SLEEP REGRESSIONS CAUSED BY DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES

As a mother and sleep consultant, spending so much time observing and hearing about young kids, I’ve come to the conclusion that children,as a rule, are complicated beings!

A baby’s basic needs essentially break down into eating,sleeping, and pooping, and their only real form of communicating an issue with any of those things is through crying. But as any parent knows, identifying the fact that there is a problem is much easier than actually solving the problem.

Now, if you’re the parent of a baby who’s learning to crawl,or just figured out how to roll over, or is learning to talk, this may come as the least surprising scientific discovery imaginable, but developmental milestones are likely to cause disruptions in a baby’s sleep. More night wakings and periods of increased long wake episodes are often manifested at the onset of reaching new milestones. So, let’s look at language and movement skills and WHY they might be responsible for some more frequent nighttime wakeups.

Much like the rest of us, babies get excited when they start to learn a new skill. They get a thrill out of this newfound ability and they are going to practice it over and over. In the morning, in the afternoon, and when they wake up in the middle of the night, and that excitement is going to make it a little more difficult for them to get back to sleep.

The reason I wanted to talk about this is because I see a lot of parents looking for a “solution” in this scenario, and in trying to get their baby’s sleep back on track, they tend to lose consistency. They’ll move bedtimes around, start rocking or feeding baby back to sleep, change up the bedtime routine, anything they think might help. But the best advice I can give you is to hold steady. You’re probably going to have to go in and comfort your baby a little more often during this period, and you’ll have to help get them out of the uncomfortable positions they manage to get themselves into, and you’ll likely have some frustrating nights where your little one will drive you a little bananas with their babbling. And although you can’t fix the situation,you can make things easier for yourself once the regression is over.

Adopting a bunch of quick-fixes in order to get your baby sleeping quickly when they wake up at night is likely to end up creating dependencies that will last long past the development of the new skill. So don’t give in to the temptation to go back to or introduce a sleep crutch.Offer them some comfort, tell them it’s still bedtime, help them get back into a comfortable position if they’ve gotten themselves pushed up against the side of the crib, or roll them onto their backs if they’ve flipped, but try let them get back to sleep on their own. That way, once they’ve got this new skill mastered, they’ll still have the ability to self-soothe when they wake up at night.

It’s likely to be a bit of a challenge, but hang in there. Stay consistent and you can expect even more of those glorious sleep-filled nights once the storm has passed.

And know that I'm here if you get way off track and need a little help in getting your child sleeping beautifully again!