As a parent,
we often find ourselves
hanging out for these mythical, magical moments
in parenthood, right?
Like, that by three months,
your baby's sleep will get better.
By six months, their sleep will get even better.
By this age, they'll be doing that,
by this age they'll be doing that.
We kind of get caught up in almost just waiting
for this miracle age stage to happen.
And very often it doesn't.
And today I am answering your sleep question.
People often say that a baby's sleep improves
around six months.
Is there any truth to that?
And I'm going to give you my opinion
and advice on the old,
your baby's sleep should be better
by a specific age, statement.
And I'll tell you in what circumstances that might be true.
So, stay tuned.
I'm Nicky, one of the founders of Little Ones,
and I have three amazing children,
two cats, a dog, and two chickens.
I'm passionate about helping families
help their little ones to sleep better.
And we have developed
a set of comprehensive, online sleep programs,
which guide families right from birth
through to toddler and preschool years
to help them get their little one's napping
and sleeping really well for their age.
We would love to help you and your family.
So, please check out our website.
www.littleones.co
So, back to your sleep question.
Is six months the magic mark?
Yes and no.
You knew I was gonna say that.
So, I'm going to start with no.
I think if we spend our entire parenthood just waiting.
You know, passively waiting
for things to get better on their own,
then I think you will be disappointed.
This holds true with just about almost anything
to do with Parenthood.
The thing is you don't know what you don't know
and it can be quite easy to fall into the trap of just,
it's just a stage.
It's just a phase. It'll get better.
She'll grow out of it. Yes, that is true.
And in a number of different scenarios,
there are stages and phases.
And we, ourselves would say to some people,
oh, that particular thing is a slight sleep regression.
Just give it a week
and hopefully your little one will come through it.
But, I think it's setting yourself up to be disappointed
if you spend your entire parenthood
just waiting for things to improve
because there are definitely steps,
tweaks, little things that you can implement
and change to seek those improvements yourself.
It doesn't have to be a waiting game.
So, this is why I'm going to say there's a no side
to the six month magic sleep, improving on its own mark.
Because if your little one is a terrible sleeper
from newborn,
they're still a terrible sleeper three, four months old,
six months is probably
gonna see them be even more terrible sleeper.
If your little one is waking multiple times a night,
not napping well, is relying on really heavy,
parent controlled sleep associations.
So, if you are having to rock them and feed them
and pat them to get them back to sleep all night long
this isn't going to magically improve
because they've reached a specific age, unfortunately.
And I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
That said, what we generally do see by six months
is a baby has matured neurologically
since they were newborn.
So they're no longer in these really disorganized,
newborn sleep patterns.
They've got a really well locked in circadian rhythm.
They're able to stay awake for longer during the day.
So, you're able to maximize your awake windows with them.
And you're able to work with their circadian rhythm
to start locking in some really good sleep habits
and nap patterns.
So, that does mean that if you are trying to implement
some sort of routine or a more predictable nap
and sleep pattern or work on self settling
with your little one,
around six months is where their sleep
is going to get quite nicely consolidated.
So, if you're already working on improving their sleep
you will probably find that around six months
things might start to look really good.
That is a bit different
to just waiting for things to improve on their own.
If your baby is around six months old or nearing six months
what you could expect their sleep to look like
as they should have been,
they should be on three predictable naps a day.
Around six months they start being ready
to lose the third nap of the day.
So, that late afternoon nap.
So, moving from six months and beyond,
you'd be looking to have two really good naps happening
in their daytime.
We would recommend a shorter morning nap
followed by a longer lunchtime sleep
and then a nice chunk of awake time
until bedtime in the evening.
So, I hope that gives a little bit of clarity
around that sort of mythical,
things will just get better, question
because I know that, that statement
does get thrown around a lot in the parenting world.
And I've heard it a million times myself,
I read it online all the time.
That said,
if you are the kind of parent
who just wants to wait things out
and see what happens, then you do you, and that's awesome.
Good on you.
If you are the kind of parent
and I was this kind of parent,
who needs a bit of a plan,
who wants to sort of take a bit more of an active approach
to improving things,
then we can definitely help you with our sleep programs.
Because of course we know how to get to that six month mark,
where your baby can be napping
and sleeping really, really well.
And we would love to help you and your family there.
Go check out our website
and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
And I will talk to you again soon.