Four months old is a really tricky time for sleep.
There are a whole lot of things happening
in your little one's body and brain
that mean that sometimes sleep can be quite hard to achieve.
And today I am answering your sleep question.
My four month old can self-settle at the start of naps,
but cannot resettle during sleep cycles.
And in this video, I'm going to explore why your little one
might be struggling to resettle between their sleep cycles.
Tell me in the comments below,
do you have a four month old baby
who is struggling with the same thing?
Or is sleep going really well for you and your family?
We would love to hear from you.
Hi, I'm Nicky.
I'm one of the founders of Little Ones,
and mother to three darling children.
When we created this company,
we wanted to provide trusted, proven sleep solutions
to tired families
because we know what sleep deprivation is like,
and we also knew how hard it was
to find reliable information from sources you can trust.
What we have developed
is a set of comprehensive sleep programs
that guide you through every aspect
of your little one's sleep right from birth.
We cover naps, settling, self-settling, sleep regressions,
night sleep, nap transitions, starting solids and more.
We would love to help you and your family
achieve better sleep through our online programs
available in our mobile app.
Please visit our website, www.littleones.co
to get started right away.
Right, I'm not gonna dive too deep into
the mass of sleep changes that happen at four months old,
because we've got a ton of videos on our YouTube channel,
and articles on our website that cover all of the mass
of neurological developmental leaps that happen at this age.
So make sure you check those out as well.
But what I am gonna briefly mention is that,
once your little one reaches around four months old,
and then of course beyond four months old,
self-settling does start to play a part
in your little one's sleep quality.
So if your little one is self-settling
or able to self-settle, it means that they can independently
put themselves to sleep at the start of their naps
and at bedtime in the evening.
This means your little one is not relying on you
to actively settle themselves to sleep.
So what self-settling generally means
from this age onwards is your baby is able to achieve
longer naps and more consolidated nighttime sleep,
because they have the skill of being able to put themselves
to sleep without relying on you actively settling them
each time they come out of a sleep cycle
during the day and overnight.
So if you're a little one at four months old
is already self-settling to sleep, perfect.
That's really awesome, and you've done a great job.
But your question indicates that your little one
is still struggling to then resettle
between those sleep cycles.
Firstly, I'm going to say this is so normal at this age,
and I don't want you to get stressed out about it
or hung up on it because your little one is
what we would call catnapping,
or just sleeping for that one sleep cycle at a time.
Baby steps with babies.
The fact that your little one is able to self-settle
when they're going to sleep,
is the biggest step in the right direction.
And sometimes for some babies,
it is just a bit of a waiting game
while the development catches up.
So you might do everything else, right
to help them be able to resettle between those cycles.
Sometimes it's just a time thing,
and we just need to ride it out.
But I'll give you a couple of tips
for things that you could definitely try
to help get them resettling between those sleep cycles
to aim for longer naps and better nighttime sleep.
So the first thing I would suggest
is referring to naps during the day,
just make sure your little one is awake
for long enough between naps.
So quite commonly, we see catnapping, or not resettling
between sleep cycles
when a baby is still in sort of newborn-ish sleep patterns,
so having a wait periods that are a bit too short now.
At four months old, I would definitely be looking at
at least two hours of being awake between naps,
to allow them to be tired enough to then resettle
and sleep for longer than that one sleep cycle.
But you also wanna rule out that they're overtired,
so I wouldn't want them to be awake for too long
between their naps,
definitely no longer than two and a half hours awake.
Aim for two, if they're overtired,
that can be another reason that they're not resettling
between their sleep cycles.
The environment in which your little one sleeps
is also going to contribute to their resettling success
at this age.
Aim for the classic advice we always give,
nice dark room, loud white noise.
These things will really help your little understand
that they are in the zone for sleep,
that it's still sleep time,
and they're hopefully eventually going to just roll over
once they surface out of that first sleep cycle,
and go back to sleep into another one
to have a nice long nap.
Another thing that you can do just to help your little one
understand that they ought to be resettling back to sleep,
is just give them a bit of help.
There is nothing wrong with letting your baby self-settle
to sleep, then if they're struggling to resettle,
going in and doing a bit of active settling for them.
This might be patting them on the bottom
or the tummy or the back,
it might even be getting them up
and rocking them for a little bit to get them back to sleep
so that they can sleep for another sleep cycle.
The fact that your baby is self-settling
at the start of that nap is a really big win.
And I wouldn't want you to feel like,
you can't then go in and hands on resettle them,
because that would still be totally fine.
It helps teach them that they need to sleep
for longer at that nap.
And it also means that they are
potentially getting a nice long nap,
so it's gonna stave off any over tiredness
throughout the rest of the day.
So I hope that's given you a few tips around
some different things you can try
to encourage your little one to resettle
between those sleep cycles.
But the biggest thing that I wanna tell you is
not to stress about it.
Some babies are just serial catnappers
no matter what you do.
And if your little one is already self-settling,
like I said, that is a really, really big step
in the right direction and the rest will come.
It might be a few tweaks to their nap routine,
a few tweaks to their awake windows,
switching on some white noise and that's all it takes.
Or it might just be a little bit of time.
But if you do need some extra help getting those awake times
and maybe sort of looking at
what the ideal nap structure should be
for your little one at this age,
please check out our website wwww.littleones.co,
and see how our sleep programs can work with your family
to improve the sleep of your little one,
but also of your sleep too.
Thank you very much for joining me
and I look forward to talking to you again soon.