What is a sleep regression?
Some babies who are already sleeping regularly suddenly change their sleep schedule without warning and wake up frequently during the night when they are healthy. This is a normal occurrence and is medically known as Baby and Toddler Sleep Regressions. This can be characterised by shorter naps during the day, frequent waking at night, difficulty putting them to sleep, and increased dependence on adults. ...... When sleep regressions occur, mothers and fathers are often exhausted by their babies.
What are the risks of sleep regressions for babies?
Although this is a normal occurrence, it is not harmless and such frequent reversals in daytime and nighttime can also affect your baby's development if parents do not take appropriate measures.
1. the baby's lack of sleep, appetite is affected and the baby is not active during the day;
2. If the baby is not helped at this time, the previously regular biological clock will be disturbed, with long-lasting effects on growth and development.
When do sleep regressions occur?
Sleep regressions usually occur at 4 months, 8-10 months, 11-12 months, 18 months and 2 years of age, and mostly last for about 1-4 weeks. This is because these are some of the key periods of growth and psychological development, meaning that sleep regression can occur whenever your baby enters a new stage of development. Let's look at a chart showing when sleep regressions occur and how long they last
1. The teething period.
4-6 months is the teething period. Babies at this stage often suffer from oral discomfort, resulting in frequent crying and night waking. When your baby has more saliva, likes to bite the nipple and chew toys, it is the teething period. There is no effective way to deal with teething babies, but mothers can only be more patient and buy teething toys for their babies, soothe their babies at night when they take a nap, and feed them some milk to calm them down.
2. The developmental period of large movements.
3-4 months old babies always look uncomfortable at night; they always practice rolling over with their eyes closed, and when they can roll over, they wake up with their heads up. (This is the time when babies are learning to roll over~)
At 5 to 6 and 8 to 9 months old, babies who fall asleep with their eyes closed still crawl all over the bed, and wake up and cry when they encounter their bodies or hit the head of the bed or the fence and can't crawl; they change their sleeping position and direction every day, and their heads are never on the pillow again. (These are all typical symptoms of babies in the crawling stage)
Many babies between the ages of 10 and 13 months already like to stand up and crawl all over the bed, sometimes they even stand up and scare their mothers so much that they only dare to sleep with one eye the whole night.
At 14 to 15 months, you have noticed that your baby likes to walk with something in his hand, right? It's good to walk around during the day, but what about when you go to bed at night? Looking at a baby who is crawling all over the bed, mummy and daddy need to develop their sleep skills, otherwise insomnia and neurosis are really not far away.
Compare the table with the timing of your baby's key periods of gross motor development, do mums know what to expect? Yes! It's the sleep regression caused by gross motor development! Sleep regression in babies is closely linked to gross motor development. In fact, gross motor development has a direct impact on body control within the sleep faculty, and as babies develop better gross motor development, they will have better body control and will develop better sleep.
Frequent night wakings can occur when babies are learning to: lie down, roll over, crawl, walk, run and jump, and a range of other gross movements. For example, rolling over and waking up, standing up and waking up suddenly, etc. Babies in the gross motor development stage wake up frequently during the night, and it is even more difficult to pick up sleep. For this stage, mothers can let their babies exercise more during the day to burn off energy so that they can fall asleep easily at night and soothe them as soon as possible when they wake up during the night to help them catch up. We should also put ourselves in the right frame of mind, don't feel impatient and try to tolerate the expressiveness and high energy of our babies at this stage.
3. Long-term fierceness.
From time to time, babies within 1 year of age will experience rapid growth, with their height, weight and brain capacity increasing rapidly. The sudden surge will cause the baby to eat more milk and become more frequent and irregular, so it will lead to shorter sleep time, anxious feeding and grumpiness. During this time, mothers do not need to pay too much attention to regular feeding, just feed on demand, as long as the baby is fed and drank enough other gods are floating!
4、The period of concurrent sensation
The so-called and sleep period, is the baby began to shorten the daytime sleep time. 4 months to start and for 3 sleep; 6-9 months to start and for 2 sleep; after the age of 1 year to start and for 1 sleep. During this period, babies start to have frequent naps and have difficulty falling asleep during the day, and their routine becomes disrupted. Depending on the situation, mothers can cancel a certain phase of napping to help their babies get through the restlessness of the combined sleep period.