2-hourly night wakes gone in under a week!

Ruby's sleep story...

Fatigued and emotional, new mum Ash felt like she was failing. She was dealing with poor napping, endless night wakes and a crabby baby, with no end in sight.

Now 4 months old, little Ruby was only napping for 30 minutes at a time, achieving about 4 of these short naps throughout the day. Ash had no idea what the awake times were meant to be for Ruby's age, and coupled with poor napping, this meant Ruby was reaching bedtime at night very overtired.

From there, Ruby was waking every 45 minutes to 2 hours all night long. When she woke, Ash would feed her back to sleep each time. Ash was exhausted and knew their sleep situation wasn't sustainable, so she bought our Baby Sleep Program.

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After reading our recommendations on the ideal sleep environment, Ash started by introducing some white noise and also made Ruby's room darker so that sleep was easier to achieve.

From there, Ash started using our awake times as a guide for when Ruby needed to be napping. Almost straight away, Ruby became easier to settle to sleep at her naps and she also started napping for a little bit longer each time - around 45 minutes, or one full sleep cycle.

After reading through the information in our Sleep Program and chatting to our friendly sleep consultants, Ash realised that baby Ruby was deep in the throes of the 4 month sleep regression, meaning her sleep needs had developed and matured from those of a newborn baby.

During this massive change, sleep cycles become more pronounced and babies wake fully after each one, resulting in catnapping in the day and very frequent night waking! At this time, babies are capable of learning to fall asleep independently, or self-settle, which means when they wake at the end of a sleep cycle, they can simply put themselves back to sleep without needing you to actively settle them via feeding, patting or rocking.

Little Ruby was relying very heavily on being fed to sleep - that it was the only way she knew how to go to sleep. This meant that once the 4 month regression hit, she was needing to be fed back to sleep after every sleep cycle. (Read more about how sleep associations work HERE).

This situation was also exacerbated by the fact that she was having such short naps in the day and far too much awake time, causing her to be very overtired by bedtime in the evening. An overtired baby will struggle to sleep well at night in any case, so couple that with a strong feed-to-sleep association, and you've got a recipe for a very wakeful baby and a very tired mother!

After making some positive changes to Ruby's sleep environment and tweaking her nap schedule in the daytime, Ash was then able to use one of the methods in our Sleep Program to gently guide Ruby from feeding to sleep, to self-settling in her crib.

Once Ruby had mastered this important skill, her naps and night sleep almost instantly improved. All of these improvements happened in under a week because Ruby was perfectly ready for sleep every time and so it wasn't difficult to alter her sleep habits.

Ash says:

I cannot thank Little Ones enough. Within one week I was a different mother, I was able to function as my little girl was sleeping 10-12 hour stretches at night. I even recommenced University study as I could almost guarantee to have 2hrs in the middle of my day to myself to study.

Once Ruby was napping better and sleeping more soundly at night, Ash also reported that she was a much happier baby. In fact, Ash was so impressed by the positive changes she saw in little Ruby, that she didn't hesitate to recommend Little Ones to her friends:

I have recommended this program to 4 friends who ALL had similar outcomes. Babies sleeping through the night (or close enough) and mums that can function and enjoy this crazy ride. I am forever grateful for the Program and for the information it equips new mothers with!

If you need a hand getting through the 4 month sleep regression or getting your baby's settling, naps or night sleep back on track, take a look at our award-winning Sleep Programs, recommended by paediatricians worldwide.