In this article we will look at the basic facts around your baby's sleep between 3-6 months. Here you will find some tips and suggestions to help your baby sleep better during this big period of sleep maturation and development. Welcome to the trickiest period of sleep your baby will ever have! During these few months your baby's sleep will become a lot more like ours as adults, with more distinct periods of light and deep sleep and more neurologically differentiated sleep cycles. It is during this time that a baby's sleep habits are really becoming important; this leads many parents to seek advice around their baby's sleep patterns in this difficult time of change. Lets have a look at what is happening for your wee one: SLEEP CYCLES: This is the biggest neurological sleep change in your baby's whole life. Prior to now, the way your baby went to sleep for their naps and at bedtime will have had little to no impact on their ability to stay asleep longer than one sleep cycle. Somewhere between 3 and 4 months your baby's brain alters the way it deals with sleep and all babies begin to rouse more between sleep cycles. A lot of babies wake fully. This is because their sleep has matured to have more distinct periods of light and deep sleep and daytime and nighttime sleep are more differentiated, like ours is as adults. Babies will naturally wake at the end of a sleep cycle and need to actively, cognitively, go back to sleep again. This takes some practice to get right! If a baby is relying on a sleep prop/association to fall asleep (such as being fed or rocked to sleep) they will need the same prop in order to go back into another sleep cycle and nap for longer. This can be why, once babies hit the 4 month mark, they start "catnapping" for 35-45 minutes in the day and waking every 2 hours overnight. It is during this time, if your baby is relying on you in order to fall asleep, you might want to teach them to self-settle so that they can go between sleep cycles on their own. This blog has a lot more information on this stage, commonly called the 4 month regression. AWAKE TIMES: Your baby's awake time needs are now a lot greater than when they were newborn. This means that if you're still trying to put them to bed after an hour of being awake you're most likely experiencing a lot of protesting from your baby or you're having to do a lot more rocking or feeding to get them to go to sleep in the first place. Babies this age need a decent amount of awake time to allow them to then nap well. Your baby is a lot more aware of the world and will love playing, laughing and visual stimulation during this time. If you are finding your baby hard to settle, our Sleep Programs take all the guesswork out of awake times, ensuring your baby is put to bed at the best time to allow for great napping. NAPPING: Sleep is as much a nutrient for babies as milk. It is often overlooked, even by some medical professionals, in terms of it's absolute importance to a baby's growth and development. Up until the age of 2.5 to 3 years, babies and toddlers NEED daytime naps. The amount of nap hours obviously changes during this time, however in order to encourage good night sleep, efficient feeding and a happier baby, you need to work towards an appropriate amount of nap hours for your little one. By 3 months your baby is hopefully in a more predictable rhythm to their day with a combined total of around 3.5 nap hours. If your baby is having greatly more or less sleep than this, it can cause night waking as your baby will either be under tired (from having had too much day sleep) or overtired from not having had enough day sleep. Catnapping is a common term used in association with babies this age. Catnapping means your baby is only sleeping for one sleep cycle at a time, which can be caused by under or overtiredness or the reliance on a sleep association/prop. Catnapping usually leads to an overtired baby come bedtime because they haven't had the chance for a good long restorative sleep. If your baby is catnapping, your best line of defence is to allow them to learn to self-settle at the start of naps. Even then, some babies will need help to resettle during a nap to get a longer stretch of sleep - this is completely normal and for some babies it can last quite a while! Resettling them here rather than getting them up from their nap helps teach them to sleep for longer. It is in this tricky sleep stage that it is important to foster good sleep habits, so aiming to have your baby do at least one nap a day in their bed is a great way to head towards better sleep. NIGHT SLEEP & WAKING: From 3-6 months your baby might still wake in the night and need milk. This is more likely with babies who are not yet started on solids and are hungrier. Many babies are also capable of sleeping through the night by 6 months, if everything else lines up right for them. There are a number of other reasons, aside from hunger, your baby might be waking in the night, especially if their waking has increased or seems very very frequent - eg every hour: - they cannot self-settle and are relying on you to put them back to sleep when they rouse between sleep cycles - they are not swaddled (swaddling is a crucial element in your baby sleeping better in the day and at night). We would recommend babies under 5 months are swaddled. - they are being woken by environmental or household noises (using white noise is the best way to combat this) - they are too hot or cold - they are uncomfortable (usually from wind) - they are sick - they have a health condition such as reflux (read this blog for more information) - they have had too much or too little day sleep SOLIDS & SLEEP: Between the age of 4-6 months your baby may start showing signs of being ready for solids. If this is the case, you should consult with your healthcare practitioner about the best way forward. Many babies do start on solids in this age bracket and one of the signs of readiness (along with other signs) is more frequent night waking out of genuine hunger. There is a long-standing myth that starting solids will quickly mean your baby is sleeping better at night, however this is not necessarily true. When your baby starts solids the amount they will be taking is relatively small, increasing every few days, so the impact on their night sleeping won't be very noticeable right away. We advise caution around the timing and choice of solids too - lunch is the best meal to start with and babies under 10 months shouldn't be having protein at dinnertime as it can actually cause MORE night waking due to a baby's inability to effectively digest protein at night when their metabolism is slowed. If you're unsure where to begin, our Sleep Programs have all the details and timings for you. This article provides some more information about solids. SETTLING: By 4 months you'd want to aim to start decreasing the assistance you're giving your baby to help them settle to sleep. If you're feeding or rocking your baby to sleep they will need you to replicate this each time they wake between sleep cycles in the day and at night. We have many gradual methods in our Sleep Programs to help you teach your baby to fall asleep without assistance. YOUR BABY'S ROOM: The environment your baby sleeps in can have a big impact on their settling and sleep at this age - especially because they're becoming a lot more aware. The very first thing that will help your baby settle better and sleep for longer periods is a good swaddle. Swaddling ensures babies can't startle themselves awake with their moro reflex, which doesn't disappear until around 4 to 6 months. Some babies are swaddled for even longer than that! White noise is another key component in helping your baby to settle and sleep. White noise is extremely comforting to babies and helps them tune out and fall asleep. We recommend playing it louder than your baby's cries to calm them and as loud as a shower when sleeping. Use white noise for all your baby's naps and overnight too. White noise can be a really effective tool in helping your baby learn to self-settle: it's what we'd call a "positive sleep association" - when your baby wakes between sleep cycles they hear the same sound they heard when they went to sleep and it signals to them that it's still sleep time. Once your baby reached around 8 weeks old there was a shift in their hormonal balance as the hormones they had from birth and from you wore off. One of these hormones is called Melatonin and is responsible for helping us sleep and stay asleep. Melatonin is only produced and released in the dark, so sleeping your baby in a dark room is an excellent way to promote good sleep. Like all mammals, babies also find the dark comforting - they aren't afraid of the dark as older children might be; babies are not capable of mature emotions like fear. Avoid the use of night lights as these will actually stimulate your baby more and will not help your baby switch off and sleep. OTHER FACTORS AFFECTING SLEEP: This is a time of very significant change. For babies who have a more predicable pattern to their day it is far easier to pick up when something is amiss, versus behaviour that is simply attributed to developmental factors in this period. Hunger can an issue with babies between 4-6 months. A hungry baby will not settle or sleep. However, whether you are breast or bottle feeding, there are factors that need to be considered if you feel your baby seems to be constantly hungry or unsettled, such as an undiagnosed lip or tongue tie, reflux or low milk supply. If everything else seems to line up for your baby to get them sleeping well yet you suspect hunger is still the issue, talk to your paediatrician about these possibilities. Sickness can also affect a baby's sleep. Common colds can mean your baby is uncomfortable or in pain and you should follow your medical professional's advice here. Often, more seriously, babies can suffer from ear or throat infections and show no outward symptoms (not even a fever) other than a disturbance to their sleep. In most countries healthcare is free for infants so it always pays to err on the side of caution and have your baby checked by your GP. At this age, babies sleep needs have changed quite dramatically; our Sleep Programs change with your baby to help stay on top of these developments. CLICK HERE to download your FREE Baby Sleep Journey Chart! Download our FREE Baby Sleep App: For more sleep advice for babies 3-6 months, read: ROUTINES: mythbusting fact from fallacy Sleep Associations: What's all the fuss about Self Settling: the truth There is nothing cute about a catnap