Sleep in the first year, and what a “regression” really is

The word regression suggests something going backwards that ought to be going forwards. That framing causes a lot of unnecessary worry, because the underlying pattern is normal.

Newborn sleep is not broken sleep

A newborn sleeps in short stretches around the clock because that is how newborn sleep works. There is no day-night rhythm at first — it develops over the first few months.

Total sleep is high and it arrives in pieces. Nothing about that is a problem to be solved, though it is genuinely hard to live through.

Why sleep goes backwards

The stretches when sleep falls apart tend to line up with something the baby is learning. Rolling, sitting, crawling, pulling up, and the arrival of words all disturb sleep, and so does separation awareness somewhere around eight or nine months.

A baby who has just learned to pull to standing will practise it at two in the morning. That is not defiance and it is not a step backwards — it is a brain working on something.

Most "regressions" are a skill being rehearsed at an inconvenient hour. They pass, usually within a few weeks, and they pass whether or not you buy anything.

What actually helps

• Daylight in the morning, and dim light in the evening — the rhythm is learned, and light is the main teacher
• A short, dull, identical routine before sleep. Three or four steps is plenty
• Putting them down drowsy rather than fully asleep, when you can manage it
• Watching for tiredness rather than the clock in the early months
• Accepting that a baby who has been ill, travelling or teething will sleep worse, and will recover

Sleeping through is a slippery phrase

In much of the research it means a stretch of about five hours, not a full night, and plenty of healthy babies do not do it reliably in the first year.

Night waking is normal well beyond the point at which other people start asking. Whatever you are being asked at the baby group is not a standard.

The safe sleep part, every time

Whatever else changes, the basics do not: on the back, on a firm flat surface, in their own space in your room, with nothing else in there.

Those rules apply for the whole first year, and they apply at three in the morning when you are past caring, which is exactly when they matter most.

Worth mentioning to your pediatrician

• Snoring, gasping, or long pauses in breathing during sleep
• A baby who cannot be settled at all, or whose crying has changed in character
• Sleep that suddenly worsens with no obvious cause and stays worse
• Your own exhaustion reaching a point where you are frightened by how you feel

That last one belongs on the list as much as the others. A parent running on nothing is a medical issue in its own right, and it is a reasonable thing to raise.