Congrats mamas and dads, you made it through the fourth trimester! Parental leave is such an important time for bonding and learning how your baby is communicating with you. There is a lot of figuring out which cry is for hunger and which is due to tiredness. I’m sure you’ve mastered hush little baby and which rocking motion could get your sweet cherub off to sleep.
As your baby enters the 4th month you’ll soon see that there are more periods of wake and more defined periods of sleep, but there likely isn’t much of a schedule at this point. So where do you start after the fourth trimester is over? You want to develop good sleep foundations, but don’t know where to begin.
First, let’s talk a little bit about newborn sleep versus the sleep your little baby now has. In the newborn phase (about the first two months) your baby went right into what is called “REM” or dreaming sleep. REM is most important for growth and development formation and boy were they doing A LOT of growing. Now about 4 months babies go into “Non-REM” sleep first, which they will continue to do for the rest of their life. Remember they aren’t “regressing”, but progressing in their sleep development.
Now that they are in their new sleep cycle arena you can start to teach them a little more about how to sleep. This is truly one of the first of many teacher moments you will have as a parent so try to enjoy it. Let’s talk about one of the first steps to lay a strong foundation:
- Start to notice a nap pattern. Typically babies at about 4-6 months start to have 3 naps per day. The easiest nap to start with working on independent sleep and schedule is the morning nap because their drive to sleep is often the highest at this time. When you start to notice tired signs (ie; rubbing eyes, zoning out or not paying attention to the activity, pulling at ears, more clingy to the caregiver) and their wake window is almost complete (see below), place the baby in their safe sleep space, swaddle (if using), use pacifier (if using), then make sure baby is a little drowsy, but still awake. (See on sample baby sleep schedule on Instagram stories!)
Perfecting the wake window
As a new parent, I thought following a by-the-clock nap schedule was absolutely a thing from early on! Well, now that I’ve been in the sleep business for years I know that wake windows are magic. There is an art and science to perfecting the wake window for your baby. It helps with independent sleep for baby, longer naps for baby, and more warm coffee for parents 🙂
| Age | Number of Naps | Wake Window |
| 3 months | 4 | 90-100 minutes |
| 4 months | 3 | 2 hours |
| 5 months | 3 | 2.25 hours |
| 6 months | 2 | 2.5 hours |
If you feel lost, give yourself some grace! This is all so new for both you and baby. Try to step back and remember the keys to success are consistency, patience, and time. If you need more guidance check out my upcoming Bootcamp, in early May, “Back to work, back to sleep: finding the schedule that works for your baby prior to going back to work”, join the waitlist here!
