After months of restless nights, your baby is finally sleeping through the night… only to suddenly wake up crying at 3am. Must be a sleep regression, right? Not so fast.
How do I know when my baby is having a “sleep regression”?
A “sleep regression” is a deviation from a child’s normal sleep pattern that causes a disturbance to the family. However, regressions are not particularly well defined in medical literature.
For example, it is common for kids to have disrupted sleep during times when they are experiencing major developmental milestones like pulling to stand, starting to walk or potty training. But that doesn’t mean sleep issues are easily predictable and will happen at specific intervals.
“Sometimes just like adults, kids have bad nights of sleep, and you might have some bad nights of sleep for no apparent reason,” said Craig Canapari, MD, director of the Yale New Haven Children’s Hospital Pediatric Sleep Center, and associate professor at Yale School of Medicine.
Navigating pediatric sleep issues
Regardless of what to call pediatric sleep issues, they’re still a problem. So, what should parents do?
“Don’t panic. If it’s a night or two, don’t worry too much,” said Dr. Canapari. If sleep issues persist for three to four days, he recommends looking at a few things:
- Reflect on what you’re doing when your child wakes up: Sometimes parents inadvertently reinforce bad habits. If your child is waking up in the middle of the night and you try to soothe them right away with milk or snacks, that’s going to perpetuate the problem.
- Rule out any medical causes: A runny nose, constipation or ear infection could all contribute to poor sleep.
- Look at sleep duration: Perhaps your child is ready to give up a nap. Kids usually give up naps entirely between the ages of 3 and 5 years old but this varies depending on the child. Some kids still nap when they go to kindergarten and that’s OK.
What not to do during a sleep regression?
“What we want to encourage in children is self-sufficiency,” said Dr. Canapari. “If parents start inserting themselves into this process, that may impact the child’s sleeping habits.”
Sometimes these changes are obvious. For example, giving a 15-month-old milk in the middle of the night when they previously didn’t need to eat may lead to the child requesting milk every night. Similarly, it’s tempting to give older kids screen time if they wake up early. But screens are a desirable incentive to wake up early the next morning too.
Dr. Canapari says if a child is awake but not in distress, it’s OK to just leave them be. If a child is crying, try to offer the minimum amount of contact to help them get back to sleep. This may look like rubbing their back and then walking away instead of rushing in for cuddles.
If sleep issues last longer than a few days, always check with your pediatrician. If there isn’t an underlying medical concern, the situation may just take some patience and understanding. While annoying, it’s not uncommon for toddlers to wake up at 5:30 or 6. Dropping a nap or pushing back a bedtime to accommodate a child’s needs can help solve sleep issues, but the process won’t happen overnight.
