Why ‘drowsy but awake’ doesn’t work

That’s right, I said it. Your baby will never sleep straight through the night. And neither will you, for that matter. We’re all familiar with the various stages of sleep from our own experience. You might not be able to put a name to them, but you’ve certainly felt the difference between waking from a light sleep and a deep one. Simply put, when we fall asleep, we spend a little while in a light stage of sleep and gradually progress into a deeper one.

Sleep, like food, is one of those elements where baby has got the final say on whether or not they’re going to cooperate, so there’s no sense trying to force the issue. If they are not sleeping, just leaving them in their room usually won’t fix things. So here’s what’s going on, and how to fix it.

As a sleep consultant, the topic I get asked about the most is the 4 month regression. Parents can find it incredibly tough as baby starts to have more night wakes and do shorter naps. Many of us just think of sleep as an on-or-off situation. You’re either asleep or you’re not. But sleep actually has a number of different stages, and they make up the “sleep cycle,” which we go through several times a night. So in order to understand what’s happening to your baby during this stage, first you need to know a few things about sleep in general.