Sleep Schedules for Babies 4-6 Months: Part One

This is generally considered the sweet spot for sleep training as babies have usually doubled their birth weight, eat larger amounts of milk (and have started solid foods), can go longer stretches without eating, and are able to self-soothe more. If you have been practicing healthy sleep habits since the first few weeks, worked with a sleep consultant, or won the good sleeper lotto, your baby may have naturally dropped their nighttime feeds. If this isn’t the case, there are a few easy steps you can take to get baby on a sleep schedule:

• Establish a bedtime routine and stick to it EVERY NIGHT. If you do the exact same routine before bed every night for 1-2 weeks, your baby will start to have less anxiety about going to bed.

• Allow baby 5-10 minutes to fuss before responding to cries to allow baby to practice connecting sleep cycles and developing self-soothing skills

• Put baby to bed awake every night and avoid sleep props that you will have to wean them off of later like musical mobiles and pacifiers

• Drop night feeds one at a time by reducing the amount of milk by  1-2 ounces or 1-2 minutes on the breast a night until that feed is down to zero. Once that feed is done, do not offer milk again at that time and repeat this process with the other feeds, one at a time, until they are gone. If baby fusses when a feed is at zero, go in and provide soothing while baby is still in the crib. Taking baby out of the crib will trigger a feeding expectation and a meltdown when this doesn’t happen.

  By Hannah Mira, Founder of Bonsoir Bebe Sleep Consulting