Our Top Solutions for Helping Your Baby Sleep Soundly

She was doing so well. Two whole weeks of it, long enough that you'd started telling people. Now she's up three times a night and nobody in the house knows why.

This is for that situation, the one almost every family hits: a baby who was fine and now isn't.

At that point you want to change everything at once, and I can tell you from experience, many times over, that it teaches you nothing.

Do the opposite. Go through the causes one by one, starting with the most likely and the easiest to test, and stop as soon as one of them works.

Start with temperature

Temperature comes first because it's the most common cause and the one people least suspect. A baby who wakes an hour or two after going down, hot at the back of the neck, is usually overdressed and very rarely hungry. In a warm climate this is what usually goes wrong, and adding a layer when she wakes crying makes it worse. Check her chest or the back of her neck, never her hands or feet. Damp hair, a flushed face or a sweaty back all mean take a layer off. If the air-con switches off partway through the night, the room she was dressed for at 8pm isn't the room she's in at 2am, and that change catches a lot of people out.

Then look at the day, not the night

Most night problems start in the day. Here are four.

• Overtiredness. The most common cause of frequent waking is a bedtime that arrived too late. Try moving it fifteen to thirty minutes earlier for four nights before concluding anything.
• Undertiredness. Less common but real, usually in older babies: a late nap that has crept longer, or a final awake window that is now too short.
• Too little daylight. Morning light sets the body clock. A baby who spends the day indoors under steady artificial light gets a weaker signal about when it's day.
• Not enough movement. From around six months, a day with real floor time settles better than a day spent mostly in seats and carriers.

Young babies wake to feed because they need to, and no routine changes that. But there's a difference between a baby who wakes hungry and takes a full feed, and a baby who wakes, feeds for two minutes and dozes off. The second one is using the feed to get back to sleep, not to eat.

Both are fine. If you want fewer wakings, the second kind is the one you can change. The usual first step is to make sure the last feed of the day is a full one, and that daytime feeds aren't being cut short because she's distracted, which really does happen from about four months.

Everyone has things they need to fall asleep, like a certain pillow or lying on a certain side. Babies are the same, except they can't set those things up again on their own. If a baby always falls asleep being rocked, then when she wakes normally between sleep cycles she'll call for rocking, because to her that's how falling asleep works.

There's nothing wrong with that if it works for your family. If it doesn't, change it gradually: rock her until she's nearly asleep but not fully, then only until she's drowsy, then put her down awake with a hand on her chest. Expect it to take two weeks, and to slip back when she's teething or ill.

Regressions are usually progressions

There are four in the first year. One is a permanent change, and the rest are phases.

The four-month one isn't really a regression. It's a permanent change in how a baby sleeps, so it doesn't just pass. The others usually do. Through all of them, keep the routine steady, give her more support for a while, and don't start over with a whole new approach during the worst two weeks. I started over twice, I think, and it made no difference either time.

Teething gets blamed for far more than it causes, though it does disturb sleep for a day or two as a tooth comes through. Illness does too, especially a blocked nose, because young babies breathe mainly through their noses. In either case, comfort her and leave the plan for later. One bad week won't undo good sleep habits. What undoes them is the quick fixes from that bad week carrying on for three more and becoming normal.

I changed four things in one night, more than once.

A darker room, a different sleep sack, an earlier bedtime, and no late catnap, all at the same time, because I was too tired to be organised about it and I wanted it fixed that night, not in two weeks.

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Sometimes it worked, and because I'd changed four things I had no idea which one had done it, so the next time it fell apart I was straight back to guessing.

The slow way is the opposite: one change at a time, kept for four nights. I know how unreasonable that sounds when you're this tired, because I ignored the advice for months, but it still gets you there faster.

So here's the order I'd go in.

• One change at a time, held for at least four nights before you judge it.
• Temperature and layers first: the cheapest to test and most often the answer.
• Then bedtime. Earlier almost always helps.
• Then the last feed of the day.
• Then how the baby is going into the cot at bedtime.
• Then, and only then, anything more structured.

Keep your expectations reasonable.

A baby who wakes once and settles again quickly is sleeping normally. That's not a problem to fix. That's what success looks like.

This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.

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