KW: Yes, there's no research that supports sleep training babies under four months of age for multiple reasons. I mean, a lot of their sleep is not developed, and they also don't have self-soothing abilities. Many of the babies can't even roll both ways, which is what the first step is in being able to self-soothe. So, you can imagine if you're lying on your back and you want to change your position, you can't.
The sleep is not developed on top of it. So, we sort of wait for a more developed night's sleep and morning nap, then an afternoon nap, and then in the midst of all of this we have this four-month sleep regression, which sort of throws everything up in the air. That's why waiting until 16-18 weeks gives the baby some time to kind of get through that regression, and then the parents are able to gently guide them. Before that, our role as moms is to, of course, heal our bodies; establish breastfeeding if you're doing that; and just focus on our baby's growth. Our next task is to help them differentiate between day and night. It's not really sleep training or coaching but helping them to understand that during the day we're awake more, we feed more, and nap, and then we have our one longer chunk at night, and then eventually that chunk gets longer. So, that's our primary goal in the first four months.
