Most babies start sleeping through the night when they’re between 3 and 4 months old, or when they weigh about 12 to 13 pounds. “Through the night” in infant sleep terms means a stretch of 6 to 8 hours, not the 10 or 11 hours adults might hope for. Some babies won’t reach this milestone until 6 months or later, and that’s within the normal range. The good news is that a combination of environment, routine, and age-appropriate sleep training can help your baby get there.
Why Babies Wake Up So Often
Babies don’t have regular sleep cycles until around 6 months old. Before that, their cycles are shorter than an adult’s and they spend less time in deep sleep. Each time a cycle ends, there’s a brief moment of partial waking. Adults roll over and drift back to sleep without remembering it. Babies who haven’t learned to fall asleep independently often cry out for the same conditions they had when they first fell asleep: being held, rocked, or fed.
This is the core issue. The skill your baby needs isn’t staying asleep. It’s falling back to sleep after those natural nighttime wake-ups. Every strategy below works toward that same goal: helping your baby associate their crib, not your arms, with the moment of drifting off.
Build a Consistent Bedtime Routine
A predictable sequence of events before bed signals to your baby that sleep is coming. The specific activities matter less than the consistency. A simple pattern of bath, feeding, a short book or lullaby, then placing your baby in the crib works well. Keep the routine the same every night, in the same order, at roughly the same time.
For newborns, a flexible feed-play-sleep cycle throughout the day helps establish patterns without forcing a strict schedule. As your baby approaches 3 to 4 months, you can start tightening the timing. The key is following your baby’s drowsy cues (rubbing eyes, yawning, fussiness) and starting the routine before they’re overtired. An overtired baby actually has a harder time falling asleep because their stress hormones spike.
Set Up the Right Sleep Environment
Place your baby on their back in their own sleep space: a crib, bassinet, or portable play yard with a firm, flat mattress and a fitted sheet. Nothing else should be in there. No loose blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, or bumpers. These are suffocation risks regardless of how cozy they look.
Keep the room dark and use white noise if it helps mask household sounds. A cool room tends to promote better sleep. Dress your baby in a sleep sack or wearable blanket appropriate for the temperature rather than using loose coverings. Avoid letting your baby fall asleep in swings, car seats (unless actually in the car), or on couches or armchairs.
Know When Your Baby Is Ready
Before attempting any structured sleep training, your baby needs to be developmentally ready. Most pediatric guidelines point to 4 to 6 months as the earliest appropriate window. Before that, frequent night waking is biologically normal and often necessary for feeding.
Formula-fed babies can typically drop night feeds around 6 months, since formula digests more slowly and a 6-month-old on formula is unlikely to wake from genuine hunger. For breastfed babies, the timeline is longer. Most breastfed children are getting enough daytime nutrition by 12 months to sustain them through the night without a feed. If your baby is younger than these thresholds and waking to eat, they probably need that feeding.
Sleep Training Methods That Work
No single method is universally best. The right one depends on your baby’s temperament and how much crying you’re comfortable with. All of them share the same principle: your baby falls asleep in the crib, not in your arms.
Graduated Check-Ins
Often called the Ferber method, this approach has you put your baby down awake, leave the room, and wait a set amount of time before briefly checking in if they cry. The first night, you wait about three minutes before your first check-in. The second night, you start at five minutes. The intervals gradually increase over the course of a week. During check-ins, you offer brief verbal reassurance or a gentle pat, but you don’t pick your baby up. Most families see significant improvement within three to five nights.
Pick Up, Put Down
This is a gentler option that involves more hands-on comfort. You put your baby in the crib and leave the room. If they fuss or cry, you go back in, pick them up, and soothe them. The critical rule: put them back down before they fall asleep in your arms. You want the actual moment of drifting off to happen in the crib, not against your chest. This cycle of picking up and putting down can repeat many times in a single night, especially at first. It requires patience, but it lets you provide direct physical comfort while still teaching independent sleep.
Chair Method
You sit in a chair next to the crib while your baby falls asleep. Every few nights, you move the chair farther from the crib until you’re eventually outside the room. This works well for babies with separation anxiety, though it can take one to two weeks to complete the full progression.
Put Down Drowsy but Awake
Regardless of which method you choose, this single habit makes the biggest difference. If your baby always falls asleep while being rocked or nursed, they’ll expect those same conditions at 2 a.m. when they naturally surface between sleep cycles. Placing them in the crib when they’re sleepy but still slightly awake teaches them that the crib is where sleep happens. It feels counterintuitive at first, especially if feeding to sleep has been your go-to, but it’s the foundation that makes everything else work.
Expect Sleep Regressions
Even after your baby starts sleeping through the night, temporary setbacks are normal. Sleep specialists identify roughly six regression windows: around 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months. Each one is tied to developmental changes happening in your baby’s brain and body.
The 4-month regression is typically the first and often the most jarring because it hits right when many parents think they’ve turned a corner. At 6 months, hunger from increased daytime activity (scooting, sitting up, crawling practice) can drive night waking. The 8-month regression often coincides with pulling to stand and teething. At 12 months, your baby’s growing awareness of the world makes settling down harder. The 18-month regression frequently involves separation anxiety, while the 24-month version can bring nighttime fears, nightmares, and disruption from big life changes like potty training or switching to a toddler bed.
Regressions typically last two to four weeks. The best approach is to stay consistent with your established routine. If you revert to old habits like rocking to sleep during a regression, you may need to retrain afterward.
Common Mistakes That Backfire
Keeping your baby up later hoping they’ll be more tired usually has the opposite effect. Overtired babies produce more cortisol, making it harder for them to settle. An earlier bedtime, sometimes as early as 6:30 or 7:00 p.m., often leads to longer nighttime stretches.
Rushing in at the first sound is another common pitfall. Babies are noisy sleepers. They grunt, whimper, and briefly cry between sleep cycles without fully waking. Giving your baby a minute or two before responding lets them practice self-settling. If you immediately pick them up, you interrupt a process they were about to complete on their own.
Inconsistency is the biggest obstacle. If one parent does check-ins while the other picks the baby up and rocks them to sleep, the mixed signals slow progress dramatically. Whatever approach you choose, both caregivers need to follow the same plan.