Infant Sleep Across the First Year: Navigating Regressions, Transitions, and Sustainable Sleep Habits

Infant sleep in the first year is not a problem to be solved once and maintained unchanged. It is a moving target, disrupted periodically by developmental leaps, growth spurts, teething, illness, and the major regressions that cluster around four months, eight to ten months, and the twelve-month mark. Families who understand what is happening at each transition, and who have thought through their approach to sleep in advance, navigate these periods with more resilience and less reactive decision-making. By the end of this course you will be able to describe how sleep architecture and consolidation patterns evolve from birth through 12 months, anticipate and respond to the major sleep regressions with a planned rather than reactive approach, evaluate different approaches to longer sleep stretches and night weaning with an understanding of the evidence and trade-offs, adapt your infant's sleep environment and routine as developmental milestones arrive, and identify the warning signs that a sleep concern warrants a conversation with your child's healthcare provider. What you will learn: - Sleep consolidation timeline: how sleep gradually shifts from short cycles and frequent waking toward longer nighttime stretches across the first year - The four-month sleep regression: what causes it, why it is different from other regressions, and how to respond - Sleep associations: what they are, how they form, and how to shape them intentionally if you want your infant to learn to settle independently - Graduated approaches to encouraging independent sleep: the concepts behind gradual fading, check-and-console, and extinction — and the evidence base for each - The eight-to-ten-month regression and separation anxiety: what is driving the waking and how to balance responsiveness with sustainable sleep - Night weaning: when it is developmentally appropriate, how to approach it gradually, and how to coordinate it between two caregivers - The twelve-month transition: moving to one nap, adjusting the feeding schedule, and what often disrupts sleep in this period - When to seek professional guidance: signs that a sleep pattern may indicate a health issue rather than a developmental phase The course is organized around six developmental snapshot chapters — newborn through two months, two through four months, four through six months, six through nine months, nine through twelve months, and the twelve-month transition — each with a sleep overview, a common challenge, a planning framework, and a reflection prompt. Two running case examples — a family using responsive settling throughout and a family who introduces a graduated approach at five months — illustrate how the same developmental framework applies with different parenting approaches. This course is designed for individuals who have moved past the earliest newborn weeks and want a forward-looking framework for infant sleep across the full first year. Suitable for parents at any point in the first year who are new to structured sleep planning. This course is informational and educational; for guidance on a specific sleep or developmental concern, consult your child's pediatrician.