Infant sleep · 4–17 months
Baby sleep consultant —for infants who arestruggling with sleep.
Maybe it goes like this. Your baby falls asleep in your arms — warm, heavy, finally still — and wakes the minute they touch the crib. So you start over. And the whole thing takes an hour.
Or nights were fine, and now they're up every 90 minutes. Or every nap ends at half an hour, like clockwork, and you spend the rest of the day doing math about what that means for bedtime.
Something shifted. Let's look at what.
Why sleep changes during these months
Somewhere around four months, your baby's sleep cycles mature into something closer to yours — which means the moments between cycles become visible. A baby who drifted through them before now surfaces, notices where they are, and needs the same conditions back to cross into the next cycle.
That's why the transfer suddenly fails. Why the thing that worked two weeks ago stopped. The way your baby falls asleep at bedtime is usually the way they'll ask to fall back asleep at 2 a.m. — so bedtime isn't just bedtime. It's the rehearsal for the whole night.
None of this means you caused it. It means your baby developed — and the plan needs to develop with them.
The questions I'd ask you
Sometimes we start talking about bedtime and realize the part worth looking at happened four hours earlier. That's normal. Sleep is one long chain, and the link that matters isn't always the one that's loudest.
What happens when you put them down?
How are they falling asleep at bedtime — and what happens when they wake?
What did naps look like that day?
When did this start — and did anything change around the same time?
What have you already tried, and did any of it work, even for a little while?
How I'd approach it
First I listen — I want to understand why this is happening before anyone changes anything. Then we look at the whole day together, figure out which part actually matters, and start there. One part at a time.
What I won't do is hand you a generic schedule and disappear. A plan for your baby gets built from your baby's patterns, your family's days, and what you're genuinely comfortable doing at 2 a.m. — because a plan only works if you can live with it on the hard night, not just the good one.
What actually changes
That's the real goal. Not just a baby who sleeps — a parent who knows what their baby needs and what to do about it.
You put them down — and they stay asleep.
The 32-minute nap starts becoming a real one.
A night waking gets an answer instead of a debate.
And when something shifts — a tooth, a nap change, a weird week — you understand your baby's sleep well enough that you're not starting over.
Want to understand your baby's sleep patterns?
Sometimes the hardest part is keeping track of what's happening. The Infant Sleep Learning Center — an independent educational resource — gives parents a free place to document sleep patterns, track challenges, and explore helpful educational resources at their own pace.
Explore the Infant Sleep Learning Center →A few things parents ask me
Does this mean cry-it-out?
No. I don't fit families into a predetermined method. What I suggest depends on your baby's age, development and temperament, and what you're comfortable actually doing night after night. You'll know your options — and the decision is yours.
We already tried a schedule and it didn't work.
That's common, and it's useful information. A schedule tells you when. It can't tell you why your baby wakes — and the why is usually the part that's actually in the way. Bring what you tried; even the failures tell us something.
Is 4–17 months the right age to get help?
It's the age range where sleep patterns become changeable in a real way — but there's no wrong time inside it. What matters is what's happening in your house right now.
Tell me what happened last night.
You don’t need to have any of this figured out before we talk. I’ll ask some questions, we’ll look at what you’ve already tried, and I’ll tell you what I notice. Then you decide.