Wake windows lengthen, naps start to organize, and big developmental leaps land in the middle of it all. Here is what is normal, and what helps.
Across this stretch, sleep slowly becomes more organized. Naps begin to fall into a more predictable pattern and often consolidate from three down to two.
Then, often around eight to ten months, sleep can wobble again with new night wakings and protest at bedtime, right as your baby is learning to sit, crawl, or pull up.
Two things are usually at work. First, your baby's internal clock is settling in, so daytime sleep and nighttime sleep start to sort themselves into a shape you can plan around.
Second, around eight to ten months, your baby begins to understand that you still exist when you leave the room, which is a beautiful leap in development and also a brand new reason to miss you at bedtime.
Add the drive to practice every new physical skill, sometimes at two in the morning, and you have a very normal stretch of disrupted sleep.
Give the new skills plenty of room during the day so they feel less urgent at night. Keep the sleep environment and the bedtime routine consistent, since predictability is deeply reassuring to a baby working hard to understand the world.
When your baby wakes needing you, brief and calm reassurance helps them feel safe without fully waking the household.
This is also the stage where gentle, values-aligned approaches to sleep can begin, if and when your family wants them. There is a whole spectrum of ways to support sleep, and the right one is the one that fits your child and sits well with you.
A gentle note. This is warm, practical support, not medical care. For anything medical, feeding, weight, illness, or breathing related, please contact your pediatrician. Any sleep training approaches here are offered as choices along a spectrum from gentle to more structured, never as mandates. Your family, your call.