Babies sleep regresses over the first year for many reasons. The first reason is a growth spurt. During growth spurts your baby will want to nurse more often, even overnight. Growth spurts are babies way of signaling your body to make more milk. Another reason for sleep regression is developmental spurts. If you stop and think about how much babies change in the first year it makes sense that their sleep will get disturbed. When baby starts to roll over they will do it in their sleep and wake themselves up. Figuring out how to crawl usually results in the same thing! Most moms will tell you they watched their baby crawl around in their sleep! Also cognitively their brain is growing and developing. The last big reason for sleep regressions is teething. Some babies are hardly bothered by teething, others are miserable teethers. Some are slow teethers and will seem to have symptoms for a month before a tooth actually pops up!
Everyone has that friend who will proudly say "oh my baby sleeps for 12 hours a night". And you sit here with your baby who is up every 2 - 3 hours and think "what is she doing differently?! The reality is that while there are gentle ways to encourage more sleep every baby is different and babies will sleep when they are ready. Most moms will readily admit that their babies don't sleep through the night.
I find that having a good mentality can be very helpful with overnight sleep. Think of the first year of sleep as a roller coaster filled with ups and downs, good nights and bad nights. You will have a period of a month where you swear something is wrong and you will never sleep again. And then suddenly sleep will happen again and you'll wreck your brains to figure out what you did differently. The answer is probably nothing!
As for night nursing = more wake ups, this is not true either. In the first year night nursing is very important to help keep supply up, even more so if you are working! Many babies will nurse more overnight after mom returns to work because they miss the comfort and the nursing. Remember nursing is not only food for babies, it is comfort. Yes, every time they wake up they may not be hungry but they may need that extra comfort from you. Many woman will tell you that even after they night weaned their babies still woke up overnight consistently so they were still awake soothing their children back to sleep.
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