If you’re anything like me, bedtime doesn’t always go smoothly. Some days all is great and those last few minutes with the little ones snuggled up in bed listening to you finish the bedtime story are just perfect.
But there are many nights when the baby won’t go to sleep or your toddler asks for a drink for the 5th time, you’re frazzled from a long day and you just want the kids to GO TO SLEEP! On evenings like this, I can say for certain that I’m not exactly “emotionally available”.
Yet new infant sleep research suggests that parents who are “emotionally available” to their babies and toddlers at bedtime help their children to sleep better at night. Researchers videotaped mothers in 39 families as they put their babies to bed, and also had them fill out questionnaires and sleep diaries. Dads were recruited to participate in the research but not enough of them interacted with their little ones long enough and so the study focused on mothers. (more…)
I can’t remember who told me you should never wake a sleeping baby. It might have been my mum, or maybe it’s something I heard a lot of people saying as I was growing up. And it does seem crazy to wake a sleeping child.
And yet, there are times when you should.
Take, for example, a newborn who has day and night mixed up. Your little mite is having beautiful long stretches of sleep in the day and then feeding all night. You need your baby to get most of his calories in the day so he gradually needs less feeds at night. Waking him every so often for a feed, change and cuddle throughout the day, is the beginning of teaching him the difference between day and night. (more…)
I like routines for my small people. They help me plan my day and they prepare my children for what’s going to happen next. My baby naps at about the same time every day so his body is ready for a sleep when I put him down, and this means he goes to sleep without any fuss. (more…)
The truth is that it’s rare any product will magically transform your hourly waking baby or toddler into a “sleeps through the night” dream child. Things are normally much more complicated than this.
But there are some products which really do help. Here are the basics: (more…)
There is no one answer to the age old question of how to get baby to sleep through the night. If there was, there wouldn’t be so many books, products and child sleep experts available to help! I wouldn’t be writing this blog post, and there wouldn’t be millions of exhausted parents frantically searching for a solution. However, here are 6 key steps you can follow which will encourage your baby to sleep through the night.
Keep in mind that under 6 months your baby may need feeding in the night and that you are teaching your baby how to sleep. This can take a while but by putting the right elements in place as soon as possible, it will make things easier for you all in the long run. (more…)
Here’s an example of a bedtime routine which you and your baby or toddler will love. You’ll want to adapt this depending on your little one’s age. But remember that it should be focused and not too long. 20 minutes for an 8 week old baby, moving to a maximum of 45 minutes for a toddler is ideal. (more…)
If you’ve been following the progress of Josie George in her journey to help little Kai sleep through the night, well… the verdict is in. He can do it!
Josie and I looked at two approaches to teach Kai to sleep well on his own – 1) Leaving him for short periods of time, returning to reassure him until he falls asleep. Or 2) Staying with Kai whilst he falls asleep and gradually moving outside of the room over a several nights.
Because Josie has been working to improve Kai’s sleep for many months, she knew he would respond best to the approach of gradually withdrawing her presence at bedtime.
A couple of nights into the plan and she wrote a blog post that was enough to put anyone off going any further. He was pretty much awake from 2:30 until 6:30am.
But by night four, Kai slept through the night with just a brief awakening at 10:30pm. It’s really wonderful to read about the impact of this on Josie. Kai is nearly 18 months and he has never slept through the night. And yet, after a lot of support from Josie, plus some serious perseverance and consistency, he showed his mummy he could do it.
There’s still work to be done, behaviours to reinforce. The following two nights weren’t so good. But then he did it again. That’s twice in one week! Now that Josie and Kai know he can sleep through, it will be easier to improve things until Kai does it so often that Josie just takes it for granted!
So if you’re considering tackling your baby’s sleep problems in the New Year, Josie’s success might just give you the encouragement you need!
