Creating a conducive sleep environment
‘Why a whole chapter on sleep environment?’ you might be asking. Well, it’s very important. Where you sleep and the conditions you like when you go to sleep are as equally important as how sleep develops.
Think about this: you have your own familiar room with a comfy bed, favourite pillows and covers. You go to your room when you want to sleep because you feel safe there. When you wake up, you expect to still be there, nice and safe in your comfortable, familiar surroundings. You need this because when you sleep, you’re not alert to your surroundings, so you need to feel secure in order to relax.
Your baby is just the same as you. She needs her own safe, comfy room and bed. She also needs to be put to sleep in the same bed and room both day and night. This will help her night-time sleep.
So, sleep environment and location are very important.
Sleep location
There’s lots of advice on where your baby should sleep after she’s born. Some people recommend that you share a room with your baby, and other people advise that it’s better to let your baby sleep in her own room. Cultural differences play a large part in choosing where you put your baby to sleep. Western cultures tend to place emphasis on encouraging independence in young children, therefore babies sleeping in their own room has become popular. Parents across other cultural groups may place less emphasis on independence, so solitary sleeping is not so important.
Co-sleeping or bed-sharing is not recommended due to the risk of Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (SUDI). The term SUDI includes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and other fatal sleeping accidents.
Some parents do choose to co-sleep or bed-share because of their personal beliefs. Often bed-sharing happens by default – that is, you don’t intend to co-sleep with your baby but you’re so exhausted from frequent night waking that bed-sharing is your last resort, just to get some rest.
Whatever reason co-sleeping or bed-sharing occurs, make sure you are aware of the Red Nose SUDI guidelines (rednose.com.au/article/is-it-safe-to-sleep-with-my-baby) to ensure your baby sleeps safely.
Co-sleeping guidelines
• Sharing a sleep surface increases the risk of SIDS and fatal sleep accidents. Babies most at risk are those who are under 3 months of age, were born prematurely or were small for their gestational age.
• You shouldn’t sleep with your baby on your sofa or couch, a waterbed, hammock or a beanbag. These surfaces aren’t flat or stable and are completely unsafe if you fall asleep and accidentally roll on your baby.
• It’s safest not to share your bed or any sleep surface with your baby and anyone who is affected by alcohol or other drugs – that includes medicines that cause drowsiness, even prescribed or over-the-counter medicines – or with someone who smokes.
Red Nose SUDI guidelines recommend you sleep your baby in your room for the first six to 12 months.
Putting your baby in a cot next to or near your bed is the safest and best sleeping arrangement for the first six to 12 months. In fact, approximately 70 per cent of parents share their room with their baby from birth. By 1 year old, about two-thirds of parents have moved their baby to their own room.
Some of the benefits your baby may gain from room-sharing with you are that you are able to monitor her wellbeing during sleep, it’s easier to breastfeed or formula feed, and you can help her return to sleep more quickly after waking. You and your baby will also experience a greater sense of emotional closeness and wellbeing, and room-sharing helps with successful breastfeeding. Always return your baby to her bed after a feed; this is safest for her and will help with her settling and ability to soothe herself to sleep.
Even though Red Nose SUDI guidelines recommend you continue to sleep your baby in your room for the first six to 12 months, you might decide to move her during the second half of the year. There are all sorts of reasons you might choose to do that, among them that you might need to try to get more sleep, you want to see if your baby will sleep better in her own room, or your bedroom may be too small for a cot.
If you do choose to move your baby to her own room between 6 and 12 months, she may learn to self-settle more quickly when she wakes at night. This is because you’re less likely to hear her when she rouses and calls you, so she’ll have more time to try to self-settle. The downside is you may only hear her if she cries, so it’s possible that if she sleeps alone she may cry more.
Negative sleep associations
Whether your baby shares your room or sleeps in her own room, it’s important to consider what else affects her sleep development. Sleep problems are commonly associated with:
• lack of a consistent, relaxing and familiar bedtime routine
• irregular daily routines
• exciting activities at bedtime
• a very busy household
• having a TV in the same room your baby is sleeping in
• smartphones, tablets and computers at bedtime.
Predictable daily routines
Preparing your baby for night-time sleep isn’t just about having a consistent, relaxing and soothing bedtime routine. Having familiar daily routines will provide your baby with a predictable and stress-free atmosphere during the day, which will prepare her for the night and sleep.
You know yourself how hard it can be to wind down and relax when you’ve had a busy, stressful day, especially if your day hasn’t gone as planned and your routine has been upset. You might have been late for work and missed your lunchbreak because of some unexpected deadline. You know the type of events that completely stress you and spoil your day.
Predictable routines are not just important for your baby, they are important to you as well. One of the difficulties you may be having is that you’re trying to maintain your old routine and fit your new baby around that. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work. And that can make you feel even more stressed.
John B. Watson, an early-20th century childcare expert, said that ‘babies and children should never inconvenience adults’. His old-fashioned advice still influences lots of the information that’s around today. Fortunately, current research understands your baby’s needs much better than such old ideas.
In the meantime, your baby really can’t function on an adult’s routine, it’s far too stressful for her. She relies on you to adjust your routine to help her establish her day–night rhythms and sleep cycles, and provide predictable and sensitive feeding and socialising times during the day.
By implementing routines you will feel more in control and that will make you feel much more confident as a parent. Better still, if it helps your baby sleep, you will sleep.
Predictable routines are not just important for your baby, they are important to you as well.
That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy an active social life. You can work around your baby’s developing daily rhythms and schedule enriching outings that you both enjoy. Relaxing together will help you both sleep.
So, what is a routine?
A routine doesn’t mean ‘by the clock’; for example, doing things at exactly 6 am, 10 am, 2 pm, 6 pm, etc. Hardly anyone lives their life like that. Your baby’s routine will be organised around her feed and sleep times, and will change progressively as she matures. Basically, a routine is a series of activities done in the same order, each day.
Bedtime routines
Your baby’s bedtime routine is important to help her settle. Think about your own bedtime routine. After dinner and evening chores are done, you may relax after a long busy day and watch some TV or read until you feel drowsy. You always feel drowsy before you go to sleep. You also give non-verbal cues, such as yawning, moving around restlessly, rubbing your face or sighing. You might have a warm shower, clean your teeth, change into your pyjamas, read a little and go to bed. That’s a fairly common routine.
Your baby’s night-time routine can be as simple as three or four steps carried out in the same order.
Consistent and familiar routines get your mind and body relaxed and ready for sleep. If you think about it, it’s harder to go to sleep when your routine is disrupted, such as when you go on holiday or stay at a friend’s house, or you go out to a party and come home really hyped up. It’s also harder to sleep if you’re anxious or worried, or you’ve had an argument with someone just before you go to bed.
Your baby is just the same. She, too, needs a consistent, relaxing and familiar night-time sleep routine. She needs this routine even more than you because she is developing her sleep rhythms and habits.
Her night-time routine can be as simple as three or four steps carried out in the same order over a short period of time. Depending on the age of your baby or child, the bedtime routine can take up to 30 minutes. The routine helps your baby to wind down and relax so she can fall asleep more quickly and stay asleep longer.
The type of routine is also dependent on age. You might like to include a massage in your baby’s routine for the first 12 months. But your older toddler or preschooler may not enjoy a massage and would prefer stories, cuddling, singing or other quiet, soothing activities. Avoid irritability and anger at bedtime, as this causes stress and your baby, toddler or preschooler is unlikely to settle.
Sample bedtime routine
A quiet, soothing bedtime routine builds the foundation for a good sleep, helping your baby to fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. There is no set time for bedtime – this is up to you and what’s right for you culturally and personally.
1. Give your baby a bath – this is always soothing and relaxing and improves sleep. Typically, her bath should be before her first night-time sleep.
2. Try giving her a gentle massage with an oil (for babies under 12 months and only if she enjoys it – some babies don’t like such intense touching).
3. Put her in her pyjamas.
4. Using a soft, low and quiet voice, read stories or rhymes, sing songs and/or lullabies to her.
5. Give her plenty of calm cuddles.
6. Place your baby on her back in her own bed.
7. Turn out the lights and leave the room.
Morning routines
Consistency in establishing sensitive and responsive routines throughout the day and night is known to help babies and children sleep through the night.
This routine doesn’t run to a time on the clock. It will depend on when your baby wakes from a sleep and ends when she shows you she’s tired and ready for bed. The routine is a series of activities done in the same order in a predictable, sensitive and responsive way. Putting in place a routine like this will help you and your baby have more stress-free days and nights.
Having a baby does change your old routines significantly and it can be a shock to find that someone so little can change your life so completely. This is especially true if you were led to believe that your baby would just fit in with your old lifestyle.
Thank goodness your baby is so delightful and melts your heart with each smile, or reaches out to you for a hug or laughs maniacally at you when you hide your head under her blankie. And what about those funny, gummy kisses on your chin! She always has an ace up her sleeve to help you both get over those glitches.
Sample morning routine for your 6- to 8-month-old baby
• Your baby wakes from a sleep. You decide whether to resettle her or if she’s ready to get out of bed.
• If you decide it’s time for her to get up, you greet her warmly and say hello.
• You change her nappy and start your social time together. Tell her what you’re doing while you change her nappy and decide what sort of mood she’s in. It’s a good idea to tell her what sort of mood she’s in as well. She doesn’t know what she’s feeling yet. She needs you to tell her that she’s grumpy or happy or tired.
• You might decide she’s hungry and ready for a milk feed, breakfast or lunch. When you feed her, have a routine so she knows she’s going to have something to eat. Remember, when you have a meal, you always prepare yourself to eat.
• Tell her she’s hungry and going to have a feed and what’s she’s going to have to eat – milk, banana, avocado. It’s nice to know what type of food you’re going to have for a meal.
• Talk to her while she’s feeding – this is a social time. Just as you usually like to socialise and talk with someone when you have a meal, your baby really wants to enjoy your company during her meal and she’ll eat better, too. (This is the time to put your phone away and use it later when she’s asleep.)
• If you can, have something to eat at the same time. Eating together is always more comfortable and enjoyable.
• During her meal you can sing songs, tell stories and talk about the day so far and what you’re going to do next. Talking, singing, smiling and gentle touching helps her brain grow and develop rapidly. Her language skills will develop more quickly.
• If she gets distracted, wait for her to have a break between sucks on the breast or bottle and then have a chat.
• Tell her when she’s finished her milk or solids. She doesn’t know yet when the meal is over, she needs you to tell her. By talking with her you are giving her cues and signals about what you are doing and what is about to happen.
• Clean her face and hands if she needs it and explain to her what you’re doing. She needs a running commentary on everything that’s happening to her. Most exciting of all, this will help your relationship to thrive. In the same way as any new and important relationship you have, the only way to get to know each other is to talk, socialise, smile and laugh.
• After her feed, she’s probably ready for some play with you. When you play with her, she’ll sometimes like to make up the game and invite you to help her. When she does that, follow her lead – that makes her feel confident and special. During this period, she might even have some solo play if she can keep her eye on you and this means you get to have a break.
• Watch for tired signs, which indicate when she’s getting drowsy. Tell her she’s tired and put her to bed using her usual bedtime routine.
Managing exciting activities at bedtime
Why is it that suddenly all the exciting activities start at bedtime? This is often dad time, isn’t it? Dads are usually the ones with all those really fun games that wind everyone up. To be fair, mums do it too – but this is often the dad domain.
It’s okay though, and perfectly normal, and why would anyone want to send in the fun police to stop something kids clearly love? In fact, ‘dad games’ provide a lot of important brain development. Dads play differently and no one wants to restrict such important play.
It’s the aftermath and the fall-out that’s often the problem. Because it’s always when you want your baby, toddler or preschooler to go to bed, right?
The simple solution to this: don’t expect your baby or child to go to bed straight after the fun. If the games are an unscheduled part of the routine, even though you or someone else might worry about them upsetting the plans for the evening, try not to let it become a source of frustration or a major family argument. Calculate it as part of the night-time routine and set a limit on it. You know it’s going to happen anyway, so go with the flow and work it into your evening pattern.
For the first 12 months, your baby’s capacity to tolerate play and stimulation is developing gradually, so you will need to learn her non-verbal language to understand when she’s overstimulated, had enough of play and is ready for some quiet time prior to sleep. This is the time to start setting limits.
Toddlers and preschoolers manage longer periods of rough and tumble. You can tell them the game will soon be over and then it will be their bedtime routine.
At first, limits will be small and generally set for important reasons like safety. Setting small limits is helpful for both you and your child, because it can often be hard for both of you to stick to them. You have to be able to follow through and help your child with the limit you’ve set.
Children can be quite persistent in trying to accomplish a goal and they have far more energy than you. With that in mind, be sensitive and reasonable about limits, otherwise you’ll spend your days in many exhausting and unwinnable battles. So it’s always good to get your child used to the idea that there are small limits appropriate to her age.
As your child grows older and develops, limit-setting gets bigger. When you start with small, sensitive limits about important issues and work your way up, you and your child are used to the process of setting limits. It will be easier for you both. Bedtime games could be one of the first times you set a limit on yourself and your toddler.
When you plan your routine and set kind and reasonable limits, you can confidently handle the bedtime routine and feel in charge. This makes you feel good as a parent. Even though your toddler or preschooler might disagree with you about ending games, they don’t know when enough is enough and need help to calm down. They’re too little to make decisions about how excited they are. In the end, they’ll be relieved not to have to make decisions or be in charge. Making adult decisions leaves them stressed and cranky.
After the games are over, the bedtime routine could start with a calming bath or shower. This is where you keep reminding your excited child that it’s time to calm down for sleep and the bedtime routine begins. It will take about 30 minutes for her to calm down and relax, depending on her temperament and personality. Some children and adults get far more excited than others and take longer to settle and relax. You’ll get to know what your child is like.
A very busy household
Busy households are a fact of life. When you first have your baby you may get some maternity leave, but you’re still busy at home learning how to be a parent. First-time parents have a steep learning curve.
If you have two or more children, you are very busy managing several little people’s needs, of different ages, all at once. Someone could need a sleep, someone could need a feed, someone could need to go to day care, preschool or school, and someone could need love and kisses all the time.
Homes need to be cleaned, meals need to be cooked, clothes cared for, bills paid and where’s that social life and exercise that was mentioned somewhere?
Your life is busy enough when you stay at home, look after your baby and manage your home but, like many other parents, you may have to return to paid work or study sometime during the first 12 months of your baby’s life. This often means having to use some type of child care. Life can become hectic and tiring.
Parents are by nature busy. You have a lot to do, such as:
• love and care for one or more children
• drop off and pick up children at child care or school
• drive a car or catch trains or buses to work or study
• manage your home, meals, bills and shopping
• find time for your partner, extended family and social life.
You can really have difficulty finding time for everything with so much going on. It’s exhausting just reading this list!
But this is exactly how a very busy household can affect your baby/ child’s sleep. Now you could be thinking, ‘Well, hold on a minute! I’m the one juggling all the work. Why does it affect my baby’s sleep?’
Once again, think about the situation from your baby’s or child’s point of view. Often, your paid work or your study days start early. Those mornings can be much busier and stressful than usual. You need to be organised if everyone is going to have breakfast and be dressed in time to get to child care and then your work or place of study. Your baby/child feels the difference in pace and will get to know the different routine means separation from you. This will mean some level of stress for her, no matter how much she enjoys child care or preschool. That’s just normal.
A half or full day at child care can be exhausting for your baby or child. Think about it as their workplace. They are with their early childhood educators, some of whom they like and others not so much. They are spending their time with a group of babies or children, also some of whom they like and others they don’t. Sometimes these groups are quite large and because your baby/child is still little, relationships can be difficult to manage without quite a bit of help.
Does it sound a bit similar to your own workplace? Instead of carers, you have a manager, and probably many co-worker relationships to navigate, which can be tiring.
Your baby or child will play throughout the day. Play is the business of childhood and is often underestimated in its importance. Babies and children work hard at play and are constantly learning and discovering.
All the time she is waiting for you to come and pick her up. She doesn’t know how to tell the time, so she might, with your help, understand that you will arrive after a particular activity, such as afternoon tea. She really looks forward to you arriving, as what she wants most is to be with you.
After childcare pick-up, you arrive home tired but you still have heaps to do. You have to cook dinner, feed your baby, bathe her and put her to bed. Then there are household chores to do. Sometimes you might feel irritable and just want some time to yourself before your bedtime.
It’s really easy to forget that your baby/child needs some wind-down time with you after child care. Busy households are like that. So what’s the answer?
Babies and children work hard at play and are constantly learning and discovering.
Your baby/child has really missed you during the day and she’s tired as well. She needs some special time with you as soon as you get home. That means adjusting your routine to include taking time out from cooking and cleaning for 30 to 45 minutes for a cuddle and a daily catch-up with your little one.
She needs to wind down and reconnect with you after such a long separation. This also provides her with stress relief from her busy day.
If she’s old enough to talk, she needs you to ask questions about her day so you can find out what happened and whether it was a good or bad day. This allows you to celebrate her achievements and discover if something needs to be addressed with her carers. Additionally, when you give her this time as soon as you get home, she’s more likely to settle into the evening and her bedtime routine without fussing and crying, which reduces the stress for everyone.
You will also benefit from sitting down and relaxing before starting your evening chores. Your evening routine may be set back 30 minutes or so, but you’ll find it’s worth it to have a more relaxed, less stressed baby/child. This will help you both sleep better.
Smartphones, tablets and TVs
In Chapter 1, there is an explanation of how blue light affects your baby’s sleep (see page 6). Now that you have that information, you understand how important it is to remove electronic devices that emit blue light, such as televisions, smartphones, tablets and computers, from your baby’s and/or child’s sleep space. When you remove electronic devices, you will help establish your baby’s circadian rhythm.
When you’re developing a bedtime routine, you will probably like to include stories or sing songs. But this is definitely not the time for stories, songs or movies on smartphones, tablets or TVs, as that is far too stimulating at bedtime. This is the time for real books that your baby, toddler and preschooler can hold, touch, turn the pages and handle. She will enjoy pointing to the pictures and cuddling with you while you point to pictures or read. She will probably want you to read two to four stories.
Yes, it’s a shame you have to put away the electronic devices because they’re easy and you can find so many good programs that you know your child likes. But remember the end goal: sleep for both of you!
The games and programs aren’t going anywhere – they’ll be there for the times when you and your baby or children are not going to bed.
Going on holidays
Another sleep environment and bedtime routine you need to consider is when you decide to go on a holiday with your baby or child. Whenever you go away, you’ll need to adjust your baby’s sleep environment and bedtime routine to a new one.
Holidays with children are different, there’s no getting away from that fact. If you try to have the same types of relaxing getaways you had before having a baby, you’ll be really stressed and disappointed.
Travelling with your child means you will need to:
• do lots of planning beforehand
• take quite a bit of extra luggage
• make your holiday simple, child-oriented and fun
• take a little longer to get where you’re going
• explain to your child what a holiday is and prepare her for the travel as well as the fun.
If you do all that, you’ll enjoy your holiday more and be a lot less stressed. There’s nothing worse than a bored toddler or preschooler running riot while you try to be thrilled by the Grand Canyon or visit a museum. Even a museum with dinosaurs will only interest your little one for 5 or 10 minutes.
Your child has a short attention span and can’t cope with too many grown-up adventures or a holiday chock-a-block with sightseeing tours. If you’re unsure about where to go for a holiday with her, start with an internet search or ask a travel agent to find out what’s available and suitable for a family holiday with very young children.
Once you’ve made the decision about where to go, you’ll need to choose your accommodation. If you’re not going to stay with friends or family, then finding a hotel with self-contained apartments is probably the most comfortable option for you. That way you can have cooking facilities, a small living area and an extra bedroom. You won’t regret this choice. You’ll have somewhere separate to put your child to bed and space for you. Some hotels may also have babysitting facilities so you can have a break, but check the prices.
Travelling by car
Whenever you travel by car, make sure you have the correct baby capsule or car seat for her age, and ensure it is fitted properly. You will probably need a shade visor on the windows to reduce the sun and the heat off your little one during the drive. Please refer to additional information about car safety in Chapter 1: How sleep works, on pages 15–16.
When you drive with young children, you need to be prepared to make plenty of stops for play breaks, nappy changes, soothing and feeding. If your child gets motion sickness, you will have to make frequent stops for that, too. Speak to your doctor about how to manage car trips.
How often you stop is really determined by your child’s needs, but it may be every 2 hours. Make sure you have some toys to rotate, plenty of water in spill-proof bottles and some favourite snacks. If your child needs a dummy or comforter, have that on hand.
Some children will sleep in the car while you’re driving but wake up as soon as you stop. This can work to your advantage because it enables you to get to your destination more quickly. But if your little one sleeps too much in the car, she may take longer to go to sleep in the evening. If she just takes her usual naps in the car, you may be able to keep her to her usual routine, but she will still be excited and more difficult to settle in her new surroundings.
Travelling by plane
If you travel by plane, try to catch an overnight flight so your little one can stay with her night-time sleep routine. Once your toddler is 2 years old, you will have to book her a seat on an international flight. If you have a young baby, you can ask for a bassinet when you book your seat. The bassinet seats have a lot of floor room, so if you have a toddler, these are good seats to book.
Establishing routines on holiday
Once you’ve arrived and settled in at your holiday destination, let your child explore the accommodation and get her bearings. She’ll want to look at where you’ll be sleeping and also where she’ll be sleeping. This is very important to her because she needs to feel safe when she’s asleep. Remember, you’re all sleeping in a strange, new place a long way from home. She has to be sure she knows where you are if she needs you, so give her time to look around.
No matter where you are in the world, you’re going to want to keep her in a routine. This is not so bad if your time change isn’t more than an hour or two. But if you cross more than three time zones, then you and your child will experience jet lag. This simply means that the travel messes up your circadian rhythms which are set to the time zone you live in (see Chapter 1: How sleep works).
Managing jet lag
To manage your child’s sleep during a jet-lagged, unsettled period, follow these suggestions:
• Maintain a predictable yet flexible daily routine.
• Help your child get used to eating meals when she would usually be asleep by keeping meal times to local hours and give her small meals with little snacks.
• Ensure you maintain your soothing, relaxing bedtime routine.
• Use the age-related settling strategies in chapters 7 and 8 to help her fall asleep and resettle if she wakes through the night.
• Wake your child in the morning, even if she’s had trouble falling asleep and had a late night.
It takes about a week to adjust to a destination that crosses three or more time zones – such as Sydney to Los Angeles. During this period, while you reset your child’s circadian clock to the new time zone, she will be unsettled and often irritable. When you fly home, you will go through the process again.
If your travel involves a time change of only an hour or two, then keeping to her routine will be much easier to manage. You have two choices:
1. Adjust to the small difference in time and try to work around local time. This would mean your routines, meals and bedtime would be 1 to 2 hours earlier or later than at home, which may be tricky depending on the age of your child.
2. Stay with your regular home hours for the duration of your holiday. This strategy will also make things easier once you return home.
Whatever you decide to do, try and maintain the predictability of your child’s daily routines and bedtime routines as closely as you can. This means planning your day’s activities around meals and naps, and having some busy days with down-time days in between where you all rest and relax. If you have a toddler or preschooler, she may not get a proper nap every day when you’re on holiday; when she can’t have a nap, you need to set aside some quiet time or a break for her.
Finally, when you travel, you need to always be prepared for anything. In particular, think about what your child likes to eat, because the food at your destination may not suit her. It’s easy to think, ‘I won’t bother taking that, I’ll buy it when I get there.’ But you might get a horrible shock if the product you and your child desperately need doesn’t exist at your destination. Always take important stuff with you.
Make yourself a list of important items to take, for example:
• appropriate cot and bedding for your child if the hotel, apartment or house you’re staying at doesn’t have them
• prams, capsules, sunhat
• comforter, dummy and spares, any special bedding
• clothes, nappies, baby wipes, creams and nappy bags
• some favourite toys
• special foods, favourite snacks
• milk/formula and spill-proof drink bottles
• first-aid kit, thermometer, sunscreen and any medication your child needs.
Let’s face it, holidays with your child aren’t the relaxing getaways you used to have. That’s why families with young children often end up taking a short drive or plane trip to have a fun beach holiday. After all, it’s just a giant sandpit with lots of water nearby to splash in, so it may be the easiest holiday of all.
With a little online research, precision organising, expert packing and the expectation that this holiday will be fun, you will enjoy a trip away with your little one.
In this chapter, we looked at the types of obstacles in your environment that can affect your baby’s sleep and how you can make your baby’s environment more conducive to sleep. Many of these obstacles are old habits or routines that you may not have thought much about. Going on holidays is something new to consider when you think about sleep environments and that takes a lot of planning and organising. However, once you start thinking them through and with some careful planning and support from your partner and family, you can change, manage or eliminate the obstacles in your environment and create a routine that meets the needs of you and your baby.
Christina’s story (mother of Zac, 13 months)
Zac was a wakeful baby from the very beginning. Even in the hospital, all the other babies in the nursery would be sleeping soundly and he was awake and taking in his surroundings or crying. I knew I wouldn’t get too much sleep in the early days, but it was ridiculous. During the day he would wake after 20 minutes and he was up six to eight times at night.
It was after I started mothers’ group that I realised his sleep behaviour was pretty different to the other babies’. The paediatrician recommended some medication as it was suspected my little guy was suffering from reflux. This did improve things a bit – he started sleeping slightly longer during the day and at night only woke three or four times (on a good night). It was far from ideal, though.
I went to the Early Childhood Centre and they told me to use white noise for his sleeps to help him transition from one cycle to another. They also recommended darkening his room a bit when he was having his day sleeps. I don’t think these things really helped at the time but they’re great now, as he doesn’t wake when the sun comes up in the mornings.
When he was around 6 months, an early childhood nurse told us to get him into a routine. The nurse told us he had to have one sleep a day in his cot with the white noise. It always had to be the same sleep each day, to ensure he got used to it. We also started a bedtime routine to get him to sleep at night. I would give him dinner, then his bath, a milk feed, then we’d read him a book. We’d always sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ to him before he went to sleep.
He was still not sleeping for very long during the day but the routine really helped him learn to self-settle. I no longer had to lie in there patting his tummy or the cot mattress, I would just put him in bed and he would go to sleep quickly.
I think the big change to the length of his naps and night sleeps was when he started to walk at around 10 months. It was like he was starting to wear himself out and within a week or two, he was doing 2-hour naps during the day and sleeping through most nights.
I think with my little guy, he just found the world too big and exciting to waste time napping. However, the routines really helped, as I think he realised that it all went in a cycle. If he was put down to bed the same way, then the world would still be there to explore when he woke up.
Key message
• Your baby needs her own safe, comfy room and bed. She also needs to be put to sleep in the same bed and room for her day and night sleeps. This will help her night-time sleep.
• If you choose to move your baby to her own room between 6 and 12 months, she may learn to self-settle more quickly when she wakes at night. This is because you’re less likely to hear her when she rouses and calls you.
• Having familiar daily routines will provide your baby with a predictable and stress-free atmosphere during the day, which will prepare her for the night and sleep.
• Going on holidays requires you to think about your baby/ child’s sleep environment and routines in a different way. You will need to do lots of preparation and organisation so all of you can have a relaxing and fun holiday together.
