"Tips on Getting Your Baby to Sleep"
by Dr. Jonathan
Twenty years ago, I was father of two children and a General Practioner (at that stage in my career). I knew what needed to be done in to get my children to sleep from my experience as an obstetrician with babies and young mothers. Though, the theory, as is often the case, is much easier to understand than the practice of it.
My best advice for young parents is, “Plan ahead for tough love in getting your baby to sleep.” I will explain this later after this quick background information.
On average very young children tend to sleep much longer - as the child grows older the amount of sleep they require becomes less. Interestingly, there are large variations in the amounts of time that babies sleep and the amount of sleep individual babies seem to need.
The experts may say - your baby must have ‘X’ amount of hours of sleep per day. This may not apply to your baby, if your baby seems to be contented and happy and growing well on the sleep that it is currently getting then that's fine.
Some Baby Sleep Solutions
However, when things do go wrong with your babies sleep they can become a really big issue. The solutions are different depending on the differing ages of your baby. If the problems arising from your babies sleep are ignored and the same parental behavior repeated it can upset the life of you and your family.
I’ll start with parents of babies and very young children. Your child at this early age may fall asleep at any time. So trying to have a fixed idea of the exact time your baby must sleep is not necessarily correct.
Often your baby will drift off straight after feeding. But, so you can function the next day it is useful for your baby to start having structure to their sleeping by not waking during the night. The early morning feeding time between 11.30pm to 4.00am should be changed so your baby sleeps through it. The simplest way to train your baby to sleep through this period is not to use breast milk or milk at this time.
If your baby wakes and seems hungry, just give him or her water. At some point your baby will decide it’s hardly worth waking up for just water. Your baby will not run into any trouble with this technique.
Bedtime Techniques for Toddlers
With toddlers (any child that can walk, the terrible twos) who are not sleeping this is where the tough love theory really begins. The pattern usually follows that your child will wake, start crying, climb out of bed and come through to your bed. This will interrupt your sleep as they settle into your bed. Or another common response to interruptions is you will get up and take them to their room to begin trying to settle them down.
The most effective way of curing this problem is practicing what is called ‘behavior extinction’. But, this requires a strong stomach. The first step after settling your child in bed at night is to tell them, in loving terms, that this is their bed and if they wake up they are just to stay in bed and go back to sleep.
You’ve also explained to them that you have shut the door to their room and made very clear that mummy and daddy will not come if they wake. It is good to pre-plan this procedure beforehand, so if one of the parents is too weak and will not fulfill the arrangement they should not stay this particular night in the house.
Working Together (the Hard Part of "Tough Love")
You can always bring in reinforcements like a mother-in-law or experienced friend with a strong constitution. The tough love begins when your child wakes up in the night. They will start crying and will expect one of the parents to come over and pacify them.
But, you should not go – I must confess (my wife, I?) did not find this easy as a parent’s mind does tend to jump to worst case scenario… Usually at this stage, if you have a strong willed child your child they will yell or cry louder.
This may go on from anything for a few minutes for up to an hour. Eventually your child will become silence, you should wait a good length of time and gently open their room door and you will see your child fast asleep. Gently cover them over make sure they are asleep, comfortable and warm. But, do not wake them up.
Normally the crying will begin on the second night, your child will cry for almost as long and sometimes even into the third night. But, by the fourth night, your child will have quite clearly worked out that mummy and daddy won’t come and yelling does not further their cause. So, they will lie quietly and just drift off to sleep, this works in almost 100% of kids and the disruptive crying behavior stops.
Where Many Parents go Wrong...
From my experience there are a few pitfalls to watch out for. If the parent’s have waited for 40 minutes and their child has been crying constantly and they can’t stand it anymore and one goes in this has the immediate effect of setting a clock in their child’s mind that if the crying carries on for this length of time, mummy or daddy will come.
If the parent did this on the first night and on the second night both parent’s think they’ll be stronger this time and wait an hour before going in, this has an even worse effect of resetting their child’s crying clock to an hour.
You can train your child to cry for many hours this way. This is why in your planning you have to both agree that no parent is going to go in. If you follow this even though it seems tough – your child will sleep well and subsequently so will you. The process of not going in lasts a few nights and is quickly forgotten by parents and children and everyone is much better for it.
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