How to get your baby to sleep
After having her first child, Wendy Dean quickly realised that sleep deprivation seemed to be accepted par for the course of being a mum. Her eldest son Ben wasn’t sleeping properly and Wendy struggled with being a tired mum. Not satisfied with accepting the status quo, she set about researching what were the best techniques to help get a child to sleep. She established her own method for Ben and it worked. It worked a second and third time with the children that followed and the Baby Sleep Answers system and book were born. We recently interviewed Wendy – the sleep expert on the Pampers Village Parenting Panel (PVPP) – and she gave us her top tips to help with the key times that babies wake at night.
Getting your child to sleep without help
A ‘good’ sleeper should be able to fall asleep when put down awake. It seems obvious but new mums frequently cuddle, rock and soothe their baby asleep when they are young. The baby falls in to the habit of needing this soothing to fall asleep every night. A child that wakens during the night will need the exact same cycle to get back to sleep as they had at the beginning of the night. This is why the child will continue to cry until they are soothed back to sleep.
A similar problem arises with children who have learned to fall asleep on a bottle. The child associates getting back to sleep with drinking milk and won’t return to sleep until mum has returned with a bottle which is exhausting for mum and habit-forming for baby. Wendy suggests that if your child does have a tendency to fall asleep during their last feed, that you should deliberately interrupt the feeding with (say) a nappy change to ensure that baby doesn’t doze off.
Early Waking
In the early days of a child’s life, ‘sleeping through the night’ can frequently mean an early 5 a.m. rise and whilst mums are elated that they are getting a few continuous hours sleep, the gloss of that success wears off quite quickly when the 5 a.m. start becomes a permanent fixture! Many of our MummyPages mums have asked how they can move the baby forward by that precious one hour which would make all the difference. According to Wendy, there is a genetic link with early waking in only about 5% of the population which means it is possible for most mums to move those early starts forward. But how?
Firstly, children start to stir as early morning approaches. At this point, it isn’t unusual for new mums to dash into the baby’s room – but doing this means you are signalling to your baby that it’s okay to wake up that early. But more importantly, Wendy explains the importance of establishing a good sleep routine both day and night. She says, for a baby of 0-3 months, you should:
- Develop a good bedtime routine where the baby is put down awake and falls asleep on their own.
- Plan the time and duration for day time naps and wake the baby if he or she sleeps longer.
- Get your baby up between 6am and 8am each morning (even if you have had a bad night) as the consistency will pay off in the long run.
For older babies (4-12 months) continue to do all of the above but if the baby cries before 6 a.m. go into their room, leave the light off and just reassure them with your voice or a touch – try not to pick the baby up as you will only disturb them more (it’s often easier for dad to do this if mum is the main carer during the day). If the baby does fall back to sleep, although it is tempting to allow them sleep longer, pick them up by 8am. The routine will pay off.
With Wendy's input, the makers of Pampers nappies have established a ‘Soothology Routine’ which helps baby drift off into a golden sleep. If you are interesting in reading more, you should visit the Pampers website and download the relevant PDF guide now:
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On a related note, a recent study by Pampers suggests that the actual motion of having a pee during the night can potentially wake your baby up. They are calling it ‘the pesky invisible alarm clock’! As a baby can pee up to 12 times a night, it’s also likely that their precious sleep can be disturbed by wetness. On a recent visit to the Pampers factory in Manchester, MummyPages discovered the amount of research and effort that goes into creating super absorbent nappies to keep baby dry for up to 12 hours. Whilst problem sleepers may not only be because of wet nappies, don’t let it be the one factor that you overlook.
