By Linda Russell The Sleep Lady and Director of The Parent Coaching Studio
www.thesleeplady.co.uk www.theparentcoachingstudio.co.uk
I work with families all over the world, to obtain something even more valuable and for some harder to obtain then winning the lottery ….. SLEEP.
Through my experience of working with 100’s of sleep deprived families, I have developed three stages you can follow during the first twelve weeks. This will give you, what I consider, the best start for your baby so you can enjoy this important time for bonding.
Stage One Week’s One to Four. Get to know your baby
You have just had your precious baby; it may be your first or your sixth but no matter what you and your baby need to get to know each other.
- You need to get over the birth and learn the ups and downs of feeding.
- You baby has been safely tucked up inside you wanting for nothing for the last nine months. Now once they are here in this big wide world, why should it be any different for them?
- So just spend time holding, feeding, cuddling; bonding with your baby.
- Feed as and when your baby wants and sleep whenever and wherever you can.
Try and see your health visitor or go to your baby clinic once a week so you can keep an eye on your baby’s weight.
Stage Two; Weeks’s Four to Six. Start to think about sleep now.
At this stage do not worry where sleep happens but start to keep a diary of all babies’ feeds and sleeps.
Be rigid with your diary as this is going to be your guideline on moving to the next stage.
Get your baby weighed, ideally try to get to see you health visitor or baby clinic fortnightly, unless of course they are asking you to see them more often or your baby is not gaining weight.
Stage Three; Week’s Six to Eight. Introducing a routine
Only start this stage if your heath visitor is happy with your baby’s progress
Day time routine
- If all is going well take a look at your diary. You should be able to see some key times that a feed or nap happens every day.
- With those times to hand start trying to introduce a bench mark feed or nap every day and start to plan your day round that nap or feed.
- Next, with the regular feed time to hand, try to begin to space your feeds out a little more.
- If you are feeding on demand try to stretch your baby to feed no less than two hours apart, and try not to let your baby go more than three hours in the day without a feed.
Night time routine
- Start to think about introducing a bed time routine
- Start to make the time for going to bed a quiet relaxing time.
- Once you leave the living room area your baby should not be brought back into the living area.
- Bath your baby, give a gentle massage and feed all in the bathroom and the room your baby will sleep in.
- Put your baby into their crib awake.
SLEEP TRAINING
It is up to you how you would like to sleep train your baby to sleep, there are lots and lots of books out there that give you advice on how to settle your baby, I would suggest you choose the method that you feel most comfortable with.
The method I work with is the pick up and put down routine.
- Put your baby in the crib, walk out of the room and leave to cry for three minutes, go back in and pat your baby to reassure them that you are still there. Pat for only a couple of minutes. Patting is to reassure your baby and not to get them to sleep. You will probably have to leave the room with your baby still crying.
- Leave the room for three minutes and return and pat again.
- Leave the room and return again after three minutes and if your baby is still crying pick up and calm down and then start the whole process again. Your baby may not calm down, so only hold for three or four minutes and put down again.
- Continue until your baby is asleep.
- As a guideline I would suggest this could take anything up to an hour, and could take up to a week for you to see your baby settling happily on their own.
Stage Three; Weeks Eight to Twelve Establishing a routine.
Start to wake your baby up at the same time each day as this will help you to focus on the rest of the day.
- Push feeds a little longer, try not to feed anything less than three hours apart and no longer than three and half hours. It is better for your baby to feed more in the day than at night. (Again only start to push this forward if your baby is still gaining weight and your health visitor is happy at their progress).Try and see your health visitor or visit your baby clinic once a month.
- Work at your babies day time sleeps. I would suggest the ideal sleep times are a short nap for about an hour in the morning (about an hour and half after first waking up), a longer nap at lunch time (up to two hours about two hours after morning nap) and a short nap in the late afternoon (about forty five minuets about two hours after waking up from lunch time nap).
- If you have other children at home try to juggle your baby’s routine to fit in with your other children’s day. For instance if you have a nursery run to do, your baby can sleep on the way to or from nursery.
- Try and juggle lunch time sleeps so they happen in your baby’s cot, as this also means you get a rest and you are not walking for hours to keep baby asleep in the pram.
- The last sleep of the day can happen in the car or buggy as you are coming home if you have been out for the afternoon.
Remember sleep is only an issue if you are not getting enough, if you have a method that works for you and your family then you have not got a sleep problem.
Read a recent article in the herald http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2475111.0.cant_sleep_wont_sleep.php