at it. Sleep is important. Higher quality sleep is associated with happier and healthier babies – and parents.
Nighttime parenting is a season of child rearing. Yes, your baby will eventually sleep through the night. Now, you may wonder how to get your infants down to sleep at night. In a few years, you’ll be wondering how to get them up in the morning. Remember, the nights of baby in your arms, at your breasts and in your bed is a very short while in the total life of your child. Yet the memories of your love and availability last a lifetime.
We wish you and your child years of restful sleep.
William, Robert and Martha Sears San Clemente, California February 2005
five steps to get your baby to sleep better
You are probably thinking, “Wow, it’s only the first chapter and we’re getting right to the point!” That’s because we assume you’re too tired to wade through a lot of the sleep facts and theories which we’ve placed in chapter 3. You just need to get your baby to sleep longer stretches.
But, here’s the bargain. In order to make these five steps work best, you still need to learn a lot about how and why infants sleep differently than adults, and how to develop a realistic attitude about nighttime parenting. So, promise to read the rest of the book as soon as your whole family is more rested. Do we have a deal? This chapter is designed to help a baby of any age sleep longer, and more importantly, to get you a better night’s sleep. After you read this first chapter we hope you and your baby will be ready to sleep soundly the whole night through. Maybe you’ll be ready, but unfortunately your baby won’t just yet. But trust us. We’ll help you all get there soon.
Here’s a preview of the five steps you will now learn:
Find out where you and baby sleep best.
Learn baby’s tired times.
Create a safe and comfortable environment conducive to sleep.
Enjoy a variety of bedtime rituals.
Help baby stay asleep longer.
We also call this plan:
| • Ready: | Work out when, where, and how baby goes to sleep. |
| • Set: | Use consistent bedtime rituals at predictable tired times. |
| • Go: | Use various strategies to teach baby to go to sleep and resettle back to sleep. |
First we offer some precautions:
If your baby is a newborn, do not jump into this plan (or any other plan) in the early weeks. Get to know your baby first, before you introduce a sleep plan into your parenting life.
Be aware that not everything we suggest will be right for your baby. We don’t like parenting books that tell parents “this is how you have to do it. This is the only right way. Tough luck if it doesn’t fit your own ideas or your baby’s personality.” We believe that parents who know and love their baby are the best judges of how to care for that baby. This is why it’s so important to first get attached to your baby – so that you have the wisdom to know what’s best for your baby. In this book we will give you lots of strategies to help your baby learn healthy sleep habits. Which ones you choose depends on your baby’s unique sleep temperament.
So let’s get started, and here’s to a good night’s sleep … finally!
step 1: find out where you and your baby sleep best
Where will your baby sleep best? With you in your bed? In a co-sleeper, Moses basket cradle, or cot next to your bed? In a cot in your room, or in his own room? Where do you sleep best? Where do you want your baby to sleep?
Realistically, be prepared to play musical beds with all of these sleeping arrangements as you try to work out where all of you get the best night’s sleep. Expect these sleeping arrangements to change at various stages of your baby’s development. The only people who can answer the question “Where should baby sleep?” are Mum and Dad. Listen to what your baby and your inner voice are trying to tell you! Perhaps you have a new baby (or you will soon) and you are trying to decide where baby will sleep. Or, if your current sleeping arrangement is one of the reasons why you or your baby are not getting a restful night’s sleep, let’s explore your three options:
1. Sleeping alone in baby’s own room. This is the traditional picture that many first-time parents envision for their babies. As you flip through baby magazines and furniture catalogues you see pictures of smiling parents (who look like they’ve had plenty of sleep) placing their baby into a cot or cradle in the corner of a beautifully decorated nursery with the evening sunset filtering through the curtains. Parents gaze happily at their baby, who smiles up at them. You dream that this is how your baby will go to sleep, too. You’ll pat her little tummy, kiss her on the cheek and say “night-night”. She closes her eyes, you tiptoe out of the room, and you and your partner enjoy a nice quiet evening together. Your baby sleeps peacefully the whole night through.
Sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it? Will it all come true? Eventually, but not in the early months. Most, if not all, younger babies need more out of their parents at bedtime than this magazine picture. This is “quality time” for babies. They often do not willingly succumb to quick-to-sleep methods.
Will this sleeping arrangement work? It may work for easy-going babies. Mellow babies tend to fall asleep more easily and awaken less often at night regardless of where they sleep. Some of you parents-to-be are nodding your head, “Yeah, that’s the kind of baby we are going to have, right sweetheart?” Yet many of you have discovered that you have been blessed with a baby who is already letting you know that she’s going to need more nighttime closeness than this distant arrangement offers.
Those of you with cot sleepers are probably in one of two situations right now: either your baby had been sleeping well in a cot for months, and is now waking up too often, or you have been trying to get your baby to sleep in a cot for months, but he has never really slept well in the other room and you (and he) are tired.
You have two choices. You can either continue to try to get baby to learn to sleep well in the cot using the rest of the steps in our plan, or you can explore some other options of where baby can sleep.
Why won’t your baby sleep well in a cot in his own room? It may be that teething or a temporary medical cause of night waking is suddenly rousing your baby at night. We discuss many such causes of night waking in chapters 3 and 11. But there may be much more to this picture. If your baby has never really slept well alone, and nights of stumbling down the hallway to rescue your crying baby every two hours have taken their toll, it may be that your baby is trying to tell you that he needs more nighttime comfort and closeness.
