Today I want to talk a little bit about getting your baby to sleep somewhere other than their cot. I get emails from parents a lot of times saying, My baby sleeps so well on The Sleep Sense Program. She takes great naps in her cot, but she really wont sleep anywhere else. Read more
What can you do about an early riser?
I’m going to give you about four or five things today that I call my early morning checklist that you can go through and see if you can nip this little problem of when your baby wakes too early in the bud.
If you’ve just started The Sleep Sense Program though, I want to reassure you that the early morning wake ups will fade out. I find that within the first week or two, they’re fairly common. It’s just your babys bodies way of consolidating and organising some night time sleep. They might wake up at the five o’clock hour feeling pretty refreshed, but that will pass with time. Don’t panic.
If you’ve been working on this for weeks, months and youre still stuck in this early morning wake up, I want to give you some suggestions. Read more
Soothing Back to Sleep…
This question comes from Kim who writes:
Why does my 13 month old wake up between the hours of 2:00am and 4:00am and just needs to be patted right back to sleep? I don’t take him out of his cot but it takes a toll on me to stand over him and pat his back until he falls asleep again.
Well Kim, You want to think about how Jacob falls asleep at bedtime. If you find that part of your bedtime routine includes putting him in his cot, and then standing above him patting his back, in a way he’s falling asleep on his own but in another way he’s not. Read more
Is your baby banging their head?
All parents of toddlers have witnessed the full body flailing of their enraged child. It is something to behold. Kids definitely don’t hold back when they’re angry or upset! This can be disconcerting to the parent, but even more disconcerting is when your toddler repeatedly bangs her head against the wall or the sides of her cot or the floor for apparently no reason at all. Read more
Dummies, pacifiers, soothers, teethers…
A lot of parents who use dummies feel a twinge of guilt the first time they stick it in their baby’s mouth. However, dealing with a screaming infant in the shopping queue or on a long car trip will make most parents try just about anything they can think of to calm the child down! Read more
Spring forward
When we “spring forward,” on the 29th March 2015, it means the clocks go forward an hour, therefore the start of British Summer Time (BST). Ultimately it means one hour less sleep for you, parents (boo!). I think daylight savings wreaks havoc on our sleep schedules and can increase sleep debt in both kids and adults. There is actually an increase in traffic accidents the day after daylight savings, which just goes to show that it’s hard on people. We are already a sleep-deprived nation, so losing that extra hour only makes it worse (and more dangerous). Read more
The Secret..
During my 4 years as a sleep professional, I’ve gotten used to people asking me what the “secret” is to getting a baby to sleep through the night.
Teaching a child healthy sleep habits is a combination of lots of different things.
Of course, there is no ONE secret.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some shortcuts, either! With that in mind, today I’d like to share with you 7 different shortcuts you can start trying over the next few nights to get your child sleeping better. Read more
Baby that has reflux can be sleep trained
I’ve been in this business now for a while and every year I see more and more babies suffering from reflux. I’ve got two thoughts around that.
One is that I do think it’s becoming a bit of a catch phrase for any sort of fussiness that we see in babies. I’ve had clients tell me that they went in and expressed a bit of concern around their child’s fussiness and were given the diagnosis of reflux without any testing going on behind it. Read more
Want the secret to improve your child’s sleep?
During my 10 years as a sleep professional, I’ve gotten used to people asking me what the “secret” is to getting a baby to sleep through the night.
Teaching a child healthy sleep habits is a combination of lots of different things. Read more
Fired Up
Do you want to know something that really gets me fired up?
It’s when Mums (either online or in real life) are talking sleep, and I hear comments like this:
“You should just enjoy getting up to nurse all night – someday he’ll be all grown up and you’ll miss it.”
Or…
“You were the one who decided to have children. Did you REALLY think you’d be getting a full night’s sleep for the next few years?”
Or my all-time favorite…
“Well, you’d better learn to live with it!”
My fingers are starting to burn just writing about this, so I’m going to “fire back” with my top three myths about teaching your baby to sleep well: Read more