Help Your Baby to Sleep

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• You feel that you ought to pick up your baby every time he cries, though sometimes you don’t feel like it

• Every time you leave him he cries, and you can’t bear to hear him cry

Most sleeping problems do not hide deeper problems, but where they do, a little bit of soul-searching and a lot of honest and open discussion may help. Talk to someone you trust. And be kind to yourself; ambiguity and confusion are often part of the journey to the most rewarding of relationships.

Some parents find that talking with a child psychotherapist helps. Child psychotherapists understand that relationships can affect sleep and that sleep disturbances can sometimes arise from unreconciled losses in the parents’ lives. Sleep is a form of separation – a temporary loss – and can be a powerful reminder of other losses or separations which still affect us. Such reminders can hamper your ability to let your baby go. (If you would like to find out more about brief psychotherapeutic therapy for sleep problems see the resources section on page 149 (#litres_trial_promo).) You neither need to hang on to your baby nor push him away. Sleep becomes an example of how you can love him and let him go.

Loving and Letting Go

If you would like your baby to go to sleep alone but find it hard to get out of his room, you may find that listening and talking to yourself and your baby in a certain way helps.

Why Should I Talk Out Loud to my Baby?

• Because sometimes you and your baby both need to hear how you’re both feeling

• It helps you clarify what you want to say

• Things said out loud seem more real

• It can stop the same old thoughts going round and round in your head

On putting him down to sleep, try tuning in to how you are feeling and acknowledge that out loud. It’ll sound funny the first time you do it but if you talk directly to your baby it may seem less crazy. If you want to laugh – go right ahead, it could be part of the medicine.

Describe How it Feels

To begin, think about how you feel as you are ready for him to sleep. You may feel confused, scared, angry, exhausted, or a hundred other emotions. Put a name to it. Tell your baby. Start your sentence with ‘I feel…’ rather than ‘I feel like…‘. So, ‘I feel … tired and scared’ rather than ‘I feel like … I could sleep standing up and I feel like … a failure.’ Some people find that when they finally say how they are feeling, they start to cry. It’s OK. Let it happen. Who’s to know? If you start to cry, your baby may join in too. Give him a hug.

Once you’ve identified your own emotions it may become easier to listen to your baby’s protest. Is it sad, angry, tired? Whatever it is acknowledge that that is how he feels and that you understand that this is a big, important feeling for him. You could say something like: ‘You sound sad/cross/confused. It can be really hard to cope with big feelings like that.’ You may feel strong and capable when you can hear your baby’s sadness in this way. And he will be able to hear two important messages from the way that you say it: that it’s OK for him to feel like this and that you will support him while he copes.

Explain the Deal

Next, try saying that it’s time for sleep and that you have confidence in his ability to go it alone. True, you may not feel particularly confident that he can do it when you start, but just as you encourage him to feel he can do things during the day, so do the same here. In the day time you encourage him because you know he will do it in the end and you want him to feel good about himself. Going to sleep is also something he will do in the end and feel good about.

Finally, tell him when you’re coming back. Be specific. He may not understand the difference between ‘I’ll be back in a bit’ and ‘I’ll be back in two minutes’ but you do and it will make you feel more in control when you say out loud exactly what you’re going to do. Your baby will pick up a lot of clues from the way that you talk. But if you don’t like the clock-watching approach, a good alternative is to say: ‘I’ll be here when you need me.’ This is specific, because his ‘needs’ define when you come and go, and you’ve already shown that you are tuned into his ‘needs’ by listening to his cry. You are making a commitment to go on listening to him. Now start the behavioural routine you’ve chosen (see Chapter 11 for a range of options), coming and going as appropriate.

In this way you won’t be abandoning him, but loving and letting go: a subtle but powerful difference, which will allow you and your baby to move on in your relationship. You will have really listened to yourself and your baby, acknowledged what you are both feeling and been clear about what has to happen now. It won’t stop the crying immediately, but it may make you more able to deal with the tears. For more on listening to your baby cry, see Chapter 7.

What can I say to my Baby when he goes to Sleep?

• Tell him how you feel. For example: ‘I feel tired/sad/angry.’

• Listen to his cry. Describe it to him. For example: ‘You sound tired/sad/angry.’

• Let him know you care for him. For example: ‘That sounds like it’s a real problem for you.’

• Let him know what you want him to do. For example: ‘I want you to sleep now.’

• Let him feel your confidence in him. For example: ‘This is tough but I know you can do it.’

• Tell him when you’re coming back. For example: ‘I’ll be back in one minute/in the morning/when you need me.’

Choose your own words if these do not feel right to you. Of course, talking to a baby like this may feel ridiculous. This technique isn’t for everyone. You decide whether it’s for you.

3 What does your Baby need for a Good Night’s Sleep? (#ulink_3bf351b1-0276-5fcc-88c4-5ac2c59e2b1b)

‘Esme was born when our boy was five years old. Things had changed since he was born. We were much more relaxed as parents, and confident. We were also more aware of our responsibility and ability to encourage patterns of behaviour in our children.’

Brenda and Dave, parents of Mark and Esme

It’s a complex business. Your new born baby will need to be safe (see page 33 (#u48a0537c-49c1-48cc-b9cb-341e167e4b50) on safe sleeping), sleepy and comfortable – fed, clean and dry, warm and free of pain. But from about three months many babies are a little bit more astute and are ready to respond to a more definite timetable. There’s a lot you can do to help your baby learn.

Babies like to understand, but they are not clever enough to grasp a lot of complications – they like things clear and they like repetition. So, to get your baby to understand the idea of going to sleep, you’ll need to have a few clear steps and to go about it in the same way every time (see pages 28–32 (#uef6c7e27-57ae-4bf7-8b70-7a5cf9b3627b) for some tips about the end of the day, bedtime routines and sleep associations).

Organizing the Day

Strange as it may seem, having a regular breakfast time has a lot to do with getting a good night’s sleep. Babies don’t fit naturally into the daily pattern of sleeping and waking that we adults take for granted, so if you have a laissez-faire attitude to the day, with moveable feasts and naps when needed, your child might develop the same attitude to bedtimes and night wakings.

‘I really don’t know why Sophie slept through the night from very early – luck maybe! However, I do feel a bedtime routine is essential and even some kind of routine during the day.’

Diane, mother of Sophie, aged 15 months

Many parents find that thinking about the patterns they create during the day as well as at night helps their baby to develop a more regular routine. You may find that a structured day with meals and naps at fairly regular times, give or take ten minutes, gives your child a better chance of a regular bedtime with continuous sleep. If your baby is bathed, fed and sleepy by 6pm, it’s best not to keep him awake waiting for daddy to come home for a cuddle, especially if that could be any time up to 9pm. This doesn’t mean being ruled by the clock. Some days are bound not to fit your pattern. But knowing what your goal is, allows you to respond to your child’s needs while recognizing that flexible routines can provide a reassuring anchor.

‘My first child was a nightmare for nine months, and needed hospitalisation to check there was no underlying problem, he was that bad. I was a single parent at the time and I feel that that contributed to the problem. However, I really believe that developing a good daytime nap routine was the most important thing I did. Within one week of establishing two daytime naps Sam went from screaming every two hours to sleeping through the night. I also used this for number two – it works!’

Fiona

However, some parents feel that routines can get in the way of meeting their own and their children’s needs, and stop them responding to their child as an individual. Many of these parents prefer their children to eat and sleep wherever and whenever they like.

‘By the time he was five months old Thomas occasionally slept through the night. But reading The Continuum Concept made me realize I did feel odd about the hours of separation from him. I decided to continue to sit up and feed him and gently put him in his cot in the evening. When he woke in the night I’d follow how I felt or how he seemed to feel and either take him in with me or to the guest-room double bed for a feed and sleep or just sit up to feed him to sleep again and pop him back in the cot. The sleeping through stopped immediately. But I feel it worked because I gave myself to him 101 % instead of getting annoyed. When he’d perk up after an hour’s feed from 8pm to 9pm and I’d felt he was just dropping off, I’d laugh and say, “Well we’d better go downstairs and see what daddy’s doing.” The key was to be really and truly willing to share his joy of life.’

Sarah

The Choice is Yours

Psychologists have discovered that when adults live in a laboratory for a few days without a watch or clock or any other way of discovering the time, they tend to sleep longer and stay awake longer so that they quickly become out of sync with the outside world. In fact, adults’ biological clocks are set to run on a 25-hour clock and not the 24 into which we squeeze ourselves. This is why we find it easier to stay up late at night than to go to bed earlier than usual.

Your baby’s internal clock is set to the same rhythm. If you let him he could gradually work his way round to an increasingly late bedtime and late morning wakening.

Bedtime Routines

If you want your baby to go to sleep at a regular time, the best way to complete a well-organized day is with a bedtime routine. When you look into your baby’s eyes around the time of the six-week check-up there finally seems to be someone home – or almost. So this is a good time to introduce a bedtime routine if you haven’t already done so. In fact, many babies begin to sleep a lot better from this point without much prompting and many have developed a definite pattern of their own making by the time they are three or four months old.

A bedtime routine will probably include some or all of the following: bath, feed, story or quiet play, cuddle and a kiss. And it will end with your baby in his place for sleep on his own or with you. A bedtime routine can be as long or as short as you like. Many people find saying goodbye difficult. A bedtime routine can be a good way of preparing you and your baby for the separation of sleep.

‘It took me a couple of weeks to get myself organized and then we decided to organize Thomas. Lots of people had given us advice. So we decided to have a set bedtime to have the evening to ourselves. We started with a bath, and then into the bedroom with a very dim light so that we could just see, for his last feed. He slept through the night at six weeks.’

Sue, mother of Thomas, aged two

The main points to consider when developing a routine are:

• Is it peaceful? Waiting for a partner to come home from work for half an hour of rough-and-tumble play can be counterproductive. Save it for the weekend.

• Do all the elements always come in the same order? Babies feel more relaxed when they can predict what’s coming next.

• Is it practical? Sometimes a family will develop a routine that is useful at times and difficult at others – such as letting the baby fall asleep in front of the television or while driving round in the car. It is worth persevering with a more practical alternative if you can find one.

• Is it possible to do all these things within the time you’ve set? Starting a lengthy routine at 6.30pm for a bedtime of 7pm is doomed to failure. Experts now recommend a daily 20-minute dose of book sharing even with the youngest of babies, so it may be worth winding things down a little earlier than you had planned.

• Is anything else going to interfere with the routine? This should be a relaxing and close time for both of you. So, record that soap opera for later and ask your mum to call after your baby is asleep. You and your baby both need to give and receive full attention, so that you can both feel secure enough to say goodnight.

• Is there an end to the routine? Cycling through the last couple of elements again and again can be exhausting and frustrating for you and suggests that your baby has not made the association between the end of the routine and sleep. Many parents find that whenever they put their child down to sleep he cries out, so they sing another song, or give another cuddle or drink only to find that the baby cries again when he is put down. A good routine ends with the baby falling asleep without you performing any encores.

Sally, mother of Emily, four, and lack, 18 months, remembers that Jack used to be afraid when the lights were suddenly turned off. Now she ends their routine by getting lack to ‘blow’ the light out himself with a little help from his bedtime friends, Piglet and Pooh.

Inevitably, there will be times when your routine has to go by the board – holidays, illness, visitors staying overnight. But the sooner you can reinstate the familiar routine, the more easily you will both rediscover your pattern of sleep. Alternatively, some parents find that where sleeping problems have already developed, a break in the usual routine can mean a chance to create a new pattern.

Kathy, mother of Lily, six, Robert, four, and Alice, two, delayed going away because Alice woke nightly and would only accept her:

‘A friend was getting married 200 miles away and we’d said we would go but I really didn’t want to because I was concerned about Alice not settling with my mother-in-law. I went looking for sympathy from my neighbour, but I got none. She just said that I should remember that life isn’t just about children but about husbands as well. So I was really upset, but I went. When I rang up the next morning my mother-in-law told me that Alice hadn’t woken in the night as usual. She’d slept better than usual so I needn’t have worried.’

Sleep Associations

As the name suggests, ‘sleep associations’ are the things your baby associates with going to sleep. The fact is that, whatever your baby is used to when he falls asleep in the evening, he may need again to get himself back to sleep if he wakes in the night.

Babies are incredibly adaptable – if you always sheared sheep in your baby’s bedroom whenever you wanted him to sleep, he would still sleep – he would just learn to associate sleep with the sound of bleating and sheep clippers. And you’d have to be ready to fleece another from your flock each time he woke at night. Most parents find that a teddy and a goodnight kiss work just as well.

After the first few months of life, a baby who routinely falls asleep on his own in a room that is fairly dark and quiet will recognize the same conditions when he wakes for the average five times a night – and so be able to return himself to sleep without needing you. Some parents start a routine earlier than others:

‘James and Richard have both slept well from the beginning. I put it down to some advice I had at the start. The first night home with James I didn’t get a bit of sleep, and then there was a knock at the door and it was the midwife. “Stick him on,” she said. “Hmm, he’s just using you as a dummy. Put him down. Go and play some music that you like.” We were a bit hesitant but did as we were told. It was the best advice I’ve ever had. He cried for ten minutes and then went to sleep. The midwife said, “When he’s fed and you know he’s satisfied, put him down.” He slept through the night by the time he was six weeks old. It was the same with Richard.’

Frances and Stuart

On the other hand, a baby who routinely falls asleep in your arms or at your breast will need to find a nipple and someone to hold him at night to do the same. Many parents who prefer this way of saying goodnight to their baby are also happy to share their beds with them, so that they can easily recreate the evening’s sleeping conditions:

‘In the evening I undress Sophie, sometimes she has a shower or a bath and then we lie down in bed, read a story and then she holds my breast and falls asleep. I’ve had her in bed with me since birth. I did the same with Sam and Rosie when they were smaller too.’

Clare, mother of Sam, eight, Rosie, five, and Sophie, two-and-a-half

But if you like your bed to yourself, it’s counterproductive to lull your baby to sleep in the evening with a feed or a cuddle – because you’ll probably spend a lot of the night in his bedroom doing the same thing again. If you want to spend your nights in your own bed with only adult company, sooner or later you’ll have to get your baby to go into his cot awake and alone in the evening.

Sleep associations can take a while to learn. Especially in the early days, it may be difficult to identify a strategy that works. Sometimes, putting him in his cot and leaving him to it makes him nod off and at other times he can remain determinedly awake through all 25 verses of ‘Oh my darling, Clementine’. Still, it is worth persisting with a structured bedtime formula that you like because eventually your baby will find the predictability of the formula reassuring and relaxing.

Safe Sleeping

The possibility of cot death worries many of us. But there are things that research has shown help to prevent it. Making sure we follow the recommended advice may help to put our minds at rest.

Many parents buy a baby monitor so that they can hear when their baby cries. These are a good idea, especially when your baby sleeps out of ear-shot. But there’s another sort of device called a ‘breathing monitor’ which is designed to sound only when your baby stops breathing. The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths recommends that you only buy one of these breathing monitors if your baby has problems breathing. Talk to your doctor or health visitor before buying this type of monitor. In tests, parents found that breathing monitors tended to sound when there was no problem with the baby – making them more anxious rather than less. Parents also tend to check their baby less often when there is an alarm in the room, which means that they may not pick up the other predictor of cot death – that their baby is too hot.

Babies of less than four months old are less able to adapt to swings in temperature than the rest of us and need help to keep a steady temperature. Overheating can lead to cot death. So don’t use any bedclothes that make it difficult to regulate your baby’s body heat. Duvets and lambswool fleeces are out, but sheets and blankets are in. Babies regulate their temperature by losing heat from their heads so don’t dress him in a hat to sleep. Your baby can also wriggle his head under a cot bumper, soft toy or pillow, so it’s best not to put any of these into the cot until he is one year old.

‘We worried about having the duvet on our bed and that she would overheat but we’d move the pillow out of the bed and there would be an air space between us.’

Sally, mother of Laura and Annie

Other co-sleeping parents regulate their babies’ temperature by swopping their duvets for sheets and blankets and dressing their baby in fewer clothes.

The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths recommends:

• Laying your baby on his back to sleep (he is not more likely to choke).

• Don’t allow anyone to smoke near your baby or in the house.

• Keep your baby’s room at about 18°C/64°F.

• Cover him with a sheet and cellular blankets, rather than a duvet. (A folded blanket counts as two.)

• Don’t assume that, because it’s cold outside, your baby will be cold; judge it by feeling him.

• Check your baby by putting your hand inside his babygro and feeling his stomach. If he’s warm, that’s fine. Too cold and add another blanket, too hot and you need to remove one. (Don’t worry if his hands and feet are cold – this is normal.)

• Lie your baby with his feet at the end of the cot so he can’t wriggle down under the covers.

• If your baby seems unwell, seek medical advice early and quickly.

• Have your baby in a cot beside your own bed for the first six months.

If you are a smoker, have taken drugs or are drunk, you should not sleep with your baby in your bed because this increases the risk of cot death.

Cot death is rare, so don’t let it spoil those special first few months with your baby.

4 Where Should my Baby Sleep? (#ulink_70dad97a-977d-5709-9da3-baf5d88958b7)

‘I think that children are supposed to sleep with their parents. Many of the sleep problems are to do with sleeping alone.’

Margaret and Phil, parents of James, aged 20 months

‘Thomas went into his own bedroom pretty early on. I think he lasted about two days in our bedroom – we couldn’t sleep. The health visitor had said something ridiculous like six months, but we couldn’t keep to that.’

Sue and Michael, parents of Thomas, two

For 95% of evolution, babies have slept with their mothers. Independent sleep is a relatively recent idea. So which is best – co-sleeping or independent sleep? As yet there’s no clear answer but there is mounting evidence that our bodies are designed for close proximity or contact with our babies throughout the day and night until at least six months. It may be that solitary sleeping in the first few months of life makes too many demands on your baby’s body, and that sleeping and waking within sight and sound of you helps him to adapt to life more smoothly.

Bed-sharing Benefits

The process works like this: it’s not unusual for babies, and especially premature babies, to have breathing pauses, which last anything up to 20 seconds. It’s quite normal. The breathing system is not fully mature at birth. If they happen in sleep, these breathing pauses lead the baby to wake and start to breathe again. Researchers have now discovered that babies who sleep close to mum and dad tune into their parents’ breathing following a breathing pause and join in again at the same pace (McKenna et al., 1994). There is also a suggestion that mothers who sleep with their babies tend to sleep up close, facing their baby most of the time and that this closeness stimulates their baby’s breathing in another way – through the increased level of carbon dioxide they emit (Mosko et al