https://youtu.be/r8ex-XlojNQ

This week I want to look at one of the reasons that could be behind your little one’s night wakings, and that is sleep onset. I will explain what that is, what it means and how this could absolutely be the game-changing nugget of wisdom that resolves your little one’s sleep in a really, really big way. So make sure you read until the end so you fully understand what sleep onset is all about.

First of all, what does it mean? What does sleep onset even mean?

It means falling to sleep. It’s the way that sleep comes about. So what could that include? When we fall to sleep, our body goes through a certain sensation of closing down. We close our eyes, our breathing becomes slower, and there are all kinds of things that happen to us physiologically and biologically, but there are also external things that happen as well. So once we understand how we’re falling asleep at the sleep onset, it actually plays a really significant role in how we sustain our sleep throughout the night.

Now, of course, we do wake up. It’s really important to know that nobody just sleeps the whole night without waking. But the wakings are so minimal, sometimes you don’t even know you’ve had one. They can be so partial, so subconscious, semiconscious, you just have this slight arousal and on back off into sleep. They are cycles of sleep.

So you go down into deep sleep, you cycle up, you come through, lighter sleep, and then this is the point where you might just wake up. But, oh, no, we’re down into another sleep cycle. We go down, we’ll go into deep sleep, and we cycle through sleep like this all night long. But it’s when we are in that lighter sleep that we do actually slightly wake and go back off. We have to, our bodies need to do that to regulate and to keep us alive.

And so babies and children are the same, but when they’re tiny, when they’re really little and they don’t actually know how to get to sleep and they haven’t really grasped the sleep onset yet, when they have those cycles that they’re coming into that light sleep and they’re just about to tip over into the next cycle. They find themselves awake and they find themselves and they don’t know how to get back to sleep, because they didn’t know how they got there in the first place. And they cry and they look for your help because they need to get back to sleep.

So this is why the sleep onset is key because once they’re doing it, once their body is in that rhythm and it knows the body just does it and they fall to sleep, then the body and the mind will be trained. They will be efficient and effective at going back to sleep when we have those stirrings and wakings or partial wakings in the night.

So hopefully you feel reassured that, “Oh, okay, waking up is normal,” and it is completely. But it’s the getting back to sleep that matters, and when your little one is doing that, they’re not going to cry out or look for you or look for help because they’re able to do it themselves. So you won’t know that they’ve had two, three, five wakings in the night because they’ve resettled themself when they’ve had those stirrings. And that is when it feels so lovely and like they are sleeping through the night, which is what we all aim for, don’t we, for as soon as possible.

So the thing we need to look at is the sleep onset associations. Now, some people will talk about these as sleep crutches or sleep props, and they’re not all bad. To be honest, you can have healthy, positive sleep onset associations, as well as unhelpful destructive sleep onset associations, and it’s really important that we know the difference between the two.

So a sleep onset association is something that puts your little one to sleep. It’s something, an association that helps them to go to sleep. But some things will help, whereas other things will do the job for them.

For instance, if you rock your baby and you rock, rock, rock, rock, rock all the way to sleep, that’s done it for them. They haven’t really done anything. But if they have a cuddly teddy and they cuddle that teddy, but then they fall asleep, the teddy’s just helped them. It’s given them an element of comfort, but the rest of the job they did and they put themselves to sleep with that cuddling.

If they’re sucking on a dummy or pacifier all the way to sleep, that might be the thing that’s soothing them off to sleep. And this is why when it drops out naturally, because the jaw naturally opens, they’re fine for a while. But then they go into light sleep and they start to immediately do that sucking motion and wait, it’s gone. It’s not there. And what? Hang on, something’s up. And then boom, I’m awake and crying, because they’re missing that thing that got them to sleep before.

However, if they didn’t suckle all the way to sleep, maybe they suckled for calming and comfort, but then it is taken out, if they didn’t suckle all the way to sleep, they wouldn’t be seeking. Their body wouldn’t naturally reactively seek that thing in order to get back to sleep.

Now, some of the things don’t matter at all in the early weeks. With newborns, you can’t spoil them and you can’t get it wrong. Honestly, instinctively, you’re going to rock and cuddle your baby to sleep. You’re probably going to feed them to leave. You’re going to do all these things. Please do not worry about that in those early weeks.

But an awareness of it will pay dividends. Because if you’re aware of how much you’re doing that, you can, around four months in, sometimes sooner, but you can start to just spot and be aware of how much you’re doing for them and how much they’re doing and you can gradually start to tip the scale. So you’re doing a bit less and they’re doing a bit more when they’re getting a bit more practice until they get really, really good at it.

But certainly between four and six months, I would pay a lot more conscious attention to their sleep onset so you can help them to develop that and for that to come through. Because so long as you do it for them, they’ll need you to do it for them. And this is why for some parents that goes on for years, actual years. And it’s like anything, you don’t just go, “Oh, I’ll just wait, one day my child will ride a bike.” No, you have to get a bike for them and put the training wheels on and help them and encourage them and run alongside them and bit by bit, you take away wheels and let go, and oh look, they’ve got it.

With sleep onset, learning that is the same. They don’t just suddenly go, “Yeah, I’m going to learn that today.” It’s gradual, but it needs to be intentional. So your awareness as the parent or caregiver is vital in understanding this.

Have a think about those sleep onset associations and which ones might be at play in getting your little one to sleep. Is there something that is entirely doing it for them? And if so, could you move a little bit from doing it for them to doing it with them, helping them and just not, but not doing the whole thing, so they’re doing a little bit of the work? And then could you ease up a little bit on your input bit by bit, gradually? So that they’re not left alone to figure it out all by themselves, but they’ve got your assistance. They’ve got your reassurance, but they’ve just got to work a little bit harder at it because you’re not going to do the whole job for them.

Is there something that you’re thinking of right now that you’re like, “Yes, ours is this. We feed to sleep. We need to stop feeding to sleep.” Okay, feed, absolutely feed your baby. When they’re full, make sure they’re awake, give them a little stroke and or with a little whisper, a little song, and then make sure they’re aware that they’re going down to sleep. And then use soothing, comforting touch and reassurance to help them to finish the job. But they will feel that sensation in their body as they drift off and the...

https://youtu.be/m0PSzAcmK7I

This week’s blog is a deep dive into the topic of responding to those night wakings.

The first thing to look at is the type of waking. Why has your little one woken up in the first place?

Because if we know what the type of waking is and what the waking is about, that can help us to determine the best way to respond. Or for example, is your little one awake because they’re hungry? Are they awake because they’re in pain? Are they awake because they’re uncomfortable, or are they awake because they need some reassurance? Or are they awake because they just kind of woke? That can happen too. And sometimes they need some help with getting back to sleep.

So how do you know? How do any of us know? They don’t come with a manual and especially when they’re too young to talk or tell us, or really express their feelings, they just cry.

Sometimes all the cries can feel the same, especially in the middle of the night, “Oh, it’s this, no, it’s this, no, it’s this.” In the moment it’s trying to work out if we know why they’re awake.

As the journey through parenthood goes on you start to get familiar with cries, like pain cries for example. Pain cries are usually quite high pitched and prevalent. And you usually do just know if they’re in pain and you can tell because it’s different. It’s not the kind of cry, the communication style cry that you see every day when they’re hungry or need a nappy changing, or are just fractious. You do tend to spot those piercing pain cries, and hunger cries. Personally, I think they’re really hard to identify. Some people say they know, they just know if it’s hunger or not, but I know lots of us don’t know, and we’re left going, “Are they hungry? Are they not? I don’t know.”

So one of the best ways to determine hunger is by knowing roughly how much they need and have, and if they were breastfed, or bottle-fed, formula-fed, are they onboarding enough? And at what frequency does that usually take shape? Because then you will start to know, it’s definitely not hunger. That can be one way that you know it’s not. And again, as you’re getting familiar with those different sounds, expressions, and actions, you will start to see things they do when they’re hungry and things they do when they’re just irritable. So understanding that is key. Also related to that, sometimes you do get discomfort, particularly digestive discomfort. They may be full, sure, they may have fed brilliantly, and you’ve ruled out hunger, but they’re really uncomfortable because it hurts there in their tummy.

It’s a different kind of pain to the piercing pain cry, but really agitated, awkward discomfort. Sometimes with that, you see other signs like drawing the knees up and you can tell that they have that pain or discomfort in their tummy. Or they’re not comfortable in their sleep space. It could be that they’re too hot, too cold, that it’s a terribly hard mattress, particularly in the travel cots, we get those uncomfortable mattresses. Could just be that they can’t get comfortable in that way as well. Or it might just quite simply be that they need a little bit of help getting back to sleep. So try to identify why, but if you can’t identify why, or if you’re like, “Well, I think I’ve whittled it down to it’s going to be this or this.” If you’ve got a rough idea but you’re not certain, then it’s great to know how to respond and to have that kind of backup plan as well of, “Ah, if it’s this, then I’ll do this.”

And of course, if it’s pain, you want to alleviate the pain. And if it’s hunger, you want to feed that hungry baby. Aside from that, how can you respond?

The key things to think about with responding are that you are delivering the same sort of message of reassurance every single time. So any response from you, your little one wakes and cries out and you to them, any form of response is going to be reassuring. It lets them know that they’re not alone, they’ve not been abandoned, you always return, and you’re there to tend to their needs, as best you can identify. So any response is better than no response, but how you respond is definitely key. So if you have a particularly alert little one, let’s say, or toddler-preschooler age, because they were all pretty alert around that age, and they’re really tuned into interactions from you, then sometimes with little ones like that, too much fuss, too much interaction, or too much effort really from you.

If there’s lots of, “Come on, shh, shh, back to sleep,” and you’re fully expressive in your face, you’re making eye contact, you’re all hands on, sometimes too much of that is actually over-stimulating, and can actually rile them up to the point they’re like, “Okay, hold on. Right, you here. Right, we’re interacting.” Or maybe it’s daytime. It can be too much for them and it will actually wake them up more or keep them awake, or leave them in that frustrated place wanting to be asleep but not really sure what’s going on, and it will prolong going back to sleep. And if that is the case, less is more, so responding with a more, well, I would always say to respond with a very nonchalant, unengaging, bland and boring, be bland and boring. You’re not standoffish, you’re not angry in any way, you’re not being cold. You’re also not being all fluffy and animated and molly coddled, and all-engaging because that’s for the daytime.

You’re in nighttime mode which means you are in, nothing to see here mode, it’s time for sleep, come back to sleep, matter of fact. And just keep it really simple, less is more. I would suggest that anyway, regardless of your baby or child’s temperament type, but be more aware of that and be ultra vigilant with that, if you have got a super alert because they will pick up on every little detail of your facial expressions, your animations, your voice, everything. Keep to a whisper in the nighttime. You only whisper, you’re bland and boring, right from the minute you say goodnight, lights out, until the time they’re allowed to wake up and start the day, you are in bland and boring whisper mode. And I would just say that for every single response, every single time.

So whether that’s a feed, a cuddle, a trip to the bathroom, still maintain that nighttime persona because it will help to get that message to your little one that it’s not time to start the day, it’s nighttime. And that helps to differentiate night from day. In the night, Mummy is like this, or Daddy, or a caregiver. This is nighttime, it’s sleep time. In the daytime, my parents or caregivers are like this and it’s different. So again, they’re just associating. Things like daylight and darkness tell you night and day, they send a message to the brain, daylight, awake time, darkness, sleep time. It’s a real simple message that the brain picks up on. And same with interaction and animation and engagement from you.

The response you might give and the approach you might take to helping your little one to resettle will be covered in next week’s Blog, where I will be exploring sleep onset, and how to actually really practice and work on that to help them settle to sleep, and the same goes for back to sleep.

You might find that next week’s Blog will help you to come back and apply what I talk about to the night wakings as well. And so in that response, it may be something that is a little less engaging and may be more distant, so you may give them a bit more space, and come and check on them regularly, and reassure them as they need it. Others will need a lot more hands-on help they’re going to need, while being bland and boring and unengaging,...

https://youtu.be/YN1O5Yue6Xc

There are so many different reasons for night wakings, but today we’re going to explore one particular thing that could be causing night wakings for your little one, and that is parasomnias. What on earth are they? In this week’s blog post I am going to explain exactly what they are, why they happen, how you can respond to them and how you can prevent them.

Let’s delve into parasomnias. It’s a funny old word, isn’t it? Actually, it comes from para, meaning alongside of, and the Latin noun of somnus, which means sleep. It’s something that happens alongside sleep, basically.

What is it? What are they? What are parasomnias?

You will have heard of them in their individual little forms, things like sleep talking, sleep walking. You may have heard of night terrors or sleep terrors, those are all part of the parasomnia family. What they really are, what it really is, what it really means is a movement or behavior in sleep. That’s the easiest way to explain it. Things like sleep walking actually are pretty hereditary. It runs in families. If you were a sleep walker, maybe your child will be. Don’t be surprised if you see that, it does run along in families.

That hopefully gives you an idea as to what parasomnias are and the group they belong to. Sleep walking, is walking in sleep. It’s getting up out of bed and physically walking around, and talking is talking or making noises in your sleep. But the one that I think needs a little more explanation is sleep terrors or night terrors, because a lot of parents think their child is having them. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not, so it’s good to understand what they actually even are. They are not bad dreams or nightmares or severe bad dreams or terror, that kind of thing. That’s a dream and it’s something that you wake up from and you can recall it. You can remember it if you try hard enough. The brain can recall it.

Whereas, a sleep terror or night terror, whilst it can come across as being similar in the moment, maybe you can see them thrashing around or speaking and appearing upset. It looks like someone’s in a really bad dream. However it’s actually not the same thing. It’s not the same place. They’re actually in a state of somewhere between awake and asleep.

They’re in a very deep sleep, but there’s an awake and an awareness element to it as well. I’m not going to go into the science right now. But what you’ll see in terms of the difference is a bad dream or a nightmare is, “Oh my gosh. It’s awful. It’s awful. I’m awake.” As opposed to a little one who looks like they are awake. They already look awake. With a night terror or a sleep terror, or actually the milder version that we tend to see in the younger ones is typically called a confusion arousal. It can still be a little bit upsetting or distressing in terms of their behavior, but it’s not quite as terrifying in terms of how they behave, but it is still very odd.

They can be as mild as sitting up and looking around and looking for something and being confused and then going back to sleep, hopefully. The thing with those, confusional arousals, sleep terrors, night terrors, that kind of thing, is they will look or can look as though they are awake. Parents often describe it as they look like they’re possessed. Soetimes in this state if you approach them, they might look like they’re looking right through you and you’re feeling like, “They don’t recognize me,” or that they aren’t responding to you. When you try to comfort them or anything like that you don’t get a response and that’s how these episodes can be.

How do you respond to them? That’s the thing. The key thing is not to try to jolt or shake or wake a person from a parasomnia. It would be really confusing for them. It could be upsetting, or you could actually just become a part of all of the confusion that they’re in. You just become a figure that’s in that weird world they’re in right now with their mind, if you think of it like that. It’s better not to try and wake them, but instead to monitor them. With children especially, with little ones, monitor that they’re not going to hurt themselves. They’re not getting into physical difficulty because if they are thrashing about or walking or moving around, they could injure themselves. So safety, primarily, is the thing you’re looking out for. If they’re of an age that they can get up and out of bed and they’re walking, guide them back nicely. Don’t try to interact. Just, “This way,” and guide them back. They’ll subconsciously have this, ‘you’re there, but you’re not really there’ level of awareness.

If it’s talking, honestly, I would let it go and let them talk. Let them chat away in their sleep. It’s really not a problem. If it’s a night terror, if they’re shouting out, “No, no, no,” frustrated or anything that is disturbing, again, monitor. Watch them. If you can watch either from a baby monitor video camera or from a crack in the door, just to make sure they’re okay, but hold back. If they are okay, just hold back. Don’t intervene. Let the episode pass. Like I said, you can’t exactly comfort them. It doesn’t really work.

I’ve tried this myself, by the way. My son was prone to having some of these when he was in the toddler/ preschooler age, so I know firsthand what it feels like as a parent to experience a child having one of these. It is really bizarre and it can be quite upsetting. Sometimes it can be funny, but sometimes they can be upsetting. Hold back and try not to stimulate or engage with the child. But if you can steer them and keep them safe, that’s great.

Again, with sleep walking, my youngest, actually, has done a bit of that. I know if she’s come downstairs of an evening, which is really, really rare for either of my children to ever do that, but if she does, I almost immediately know. I’ve even looked at her, looked at my husband and gone, “She’s not awake.” and then I’ll say to her, “Come on, back to bed,” just gently though, not to wake her up or startle her and I walk with her and tuck her in. In the morning when I ask her about it, she has no memory of it and it’s because it was a parasomnia. That’s kind of a nicer kind where it’s not really upsetting and she’s even laughed about that in the morning.

So that’s parasomnias, how to respond or not to respond to them, how to deal with them in the moment, and rest assured they will usually pass quite quickly, and it’s good to know that they typically happen in the first half of the night. Less often in the second half of the night, so usually you can deal with it before you’re having your lovely deep sleep. But what can you do to actually prevent it? How can you stop them? How can you stop them? Well, like I said, sometimes it can be hereditary anyway, and so it is part of their genetic makeup and a tendency that they may have. However, that tendency is far more likely to show itself if they’re overtired. I say this about everything and if you’ve read any of my other blogs or watched my YouTube videos or followed me for a while, you’ll understand that I’m always talking about overtiredness because it is absolutely the root of a large proportion of sleep challenges with little ones. But overtiredness is a reason you’re going to start to see these.

If your child has them a lot, I would question how much sleep are they getting overall? If they should be getting daytime sleep, are they and are they getting enough? If they’re past the age of daytime napping, how else could they be getting more rest? Are they going to bed too late or is bedtime all over the place? Could we bring that earlier and make it consistent?

I would say spot it. You’ve got to spot it, then you’ve got it. Where is it that they could be getting overtired? Where are we depleting and where can we top up and replenish that sleep? Because usually once we overcome overtiredness, we...

https://youtu.be/YGCOjZuaR1A

Being overtired is so often the cause of sleep challenges for babies and young children. You’d think being tired would lead to sleep, but being too tired actually makes sleep worse. In this week’s blog we’ll be exploring why being overtired is causing your little one to wake at night and how to figure out if your child is in fact overtired.

I know it’s counterintuitive, but when we get overtired, our sleep is worse. Why? Have you ever got so tired and for whatever reason you had to power through. And at some point, you just felt like you’d gone past it. And even though you hadn’t been to sleep, you didn’t feel tired anymore. Like a second wind.

That’s exactly what it is, a second wind. The brain tells the body it needs to keep going, so it releases hormones which are like getting an adrenaline boost. In other words, being overtired can leave you feeling quite awake and unable to get to sleep.

From birth, babies gradually manage longer and longer awake between sleeps. We call these wakeful windows, but most of us parents don’t know what the ideal wakeful windows are for our children. Plus, it’s a constantly changing target. Many babies and young children end up being awake for too long between sleeps and a sleep deficit builds up.

This leads to children filled with hormones at bedtime that are making it harder for them to settle to sleep. Or if they do crash out, the night sleep is disturbed or unsettled. And almost for sure, you get the 05:00 AM wake-up calls. If you know what I’m talking about, and you’ve experienced life with an early riser, like I have.

So how do we solve this? How do we get your little one to take all the sleep they need, so they don’t get overtired on a continual basis? Step one is, knowing those sleep and wakeful windows. This knowledge is true power. It will help you to know when to attempt to put your baby down for a nap and how long to aim for with the sleep.

It’s great to have a backup plan too because they often won’t sleep when or as much as we’d like. So you may need to bring the next nap a little bit earlier or get them to bed a bit earlier to top them up. Step two is, topping up the sleep tank. If you know your little one is already overtired, try some early nights or an extra power nap. If you can replenish the empty sleep tank, you’ll find your little one is better positioned to take better naps and sleep more soundly at night, which will further recover the overtiredness. If you’re experiencing sleep deteriorating for your little one after starting nursery or daycare, it may be because he’s just not getting the sleep he needs while there. I get a lot of messages from parents saying their child is overtired since starting in a childcare setting.

It’s similar to when children start school. The change and the emotional energy to be “brave,” is all extra tiring. In this case, do talk to the childcare provider to see if they can accommodate the sleep needs for your little one. And also make sure they’re getting to bed nice and early after those busy days. If your pickup time is right on top of nap time, consider tweaking your schedule for the short term, so he can get the sleep he needs at nursery, or once at home. Topping up with longer naps at the weekend or on home days will also really help. If your baby is overtired due to naps being very short and not replenishing, you can try working on extending the nap with some soothing back to sleep, rather than just getting your baby up the moment she wakes. Or you could head out for a motion nap in the pram or the car, just to help finish off that broken sleep.

Avoiding overtiredness is one of the biggest keys to having a well-rested, healthily restored, and happy little one. And the same goes for you too. Until next time, sleep soundly and live with vibrance.

Book a discovery call and find out how we can help you with your little ones sleep.

https://youtu.be/cK6DVFzP3Zw

3 YEAR OLD SLEEP REGRESSION.

A QUESTION FROM A PARENT

So yeah, age three can be really tricky because some are ready to stop napping, whereas others still need some sleep in the daytime until they’re closer to four, even four and a half. So if this little one hasn’t been napping for a long time in the day, there probably is some built up over tiredness. But we are now approaching three and there’s a good chance that that nap would be on the way out anyway. So reintroducing it at this stage is probably not the best move. By all means allow catch up sleeps. If he nods off in the day, let him sleep. I wouldn’t disturb him. If you are out and about, he nods off on the go, he needs it. So I would let him have that sleep, but I wouldn’t enforce a nap now if he’s not used to doing one. I absolutely would say, yes, go ahead with the early to bed.

Early nights are going to be key right now because the length of the day is probably a bit too much for him. So if we are not going to get sleep in the middle of the day, then we need to chip a bit off the end of the day and make bedtime earlier. A lot of parents would be fearful of doing an early bedtime because they’re going to worry that going to bed earlier is going to mean waking up earlier the next morning, but it doesn’t work that way. In fact, actually if this little one’s continuing to go to bed too late and is overtired, the night sleep will be worse. So getting to bed earlier is good. Definitely, asleep by 7:00 PM, latest, and if he’s ready to go to sleep even earlier, that will be fine too.

Book a discovery call and find out how we can help you with your little ones sleep.

https://youtu.be/E5Y5qymtlsM

The eight-month sleep regression. If you know me or have followed me for some time, you’ll know that I really don’t like the word regression. Why? Because it’s not really a regression, just because sleep becomes difficult or hindered, doesn’t mean they’re actually regressing.