How to get my baby to sleep through the night?
This is something I’m sure many parents have typed into google late at night looking for a glimmer of hope on when these relentless night wakes may end. The good news is that there is light at the end of that dark sleepless tunnel, and you will sleep again – that I promise!
When and how depends on a lot of different factors which I am about to go over in this next blog post.
First of all, it is important to remember that babies are born with small immature digestive systems and will require frequent feeds over a 24-hour period. You may hear of babies younger than three months who ‘sleep through the night’ however know that this isn’t the norm and people also have many different definitions of what sleeping through the night actually looks like.
I always recommend you feed on demand for the first 6-8 weeks and from there you can look at reducing (if you’re not already there) to 2-3 nights feeds.
My newborn guide which is available on my website is a great tool to help you navigate the newborn period and includes a settling technique suitable for newborns and is a great way to resettle overnight if bubs is not due for a feed.
Remember this advice is based on a baby who has no feeding issues, gaining weight and thriving. If your baby is not, then you may get advice from your midwife or child health nurse to feed more often overnight.
Once your baby is around 14-16 weeks (if growing well and gaining weight) you should be able to confidently drop to two night feeds and sometimes even one. If you are finding that your baby is waking often overnight and maybe even more than they did as a newborn, then you may need to look at the way they fall asleep and explore if they have a sleep association.
What is a sleep association?
Think of it like this – us adults also wake multiple times throughout the night but because we know how to fall asleep independently, we usually just roll over and return to sleep which we won’t even remember in the morning. But what if we wake and our pillow has fallen onto the floor … we wake up fully and realise and then pick up our pillow, right? Imagine if we needed someone else to pick up our pillow before we could fall back to sleep?! Sounds frustrating right! When your baby wakes throughout the night (which is normal) after each sleep cycle, instead of drifting back off to sleep themselves they will fully wake and cry out for you to come and feed them or rock them etc so they can fall back to sleep. These sleep cycles become apparent around 4-6 months which can sometimes mean your sleepy newborn is now waking as often as every 2-4 hours needing you to return back to sleep. If this sounds like you then know that this is a really normal part of your babies development but most babies will need some assistance to learn how to fall asleep independently.
Teaching your baby to fall asleep and resettle after sleep cycles independently is a key factor in when your baby will sleep through the night. If they know how to do this then they will only need to signal out to you overnight if they are hungry (or sick/uncomfortable, cold etc) so will naturally sleep through the night when they are ready and no longer nutritionally need night feeds.
This usually happens anywhere from 5-9 months and is dependent on their weight, solids intake and the ability to self-settle.
Teaching your baby to self-settle is a personal journey and how we do this is dependent on your babies temperament, your parenting style and what sleep association your baby may have.
If you are wanting to start working on teaching your baby to self-settle, they are over 14 weeks then get in touch for a consultation.
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