Is your newborn baby pretty difficult to settle to sleep?
Ugh, I know exactly how you feel.
When I had my son, who is my second child,
I was determined to avoid the mistakes I made
with my eldest, where I would unknowingly
let her get really over-tired during the day.
I just had no idea about sleep.
With my son and my endeavor to completely avoid that,
I spent hours trying to get him to sleep as a newborn baby
and he would just lie there,
staring at me, awake,
with these big blue eyes the entire time.
I shed so many tears.
I was so frustrated.
I would have my two year old right
outside my son's bedroom door, needing my attention,
needing some time with me,
and I remember being trapped in his room,
so frustrated he wouldn't go to sleep.
If I feed him, if I rocked him, no matter what I did,
he wouldn't go to sleep during the day.
It would take over an hour sometimes
to just get him to sleep for him
to then only sleep 45 minutes to an hour
and we'd start all over again.
I totally know how you feel.
And today I am answering your sleep question,
"My five week old takes up to an hour to fall asleep.
Is there something I can do?"
And you will be so relieved to know that, yes,
there is something that you can do.
So stay tuned while I explain all about the mistakes
that I made and the things I now know.
I'm Nicky.
I'm one of the founders of a company called Little Ones.
We specialize in infant and toddler sleep
through our comprehensive online sleep programs.
As mothers, we really understand the emotional
and physical toll that sleep deprivation can have
on you and on your family,
which is why we're so pleased with being able
to help over 200,000 families worldwide
achieve better sleep.
We love hearing how we've been able to help these families
through sleep regressions, nap transitions,
night waking, poor napping, unsettled babies, and more.
We would love to help you and your family
achieve better sleep.
Make sure you visit our website www.littleones.co
and see if we're the right fit for you.
All right, let's talk about your five week old baby
and why it's taking so long for them to fall asleep.
The good news is, is that it's actually a really simple fix.
It's just about understanding what your baby's sleep needs
are at this age and at any age.
Once you know what their sleep needs are,
what their biological sleep needs are,
then you're away laughing and I promise you
their sleep will get better.
The issue that I was having all those years ago with my son
was that I was putting him to bed too soon.
As I said, I was trying to avoid over-tiredness
and there's a lot of publicity about overtiredness,
everybody's heard about it.
How overtiredness causes poor sleep,
how it causes fractured naps
and really fragmented night sleep and a cranky baby.
And I experienced that the first time around.
And I did not wanna do that again.
In my enthusiasm to avoid over-tiredness,
I entered into the territory of under-tiredness.
And this, actually, is just as bad.
So what was happening in my case
and what might well be happening for you
is I was putting my son down to bed way too soon.
I was giving him at sort of five, six weeks old,
no more than an hour awake time
because that's the information that was available
to me out there at the time.
Everyone was saying, "Don't let them stay awake
for longer than an hour."
So I would get him up, feed him, change him,
have a super quick awake period, swaddle him,
put him in his room, and do everything,
literally everything I could,
to get him to sleep within that hour.
And like I said, he would just look at me
with his big baby blues and I mean,
my heart should have been melting,
but I had tears running down my face
because I was so frustrated.
I didn't know why this baby wasn't sleeping.
Half an hour to an hour later, he would drift off to sleep.
I now know with all of the sleep knowledge that I have now,
that he was, he just wasn't tired enough to go to sleep,
it's as simple as that.
The awake period I was aiming for
was far too short for his age.
If I'd actually put him in bed after an hour and a half
to two hours of awake time,
he probably would have drifted off to sleep like that,
on his own, without the frustration, without the stress,
without the tears and he probably
would have napped better as a result.
So this is the very first place I want you to start
with your baby and trying to figure out
why they're taking so long to settle.
What are the awake periods that you're aiming for?
If they are an hour or less, you need to push that out.
You need to be extending out those awake periods.
It would be like my nine year old coming home from school
and me trying to put her to bed for the evening at 4:00 PM.
She's not gonna go to bed at 4:00 PM
because her bedtime's 7:30.
She's just not tired enough.
And it's no different for your little one.
If they're not tired enough,
they won't go to sleep, simple as that.
Now, without knowing you and your particular situation,
you might also be falling into the flip side
of undertiredness which is, of course, overtiredness.
Although in an overtired baby,
I would expect them to be a bit easier to settle,
but they're probably grouchy
throughout that entire settling period.
If your baby is overtired,
which means if they've had too much awake time
between their naps, they are also going to be hard
to settle to sleep.
So if your baby is awake for more than two hours
at this age, from one nap to the other,
then you need to trim back their awake time
and start settling them to sleep a bit earlier.
Definitely well within the two hour mark.
A couple other reasons it might be taking
your little one, at this age,
a long time to settle
is hunger, wind, and their sleep environment.
Let's start with hunger.
A hungry baby will not settle to sleep.
It's as simple as that.
So I would be with your baby,
if you've got the awake times perfect
and you're confident that that's okay,
I would definitely be considering hunger as an option.
And this could be that they, it's been too long
since their last feed, it could be
that they're not feeding very effectively
if they're breastfeeding, and actually even bottle feeding.
And that could be because of a tongue and undiagnosed
or even diagnosed tongue tie or a lip tie or a cheek tie.
It could be that they're not feeding effectively
because they have acid reflux
and the feeding is hurting them.
Perhaps there's something going on with their latch
or the milk supply.
So if you're awake windows are spot on,
definitely, the next thing I would be looking at
would be hunger.
And if you think that there is something going on,
hunger wise, or feeding wise for your baby,
I would recommend that you get in touch
with a lactation consultant or your GP
or a pediatrician and get that sorted
because, like I said, a hungry baby
will not settle and sleep no matter what you do.
Another contributing factor and linked to hunger is wind.
Wind and babies this age is a big deal
and it's often underrated.
Wind can cause so many issues with your little one
in terms of their settling and sleep.
I would recommend that you aim
for three good burps per feed.
So if you're feeding your little one right before
you're trying to pop them in bed,
it's likely that they just haven't got all their wind up.
And so I would actually recommend feeding them
a little way from their bedtime
so that they've got enough time between the feeding
and the napping for you to make sure
that all their wind has come up.
A baby who has wind and is uncomfortable
will be difficult to settle to sleep.
The last thing we can quickly look at is the environment
in which you're settling your baby to sleep.
As your baby grows and becomes a lot more alert,
their little eyes are wandering around everywhere,
looking at all the interesting things,
their ears are picking up on all these incredible,
new sounds, it's stimulating,
and it's not helping the sleep situation.
If you're trying to put your baby to bed
in a bright, stimulating room or environment,
then, at this age, they're probably starting
to be a little bit too alert for that.
And they're just looking at what's going on.
From around six to eight weeks onwards,
what can really assist your little one's
settling and napping is sleeping them
in a very, very dark room.
Not only does it help eliminate any light stimulation,
but it also, interestingly, encourages the production
of the hormone melatonin in your little one's body.
Melatonin is the hormone that assists them with sleep.
So why not work with their biological sleep drive
rather than against it, right?
So pop them in a really dark room, crank up the white noise,
and this will just help block out those startling sounds
that might be stimulating or alerting your baby.
Swaddling your baby at this age is a really,
really useful tool.
Swaddling replicates the tight feeling
of being in the womb and it helps your baby
feel secure and safe.
And it stops them from flailing around
and from waking themself up with their own crazy limbs.
So a dark room, white noise, and a swaddle.
Really useful sleep tools from this age onwards.
Right, if you've got all of that ticked off,
if you've got the appropriate awake time,
you know your baby's not hungry,
their sleep environment is spot on,
then we possibly need to start looking
at some other underlying, far less common factors,
such as various health conditions.
Reflux, as I mentioned, a tie,
a tongue tie or something which could be causing colic,
an intolerance or an allergy,
but these are very few and far between.
So I would definitely be looking at those other factors,
which are relatively easy fixes first.
If you'd like some help getting the awake times sorted
for your little one at this age,
we have all of the information available
for you inside our sleep program.
We've got the ideal awake times from two weeks old
right through 'til your child stops napping altogether,
somewhere around three.
So you never have to think about it or second guess
your little one's sleep needs.
Let us do the thinking for you.
We would love you to become a part
of our Little Ones community
so we can work together to help improve the sleep
of your little one and of your whole family.
Let me know in the comments below
how your little ones are sleeping.
Are they struggling to fall asleep and settle
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Thank you very much for watching.
And I look forward to talking to you again soon.