Self Settling is a term
that most mums will have heard about.
It's somewhat infamous, but what does it actually mean?
And how do we get your baby to actually do that?
Especially, once your baby is older than six months old.
That brings me to today's question of,
how do you encourage self settling with a baby
at seven and a half months old?
Hi, I'm Amanda founder and co-creator
of Little Ones Sleep Programs.
I'm a pediatric sleep specialist
and mother to two darling little girls.
At Little Ones, we have our comprehensive sleep program,
which guides you and your baby to learn the skill of sleep,
right from zero through to toddler age.
We do that via our program in our custom built app,
where we also have our fantastic customer support village,
that has our trained sleep consultants
working day and night,
to help you in any capacity that you may need.
Make sure that you visit us at www.littleones.co.
So back to the question today,
which is how do you encourage
self settling at seven and a half months?
So, teaching your baby, how to self settle
is definitely a skill which is going
to require a little bit of help from you,
just like if you were teaching your baby
how to read or write,
you would help and guide them and teach them the skill.
With younger babies,
teaching them how to fall asleep independently
can be a relatively quick process,
but over the age of about six months,
your baby is a little bit older, a little bit more aware,
and it may take a little bit longer for you to be able
to teach them the skill of self settling.
And you definitely will be able to help teach your baby,
learn the new skill,
as long as you're helping and guiding them
in moving forward in each step of a process.
You will have heard that there's many different ways
of teaching your baby how to self settle,
one of which is one extreme
from putting them in the bedroom at night,
letting them cry and scream
and not going in until the morning.
This is called Extinction and no way do we advocate this.
There are certainly many other methods,
this is a bit of an olden day method.
There's many other methods now that you can do
and help and guide your baby to self settle.
And then there's also the other end of the scale,
where you are present with your baby,
you are helping them go to sleep but independently,
but you are there every step of the way,
and then you gradually remove yourself from the baby's cot
and crib and environment.
And then you do eventually get to the point
where you can pop your baby into bed,
and walk out and they will go to sleep.
The first and most important thing of teaching your baby
how to self settle is to make sure
that they are indeed actually tired,
and making sure you have a good idea as to how much sleep
they need during the day,
as that is separate from how much sleep
they need during the night.
Now, this is where our sleep programs come in.
They give you the ultimate times
and nap lengths for each of your naps during the day,
to encourage really good settling at each nap,
really good nap lengths,
and also then really good sleep during the night as well,
because if your baby is seven and a half months old
and they haven't been self settling up until now,
you probably have got a little bit of
a Catnap schedule going on during the day,
they're probably also having three naps
rather than two by now,
and they're probably also waking
two hourly at night time.
So this is the, as I said,
most important during the day,
we always look at the daytime first in our sleep programs,
because that is when you're awake, you're alert.
Everyone's a lot happier during the day,
than in the middle of the night,
trying to start something new in the middle of the night.
So, naps most important and teaching your baby
at the beginning of each nap to learn how
to fall asleep in their sleep environment by themselves.
And that will help automatically by allowing your baby
to know that where they go to sleep
is where they stay asleep,
and when they wake up in the night,
they'll know that they're still in the same environment,
they're still tired and they will go back to sleep.
The second most important thing is that you choose a method
which works for you and your family.
Every baby has a different personality,
they may be really alert,
they may be really aware of your attempts to settle them,
so you may need to be a little bit more hands-off.
You may have a baby that doesn't mind
that you're in the room with them,
that you're able to be a little bit more hands-on,
and that can guide you and your baby
into what sort of method you are able to use.
Now we have seven different methods of guiding a baby
into self settling in our sleep program,
and as I said, it's most important for you and your baby
to figure out what is going to work for you.
Thirdly, consistency is the key.
Making sure that you are doing the exact same thing
at every nap and also at nighttime,
and not giving your baby mixed messages,
not teaching them how to self settle at one nap,
and then not doing it at the next nap,
and then maybe trying to do it again at bedtime.
If you're going to teach them how to self settle,
we recommend that you are going to do that
at every nap and every bedtime,
for until they can self settle
and fall asleep independently.
And then of course the morning nap or the afternoon nap,
you don't need to necessarily do in their cot or crib after,
they know how to go to sleep independently.
My next step is that a hungry baby
will not settle no matter what you do.
At's seven and a half months,
your baby should be well fed, well on solids by now.
So, this probably isn't as much of an issue
at seven and a half months,
as it is when you're looking at teaching a baby under five,
six months of how to go to sleep independently.
The next tip I would like to give you is that with anything,
when you're teaching a baby how to self settle,
that you make sure that the room environment
is ideal for sleep.
Making sure the room is dark,
you can put on some white noise that automatically
can help with your baby settling,
and can even help with adults settling you know,
it just helps turn your brain into something else
to think about and drift off to sleep easily.
So, the room environment is making sure that it's dark,
white noise and other things like making sure
your baby's has the right temperature,
at seven and a half months,
a baby sleeping bag would be recommended,
and making sure the room
is at a good warm temperature as well.
And the last tip is,
make sure you have high expectations of your baby.
Make sure that you are letting them have a go
at trying to go to sleep,
make sure that you're not interrupting
or trying to get them to go to sleep
at the first tiny little gristle.
Make sure that you are actually giving them the chance,
because they are able to do this,
they are able to go to sleep independently,
and your hard work will pay off with such good naps
and such good sleep overnight.
If you wanna read some further information,
I will link a blog up here called Self Settling The Truth,
that's got some really great information,
and another video that you are able to watch
that we've already gone through as well.
If you liked this video as always give us a big thumbs up,
and if you're new to this channel,
click the subscribe button,
and make sure that notification bell is checked,
to make sure you get notified of videos just like this one.