Today I am answering your sleep question.
My six and a half month old
is waking in the middle of the night,
babbling.
Should I leave him to self settle?
Hi, I'm Nicky.
One of the founders of a company called Little Ones
and mother to three beautiful children.
At Little Ones,
we specialize in infant and child sleep,
through a comprehensive set of online sleep programs.
Let me talk you through this one.
There are a couple of things
that might be going on here for your little one.
The first thing I would be interested in
is your little one's wakefulness
in the middle of the night.
So it sounds to me like they're waking
but they're not distressed.
They're not waking and crying out
because they're hungry or cold.
They're waking, chatting away
which suggests they're relatively happy
but they are very awake.
This would indicate to me that the reason for that could be
that they're having a little bit too much sleep
during the day
or late in the day.
Somewhere between six and eight months,
we really need to start trimming back
and then getting rid of altogether that late afternoon nap.
So the third nap of the day
and what can definitely start happening
and a sign of your little one being ready to drop that nap
is this kind of behavior
this wakefulness during the night.
So if your little one
is still having that late afternoon nap,
and the first instance try reducing its length,
and then if that's not having an impact
and then cut it out altogether
to try and avoid that wakeful period
in the middle of the night.
Which does suggest that your little one is simply awake
and alert and they've just had a bit too much sleep.
So the other thing in regards to your question
of whether you should leave your little one to self settle,
it really depends what the settling situation is
with your little one anyway.
If they are,
already a pro at self settling
and at putting themselves to sleep,
then I would see no harm in leaving them
as long as you're comfortable that they're happy.
You're confident that they're not hungry
or maybe they've gotten cold
or they're not tangled in their bedding
or anything like that.
As long as you're comfortable too
then I think you're actually fine to leave them
as long as they're just happily chatting away,
and hopefully they will eventually go back to sleep.
But that's a double-edged sword
because I think the chance and the success
of them being able to go back to sleep
is going to depend on the nap structure
that we just discussed.
So if you're a little one is still having quite a long
or a late afternoon sleep,
then even if you leave them
no matter how happy they are
they're probably going to be awake for a couple of hours.
And at that point,
they're probably going to start getting a bit upset
and need your help to go back to sleep.
So yeah, the nap stuff comes first
and then you just really need to use your own judgment
as a parent to see, you know,
how are they, are they okay in the night when they wake up?
It's not the end of the world.
If they need your help to go back to sleep.
And if they're already self settling
at naps and at bed time, then, you know
settling them and helping them back to sleep
on the odd night wake is totally fine.
It's not going to ruin
all of the self settling work
that you've done.
So I hope that's given you
a bit of an answer and something to work towards.
Thank you very much for watching today.
And thank you for asking us your sleep questions.
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I will talk to you again next week.