Is your little one waking up
every 30 to 45 minutes during the day?
And every one to two hours overnight?
This can be a sign that your little one
needs to learn to self-settle.
This is why I'm answering your sleep question,
what is self-settling
and what does it have to do with my baby's sleep?
Hi, I'm Brooke,
one of the sleep consultants for Little Ones
and mother to two beautiful children.
At Little Ones, we have helped over 200,000 families
improve their baby's sleep.
We provide an evidence-based sleep solutions
for newborn to six years within our amazing app.
So what exactly is self-settling?
Self-settling means that you are putting your baby
into their bed wide awake
and they can go to sleep without any assistance from you.
Up until around four-months-old
going to sleep is quite an instinctual behavior.
Before that four-month mark,
if everything is lined up for your baby to go to sleep,
they have a full belly,
their room is set up perfectly for sleep,
then they may be able to self-settle.
From around four-months-old,
your little one goes through a sleep regression
which is more of a progression of sleep
and this is when the instinctual behavior goes
and they need to learn how to self-settle
to be able to stay asleep
for a longer period than one sleep cycle.
So why is self-settling so important
from four-months onwards?
So at around four-months-old
this can happen between three and six-months-old
but it's called the four-month regression
'cause that's typically when it happens,
our little ones lose their instinctual behavior
of going to sleep and they have to consciously
thoughtfully put themselves to sleep.
And if they can't do this then we do it for them,
so that could be patting them to sleep
or rocking them to sleep or whatever works for your baby.
And after that four-month mark,
when they go through this regression or progression in sleep
they start waking up every sleep cycle,
their sleep cycles mature
and they start going through waves of sleep
so they'll go into a light stage of sleep
and a really deep stage and then a really light stage
and that's when they're coming out of their sleep cycle
and this is when self-settling is really important.
So if they put themselves to sleep
at the start of the nap,
then when the end of the sleep cycle finishes,
if they rouse, they'll be able to put themselves
back to sleep how they did at the start of the nap.
If we put them to sleep at the start of the nap
then they'll get to the end of the sleep cycle
and they'll start to rouse
and they'll realize that we aren't there anymore,
we're not patting their bottom,
we're not rocking them,
we're not feeding them
or whatever it is that helped them to go to sleep.
And they will fully wake between sleep cycles
and they won't be able to go back to sleep
unless we bring back the sleep association
that first put them to sleep.
At that four-month mark
it can start to get difficult
to put them back to sleep
as they start to wake fully between sleep cycles.
So they could be, all right, I'm awake.
I'm ready to go.
No one's putting me back to sleep.
Mom and dad come back in, right?
It's time to get up.
They won't see you coming back in and go,
oh, I need to go back to sleep.
They'll see you come back in and say, "It's awake time.
"Time to go and play."
If they have the skill to self-settle though,
they'll rouse between that sleep cycle,
at the start of the regression they may awake fully
and they might not be able to go back
to sleep on their own for a little while
until self-settling is mastered.
So this regression is a really tricky one
because it is permanent.
Your baby most likely won't go
between sleep cycles on their own
unless they can first self-settle
and then they can learn the skill of re-settling
which can be a bit trickier
because they're not as tired anymore
and they can put themselves to sleep quite easily
'cause they're exhausted and they're ready for sleep
and then they get through that first sleep cycle
of 30 to 45 minutes
and there they wake up and they go, oh, I'm rested.
I could get up and play.
I could get up and have something to eat
or something to drink.
But if we leave them for a little while
they will learn to go back to sleep.
So as I said, if your baby can learn
to self-settle at the start of a nap,
then they'll be able to learn
to re-settle between sleep cycles
and you can wave goodbye to those 35 to 45 minute catnaps
and those one to two-hour exhausting night wakes overnight.
Here are some tips for self-settling.
In order to give our little ones
the best chance to self-settle,
we need to first make sure everything else
is lined up for sleep.
So we need to make sure they are full
and that they are burped.
If a baby is not full
and they haven't had enough to eat
or they've got trapped wind,
they most likely won't self-settle
and they most likely won't sleep well.
So make sure they've had a good full feed,
they're burped, they have no trapped wind,
their room is perfectly set up for sleep.
They've got sleeping bag or swaddle.
Their room is dark and they have white noise.
The next step is to work with your baby's sleep association.
So if your baby is being pat to sleep,
then you'll just gradually reduce
how much you pat them to sleep
so that they are starting to do that
last little bit on their own
and then eventually you'll be able
to put them down wide awake and they can self-settle.
If your little one is older
than this four-month age bracket,
then their sleep association
may be a little bit more in ground
which makes it a bit harder
to use this gradual method to get them to self-settle.
So we have heaps of settling methods
within our app that you can check out.
Before I found Little Ones, I had a perfect sleeper.
She was sleeping through the night
from around three-months-old
and then the four-months sleep regression hit
just before four-months.
And I spent hours researching how to get her to sleep well.
I was having to pat her to sleep
and she was catnapping all day
and she was waking up countless times during the night
and I was exhausted.
One night I found Little Ones
at about two o'clock in the morning and my life changed.
I started reducing how much I pat her to sleep
and after around a week, her sleep started to improve
and at two weeks she was sleeping through her naps perfectly
and she started sleeping through the night again,
which was magical and we both needed this sleep.
Teaching your little one how to self-settle
can be a trying time especially if your baby is a bit older
and they have a very strong sleep association
like rocking to sleep or being fed to sleep
or they're co-sleeping, that is where our app is amazing.
We have support system in the villages
for your baby's age and stage
and people like myself and other consultants
will be able to help you through this
and we can give you tips and tricks
to help your little one learn to self-settle
so you can all get the sleep you deserve.
So that's all I have for you guys today.
If you really enjoyed this video,
please give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe
and hit the bell for any notifications
when we upload new videos.
Please pop a comment down below
to tell us how you are currently settling your little one.
Thank you for watching.
Bye.