It's a real struggle when you have a baby
who's not sleeping.
And that might be that they're not napping well
or it might be that they're not sleeping very well at night,
or they're really difficult to even get to sleep
and settle to sleep in the first place.
Just as exacerbated if you are at home
and you perhaps have older children who are also at home,
or if it's during the holidays,
or a period where you have your husband or partner
at home as well,
nobody will be getting any decent sleep.
And sleep is really, really important.
In this video,
I'm going to talk you through how you can
improve your little one's sleep in as little as two weeks.
The biggest thing I can tell you,
the most important thing I can tell you is that
your little one's nighttime sleep is completely dependent
on what has happened during their day.
And don't listen to anybody who tells you otherwise,
'cause that's just not true.
What happens in your child's day for sleeping,
awake periods, and feeding,
directly influences their night sleep
which is why we would never advise anybody
to sleep train their baby or look at improving
their babies night sleep on it's own without first
adjusting their daytime.
The simple explanation for this is that if your child
is over tired during the day,
that's going to impact their night sleep no matter
how much sleep training or whatever you're doing overnight.
An overtired baby will not sleep well.
The same thing will happen if your baby is under tired
or has had too much daytime sleep.
They're not gonna sleep well overnight no matter
what you do.
It's not their fault that they're
not sleeping well at night.
It's that they don't need that sleep,
because they've already had too much during the day.
In most situations,
you're fighting against their body clock.
There's not much you can do
about improving your little one's night sleep
if you haven't addressed the daytime sleep.
So let me talk you through what we recommend.
The basis of all of our sleep recommendations to improve
your little one's sleep.
And like I said,
this can happen for some families
in as little as two weeks,
even less depending on their child's
current sleep situation, their age,
and what needs to be adjusted for your little one.
So step one, naps.
Like I said, the daytime is so important to figure out.
Make sure your little one's naps are really age appropriate.
So that means two things.
It means one, that they're happening at the right time
after the right amount of awake time
for your little ones age.
So that means that a three week old baby is having
one to one and a half hours of awake time between naps,
but a three month old baby is having more like two hours
between naps.
That your constantly aware of what these awake times
should be for your baby's age,
and they're constantly changing.
And the second part of the nap equation is the nap lengths.
So be vigilant that your little one isn't napping too much
during the day.
And this is especially common for very young babies
and also toddlers.
If your little one is an expert napper
and they're just sleeping the day away,
and you're like "Yes, I've got this.
"My baby is such a good napper."
But then they're up partying all night.
That napping was the reason.
Cap their nap hours if you have to.
Reduce the amount of naps.
Wake your baby up from their naps if they're at risk
of oversleeping.
It sounds barbaric, but it's not that bad.
And it is in your child's best interest if then
they're going to have a better sleep overnight
when sleep is more important and restorative to them
than just a long nap.
Focus on your baby's awake windows and the length
of their naps to make sure they're getting the exact perfect
amount of daytime sleep with the right amount of awake time
in between to lead to good nighttime sleep.
Naps is the place to start.
From there, look at your little one's sleep environment.
This is for naps and nighttime,
but it is especially important if you are trying
to improve their nighttime sleep,
but it will also improve naps.
We recommend a very, very, very dark room.
Simulate a cave.
You want your child to be sleeping in the dark,
because the dark helps them sleep.
It helps to kick off all kinds of amazing body clock
responses which produce sleep hormones which help us sleep.
Turn off the night lights.
Turn off the hall light.
Shut the curtains.
Don't let that early morning sunshine at 5:00 a.m.
come in to your child's room or it will wake them up.
Pitch black room for naps and overnight.
White noise, I cannot emphasize the use of white noise.
It is one of, just like the dark,
white noise is one of the simplest,
but most effective sleep tools in your sleep toolbox
and this can be any kind of white noise.
It doesn't have to be the classic white noise.
It could be waves.
It could be pink noise, brown noise,
the sound of rain,
something that you don't mind listening to.
Play it for all naps and non-stop on a loop overnight
in your little one's room.
It will help them sleep.
Another key and often overlooked element is the temperature
in your little one's nursery or the space
in which they're sleeping.
If your baby is getting too hot or too cold,
it's going to mean that they're waking up.
And then we might misinterpret this for them being hungry,
and so we start feeding them more often than they might
have needed to have been fed,
and that can over time create a night feeding habit.
Again something really easy that you can almost immediately
implement and control is the nursery temperature.
So we recommend that it be around 18 degrees Celsius
which I think is about 65 degrees Fahrenheit,
so check the temperature in which they're sleeping
and make sure that they're warm enough
especially if it's going to
be dropping temperature overnight.
So that's the nursery or their sleep environment covered.
The last crucial element is their settling ability.
This isn't as important for very young babies.
I would say under three, four months old.
For babies in that age bracket,
actively settle them to sleep if you need to.
Of course the goal is that your baby is able
to fall asleep independently,
because that is going to massively improve their chances
of sleeping longer stretches at night once
they're over four months old.
But in younger babies, totally fine to settle them,
actively settle them to sleep by feeding, or rocking,
or doing whatever you have to do,
because at that age,
the more important fact is that they are going to sleep
and have fallen asleep,
rather than how they're going to sleep.
So for a slightly older baby,
this is where self-settling comes in to the equation.
If your baby is relying on you rocking, or patting,
or feeding them to sleep for all of their naps,
and nighttime sleep,
they are going to start needing that replicated
every time they rouse between sleep cycles overnight,
which is approximately every two hours.
So if you've got let's say six, seven month old baby
who is up every two hours overnight,
and your feeding them back to sleep,
that feeding back to sleep is the reason they're waking.
They do not know how to go back to sleep themselves
when they're naturally coming out
of their nighttime sleep cycle.
Children who can self-settle,
do this by rousing out of their sleep cycle,
going "yep it's still nighttime,
"I've got my white noise,
"I've got my dark room,
"I've got my cuddly,"
and they roll over and go back to sleep
quite confidently and happily,
because they know how to do that.
It's not a difficult skill.
It's not an unnatural skill.
It's just sleep.
It's just falling asleep,
so we have to enable our children to learn this skill
and we have to help them learn it after around four months
when they develop the ability to learn this skill.
To do that,
what we recommend is doing whatever it is that your doing
to get your child to sleep,
but just doing it less and less.
So I'm not gonna tell you to put your baby in a room
and leave them to scream all night unattended,
because they need to learn to go to sleep.
No way.
I mean if that floats your boat,
fine I'm not gonna judge you for it,
but that is not what I would recommend.
It's not what I did with my own children.
The easiest less stressful most attentive way
to guide your child to self-settling is just
do whatever you normally do,
do their normal bedtime settling,
and just reduce it every couple of days.
So if your feeding them to sleep,
feed them until they are 90% asleep.
Pop them in their bed.
Maybe even keep your hand on them to start with,
and let them do the last bit of falling asleep on their own.
And then give that two days at that stage.
Then move on to feed them until they're 70% asleep,
50% asleep, you get what I mean.
Just slowly and as your comfortable with it,
reduce your input.
During this time,
totally fine to do kind of hands on settling in their bed,
so you've also achieved them falling asleep in their bed.
So maybe they're not happy with you putting them
in their bed 50% asleep,
or 0% asleep or fully awake,
so keep your hand on them for a little bit.
That's easy to ween off.
Just take it slowly.
Take it at a pace that your comfortable with.
If your child is getting upset,
you put them in their bed,
they're getting upset,
pick them up.
Cuddle them.
Give them the thing that they need.
Feed them, but not until they're completely asleep.
Just leave that little bit of awake at the end of it,
so that they're starting to get used to falling asleep
on their own and they go "Oh yeah, I can do this."
Once they've done it, they can do it.
It's just about us giving them the space, and the time,
and the respect to learn this new skill,
and helping them through in a really nice,
gentle, responsive way.
So the settling or self-settling element is really crucial
once your baby is over about four months old
to them achieving decent nighttime sleep.
That will also mean that they're napping a bit better
in the day,
longer than just that one catnapping sleep cycle,
but, no amount of self settling work is going
to be effective if your baby is over or under tired,
or if they're sleep environment is not conducive to sleep.
So can you see how it all ties together?
We've gotta get the naps right.
We've gotta get the awake times right first.
We've gotta do the sleep environment,
which is a really easy, easy, easy fix,
and then we can work on your little one's settling ability.
You might find that your little one's start settling
or self-settling almost on their own if you have those
other factors lined up first,
because those are the really crucial parts
that the success of your self-settling work really hinges
on those other elements.
So start here.
Start with naps, awake times.
Start with the sleep environment.
I will link our free ebook "Two Weeks to Sleep"
in the description box below,
so go down here and download that free ebook.
I cover all of this information in it,
but then of course you have it in written form.
You can refer back to it.
Inside that ebook I've got what the awake window should be
for your baby's age,
so you're not guessing,
what the ideal nap, cumulative nap hours are for each day,
for your baby's age,
so your not guessing.
And of course the self-settling approach is all listed
out there for you in an easy to follow method.
So make sure you download that ebook,
and you can get started right away,
while you've got the time on better naps,
easier settling, and better nighttime sleep
for your little one and for your whole family.
Thank you very much for watching.
Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel
for tons more baby and toddler sleep videos.
Thanks guys.