- Hi, I'm Dana, welcome to this week's video.
It's so exciting in a parent's life
when our babies start doing things, right?
Those first few months they don't do a whole lot.
In fact really, they don't do much
at all besides even sleep.
But as they get older and they start
to smile and they start to crawl and roll
and sit up and walk, all of these little milestones
are so exciting, and we love when they show up,
except for when it comes to sleep.
Developmental milestones almost always
causes sleep aggression.
So I'm just warning you that that will probably show up.
And the problem with developmental milestones
in sleep is that there's just this biological urge
on the baby's part to keep practicing the skill.
They have to practice and practice and practice
until they reach some level of mastery over that skill,
and then the body can relax into it,
and they'll just practice periodically,
but in that first surge when they're really learning
that skill, they're unstoppable.
I mean you can watch a baby who's getting
even frustrated with it, right?
I can remember when my son learned
to sit up in his crib.
He would sit up in his crib and cry
and get stuck there, right?
'Cause he hasn't figured out how to get back down yet.
I would go in, I would lay him down,
five minutes later, he's sitting up again,
and this would go on and on and on,
and I can see that he's getting more
and more frustrated, he's getting more and more fatigued,
his crying is becoming even more intense,
but for whatever reason he just won't stop sitting up.
Well I now know that that's just that,
a biological necessity.
So what can be do when this shows up for our children?
Well the first thing to remember
is that it will blow over.
It can take a week or two, sometimes even
into the third week before it subsides,
but it will subside.
And in the meantime, there's really not
a lot you can do about it.
Definitely practice during the day, right?
Take some time out of your day
if it's a sitting or a standing skill
that they're developing.
Practice getting back down again.
This is what it looks like to get up,
this is what it looks like to get down.
Helping them sort of master the skill
a little bit faster will definitely ease some
of their aggression.
In the meantime though if they're legitimately stuck,
a lot of babies can roll onto their tummies just fine,
but they can't get themselves back again.
And if they're not comfortable in that position
for sleep, they're probably gonna cry.
I just feel like it's a bit unfair
to leave them in that position if they're not
comfortable there, so definitely go
in and offer some assistance.
And that might mean for a week or even two,
you're going in there multiple times just
to lay them back down or roll them back over,
and that's okay.
This is just, you gotta ride it out.
Just be careful though that you don't give them
too much attention when you go in there.
If every time they sit up, you go in
and have a 10 minute peekaboo session
or a tickle fight or whatever you're doing
in there, then they might start
to associate the fact that when they do that behavior,
it gets really a good reward for lots
of interaction with you.
So you just want to make it really minimal.
You're just kind of going in their business
like rolling them back over, laying them back down,
and then you're getting yourself out
of there as quickly as you can.
And just keep repeating that process
until they finally fall asleep.
And just hang onto the fact that until
the next milestone, right, this is gonna
go on for probably a couple of years,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news,
but it's exciting and you can be proud
of your child for accomplishing a new skill,
and just know that it definitely will blow over
with time and patience.
Thanks for watching today, sleep well.