Congratulations on your new baby.
They just sleep all the time, right?
Not necessarily.
Some babies will wake often, they won't sleep well
in their day naps, they won't sleep well overnight,
they'll take forever to settle.
So in this video, I'm going to talk to you
about the reasons why a baby might not sleep very well
in their day naps, and not ever transition
through that 45 minute sleep cycle.
Today's questions is, my three week old never makes it
through a sleep cycle during the day, how can I fix this?
If you're new to this channel, I'm Amanda,
I'm a pediatric sleep specialist
and mother to two darling little girls.
At Little Ones we help parents through
our online Sleep Programs and custom-built app.
In our app we have our comprehensive Sleep Program
and we also have access for our customers
to our Little Ones Village,
where our trained sleep consultants
are there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
to answer any questions that you may have.
If you need any help, visit us at littleones.co.
How did your newborn sleep?
Where they a really good sleepy newborn,
or were they really alert and wide awake all the time?
Write it in the comments.
So why may a newborn not actually sleep very well
during the day?
Why might they not transition through those sleep cycles
of around 35 to 45 minutes?
So, a couple of things are, they are hungry.
A newborn baby will not sleep if they are hungry,
they will wake up and need a feed
because they haven't genuinely eaten enough.
So they might be hungry due to supply and demand
not having evened out yet.
They might be hungry due to snack feeding,
and feeding too often and too little,
so therefore they're not actually having a good feed
to get them through a long stretch of a sleep.
Or they might actually have wind,
where from the feeding they've actually now got wind
or burps and they need to actually get those burps out
because they've been laying down now
for a while whilst they've been asleep
and now the burp has all sort of coalesced into one burp
and they're not able to get the burp out,
and that might be making them uncomfortable
while they're sleeping.
Another reason why your baby might not be transitioning
through sleep cycles is they're not swaddled.
Swaddling is replicating the sort of environment
that they had in the womb, they're nice and tight.
Newborn babies have a startle reflex,
their arms flail all around
and they kind of can't control them,
and it's actually like their arms,
they're startling themselves to wake up.
One of the oldest tricks in the book is to swaddle.
I used to use a Love To Dream Swaddle,
I'll link them in the description below.
They're nice and easy, they have their arms up,
nice little zip, and the best thing is during the day,
or night, you can unzip the bottom part
and change the baby's nappy without actually having
to unswaddle them fully.
So, swaddling, whether you use a fitted swaddle
or a traditional swaddle, it's one of the oldest tricks
in the book to keep those babies stopping themselves
from waking up from their own startle reflex.
Another thing that you could easily add and help your baby
from waking up after that 45 minutes is white noise.
White noise is, again, replicating that sound
that they've had in the womb.
They can tune into that noise and they sort of,
it helps them calm and if they do wake after 45 minutes,
they'll often then resettle,
just purely with having white noise available.
Even our Baby Sleep Shhh sound,
I'll also link that one in the description below,
it is fantastic for settling and resettling babies
without you actually having to do anything.
The room environment is another factor
as to why your baby might not be sleeping well
and transitioning through those 45 minute sleep cycles.
Babies need dark environments to sleep,
they are used to that, in the womb it was dark, you know,
it wasn't bright, and I certainly know if I have a nap,
I have a nap in my bedroom and I'll close the curtains,
so I can't expect my children to sleep in environments
that are bright and white, and noisy and loud,
and different, pots and pans clinging and things like that.
So, I always have slept my children in a dark room,
and that same environment every time for each sleep.
Another important reason that your baby might not
be transitioning through those sleep cycles is that
you're not letting your baby stay awake for long enough.
Newborn babies need around an hour awake time,
but they do, at that three, four week old mark,
they're not at that one hour awake time anymore,
they do need to extend that awake time.
They could be undertired and have a look at
if they're awake for long enough.
Another reason is they could be overtired,
an overtired baby will wake up and be so wired
that they cannot go back and transition into
that next sleep cycle.
So they'll only be sleeping for 45 minutes at a time,
and that can be really frustrating.
And last of all, if you've checked all of those things,
the room environment, and the swaddling, the white noise,
make sure their nap times are ideal and perfect,
and they've been awake for a long enough period,
but not too long, the last thing could be
that their is something else going on.
There might be reflux or there might be not feeding well,
or tongue-tie or something like that, but please make sure
that you check all of those things first
that I've mentioned before even venturing down
the track of, you know, that you think
that something else is wrong.
So I hope that video helped,
we do have our Newborn Sleep Program
which goes through the optimal awake times
for every single week it changes,
of how long your baby needs to stay awake for
whilst they're growing rapidly in that newborn period.
So if you wanna check out our Programs,
head to www.littleones.co,
or find us on the App Store.
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