Hey Mums and Dads. My name's Emma.
I'm a paediatric occupational therapist and Mum to two gorgeous children.
If you've got a baby under six months of age, who's constantly catnapping,
leaving you with broken sleep and no time to do anything at all.
Make sure you watch this video, as I tell you exactly what you should be doing.
You'll also learn about one of the biggest mistakes new parents make when
working with their baby's sleep,
which results in them accidentally cutting their baby, sleep shorter.
So make sure you stick around. So you don't make the same mistake.
Before we get into it, there's a free PDF document in the description box below,
which covers your baby's developmental milestones that you can be expecting in
their first year of life.
This will give you an invaluable piece of mind as you'll know what your baby
should be doing at each age range and when to be concerned. Also,
if you want parenting tips and tricks to make your life as parents easier and
give your baby the best start to life,
make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit that bell button to be notified
when I release a new video every week. And if you've enjoyed this video,
make sure you hit the like button. First of all, let's get this out there.
Despite everything you've heard about creating a routine for your baby,
catnapping is completely normal behaviour from three and a half months to six
months of age.
At this age your baby doesn't have the ability to link sleep cycles.
So they waking after one sleep cycle, which is around 30 to 45 minutes.
This is completely normal and expected behaviour. And honestly,
trying to change it is completely futile.
And it's going to frustrate you and stress you out if you do.
What you can do now is create healthy sleep habits so that when your baby is six
months of age and they have the ability to link sleep cycles, they will,
and you won't need to do as much intervention, which will be amazing.
Here's how to create those healthy sleep habits,
which is going make life so much easier for you in the near future.
The very first thing you need to do is create an ideal sleeping environment for
your bub.
Do not believe the myths that your baby needs to get used to sleeping in a noisy
room. And it needs to be extremely bright. That is completely false.
What your baby's doing in that environment is habituating,
which means they're working really,
really hard to block out that noise and that light so that they can sleep or get
some kind of sleep. So when your baby wakes up from that,
they're going to be a really grumpy and tired baby.
So your baby's room should be dark and it should be dark enough that you can't
actually read a book.
And this just ensures that when your baby wakes up between sleep cycles at
around five, six months, and they might have that skill to link sleep cycles,
they're not going to be stimulated by the things in the room and wake up.
They might actually go back to sleep.
So we want it dark enough so they might go back to sleep.
The bedroom should also be quiet.
And this is extremely important because up until six months of age,
your baby will predominately spend most of their time in light sleep,
which is when they're easily woken by loud noises or sudden loud noises.
So a quiet room ensures that they're not accidentally woken up.
A baby can learn to go back to sleep after being accidentally woken up.
But we just prefer to avoid that completely.
So if you have a noisy household, you just use a white noise machine,
which is a consistent noise that plays throughout their whole nap.
And that could be radio static, rainfall, or a waterfall.
And it should be cool.
So babies sleep best in rooms that are mid 60 to low 70 degrees
Fahrenheit, which is around 19 to 22 degrees Celsius.
If you can't achieve that in the bedroom, that's fine.
You just dress them appropriately, to compensate.
The next thing you should do is have a bedtime routine.
It doesn't have to be long and elaborate.
It just needs to be something that you do every time they have a nap.
And it's basically, just tells your baby that it's time to sleep.
So it might be that you take them into their bedroom room. You close the blinds,
you put on the white noise machine, put them in their sleeping bag,
sing them a song while standing up, and then put them in the cot.
What you want to do is make sure you do it every time they have a nap,
because it essentially tells them it's time to sleep when these things happen.
So what you want to do is work towards a nap schedule.
So at around four to six months of age,
you'll notice that a nap schedule is kind of emerging.
So to help that process along,
what you can do is start your baby's day at a set time.
So you want to keep that consistent and within a 30 minute window.
Having that consistent wake up time means that their first nap will
generally happen at the same time each day.
So if they're under four months of age after being awake for 45 minutes
to two hours, your baby's going to need that first nap.
And if they're over four months of age after being awake for two to two and a
half hours, they're going to need that first nap. So if, for example,
your baby wakes at 7:00 AM and they're over four months of age,
then they're going to consistently need that first nap at nine o'clock.
So that nap will become very consistent.
And then hopefully that will lead onto the other naps, becoming more consistent.
The next thing you want to do,
which is the biggest mistake I often see parents make is they forget to pause
when their baby's having a nap and they start to stir. So remember,
as your baby is around five to six months of age,
they're developing that skill to start to link sleep cycles.
And we know that your baby will go through a sleep cycle so around 30 to 45
minutes and they'll come into a partial wake period where they will scream out.
They might kick their legs. They might grunt and groan,
but if you leave your baby, there's a potential that they'll go back to sleep.
So just remember to pause when they're around five to six months of age,
don't go rushing in and picking them up. Because as soon as you pick them up,
you're going to wake them up fully. And they're not going to go back to sleep.
So pause and see if your baby goes back to sleep.
If they do amazing, they're on their way to joining sleep cycles,
which means they're going to be having longer naps in the day,
which will be amazing. And if not,
then just keep working towards that. So just remember to pause for each nap.
The last thing you want to work towards is putting your baby in their cot
drowsy, but not asleep. And you don't need to do this for every nap.
Some naps are really, really hard.
The reason we want them to be going to bed drowsy,
but not asleep is that they learn to fall asleep by themselves,
which is really important when you're wanting them to try and link sleep cycles.
Because if they need you to rock them to sleep, or they need a dummy,
they're actually going to find that really hard to link sleep cycles,
because they essentially need you. So if you can put them to bed drowsy,
but not asleep and they can fall asleep every now and then they're learning that
skill, which is amazing. So that's it Mums and Dads.
Those are the simple tricks that you can do to create healthy sleeping habits
for your baby now.
So that when they're six months and they have that skill to join sleep cycles
they will, and they won't need as much intervention from you.
Remember to get that free developmental checklist for your baby's first year of
life. If you've enjoyed this video, make sure you hit that like button.
If you want to hear more parenting tips and tricks to make your life as parents
easier and give your baby the best, start to life,
make sure you subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I
release a new video every week.
And hopefully I'll see you next week where you'll learn more parenting tips and
tricks.
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