The Baby Sleep Book: How to help your baby to sleep and have a restful night

You can also use bedtimes as teachable moments to implant into your child pleasant thoughts and admirable values as she drifts off to sleep. Do this night after night and these bits of wisdom will be filed away in her library of experiences. Years later these bedtime lessons will be an important influence in her life.

Bedtime prayers are a time-honoured tradition for smoothing out the wrinkles of life and for passing on parental values and beliefs. Teach your child a familiar prayer, or make up your own prayers of gratitude and concern for others.

Dr Bob remembers toddler Andrew used to ask while snuggling to sleep, “Tell me good things, Daddy.” Bob would create peaceful scenes for Andrew to imagine. “We are sitting next to a quiet river in the warm sunshine with little fish swimming by.” Four or five little images would help Andrew settle into sleep peacefully.

After one or two stories, if she wanted more I said something like, “Mummy needs to go put on her pyjamas now, and I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes.” I encouraged her to look at the books we had just read together. She was okay with that and would often be asleep by the time I got back.

Wants to stay up late

Our two-year-old figts going to bed until 10 or 11pm. I know he’s tired, certainly we are. How can I get him to sleep earlier?

The most important aspect of helping a toddler go to bed early, especially when you know he is tired and is just fighting it, is to learn what his tired time is (review page (#ulink_10ca544b-4e62-567d-b623-f53ff090699b)), anticipate it, get into the bedtime routine early, set the stage for sleep (review page (#ulink_6c701ce5-c355-506c-9a6f-3cdbe5064b9b)), and do this consistently night after night. You may also need to eliminate any afternoon naps (see “Getting Baby to Nap at Predictable Times (#litres_trial_promo)”, page). (See related situations, “Establish a Set Nap Schedule”, page.)

Also, take inventory of what else is going on in your family. Does your child miss you during the day and want to make up for it at night? Are changes in your routine, such as a move, a change in childcare providers, or the arrival of a new baby, upsetting your child? Some children don’t want to go to bed because they are afraid of going to sleep. Others resist bedtime because they don’t want to be separated from their parents or because they want more “quality time” with their parents. In our family we noticed that the busier and more preoccupied we were during the day, the more our children lobbied for quality time at night.

You know that your son needs to get to bed earlier so that he can get enough sleep. And you and your partner may need some couple time in the evening. So how do you take what you have figured out about why your child is resisting bedtime and use this insight to get him to sleep earlier?

If there are stressful situations that make it hard for your child to sleep, try to remedy them. Make an effort to spend quality time with your child at times other than bedtime. Encourage lots of active play, so your child really is tired at night. Turn off the television.

Plan ahead for an earlier bedtime. Start your winding-down-for-bed routine earlier. Have your child take a bath and get his pyjamas on earlier in the evening. Then at least he is ready for bed, and you don’t have to hurry through the whole routine when you are both tired and cranky. Then use the time between bath and bed for quiet games and other activities that you do together.

It may be that your child is just not ready to go to sleep before 10pm. Throughout this book we have stressed the importance of earlier bedtimes, especially for infants and children. Yet, an early bedtime may not work well in your family. With today’s busy schedules, parents may not have much time with their children during the day. As a result, children demand more attention from their parents in the evening and balk at bedtime. If your child is, on the whole, well rested (maybe he’s taking a long afternoon nap that helps him stay awake at night), a later bedtime may be more realistic. When your child goes to bed is not as important as going to bed at the same time from one night to the next.

Wakes up too early

Our almost three-year-old wakes up at 5am to play. He’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to go, but I’m not.

Some children are like roosters. They wake up and are ready to go with the first ray of sunlight on their little faces. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get up at the crack of dawn.

Put blackout curtains on the windows in your child’s room. This should keep the little rooster asleep for an extra hour or two. But you will probably have to let him stay up an hour later at night. To do that he may need a slightly later nap. In other words, everything gets pushed forward clockwise – later rising, later nap, and later bedtime. You have to decide if you want more time for yourself in the morning or in the evening. You won’t get both.

If Dad gets up early, your toddler can tag along with him while he does all the guy things – shower, shave, dress, fix breakfast – while you get longer to sleep. It’s a good father/son “alone together” time.

If that’s not going to happen, you can get up and lie with your toddler on the couch – while he plays quietly, you can snooze or at least be horizontal long enough to feel more rested once the clock says it’s a more reasonable hour. By modelling that it’s still sleepy time for you, your toddler will get the message that it’s a good idea to play quietly. Of course this assumes that your house is thoroughly childproofed, the doors to outside are locked, and any off-limit areas are gated off. Even though most youngsters won’t wander all over the house when they could be by you, you’ll rest easier knowing he won’t get in trouble if you really doze off. Dr Bob’s partner positioned her toddler on the couch in a way that he’d have to crawl over her to get down, which meant she’d know if he was on the move.

Place a child safety gate in your child’s doorway. Set up a water bottle and small snack (something non-chokable) on your child’s nightstand before you go to bed. Teach your child to play and eat quietly and safely in his room when he wakes. You can even set an alarm clock and tell him he can call for you when the alarm goes ding. Even better is a music player with a timer that you can set to come on with your child’s favourite music (a regular alarm buzzer may be too scary).

Wakes up to play

Our eighteen-month-old baby sleeps in a cot next to us and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night eager to play. It’s cute, but we’re not in the mood to play at 3am. How can we stop this habit?

First, you can be encouraged that this is usually just a phase as baby discovers new milestones. It often passes within a few weeks. Despite this, your toddler needs to learn that nighttime is for sleeping, not for playing. Here’s how we discouraged middle-of-the-night playmates. When our toddler was sleeping close to us and woke us up, we acknowledged her presence but then told her “time to sleep”. Then we pretended to go back to sleep. If we “played dead” long enough, she would decide that it wasn’t very interesting to be awake in the dark, and she would go back to sleep. If baby protests this silent treatment, you can cuddle her close to you (use a firm hand) and repeat the sleep cue: “time to sleep” or “sleepy-sleepy”. Or roll over and lie with your back to baby. Most babies eventually give up and after a few nights, go back to sleep easily.

If this phase lasts too long, and is obviously not going away, in the interest of letting one of you actually get to stay asleep, the one who is feeling generous can get up and walk or rock baby back to sleep. Don’t turn on any lights (there will be enough “night light” coming in to find your way around). After she gets bored she’ll be ready to go back to sleep. Then you can both make your way back to her cot, or your bed.

Discouraging the midnight visitor

Our two-year-old comes into our room, where he used to sleep, at all hours of the night. How can I get him to stay in his room short of locking him in, which I obviously don’t want to do?

Like salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn, children often naturally gravitate back to their preferred sleeping place. Those middle-of-the-night visits, though disrupting, are a usual developmental stage, especially if your child is making the transition from sleeping in your room to sleeping solo in his own. Here’s how to give your child extra nighttime security without disrupting your sleep:

Have an open-door policy, but with rules. Put a futon, mattress, or a cute sleeping bag at the foot of your bed and market this as his “special bed”. Then show and tell him this rule: “You can come into Mummy and Daddy’s room at night if you need to and sleep in your special bed, but you must tip-toe in as quietly as a mouse and not wake up Mummy and Daddy. Mummy and Daddy need their sleep, otherwise we will be cranky the next day. And a cranky Mummy and Daddy are no fun to be with …”

Try not to view this nighttime visit as bad behaviour. It is natural and normal. It will diminish in time without you even needing to discourage it.

To reinforce both your availability and the message that nighttime is when everyone sleeps, go on to tell him, “If you wake Mummy and Daddy up, you have to go back into your room.” Try another show and tell game. During the day walk with him from his room into yours and show him how to slip quietly into his special bed without waking you up.

Here’s how some parents in our practice negotiated with their midnight visitor:

After we moved, our four-year-old, Josh, wanted to sleep with us all the time. Even after he fell asleep in his own bed, he’d creep in with us at about three o’clock in the morning. Even though we enjoy cuddling with him, especially as we all fall asleep, he’s an after-midnight kicker, and we’d spend most of the nights he was with us crossing our arms over our sensitive body parts. So we made a deal. We told Josh that we loved sleeping with him, but now that he was bigger, we didn’t sleep well when he was in our bed all the time, and this made us tired and grumpy parents. We further explained that we could probably handle feeling that way once a week. So we made up a chart and told Josh that if he stayed in his own bed all night Monday through Saturday, he could sleep with us all night on Sunday. Now Josh is eager to sleep “well” on his own so that we can all enjoy our Sunday night snuggles.

Weaning off nighttime bottles

Our two-year-old still insists on a bottle at bedtime and if he wakes during the night. I know this isn’t good for his teeth, but he really seems to need the comfort. I also wish he’d stop needing the bottle during the night. What can I do?

This is a common dilemma. A toddler who is used to the comfort of sucking on a bottle to get to sleep won’t give this up easily, but it’s true that milk or juice sugar that stay on the teeth at night can cause cavities. In chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo) we’ll discuss this situation in detail, but here’s the basic approach we recommend:

Go sugar free. Slowly dilute the milk or juice with water over a couple weeks until it is all water. If your child clues in to this trick, back off for a few days then continue again. This at least eliminates the risk of cavities.

Have a bye-bye bottle party. Have a ceremony where you toss the bottles into the outside dustbin, watch the rubbish trucks take it away if possible, celebrate with songs, dancing, cake and presents. Encourage your child that he is all grown up now and tonight will “go night-night as a big boy”. Have a hidden spare bottle handy in case your child decides he doesn’t like this idea come bedtime and his hysterics are beyond what you feel is ok. Some of his presents can be other bedtime props, like a musical stuffed toy, new pillow, or blanket.

Substitute yourself. You may find that once you’ve taken the bottle away you need to find something to take its place. Your child may declare that that something is you. You may need to spend a few weeks helping your child go to sleep if you feel he needs you.

If you’re using other substitute props, make sure your child knows how to find them during the night when he wakes up and asks for the bottle.

If you feel your child really needs the comfort of a bottle with water, that’s okay. You know best when to be rid of the bottle once and for all.

Becoming a bed hog

Our thirteen-month-old has been sharing our bed, and up until now it has been great. Lately he has started moving around while he sleeps. It’s like he thinks he owns the bed. My partner and I are starting to feel the effects of a third person in our bed. Help!

Funny – and not so funny – things happen when baby shares your bed. Three familiar, though sometimes annoying, sleep positions that family-bed babies seem to enjoy are the heat-seeking missile, the starfish, and the H-sleeper.

The “heat-seeking missile” snuggles comfortably into a parental armpit or a breast and refuses to back off. Like a mother hen, you instinctively put your wing (your arm) over the top of your baby’s head. He may want to stay in touch with, or actually attached to, your warm body all night long. Baby sleeps great, but you may not. No worries, though, about this baby falling out of bed.

With the “starfish”, baby sprawls his arms and legs out as far as they can go, sometimes stretching out so much they seem to force you right off the bed. Starfish sometimes become thrashers.

The H-sleeper enjoys physical contact with both parents. He falls asleep between the parents, parallel with their bodies, and then strategically rotates himself until he is perpendicular to the parents, resting his head on one parent and his feet on the other. Isn’t that nice? He loves you both! Again, baby sleeps comfortably that way all night – but you may not, especially if you’re the one getting kicked in the ribs.

Baby’s head in mother’s armpit.

Usually when an infant or toddler starts taking over the bed in these positions, dads announce, “It’s time for a big boy bed!” Is Dad right?

Here are your options. If everybody is sleeping reasonably well, you may be able to laugh this off and hope it’s passing phase. Yet if baby’s nighttime frolicking means baby is the only one who is sleeping well, you need to take some action:

“Draw the line.” Put a line of pillows between you and your toddler. He gets one-third of the bed space; Mum and Dad get the rest.

Try Dr Jim Sears’ trick he calls “staying in your own lane”: Jonathon sprawled across the bed with arms stretched out forming the letter H with the three of us. When he was around two years old, I was watching a swimming competition and I was paying attention to the lane dividers that kept the swimmers from swimming on top of each other and it gave me an idea. What if I could keep Jonathon in his own lane in the bed? We had tried pillows but they just took up a lot of room and it was hard to have an entire pillow between him and us. Even though we had a king-size bed they just didn’t seem to do the trick. When I saw these lane dividers in the swimming pool I thought, “hmm, something like that might work” so I went downstairs into our garage and noticed that we had some of those water woggles, long thin cylinders made of firm foam. Using ones that had hollow centres, I slid broom handles in to add some rigidity. After Jonathon fell asleep I placed one on each side of him, each one running the length of the bed, and this worked beautifully. If he started to roll over or rotate sideways the foam was firm enough to keep him from going over it. These were perfectly safe because they were rigid enough so that he didn’t become entangled and light enough that he wouldn’t be hurt if he somehow slipped under. They were also easy to store under the bed when not in use. One point: I don’t suggest using old woggles that have been sitting in the pool in the sun for months because the foam tends to break down and be quite flaky and makes a mess. Go out and get some new ones.