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Help to Better Sleep and Try Strategies
There are different reasons kids have trouble sleeping, and some different expert opinions on how to help them. Your family should learn about the various approaches, and decide what feels most comfortable for you and for your child. Remember, with any of these approaches, to be consistent, keep bedtime calm, and let your child know you love them. You should not to follow any program to the letter if your intuition tells you it’s not right for your child. Different approaches may work better or worse for different children in different families. If you feel you or your child is just too distressed by a given method, try something else more comfortable for you.
Approaches to Try
Cutting back on nighttime nursing: If your breastfed baby is under six months, they probably still need to nurse at night. Even at six months, your baby may well be hungry after only about six hours of sleep. Growth spurts will also cause your baby to be hungrier at night. But if your older baby or toddler is nursing a lot at night, and you want them to cut back so you can get more sleep, here are some helpful hints:
- Tank your baby up with more feedings during the day.
- Get your baby used to falling asleep other ways, such as being rocked by your partner, or carried around the house in a baby sling or carrier.
- If your baby is sleeping with you, increase the physical distance between you at night. Try a “sidecar” arrangement, with baby’s crib next to your bed, or even have the nursing mom sleep in a different room a few nights, and let the other parent soothe your baby back to sleep. The conventional wisdom says that it usually takes about 3 nights to wean a baby (who is ready) from nighttime nursing.
“Ferber method”: You can try a modified “cry it out” approach, like the “Ferber method.” In this approach, you wait a little longer each time your child wakes up and cries before you go in to comfort them. We do not recommend teaching your baby to put themselves to sleep in this way until after about 12-18 months of age. In the opinion of our panel of experienced developmental and behavioral pediatricians, it is important to form strong baby-parent and parent-baby attachments in the first year of life, and letting a baby cry uncomforted may interfere with that process.
Modified Ferber method: You may want to try a "modified Ferber method," where one parent goes in to the crying child every five to ten minutes (rather than waiting longer and longer each time) until the child eventually falls asleep. The idea is that the child will need less and less time each night to get back to sleep, until they finally sleep through the night.
After going through your child's bedtime ritual put them down and rub or pat their back. Play a lullaby tape or CD, wind up a musical toy, or turn on some kind of "white noise." Expect your baby to have some trouble letting you go-this is typical separation anxiety.
If your baby cries, wait five to ten minutes before you go back in to comfort them. It should take about that long to fall asleep. When you go in, say almost nothing---just briefly reassure your baby that you are there. Don't give a bottle or pick the baby up. Definitely, do not play with your baby. That would give them an incentive to wake up! Keep checking on your child every five to ten minutes as long as they cry. You can follow the same pattern if the baby wakes in the night.
You can expect it to take about a week of this before your baby is falling asleep alone without too much fuss. If your baby has been sleeping well every night, and then suddenly cries out one night---go see what's wrong right away. If your baby is having trouble like not feeling well, colic, or earache, pick them up and comfort them.
The bad news is, that with approaches like this and the Ferber method, after family trips or after an illness, you may have to start over from scratch and re-train the baby.
Sharing sleep (Co-sleeping or family bed): You could try sharing sleep with your child, either in the same bed or in the same room to make it easy to offer nighttime comfort and breastfeeding without anyone having to fully wake up. Make sure your sleep sharing arrangement is safe for your baby.
Getting your child out of your bed: If your child will only sleep in your bed with you, and that is not working out well for your family, then read about how to help your child learn to sleep in their own bed. Most children are accepting of leaving the parent’s bed between ages 2-3. The key is to wean them gradually into their own bed. Start with a futon or pad on the floor in your room, and after a while move them into a bed in their own room.
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