Your Baby Knows How to Sleep

Your little baby knows how to sleep. 

While pregnant, I'm sure you've trusted that your baby will get the sleep they need when they need it and probably haven’t really thought about their sleep unless they are doing somersaults at 2am or the sonographer is trying to get a good ultrasound picture of your little wriggler.

So why is sleep such a big topic of focus for new parents?

Well, the thing is that while your newborn baby knows how to adjust their sleep patterns to their needs, their schedule doesn’t always align with your life and they haven't had the chance to learn how to sleep independently without you.

It's very reasonable for you to want to do things like eat, shower or sleep yourself and this can be difficult if you're not quite on the same page.

So allow me to give you some advice about how you can optimise sleep for everyone.

From both a personal and professional aspect, I like to take the best bits of all the different strategies and theories and blend them to find the best approach that I or families I am working with find most effective.

I have found there to be 5 key elements of great sleep and we can start to bring some of them in for our newborns from the beginning to build positive sleep habits.

The first is to optimise their sleep biology, so their circadian clock and sleep pressure.

The second key element is optimising care for all, so that everyone feels calm and ready for sleep when the need arises.

A supportive sleep environment is my 3rd element for great sleep and this involves their sleep space and sleep companions.

Newborns are not capable of learning routines nor reliably getting to sleep without your support, so I tend not to bring in these 4th and 5th elements until they’re at least 3 months old.

Certainly, you can provide them with small opportunities to experience falling and staying asleep independently in their cot, but just don’t expect them to always be able to do so at this early age.

If you'd like some more information and support for your little one's sleep, at any age, then please come and see me.