My baby will only sleep on my chest: How to Handle When Your Baby Only Sleeps in Your Arms or On You

How to Handle When Your Baby Only Sleeps in Your Arms or On You

Home / Sleep Training / How to Handle When Your Baby Only Wants to Sleep in Arms or On Chest

by Nicole Johnson, Founder and Lead Sleep Consultant in Sleep Training —
Last Updated: February 17, 2022

This post is for all the parents whose baby only wants to sleep in arms or on chests.

There are a lot of decisions to make as a new parent. Should you buy a bassinet, co-sleeper, or a crib? And, you must decide whether or not to share a room with your baby, too. You can spend a lot of time (and money) getting your baby’s sleep space ready. And, many times, babies sleep just fine exactly where you planned. But, sometimes, they don’t.

What happens when your baby only wants to sleep in your arms or on your chest?

You may rock the baby to sleep in no time, but as soon as you lay him down, he wakes up! Or, he sleeps for a bit, say 20-60 minutes, and then wakes up. Waking up every 1-2 hours all night long for months on end can make parents sleep-deprived and feel like they are literally going crazy (sleep-deprivation IS a form of torture after all!). Or, holding a baby for 3 hours a day for naps can lead to moms feeling depressed and feeling inadequate in terms of keeping up with the household chores.

This article will help you learn how to handle it when your baby only wants to sleep in arms or on a chest.

Try Swaddling

If you haven’t already, try swaddling your baby. Living in the womb all those months is a very snug and comforting feeling. Swaddling, or wrapping your baby like a burrito, helps replicate that feeling to an extent and helps your baby sleep better.

Try a Zipadee-Zip

If swaddling didn’t work or your baby is older than 4 months old, you may want to try a Zipadee-Zip. It is a great swaddle transition product that helps when a baby feels like she is falling when her moro reflex is still strong leading to the startle you see.

Try heartbeat white noise

One reason your baby may like to sleep on your chest is because of the sound of your heartbeat. Assuming it’s mom who is holding the baby, your baby did sleep with your heartbeat sound for many months. So, consider using a white noise machine with a heartbeat sound. It may not be a miracle solution but could help.

Try Sleep Training

If your baby is 4 months old or older (we’ve worked with even toddlers with this problem), then it may be time to try sleep training your baby or toddler. After all, your baby is fully capable of sleeping on another surface, but from his or her perspective, why? This is what your baby has grown accustomed to and, of course, doesn’t know any different or that there is a “problem” with it. We all love holding our babies and snuggling, but during the day we have houses to clean, dinner to make, and, heck, maybe even take a shower! At night, let’s face it, sleeping upright holding a baby is exhausting not to mention dangerous in some cases. Sure, I did it when my youngest was a week or two old, but over time, we MUST sleep in order to be more effective and present parents.

For many babies, they need to learn HOW to sleep in another space and to learn healthy sleep habits and that’s what this entire website is all about!

Is your baby only sleeping in your arms or chest? Tell us about it!

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Need Baby and Toddler Sleep Help? We Have the Resources You Need!

If you are tired of wading through stacks of baby sleep books that just aren’t working, if you are beyond exhausted and just can’t solve your child’s sleep problems on your own…then personalized sleep consulting is for you. We have been around since 2008 and invite you to tap into our MANY years of experience. Our team of expert consultants will create a Personalized Sleep Plan^® just for your family and then support you through every step of implementing your plan. We encourage you to consider our personalized, one-on-one baby and toddler sleep consultation packages if you want to see real, meaningful results now. Your consultation package also includes ample follow-up help, designed to help you troubleshoot problems and tweak your plan as needed.

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For those persistent nighttime struggles, check out The 3 Step System to Help Your Baby Sleep. Using the same unique approach and practical tools for success, this e-book helps you and your baby sleep through the night.

Learn More About The 3-Step System

If you’re looking for ways to get your baby or toddler into a healthy sleeping routine during the day, explore Mastering Naps and Schedules, a comprehensive guide to napping routines, nap transitions, and all the other important “how-tos” of good baby sleep. With over 45 sample sleep schedules and worksheets, Mastering Naps and Schedules is a hands-on tool ideal for any parenting style.

Learn More About Mastering Naps

For those persistent toddler sleep struggles, check out The 5 Step System to Help Your Toddler Sleep. Using the same unique approach and practical tools for success, this e-book helps you and your toddler sleep through the night and enjoy a better daytime schedule.

Learn More About The 5-Step System

Join our VIP Members Area packed with exclusive content and resources: e-Books, assessments, detailed case studies, expert advice, and more. As a VIP member, you’ll also enjoy a weekly chat with an expert sleep consultant.

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Baby Will Not Sleep Unless Held – Happiest Baby

By
Dr. Harvey Karp, MD, FAAP

On This Page

• Why Babies Only Sleep While Held
• Is it safe for my Baby to sleep in my arms?
• How do I get my baby to sleep without being held?
• How SNOO Helps Babies Who Can’t Sleep Without Being Held

Does this sound familiar: You lay your sleeping (or sleepy) baby down in their bassinet as gently as possible, but the second their little body brushes the sheet, the screaming starts? Then, of course, as soon as your baby is back on your chest, the crying immediately stops and the ZZZs come easy. This is a common sleep struggle that exhausts parents and makes them feel, well, stuck. And that’s because when babies regularly sleep on you, they begin to learn that sleepytime occurs in your arms, not the bassinet. It’s tough! But I’m here to help you get unstuck! As impossible as it may seem now, rest assured, you can get your baby to sleep soundly in their bassinet.

Why Babies Only Sleep While Held

Babies aren’t dummies! They know a good thing when they find it. To your little one, your warm, familiar, subtly moving body is so much more welcoming than that quiet and still bassinet. Quite simply, when your baby is nestled in your arms, they’re reminded of the womb, complete with gentle movements, a snug embrace, and the comforting sound of your heartbeat.

Is it safe for my Baby to sleep in my arms?

It can feel very sweet when your baby sleeps on your body, but it’s actually risky to let your little one do this. I’ve gotten too many emergency calls in the middle of the night after a sleeping baby perched on their parent’s body has fallen to the floor. Plus, co-sleeping on any surface, like a couch, reclining chair, or an adult bed, greatly increases a baby’s chances of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS. ) (In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics notes that they’re “unable to recommend bed sharing under any circumstances.”) Remember, you want your baby close to you when snoozing, which means in your room for at least the first six months—not on your body!

How do I get my baby to sleep without being held?

Many parents find that giving their babies a fourth trimester of comforting stimulation can greatly improve their little one’s sleep. That means, lean into some of the 5 S’s for soothing babies: Swaddling, shushing, swinging, and sucking. (All of the 5 S’s help to activate your baby’s innate calming reflex, which is nature’s “off switch” for crying and “on switch” for sleep.) Unfortunately, the fifth S, side/stomach position, is not safe to use for sleep…but that’s a position lots of babies who sleep on their parents prefer! If you have a baby who really loves that particular S, you want to do the other four S’s even more to try to help your sweet bub sleep on their back. Here are the basics for getting your baby to sleep without being held:

• Swaddle your baby. Swaddling your little one helps to mimic the snug and comforting embrace that they felt in the womb, which helps babies feel more comfortable on their back. Again, this throwback feeling helps to switch on your baby’s calming reflex. Plus, a proper swaddle keeps Baby’s startle reflex from waking them up. (Unswaddled babies can accidentally bonk themselves in the face, startling themselves awake.)

• Use rumbly white noise. Turn on some white noise (shushing) during your baby’s bedtime routine—and keep it on all night long. Low and rumbly white noise, like the sounds in SNOO and SNOObear, can help babies fall asleep faster, sleep longer…and can help them be less dependent on their parents for sleep. (A 40-baby study found that white noise helped 80% fall asleep in just 5 minutes! Plus, white noise has also been shown to significantly decrease the duration of crying and increase sleepytime in colicky babies. )

• Rock your baby. When babies are fresh out of the womb, they crave rocking to help them stay calm and sleep! (Remember, rocking—aka swinging—is reminiscent of all the jiggling your baby experienced for nine months in the womb.) Research has shown that rocking (and rocking bassinets, like SNOO) not only reduces crying and hastens sleep onset, it also improves overall sleep quality.

• Offer a pacifier. Pacifiers work to satisfy the Sucking portion of the 5 S’s. Sucking can lower your baby’s heart rate, blood pressure, and stress levels…which can all lead to better sleep. If you’re nursing your baby, hold off offering a paci until breastfeeding is well established.

• Lay your little one down awake. When you place an already sleeping baby in their bassinet, it prevents them from learning that bassinets are for sleep. To fix that, put your baby down when they’re calm, drowsy, and on the verge of sleep. And if your nugget dozes before you transition them from your body to the bassinet, simply rouse them gently with a light tickle until their eyes open. After a few seconds, your little one’s eyes will close again and slide back to sleep. While waking a sleeping baby seems counterintuitive, this strategy is the first step to help your baby learn that they have the power to self soothe.

• Learn Baby’s wake windows. A wake window is simply the time your baby can be awake before they need to go down for their next sleep. Most babies’ wake-times fall into a certain range. For example, 1- to 2-month-olds can often be awake for one to two hours before they must sleep again, while 3- to 4-month-olds can usually be awake between 75 minutes and 2.5 hours before their next sleep. Once you learn your baby’s wake windows, you can put them down for sleep before their window closes, which can help avoid your baby’s overtired bassinet-refusal.

• Conquer reflux. A baby dealing with acid reflux may resist getting put down flat on their back to sleep, which is the safest position. To help, always feed your baby while they’re upright, burp them often, and then keep them in a sitting position for 20 to 30 minutes after a feeding, if possible. This allows gravity to keep stomach contents where they should be. (See how this, paired with paced bottle feeding, can reduce reflux.) If your baby is safely swaddled in SNOO and your doctor recommends elevation of the head, you can try elevating Baby’s head slightly with Leg Lifters, which offers a slight, safe incline.

How SNOO Helps Babies Who Can’t Sleep Without Being Held

Over the years, I’ve worked with thousands of families and have found that many babies still prefer sleeping on top of their parents, despite being swaddled and having white noise. That’s one of the reasons I worked for five years with MIT-trained engineers to develop SNOO, my responsive smart bassinet that soothes babies and promotes sleep with the calming trifecta of womb-like motion, safe swaddling, and all-night white noise. After all, we already know that  swaddling, rumbly white noise, and rocking are great sleepytime cues! So, think of SNOO as a one-stop sleep solution that safely provides three out of 5 S’s for sleep. (Plus, SNOO is incredibly helpful to especially finicky babies who love being held, in part, because they easily rouse at any little bump in the night.) Here are a few more reasons to choose SNOO:

• SNOO has been shown to add roughly 1 to 2 hours of baby sleep each night.

• Most SNOO babies sleep nine hours or more by 2 to 3 months.

• SNOO’s secure swaddling system prevents dangerous rolling and allows parents to continue swaddling until their baby graduates to the crib. (Non-SNOO babies need to give up the sleep-promoting swaddle once they begin rolling.)

• SNOO automatically responds and adjusts to your baby’s fussing and crying with motion and sound, which can often calm in under a minute.

• SNOO’s weaning mode allows for a gentle transition to crib.

• Research has shown that SNOO can help parents feel more rested and less likely to feel mentally stressed.

For even more help getting your baby to sleep, check out…

• What to Do When Your Baby Won’t Sleep in a Bassinet
• How to Handle Your Baby’s Night Wakings
• Why Your 3- to 4-month-Old Suddenly Is Not Sleeping
• Which Risky Sleep Practice Surges After Waking at Night?
• Co-Sleeping Need-to-Know

About Dr. Harvey Karp

Dr. Harvey Karp, one of America’s most trusted pediatricians, is the founder of Happiest Baby and the inventor of the groundbreaking SNOO Smart Sleeper. After years of treating patients in Los Angeles, Dr. Karp vaulted to global prominence with the release of the bestselling Happiest Baby on the Block and Happiest Toddler on the Block. His celebrated books and videos have since become standard pediatric practice, translated into more than 20 languages and have helped millions of parents. Dr. Karp’s landmark methods, including the 5 S’s for soothing babies, guide parents to understand and nurture their children and relieve stressful issues, like new-parent exhaustion, infant crying, and toddler tantrums.

View more posts tagged,
sleep

Have questions about a Happiest Baby product? Our consultants would be happy to
help! Connect with us at [email protected].

Disclaimer: The information on our site is NOT medical advice for any specific person or
condition. It is only meant as general information. If you have any medical questions and concerns about your child or
yourself, please contact your health provider.

Letting your baby nap in your arms isn’t a bad habit

Call it “the human mattress.” After hours of crying, feeding or fussing, the blessed relief of a sleeping baby in an exhausted parent’s arms isn’t something anyone wants to mess with.

A sturdy crib or sweet little bassinet is one of the first purchases many expectant parents make, right before or after they paint the nursery a soothing colour for sleep. Some dark curtains and maybe a white noise machine and, presto, you have the perfect retreat for baby’s naptime and nighttime slumber.

Such a lovely plan! But let’s be honest here: In the first few days or weeks (or even months), your baby sure spends a lot of time sleeping everywhere except alone in their crib. And conked out in their mama’s arms or on their dad’s chest is often the easiest route to dreamland. The delicious warmth of baby, the little tree frog curl of their legs, the constant reassurance of their chest rising and falling as they snurfle through their slumber—perfection.

After hours of crying, feeding or fussing, the blessed relief of a sleeping baby in an exhausted parent’s arms isn’t something anyone wants to mess with. Transfer the baby to a bassinet? Over mom’s not-quite-dead body. The little creature is sure to wake up when you lay them down in that cold crib, away from the bodily warmth that soothes them. And so it continues, the sleep-inducing trick that child sleep consultant Alexis Dubief calls “the human mattress.”

Feel no guilt, parents! “Nobody puts a baby in a crib alone, especially awake, from day one,” says Dubief, author of Precious Little Sleep. “This is simply an unrealistic expectation for most new parents. Newborns need a lot of soothing, and being held by a parent or loved one is very soothing.”

So, go ahead and let your baby snuggle into your chest. Those early weeks aren’t the time to worry about sleep training. But there are two caveats: The person cuddling the sleeping baby has to be wide awake themselves and, yes, at some point, your baby will be so accustomed to sleeping on a warm body that sleep won’t happen easily anywhere else.

Is it safe to let your baby sleep on you?

“Having a newborn sleep on you is fine as long as you’re awake,” says Dubief. “But chances are, you’ll fall asleep when you’re in this position, and safety concerns become an issue.” Dubief admits that even she fell asleep with her own babies before she knew how “enormously unsafe” it is.

Ideally, there are a few other warm bodies around to cuddle your baby to sleep while the bleary-eyed mom or zombie dad catches some quality zzzs in their own bed. Maybe it means grandpa plays the human mattress so that the baby can sleep while the grown-ups watch the playoffs on TV. Or perhaps auntie can rock and read while the tree frog dozes in her lap. Everyone loves holding a baby, right?

Well, no—not always. What is lovely when a baby is a few days old may get tiring fast for an exhausted and overwhelmed mom who just can’t hold their baby another second. If you’re desperate to sleep, eat, pee, shower or just take a break from the unrelenting demands of the new self-centred ruler of the household, putting your baby to sleep in their own bed, even if they protest, is perfectly fine (not to mention a nice way to start teaching the self-soothing techniques that your baby needs to learn).

How to get your baby to nap in a crib

In the end, the transition from the early weeks (when sleep doesn’t need to be by the book) to the age when you really should start thinking about good habits is a moving target and may depend on the baby. Despite all the warnings about creating unwanted precedents, Dubief says that babies don’t have the mental capacity to form habits in those first eight weeks of life and won’t learn “independent sleep” (falling asleep on their own) until somewhere between four and eight months.

Somewhere in between, letting your baby nap on you may need to stop. “If your baby has only slept on an adult, by six months, they will know this is the only way to nap and will become quite upset when you attempt to deviate from the norm,” warns Dubief. “If you don’t want to let them nap on you for the long haul, gradually backing out of it earlier—starting at three months—is ideal. ”

Getting your baby to transition from napping on their favourite human to sleeping soundly in their own bed isn’t easy, but a few tried-and-true tricks can help. A hot water bottle can warm baby’s spot for a few minutes and then, when you put them down and remove it, they may be fooled into believing that they’re sleeping on you. Some parents swear that baby massage before bedtime can help, while others leave their hand on babies’ bellies until they settle into a deep sleep.

Whenever you choose to move away from cuddling with a sleeping baby, the message is clear: Don’t worry about it in those early days. Let them be little, be safe about it and tackle the transition to the crib when you’re ready.

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Is It Safe For A Newborn To Sleep On My Chest? Experts Weigh In

Baby

RgStudio/E+/Getty Images

It depends on whether you’re sleeping, too.

by Ni’Kesia Pannell

Updated: Sep. 19, 2022

Originally Published: April 6, 2017

When it comes to pregnancy and babies, there are lots of things to be fearful of — and not just being a new parent yourself, but being around anyone who is pregnant. Though I know a baby is safe in their parent’s womb, I’ve always worried that the slightest touch would cause them to be harmed. Similarly, I’ve grown somewhat fearful of newborn babies, simply because there are so many things that can happen to them, too — especially while they’re sleeping. With co-sleeping becoming more popular among parents, one of the main questions I (and many others) have is this one: Can babies sleep on their stomach on your chest? Or is it unsafe? Here’s what experts want you to know.

Is it safe for baby to sleep on your chest?

The rule of thumb is: It’s safe if you’re awake. “It’s OK to let a newborn baby sleep on your chest as long as you don’t fall asleep, too,” Jean Moorjani, M.D., a pediatrician at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, tells Romper. “If you’re awake, it’s perfectly fine to watch them snooze on your chest. If you feel sleepy, then put your baby in their crib or bassinet.”

It’s when you fall asleep that having your little one snoozing on your chest gets dangerous. “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is, of course, the concern,” Arunima Agarwal, M.D., a New York-based board-certified pediatrician, tells Romper. SIDS refers to the sudden, unexplained death of an infant during sleep. In the case of a baby on a parent’s chest while that parent is asleep, they may potentially roll onto the baby, causing SIDS, suffocation, or strangulation.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 3,500 babies die of sleep-related causes in the United States each year, with SIDS among the leading causes. For that reason, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not recommend bed sharing under any circumstances, though they acknowledge some parents still choose to do it.

However, in this specific scenario, the solution is simple and straightforward: “As long as the parent, guardian, or adult is awake, it’s perfectly fine,” Agarwal says.

Why do babies like to sleep on your chest?

athima tongloom/Moment/Getty Images

There are a few reasons why it feels incredibly natural to have your baby sleep on your chest — and why they like it so much. For one, sleeping on an awake parent’s chest can help babies to feel calmer. “It’s very intuitive and comforting, body contact,” Agarwal says. “Skin-to-skin contact increases body heat, and baby feels safe, comforted, and warm. Especially when the baby’s younger, you swaddled them up to a certain point, so this is almost like a like a natural swaddle, because they feel warm and safe.”

Yet another reason why babies might like to sleep on your chest: the sound of your heartbeat. “It reproduces the in utero environment where mom’s pulse was the primary and constant sound the baby heard,” Nicole Porter, Ph.D., a sleep and fatigue specialist, previously told Romper. “It’s familiar and comforting.”

Benefits of baby sleeping on your chest

The comfort level of your little one is a huge plus. Any new parent can attest that there are times they would do just about anything to get their baby to sleep soundly. “It’s huge for a newborn to feel comforted and safe, because they’ll stay asleep longer,” Agarwal says. “In that position, they’re hearing your breathing and heartbeat — all of these things are reminiscent of being in the womb and, again, just provide more comfort to the infant.”

Plus, the more time you can spend holding and cuddling your baby (when you’re awake), the better. “It’s also bonding for the parents, not just for the baby,” says Agarwal. “For the adult this position creates bonding, which improves the relationship overall, because most parents and adults are sleep deprived those first few months. Bonding is extremely important for the adult to the baby, and the other way around, as well.”

Although letting your baby sleep on your chest does have some perks, parents should take the advice of medical experts and be incredibly diligent about not nodding off along with their baby. If you do place your baby on your chest to get them to fall asleep, be sure to transport them off to their crib and place them on their back before you drift off, too.

Experts:

Jean Moorjani, M.D., pediatrician at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children

Arunima Agarwal, M.D., New York-based board-certified pediatrician

Nicole Porter, Ph.D., sleep and fatigue specialist

This article was originally published on 914Z”>April 6, 2017

Baby Only Sleeps in My Arms During the Day

Does your newborn sleep well over your shoulder or on your chest? Learn what to do when your baby only sleeps in your arms during the day.

Five hours.

That’s how long your baby will sleep at a time… but only if you’re holding him. As soon as you lay him down, he snaps wide awake.

In fact, if you don’t hold him for his naps, he probably wouldn’t sleep and end up being overtired. Even if you try putting him down when he’s in deep sleep, he wakes up within minutes (if not immediately).

You also have a two-year-old to care for, so you can’t exactly have a sleeping baby constantly in your arms. Using the bathroom or fixing yourself some lunch seem all but impossible. You know you need help so this doesn’t develop into something worse.

In fact, this whole thing is driving you crazy, leaving you exhausted and miserable.

When your baby will only sleep in your arms during the day

I hear you, mama.

We’re caught in a tricky spot during the newborn stage. We know our babies still need help falling asleep, so sleep training is out of the picture for now. But we also need a break, even if just to take care of the household, our other kids, or maintain our sanity.

After hearing from several moms in my life and online, I learned a few handy tricks you can try to finally free your arms. These are some of the cleverest strategies moms have tried to ease their sleeping babies out of their arms and into the crib or bassinet.

Take a look at these suggestions and see if they’ll work for you:

1. Move as your baby drifts off to sleep

You almost can’t blame your baby for being startled awake sometimes. After all, he’s fast asleep in your arms, only to feel a sudden movement as you make your way to the crib. No wonder he wakes up even before you’ve set him down.

Instead, try this little trick: move slightly as he drifts off to sleep.

First, hold him in your arms to help him sleep. As he starts to get sleepy, make a slight motion, like standing up or taking a few steps. He’ll feel the change in motion, but then realize that he’s still in your arms and continue to sleep.

That way, when you do put him down, the motion and change in that position won’t bother him so much, making him more likely to keep sleeping.

Free download: Join my newsletter and download a free chapter of my ebook, How to Get Your Baby to Sleep Without Being Held. You’ll learn effective tips and strategies to finally ease him out of your arms:

2. Warm your baby’s sleeping surface

Another shock that can come as a surprise to your baby is the change in temperature. Whereas your body felt nice and warm, the crib can feel crisp and cold.

To help ease the transition, heat the surface of the crib or bassinet a few minutes before you plan to lay him down. A hot pack or a heated pad placed on the crib mattress can do the trick. Don’t forget to do a few trial runs beforehand to make sure the surface doesn’t get too hot.

Then, when it’s time to set him down, remove the pad a few minutes beforehand, leaving the mattress nice and toasty.

3. Hold your baby in the position you plan to put him down

Do you hold your baby to sleep with his face tucked sideways close to your chest? Does he like being held upright, perhaps over your shoulder or across your legs?

You can imagine how difficult it can be for the both of you to transition him out of your arms. He could be fast asleep on his tummy against your chest, to suddenly lying down flat on his back in the crib.

If you run into this problem, try holding him in the position that you plan to put him down.

More than likely, that means you’ll be putting him down on his back—specifically, stretched out and flat. If so, hold him in a similar position in your arms. That way, he’ll experience less of a jolt when you finally lay him down, considering that he was already in that position as you held him.

Learn what to do when your baby won’t nap unless held.

4. Put your baby in a swaddle

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links, which means I will earn a commission—at no extra cost to you—if you make a purchase.

One of the reasons I loved wrapping my babies in a swaddle was that it made for an easier transition out of my arms. They were already wrapped and snuggled in a certain position, one that continued even in the crib.

Before nap time, wrap your baby in a swaddle (like this one I gifted my cousin’s baby) and hold him in your arms. That way, when you eventually put him down, he’s already wrapped in what he’ll continue to sleep in. Even better: he’ll have fewer chances to flail his arms and startle himself awake in a swaddle.

Love to Dream Swaddle

5. Keep your hand on your baby’s chest

Your baby might be startled awake when you put him down because of the loss of contact with you. You can “trick” him to keep sleeping by laying your hand on his chest after putting him down.

As he starts to drift off, place him in his crib, keeping your hand on his chest. The slight weight and presence of your hand won’t feel as shocking, especially if his chest had been in contact with you. Keep your hand on his chest until he’s sound asleep.

If he wakes up and cries, then pick him up to calm him down and try again. By being persistent and repeating this process, he’ll learn that you’re still there and eventually know how to put himself to sleep on his own.

6. Cover the bassinet

I’m sure you’ve seen strollers with a light blanket draped over it. I’d do this with my babies, especially if the sun was bright. But one additional perk is that the blanket removed extra stimulation that could overwhelm and make them fussy.

The same can be done with your baby’s bassinet.

After placing him inside, drape a light muslin blanket (aden + anais ones are fantastic) over the bassinet. Make sure there’s plenty of space for air to flow and that the blanket isn’t actually touching him. And, just like with a stroller, you’ll need to be awake to supervise.

That way, should he wake up, he won’t feel overwhelmed when he can see a familiar blanket instead.

aden + anais swaddle blanket

7. Lay your baby on your shirt

Some babies can feel comforted with the simple scent of something familiar—you!

Try wearing a shirt beneath your regular clothes all day. Then, before it’s time to put him down for a nap, remove the shirt and place it on the bassinet, laying him on top. The shirt can help him feel comforted, what with its familiar texture and scent.

To be extra careful, tuck the edges of the shirt under the bassinet, and keep an eye on him to make sure the shirt doesn’t bunch up.

8. Lay your baby next to you

Don’t want to have to put your baby down? Start off by lying down next to him to begin with!

Either on your bed or on a thick blanket on the floor, put your baby down and lie down nearby with your arm around him. For instance, the top of his head could touch the bottom of your arm, or you could simply scoot next to him so your bodies touch.

Then as he starts to fall asleep, carefully move your arm and inch your way off the bed or blanket. Meanwhile, he remains in place without having to be moved at all.

9. Wear your baby in a wrap

Should none of these tricks work and you simply need to make sure your baby sleeps, try wearing him in a wrap.

Granted, he’s still sleeping next to you, so you’ll still be limited in what you can do. But with a baby wrap, at least you’ll have your arms free to walk around while he enjoys a nice nap next to you. This is especially useful if you need to catch up on chores or tend to your other kids.

Moby Wrap Baby Carrier

Conclusion

As effective as holding your baby to sleep can be, at some point, you’ll need to free up your arms and get him to sleep on his own. Hopefully you now know what to do to make that happen.

Try moving just as he starts to drift off, or warm the crib mattress before setting him down. Hold him in the position you plan to place him down, keep him in a swaddle to make the transition easier, or place your hand on his chest.

Drape a light blanket over the bassinet to block stimulation, or lay him down on top of one of your shirts. And if worse comes to worse, a baby wrap will ensure he gets his sleep while freeing up your arms.

Sometimes we have to “trick” our babies to sleep away from our arms—even if they won’t always sleep for five hours straight.

Get more tips:

• 4 Things to Do When Your Overtired Baby Won’t Stop Crying
• When Your Child Regresses Because of New Baby Jealousy
• Watch Out for These 7 Baby Tired Signs You Might Be Missing
• How to Survive the First Weeks with a Newborn and Toddler
• What to Do When Your Husband Doesn’t Help with the Baby Because He Works

Don’t forget: Join my newsletter and download a free chapter of my ebook, How to Get Your Baby to Sleep Without Being Held:

Myths about baby sleep and SIDS, debunked by an expert

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

Jennie Woodcock/Reflections Photo library/Getty Images

Familiar with the Back to Sleep campaign to eliminate sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS, one of the leading causes of infant death? Called Safe to Sleep today, it urges parents to put babies to sleep on their backs, never on the stomach, until age 1. Since the start of the campaign in 1994, SIDS rates have dropped by half, which is why it was chosen by the American Academy of Pediatrics as one of the most important achievements in children’s health in the past 40 years.

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

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Routine vaccinations are life-saving for many children. Just look at polio, which once killed or disabled thousands, and which has now been eradicated in the United States due to vaccination efforts. Before vaccines were developed, for example, rotavirus killed about 450,000 children worldwide each year. In the United States, Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) took the lives of 1,200 annually.

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images

The most common childhood cancer in the United States today is acute lymphocytic leukemia, striking nearly 3,000 children a year. In 1975, it was a death sentence, but after years of research new medication combos, today 90% of newly diagnosed children are expected to live five years or more.

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

Eddie Lawrence/Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images

The main cause of death for newborns around the world, says the American Academy of Pediatrics, is being born premature. About 450,000 babies a year, or one in nine, are born prematurely in the US alone. Adding a surfactant, or lubricant, to the lungs of a newborn helps them breathe. After it was implemented in 1985, preemie deaths from respiratory distress syndrome dropped by 41% over the next six years.

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

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In pregnancy, HIV can be transmitted from mother to baby by blood during pregnancy, via vaginal secretions during childbirth, and during breastfeeding after birth. The rate of transmission used to be as high as 40%, but after research discovered an anti-retroviral medication called Zidovudine, the rate decreased by two-thirds.

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

Janice Haney Carr/CDC

In sickle cell anemia, an inherited disorder, red blood cells become hard, sticky and form a C-shaped “sickle.” Those sickle cells die early, which causes a constant shortage of red blood cells, extreme pain, infection and often, strokes. In 1975, a child with sickle cell disease would likely die by age 14, but medical advances have increased the current life expectancy to age 40.

Photos: 7 medical advancements that saved children’s lives

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One in three children who die in auto accidents aren’t protected by seat belts or car seats, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Since the implementation of laws and national awareness campaigns such as Click It or Ticket, deaths have plummeted. In children younger than a year, for example, the proper use of car seats has reduced deaths by 71%.

Dr. Harvey Karp, author of “The Happiest Baby on the Block,” will be taking your baby and parenthood questions on the CNN Parenting Facebook page live at 11 a.m. ET Monday, October 30.

Story highlights

Baby sleep is best if you play loud, rumbly white noise during all naps and nights

An unswaddled baby can roll to an unsafe position more easily than a swaddled one

CNN
 — 

We need more training to get a driver’s license than to become a parent, in our culture. Even though we would benefit from parental education, some of us have never even held a newborn before having one of our own. And we often rely on advice from friends and family, much of it outdated or just plain wrong.

Baby sleeping on their back

Jamie Grill/Tetra images RF/Getty Images

Most moms aren’t putting babies to sleep safely, study says

When it comes to baby sleep, bad advice can be dangerous. October is Safe Sleep Awareness month, an opportunity to learn more about sudden unexpected infant death and debunk the myths about what is sabotaging your sleep and highlight habits that potentially risk your baby’s safety.

A grandmother holds her newborn granddaughter in her arms for the first time. The infant is two weeks old.

Daniel MacDonald /Getty Images

Is grandparents’ old-school parenting putting kids at risk?

Not true. In fact, total silence can make it hard for your baby to doze off. Remember, the womb is noisy: louder than a vacuum cleaner and running 24 hours a day. For nine months, your little one’s been lulled to sleep by the rhythmic whooshing of the blood flowing through the placenta. To her, the quiet of the average home is jarring. Plus, in a silent room, she’s more likely to wake up when a loud truck on the street or any other bump in the night breaks that silence. The truth is, your baby will sleep best if you play loud, rumbly white noise during all naps and nights.

Nope. You should always wake your sleeping baby using a little technique called “wake and sleep.” It gently teaches your child the important skill of self-soothing. Here’s briefly how it works: Starting as early as the first day of life, wake him up the tiniest bit after sliding him into bed. Just tickle his neck or feet until his eyes drowsily open. Very soon after, he’ll drift right back into slumberland. In those few semi-awake seconds, he’s just soothed himself back to sleep – the first step toward sleeping through the night.

Not really. Your baby may fuss and resist swaddling at first, so it may look like she hates it. But babies don’t need freedom, they need the feeling of security they had in the womb. Without wrapping, your infant will flail her arms, whack herself in the face and startle easily throughout the night. That’s a recipe for poor sleep.

Swaddling is the first step to calming, and it’s important you don’t stop there, especially if your infant’s been fighting it. To help her settle, you’ll want to layer in other womb-mimicking steps: “shushing,” side/stomach position, swinging and sucking, which, along with swaddling, make up the 5 S’s of setting up a baby for sleep success. And once the S’s become part of your sleep routine, she’ll give up her battle! (Note: Side/stomach position is for calming only, never for sleep.)

Photo Illustration/Thinkstock

Babies may sleep longer in their own rooms, study says

Having our babies grow up to be independent takes a long time. There’s no need to rush it. In fact, having your new child sleep in another room is inconvenient (for feedings and diaper changes) and possibly dangerous. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that babies sleep in the parent’s room for at least six months (always on their back, in their own bed). The simple practice has shown to significantly reduce the rate of sudden infant death syndrome.

Swaddling reduces crying and increases sleep. But new research shows that swaddled babies who roll to the stomach have double the risk of SIDS compared with an unswaddled baby rolling over. As a result, the pediatrics academy is now recommending that parents stop baby-wrapping at 2 months. On the face of it, the group’s new advice seems to make sense, but it completely ignores the risks of not swaddling.

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In an eight-year review of data collected by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, only 22 sudden unexplained infant deaths related to swaddling were reported; almost 50% were in sleep sacks (a wearable blanket), and 90% were found on the stomach and/or with bulky bedding. (Note: Fatalities categorized as sudden unexplained infant death include sleep deaths from accidental suffocation, strangulation and SIDS.)

Swaddling is a go-to for sleep-deprived parents the world over. Can it increase risk of SIDS in swaddled babies?

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Swaddling and SIDS: About that alarming study …

During those eight years, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of babies were swaddled. Since sudden unexplained infant death strikes one in 1,200 babies, one would have expected hundreds or perhaps thousands of swaddle-related deaths over this period if wrapping caused these deaths. Of note, during the same eight years, 1,026 deaths related to sofa sleeping were reported to the safety commission.

The point is, though swaddling may introduce a theoretical risk, there is not a lot of proof it is causing a true increase in sudden unexplained infant death. On the other hand, swaddling has been shown to reduce infant crying and boost sleep. That is of critical importance because the stress provoked by persistent fussing and parental exhaustion is a potent trigger for postpartum depression, child abuse, car accidents and even risky sleeping practices, which are associated with up to 70% of all infant sleep fatalities.

We don’t want babies rolling over swaddled, but we also don’t want them rolling over unswaddled during the 2- to 4-month-old peak period for SIDS. An unswaddled baby can roll to an unsafe position more easily than one whose movement is restricted by snug swaddling. And, since swaddling improves sleep, unwrapped babies wake more often and are more likely to tempt their tired parents to fall asleep with them in their beds.

CNNTech reviews the Snoo — smart bassinet

CNNTech

video

Does this $1,200 crib make your newborn sleep?

To solve this tricky problem, I assembled a team of MIT-trained engineers and renowned industrial designer Yves Behar to invent a type of swaddle that keeps sleeping babies safely on the back. In October 2016, my company Happiest Baby debuted Snoo, the world’s first responsive bassinet that employs this special swaddle, which clips to the base of the bed to prevent rolling. This innovation allows parents to reap the substantial benefits of swaddling for a full six months without any of the risks.

The National Institute of Health-led Back to Sleep campaign quickly reduced sleep deaths from 5,500 in 1994 to 3,500 in 1999. However, for the past 17 years, progress has completely stalled. The tragic truth is that 3,500 infants die during their sleep each and ever year. Although more babies are sleeping on the back, the rate of accidental suffocation and strangulation infant deaths has quadrupled since the mid-1990s. What’s behind this alarming trend? Unsafe sleeping practices. Seventy percent of all sudden unexplained infant death victims are found in adult beds, sofas and other risky locations.

A recent study revealed that while most parents fully plan to follow the ABCs of safe sleep (Alone, on the Back, in a Crib), less than half actually do it. And by the end of the night, about 60% of babies have migrated from their bassinet to their parents’ bed, according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Lactation.

Close-up shot of pediatrician ready to give an intramuscular injection of a vaccine to a baby girl

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The next great medical innovations that could save children

The terrible, unintended consequence of the Back to Sleep campaign is that it has worsened infant sleep. Babies just don’t sleep well on their backs in still, quiet cribs. And as discussed in myth 5, when babies don’t sleep well, parents resort to bed-sharing, which leads to many more infant suffocation deaths.

It is very important that parents continue to place their babies to sleep on the back, but they also need to start using more tools to improve their child’s sleep. The good news is that there are three effective ways to boost slumber for back-sleeping babies: sound, swaddling and rocking.

Rumbly white noise is inexpensive and very effective for improving a baby’s sleep. Snug swaddling is too, but as explained above, pediatricians now recommend that parents stop wrapping at 2 months old. Motion, or swinging, is also great, but the American Academy of Pediatrics has found that sleeping in sitting devices, such as rockers and swings, may allow a baby’s head to roll forward and cause accidental suffocation and death.

A new born baby takes the finger of his mother after the delivery, on September 17, 2013 at the Lens hospital, northern France. AFP PHOTO PHILIPPE HUGUEN (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images)

PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/AFP/Getty Images

US infant mortality rates down 15%

These are issues we sought to address with the Snoo bed. It allows for safe swinging (it is totally flat), safe swaddling (the baby can’t roll over) and safe sound, as the sound increases when a baby cries but then immediately softens – after the baby calms – for all-night sleep promotion. We designed it to deliver the right level of womb-like stimulation that is right for any particular baby to calm his or her fussing and boost sleep.

For nearly 20 years, despite enormous public health educational programs, we have failed to reduce infant sleep death. But, by focusing on sleep efficacy (boosting a baby’s sleep), we now have a very exciting means to prevent many – if not most – of these deaths. And as a health bonus, improving sleep efficacy may also allow us to reduce other serious and unsolved health problems triggered by exhaustion and crying, such as postpartum depression (with about a half million cases diagnosed a year) and shaken-baby syndrome (1,300 incidents a year).

Join the conversation on CNN Parenting’s Facebook page

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Please join me in October – and all year long – by telling new parents about exhaustion’s role in sudden unexplained infant death and by sharing the sleep-boosting tips mentioned here. I am confident that we will dramatically improve the health of American parents and babies as we put more energy and emphasis on helping parents promote better infant sleep.

Dr. Harvey Karp is the author of “The Happiest Baby on the Block” and founder and CEO of HappiestBaby.com, the maker of innovative tools to help babies sleep.

how often and how long should sleep, conditions for sleep, sleep problems in a newborn

Olesya Ogurtsova

solved the problems with the child’s sleep and sleeps peacefully

Author’s profile

In December 2019, I became a mother for the first time and found out that sleep a baby – or rather, its absence – can create problems for the whole family.

To solve them, I had to study a lot of information, spend 15,000 R and an incalculable amount of nerves. But I have walked this path and continue to follow it. Now my son is a year and four months old and it suits me how he falls asleep and sleeps. I’ll tell you about the sleep problems we had and how I solved them.

Why I started doing baby sleep

Newborn babies are said to sleep all the time. My son didn’t do that. He could not sleep for a couple of hours in a row, and even throw a tantrum for half an hour when I tried to rock him. Before pregnancy, I told myself that I had no voice and hearing, so I would never sing lullabies. But already on the first night in the maternity hospital, she sang “Tired Toys Are Sleeping”, however, then it didn’t help much.

By the end of the first month of my son’s life, I found ways to put him to bed: he fell asleep well only on his chest or in a stroller. My son slept with me on the bed and it was comfortable. I was not afraid that I would crush him, since I have a light sleep and I do not twist at night. At night, he woke up five to seven times, I gave him a breast and he quickly fell asleep.

During my pregnancy, I read many books on parenting. Almost nothing was said about sleep there: it was only about the temperature and humidity in the room. I always thought that sleep is a natural need of the body and there can be no problems with it. “A tired child is sleeping,” says the popular pediatrician Yevgeny Olegovich Komarovsky. Therefore, I was very surprised when I saw an ad for a baby sleep consultant on Instagram. At a certain point, I had to use the services of such a specialist, and I discovered a lot of new things for myself.

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It turned out that even perfectly healthy children can have problems sleeping:

1. a baby can cry when laying down and not fall asleep for an hour and a half;
2. can fall asleep only under certain conditions: with breast in mouth, while rocking on a fitball, in a moving car;
3. can only sleep for 40 minutes after half an hour of bed;
4. may wake up 16 times a night and again demand help to fall asleep.

These problems are most common in the first two years of a child’s life, but may occur later. During the year of motherhood, I encountered most of them.

How often and how long a child should sleep

In 2015, the National Sleep Foundation made recommendations for sleep duration at all ages.

Sleep norms for each age

Age	Recommended sleep time
0-3 months	14-17 hours
4-11 months	12-15 pm
1-2 years	11am-2pm
3-5 years	10-13 hours
6-13 years old	9-11 am
14-17 years old	8-10 hours
18-25 years old	7-9 hours
26-65 years old	7-9 hours
Over 65	7-8 hours

Age

Recommended sleep time

0-3 months

14-17 hours

4-11 months

12-15 hours

1-2 years

11-14 hours

3-5 years

10-13 hours

6-13 years

9-11 hours

14-17 years old

8-10 hours

18-25 years

7–9 hours

26-65 years old

7-9 hours

Over 65

7-8 hours

Counselors divide sleep into daytime and nighttime. They also advise how many times to feed a child at night during the first year of life, how many times he can wake up and at what age he acquires the ability to sleep all night long. If the baby rarely wakes up at night and gains weight well, you should not wake him up to feed him. And if more often, it may not be related to hunger at all.

It is important to remember that any tabular norms are not dogma, but an occasion to carefully observe the child and evaluate whether something needs to be changed. Different sources give different figures, there are no common standards in world and Russian practice. The age of the child is counted from the expected date of birth. For example, if a baby was born at week 36, it makes sense to look at sleep values ​​a month younger than the baby’s current age. If the child was born later than the predicted date – vice versa.

A newborn can only sleep 14 hours a day and that will be fine. You can judge for yourself how far 14 hours are from “constantly sleeping”.

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There is a concept of “individual sleep rate” of a child. The individual norm shows how many dreams a child needs and how long they should last. It is important to calculate it in order to properly organize the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness of the baby. To do this, you need to record the duration of all the dreams of the child for five to seven days and calculate the arithmetic mean. It should be borne in mind that these should be the most ordinary, event-poor days: without trips, guests, illnesses, transitions to fewer dreams, without learning to fall asleep on your own, and so on. You should get a sleep time at which the child feels good during the day: he looks cheerful, does not act up for no reason, falls asleep calmly and not too long, and wakes up in a good mood.

At around four months, sleep regression occurs. This changes its structure: sleep has phases and cycles, like an adult. One cycle at this age lasts about 40 minutes, after which the child wakes up and, as it were, checks whether everything is fine. When the brain is convinced of this, the child instantly falls asleep further. But if something has changed, he may feel anxiety and not fall asleep: for example, if he fell asleep in his mother’s arms, and woke up alone in an empty bed.

When they want to solve the sleep problems of a healthy child, they work on physical comfort, sleep conditions, routine and associations for falling asleep. Over time, you have to teach the child to fall asleep on their own, that is, without the help of parents in the process of falling asleep.

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What influences a child’s sleep

Physical comfort

It is difficult for a child to fall asleep if he is irritated by a leaky diaper or a pajama tag. Therefore, it is important to check all the things that the baby physically comes into contact with during falling asleep and sleeping.

I did it in literally five minutes. Everything was in order: there were no crumbs in the bed, the sheet was soft, and we carefully cut off the tags from the pajamas as soon as we brought things from the store. It seemed that the child did not like pajama pants: he wiggled his legs when I put them on. It was summer, I decided to style without them, but he didn’t start falling asleep faster because of this, so I returned the panties.

What influences a child’s sleep

Temperature and Humidity

It is generally said that the baby sleeps well at 18-22°C and 40-60% humidity. Our apartment is warmer and drier, so I regularly ventilate and turn on the humidifier. I have not noticed that these parameters greatly affect my child’s sleep. Perhaps because they did not reach critical levels.

Separately, I want to say that with the onset of winter, my son began to fall asleep faster in the stroller, and once he even fell asleep on his own, without my motion sickness. He is not one of those who can fall asleep with toys or on the potty, but one day we were just driving home in a stroller, and at the entrance it turned out that his son was already sleeping. I concluded that it was the frosty air and the slight rocking of the stroller that affected him. Many mothers note that in winter the child sleeps better on the street than in summer. Therefore, I try to ventilate and cool the room well before going to bed.

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What influences a child’s sleep

Darkness

In the first month of my son’s life, we had a night light on all night, but I needed it more than the child. I constantly checked how he was sleeping, whether it was time to change the diaper, and it was easier to breastfeed in the light. Then I realized that the light still prevents me from sleeping, and the recommendations on the Internet about the child were different. We decided to sleep in the dark and turn on the night light when we need to change a diaper or feed our son. In the light, he woke up and began to cry, but then quickly calmed down and fell asleep. During the day, I just closed the curtains. Even before the birth, we bought them as a blackout, and I was sure that the room was dark enough. When I started working with a consultant at six months, it turned out that I was wrong.

It turned out that for most children with poor sleep, including my son, mere darkness is not enough to fall asleep comfortably. What was needed was absolute darkness, which “at least gouge out your eye.”

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Our curtains turned out to be a so-so blackout, they still let in a little light: this is easy to check with a flashlight if you shine it through the curtain. I didn’t know this when I bought it. But even a real blackout, which does not let in absolutely any light, is powerless where there are gaps between the curtain and the ceiling above and the walls on the sides. Therefore, we did not change the curtains, but added a blackout to the windows.

The sleep consultant advised me to cover the windows with foil, which we did. We took a roll of ordinary foil, in which we usually cook, sprinkled plain water from a spray bottle on the glasses and laid the foil on them so that light did not break through them. This was to test how much my child really needs absolute darkness.

The method is fast, simple and cheap, but it has disadvantages. When the water dries, the foil falls off, you have to fasten it again. In some areas, the foil, on the contrary, “sticks” to the glass so that it cannot be removed from the glass without a blade. After sleep, the child needs natural light, it is difficult to remove the foil every time. They found a way out: foil was left on the window section with a window leaf, and Shottis paper pleated blinds from Ikea were attached to the central part. They do not fit close to the window, so light breaks through from the side, but it is convenient to lift them.

If we cover all this with our not-quite-blackout, the light still breaks through. But such darkness was enough, the baby began to fall asleep much faster. I myself appreciated how much more comfortable it became to sleep.

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Light comes through the curtains. There is no foil and paper blinds here yet

Added foil around the edges and blinds in the middle

Light comes through the curtains. There is no foil and paper blinds yet Added foil around the edges and blinds in the middle Now light only passes through small gaps

What influences a child’s sleep

Absence of sharp and loud sounds

In the morning the husband goes to work when the child is sleeping, and comes in the evening when the child is just falling asleep. The sounds of the door lock, the door itself, steps and other movements in the corridor interfered, so we began to turn on white noise. This is a uniform background noise, similar to the sound of a waterfall. It hides other sounds. It is important to choose a comfortable volume, up to 50 dB – it’s like the sound of rain or water in the shower. There is no information that sleeping under these sounds is harmful, but I constantly saw a positive effect.

White noise can come from toys with audio modules, a phone or a Bluetooth speaker. There are toys that not only play white noise when you press a button inside the toy’s paw or tummy, but also automatically turn it on if the baby starts making sounds. This is convenient if you do not want to listen to white noise during the entire sleep of the child. The baby’s sleep cycle ends, he starts to wake up, he can cry a little – and the toy will immediately turn on white noise, which will create the atmosphere that accompanied the child when falling asleep. The baby is expected to fall asleep immediately.

6 things for healthy sleep

I didn’t buy this toy for two reasons. It seemed to me that if the child was already awake, then an unexpected white noise would wake him up even more. In addition, such a toy must be placed close to the baby so that it catches the first sounds when it wakes up.

Instead, I turn on a twelve-hour video on an old smartphone and put the device face down. First, she played the video on YouTube under the Premium subscription, that is, without interruptions for advertising. Then I downloaded it to my phone so as not to depend on the Internet. White noise works throughout falling asleep and sleeping, even at night. At first it bothered me, but not for long: I got used to it.

I especially appreciated the white noise when one of the neighbors started a renovation. White noise does not muffle the sounds of a perforator, drill and hammer, but it helps not to flinch at the moment when someone starts working. The son falls asleep as usual and does not wake up until he has had enough sleep.

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Also, white noise helps to create a familiar environment if you put your child to bed at a party, in the country or somewhere else. I take my phone with me in the car and in the stroller. True, the rule about a distance of one and a half meters is not observed there, but I make it quieter and lull my conscience by the fact that my son rarely sleeps outside the house.

Old phone for white noise. There is no video sequence in the video, there is this static picture

What influences a child’s sleep

Place to sleep

The child does not have to be in a crib: he can sleep in the same bed with his mother or both parents. In this case, for the sake of safety, a number of conditions must be observed:

1. There must be a parent on one side of the child, and a fence on the other: a wall or a special limiter.
2. The mattress must be sufficiently firm and in good condition: make sure that it does not collapse under your weight, that there are no sagging areas in it.
3. The bed should not have a lot of pillows and other things.
4. The parent must not smell of alcohol or strong odors.
5. Parent must not take sleeping pills.

These conditions are also needed to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome – SIDS. For the same reason, the child is not recommended to be tightly wrapped up – to overheat – and put to sleep on his stomach until he learns to roll over on his own.

As a transitional option between co-sleeping and a separate bed, you can use an extra bed: put the baby bed close to the adult, and before that, remove one of the walls from it. It is important that there is no space between the beds into which the child can fall or stick his hand. It is desirable that the beds be on the same level or a crib a little lower than an adult: in this case, the child will not fall if he decides to move to his parents.

The classic version is a separate bed in the parent’s bedroom or a separate room. It is important that the child cannot get out on his own: the walls of the crib should be high enough, not lower than the child’s armpits, but better higher. To prevent the child from bumping his head, you can install soft bumpers. They should not have elements that can be torn off and stuffed into the mouth. In addition, the sides create additional blackout. This is true if you turn on the phone when the child is sleeping. It is desirable that the sides and bed linen be calm, discreet colors.

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Here, the cushions are twisted from blankets, and the side is raised. A child does not need a pillow until one and a half to two years old, so it is not available. For the same purpose, babies in the first months of life are often swaddled to sleep. It is important that swaddling is not tight. Instead of a regular diaper, you can take a diaper bag; with it, swaddling skills are not required.

When walking, the child can be placed in a stroller or sling. The rocking sensation lulls the baby to sleep. The same effect is produced by a moving car, children’s swings and sun loungers.

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I went from co-sleeping to sleeping in a crib at the other end of the room. Even at the maternity hospital, I started taking my son to my bed, so we both got better sleep. He did not want to fall asleep in his crib, and we used it as a playpen. But sleeping three of us on the bed was uncomfortable, so when I started teaching my son how to fall asleep on his own, I put him in a crib, which was placed close to ours. At that time, the child was six months old.

We removed one of the walls, but the bed was lower than our bed. At that moment, my son wasn’t crawling yet, so he couldn’t get over to us on his own, but I could calmly take him at night to feed him, and that suited me.

Later, my son learned to climb over to us, and I had to put a low side so that I could take him out of the crib while sitting on my bed. When my son learned to stand up, I had to raise the side higher. It became inconvenient to take him for feeding, but by that time I was only feeding him three or four times a night.

When I cut down on all nighttime feedings, we moved the crib a little and later moved it to the other side of the room. My son began to sleep better in the morning.

For the first six months my son slept on our bed on his side or on his back

The son is already sleeping in his bed, which is attached to ours. Roller for tightness, I first made from a pillow for pregnant women

Now the crib is separate from our bed. I removed the roller from it when my son started to get up

My son is already sleeping in his own bed, which is next to ours. I first made a cushion for tightness from a pregnancy pillow. Now the crib is separate from our bed. I removed the roller from it when my son started to get up

What influences a child’s sleep

Rhythm of sleep and wakefulness

With a child under one year old, it is more correct to talk not about the regime or routine, but about the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. Because all deeds and dreams are tied not to a specific time, but to the moment of awakening. The time until the next sleep is counted from it.

The time between sleeps is called waking time: this is generally all the time that the child does not sleep, including bedtime. In order to qualitatively prepare the child for sleep, the time of wakefulness should be divided into stages.

Active wakefulness. This is the stage when the child has fun and noisy time, moves and plays a lot, gets new impressions and experiences vivid emotions. This stage begins immediately after sleep and lasts about 3/4 of the time of wakefulness. At this time, the room should be light, or you and your child should be outside. It is important that he is tired, but not overexcited and not overtired. At this stage, we usually eat, go for a walk or play, bathe the baby. Bathing can be relaxing for some children, but mine, on the contrary, is fun.

I gave my child vitamin D, which is prescribed for absolutely all children. When we missed an appointment for several days because the old bottle was over and the new one had not yet arrived, I noticed that my son woke up less on those nights. The usual number of awakenings returned when the vitamin appeared again in the diet.

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Calm wakefulness or “bridge to sleep”. This is also a common pastime, but already quiet games with a slightly dimmed warm light. This stage should calm, slow down, but not lull the baby. We do not yet tell the child that it is time to sleep, but we are already preparing the ground for this. The bridge should take up about a fifth of the total waking time.

We usually start the bridge with a snack, collect toys and things, at the end of the bridge we change into pajamas and read a book. The same activities calm some children, while others amuse, you need to look at the reaction of the child. Muted light helps me well – instead of a chandelier, we turn on a sconce.

Ritual — actions repeated before each sleep that unequivocally tell the child that it is time to sleep. Usually takes 5 to 15 minutes. The shorter the wake time, the shorter the ritual lasts. Actions during the ritual should relax the child and be the same every time. Mom, dad and grandmother may have their own ritual. The main thing is that the child has time to remember and understand that after these actions he falls asleep. The atmosphere should be even calmer than on the bridge stage, the lights should be dimmed more. To do this, we close the windows with foil and blinds, but the sconce is still on, and the curtains are open.

We have the following ritual: turn on white noise, tell my son that it’s time to sleep, carry around the room on my arms, say kind words. In the process, we close the door, the curtains, turn off the light, in complete darkness I put my son to bed, I say “fall asleep, baby”, I pet him a little and go to my bed. This is where the ritual ends and the child begins to fall asleep.

The process of falling asleep can take from a minute to infinity, but it is better if it lasts no more than 20 minutes. If it is much longer, most likely, there are shortcomings in the organization of sleep. A child can fall asleep by kissing his chest, sitting on the arms of a parent who is rocking him, lying in his crib or in some other convenient way for him.

For the first six months, my son most often fell asleep while suckling. It was difficult to accurately determine the moment of falling asleep: even in a dream, the son would not let go of his chest and could toss and turn. Now he falls asleep separately from me, lying in his bed. I listen to how he crawls on it, sometimes makes some sounds. I understand that the dream has begun only if the silence lasts a few minutes.

Falling asleep is called independent, in which there are no active actions of an adult. That is, they put him in a bed and left. This dream of many parents is not so far-fetched. But if a child has strong associations for falling asleep – chest, motion sickness – you will have to work. I will talk about avoiding such associations later in the article.

From birth to six months, my son fell asleep mainly on his chest, once a day in a stroller on the street and sometimes in his father’s arms while swinging on a fitball and singing. The husband did not always sing classical lullabies. The repertoire consisted of calm songs of Russian rock. Therefore, when at six months I began to teach the baby to fall asleep without a breast, I also sang, including my father’s songs. Over time, four lullabies remained in the repertoire. Now my son falls asleep more often and prolongs sleep without lullabies. But sometimes you still have to sing if the son cries when going to bed, when he takes a walk or is overexcited – about once every couple of weeks.

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It can take more than a week to build the right rhythm for a child to sleep and wake up. To understand when it’s time to go to bed, you need to focus on the approximate norms of wakefulness and monitor the signs of a child’s fatigue. He can rub his eyes, tug at his ears, yawn or fix his gaze at one point.

You need to learn not to confuse signs of fatigue with similar, but not sleep-related actions: rub your eye because a mote hit, yawn because the game is boring, as well as with signs of overwork when the child went too far or got overexcited during the game. Usually at this moment the child becomes more nervous, may crash into an obstacle or burst into tears out of the blue. In order not to confuse whether his behavior is related to sleep, you need to compare the actions of the child with the time of his wakefulness and carefully observe him. Therefore, it will not work to build a regime in a day or two: most likely, it will take a week, maybe even two. It is important to work on the regime on ordinary days, without trips and guests, because any emotional load, even positive, can knock down both the time of wakefulness and the duration of sleep.

For example, I noticed from my child that if guests come to us, even in the morning, then at night he will wake up more often. I followed the whole regimen, during the day my son slept as usual, at night he also fell asleep peacefully. But during the night I woke up three times, although usually I could already sleep through the night or wake up once in the morning. The situation with the guests was repeated twice, so I’m sure that the point is in strong impressions.

The right routine, together with the right sleep conditions and physical comfort, solves the vast majority of sleep problems. But sometimes this is not enough and the child has short dreams or frequent night awakenings. Then it is worth working with associations for falling asleep. But only after making sure that the first three points are met, the child does not get sick and does not experience a leap in development. Such periods can temporarily impair sleep.

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Everything that surrounds the child at the moment of falling asleep becomes for him associations for sleep: the place of sleep, the presence and actions of an adult, darkness, sounds and even smells. Associations help the child fall asleep faster. They can be divided into weak and strong. The latter are sometimes called negative, although there is nothing wrong with them. This is breastfeeding or motion sickness in a stroller or on a fitball. Without strong associations, it will be very difficult for a child to fall asleep, even if all the weak ones are present.

It happens that parents want to change their habitual way of bedtime, to change strong associations. It is important to remember that abrupt withdrawal does not work: the child will cry and demand habitual conditions and rituals. To avoid active protest of the baby, you should first expand the set of associations. For example, always lay in the same place, with the same light and white noise, and also introduce weaker associations. For example, when rocking, sing lullabies, while breastfeeding, stroke the baby on the back. After a few days, the child will begin to associate these actions with sleep, it will be possible to gradually move away from strong associations: for example, pump with pauses or feed not until falling asleep, but until calm. When the child completely gets rid of the strongest associations, you can also gradually remove the weak ones. Or leave if they suit you.

There are also several methods for teaching a child to fall asleep on his own. They are divided into hard, but fast, and soft, but slow. The choice depends on your situation. All of them are described on specialized sites, for example, on “Sleep, baby.”

Whatever method you choose, before starting work, you should rest, sleep and recover, because you will need strength. The result strongly depends on your mood and readiness to act according to the chosen plan.

If you have worked through absolutely all aspects of sleep organization, taught your child to fall asleep on his own, but he still has problems with sleep, it may be worth taking him to a pediatric neurologist or somnologist. The doctor will deal with the correction of not behavioral, but physiological problems.

How and why to keep a sleep diary

It is impossible to work on the rhythm of a child’s sleep and wakefulness without a sleep diary. It is necessary to record the time of sleep and the beginning of all stages of wakefulness, as well as all the features of the day and bedtime: visits of guests, vaccinations and other special events, how many times and what the child ate and how the bedtime ritual went. This will allow you to understand the causes that affect sleep, and choose the optimal time to start each of the stages of the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness.

It is important to record time to the minute, otherwise you may “lose” a lot of sleep or wake time during the day. For example, if a child sleeps four sleeps and on each falling asleep and waking up you round the time by 3-4 minutes, then when counting, you will lose 24-32 minutes of daytime sleep. The time of wakefulness is added by the same amount. This may be important in determining the individual sleep rate.

You can keep a diary in a notepad, in notes on a smartphone, in Google Docs, or in a special application. I tried every one of the options.

The application on the phone asked me to press “start” when falling asleep and “stop” when waking up, you can not record something later. Very strange mechanics, because the child often falls asleep in his arms. To press the button, you need to unlock the phone, and if the touch ID does not work the first time, the phone will vibrate. Then you need to open the application and press some buttons. All this woke up the child and distracted him when he woke up.

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Notes on start instantly. To see the time, just activate the screen with any button and look at it. I wrote down the time when it was convenient, without the risk of waking the child. It was simple, but not informative, I could not analyze such a diary. Therefore, based on these notes, I began to draw graphs in a paper notebook. With their help, I saw a certain trend: if my son got up later that day, then most likely he would have fewer dreams, and I realized that my son was gaining sleep for his age.

Graphs in a notebook. Columns are times, rows are days. The blue rectangles are the time of night sleep, the blue ones are the time of the day. The son’s dream time in the notes on the phone

I wrote down the sleep time in the phone notes in April and May, and when I started working with a sleep consultant in June, she gave a link to the table tables” with its own diary form. It contained formulas for conveniently calculating the time of sleep, wakefulness and bedtime. Everything had to be written down in a diary in great detail. At first, it really tired me, but then I got used to it. I entered the data into the table, the consultant could see them. And then tell me about the shortcomings and explain the patterns that are visible thanks to the diary.

I shortened the form as soon as I finished working with the consultant. She left only the important parameters for me: the time of getting up and going to bed, the start and end of sleep, as well as comments on them. For example, if I had to sing for my son to fall asleep. If the dream passed as usual, then I write down only the time.

I’ve added a Rhythm of the Day tab to my form. I enter the time of awakening into it, and the time for the bridge and laying down is calculated automatically in accordance with the rhythm that I determined. If I notice that it’s time to increase the time of wakefulness, then I change only a few numbers in the document.

The abbreviated form is not enough for learning to fall asleep on your own or finding the optimal rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. It is important to record the time of night awakenings, all stages of wakefulness and describe them in detail. But I completed my active phase of work and at that time followed the developed strategy.

The main sheet of the diary, information on one dream. Four dreams are 184 lines: you need to describe in detail each dream and the time of wakefulness that was in front of it. Another sheet of the diary in the form of a consultant. Here I wrote down only the date, the number of awakenings and feedings, and the rest is automatically pulled up from other sheets. An abbreviated version of the table. I need about 30 lines for two daytime and nighttime sleep. And then I mainly fill in only the time, if active wakefulness, the bridge, the ritual and falling asleep passed as usual, and the dream was without awakenings. The Rhythm of the Day tab for two dreams. Column C shows the time that needs to be added to the time to get up from the next sleep to start the stage from column A. I enter only the time of getting up in cells B2, B6, B10, and the start time of the stage is calculated in column B automatically

How to choose a sleep consultant

There is a lot of different information on the Internet about a child’s sleep, some articles or expert opinions contradict others. As a reader, I could not understand what was better: for the child to sleep with me or to lie in a separate bed, by what method to teach him to fall asleep on his own, and so on. It was easy to get confused, even easier to miss something important. I decided to call a sleep consultant for help to figure it all out.

Here’s what I did to find a specialist:

1. I studied the specialist’s blog, looked at it during live broadcasts and webinars. This helped me understand that I would be comfortable working with this person, that I could trust him.
2. Read customer reviews. I found a review in which a specialist solved the same problem as mine, and this gave me strength and confidence. It would be strange to trust a specialist about whom no one has written anything.
3. I checked the certificate of completion of special courses. This is a young profession, it is only 20 years old – educational standards have not been formed, this is not taught in universities.

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I did not find out if the specialist is a member of the International Association of Infant Sleep Consultants – IACSC – or the all-Russian public organization “Russian Society of Somnologists”. At that time, I did not know about such organizations, but over time I realized that membership in them could be an advantage. Non-profit organizations check the experience of applicants for membership before approving an application for membership. At the same time, there are a lot of good specialists who do not belong to any associations. My consultant is one of those.

It is important to understand that even the best consultant will not do all the work for you. Only you can see the signs of your child’s fatigue, calm him down before going to bed, replace one association with another. A consultant is needed to tell how to act, point out mistakes and support in difficult moments.

Formats of working with a consultant can be different. This can be a one-hour consultation or full-fledged support for a month. The latter option is suitable for those who want not only to build a routine, but also to teach the child to fall asleep on his own – usually it takes no more than a month.

You can find a sleep consultant on specialized websites or social networks. But, most likely, the consultant will find you himself, or rather, his targeted advertising. It was the same with me: I learned about the existence of sleep consultants from an advertisement on Instagram. I subscribed to the specialist’s blog and began to slowly read posts, listen to free broadcasts. Then my son was two months old and I studied information for the future. When the child was five months old, his sleep began to deteriorate. Instead of the usual 4-6 nightly awakenings, the son woke up 10-12 times. Before a daytime sleep, he was capricious on his chest for half an hour, and it took an hour to rock him in a stroller.

After a couple of weeks, I realized that I could not cope on my own, and decided to contact a sleep specialist for individual support. I chose my specialist because I liked the system with which she gave information. I was impressed that the story about paid services was at the end, and not at the beginning of free broadcasts.

The night when my son woke up 16 times finally convinced me to contact a consultant. The specialist was just starting a three-week course in the format of “training and individual support”. It cost the same as the usual individual accompaniment, 9900 R. My husband gave me participation in it for my birthday.

9900 R

cost a three-week course on children’s sleep

How the consultant and I worked on the quality of my son’s sleep

It all started with a table that I filled out every day. Anastasia, that is the name of my consultant, wrote comments on these days. If I had questions, I dictated them on WhatsApp and received answers the same day.

The educational part of the course is about a dozen videos on YouTube. They helped me systematize old knowledge and sort out the details, but it was individual work that brought results. The theory helped to speak the same language with the specialist, we understood each other better.

Based on the results of the first day of observations, it turned out that the room was not dark enough, at the same time we began to build a rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. On the advice of a specialist, I reduced the first time of wakefulness. It can be noticeably shorter than the others, and the last one is longer. Anastasia advised not to rock her son in a wheelchair: there he fell asleep for a long time, with great difficulty. Then she told me to change the number of dreams and the duration of wakefulness, depending on the duration of the first daytime sleep. If it was more than 40 minutes, I reduced the number of dreams from four to three and put me to bed early at night.

Sometimes I wanted to ignore advice. For example, I was sure that the room was dark enough and I would not do anything with the windows. But then she stepped over herself and did as the consultant said. The child’s sleep became better, and I began to trust her more.

In parallel with the adjustment of the regimen, we worked on a gradual separation of sleep and chest. This was necessary to exclude night awakenings, but the son did not want to give up the breast even at night. Anastasia and I agreed that I would feed the baby at the stage of the ritual, and put him to bed without a breast for a night’s sleep. This did not suit my son, he protested violently, but I calmed him down by stroking and singing. He fell asleep after 15 minutes, although he could have been screaming for an hour.

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It was very hard, but necessary. On the following nights, the son fell asleep easier. When he was completely used to falling asleep without a breast at night, I put him in a crib and began to teach him to fall asleep there during the day.

After three weeks, my son began to sleep better: he no longer needed my participation to fall asleep. At night he woke up half as often, six or eight times, and my husband liked the darkness. I finally felt that I could sleep, although I still couldn’t sleep all night long.

This is me telling Anastasia about falling asleep for the first time without a breast

When my son was seven months old, he started having problems sleeping again: he stopped falling asleep for the third daytime sleep, often cried when laying down, the number of night awakenings did not decrease. Therefore, I again turned to Anastasia, and we agreed on individual support for a week. Usually such a service costs 1900 R, but Anastasia offered a discount and in the end took 1500 R from me.

Everything was the same as before: I filled out the diary in detail, and Anastasia commented on this in Google Spreadsheets and WhatsApp. This time there were two problems: the son learned to stand up and practiced this skill where it is convenient – in the crib, because there you can grab the sides. The second problem arose due to my fault. I thought that since my son was a month older, it was time for him to go to bed later and stay awake more.

On the advice of Anastasia, we returned to the former first time of wakefulness and began to practice the skill of getting up. When falling asleep for daytime and nighttime sleep, I gently pressed the child with my hand so that he would not get up in the crib. During night awakenings, they did without it. We noticed that the son began to fall asleep well on the third dream, if the first slept for a long time. It turned out that this is also important.

The third time I turned to Anastasia was in November, when my son was 11 months old. He began to wake up at night three to five times, compared to the norm of one or two times. Before the second sleep, he cried for a long time, could not fall asleep at all and asked for an adult bed. This time I paid 1900 R.

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Before that, my son had a growth spurt, he was sick and went to relatives, and I broke the rules: I took to sleep with me, although my son was used to sleeping in her bed, at night she soothed with her breast, although she could soothe with a lullaby, and so on. That is, the son felt that he could demand more, and did it. I had to once again build boundaries, put in order the conditions for falling asleep and prolonging sleep, and overcome the protest. With the support of a consultant, all this was much easier than it could have been. I was sure that I was not mocking the child, but helping him get used to falling asleep again without my help.

I also learned that at the age of 11 months there may be a false rejection of the second dream, but it is too early to switch to one dream. To make it easier for my son to fall asleep for the second dream, I had to be stricter about the daily routine: start the bridge earlier, do more blackout at this stage. The son began to sleep better at night and during the day.

Now my son is one year and four months old, he falls asleep without my help in his bed. I alternate days with one and two dreams, but, apparently, very soon we will finally switch to one dream. My son usually sleeps through the night without waking up, except when he is teething. Previously, the appearance of a new tooth did not cause changes in the behavior and condition of the son, the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness did not change. But gradually the teeth began to erupt more and more problematic: during this period, the son began to become capricious, and after he was one year old, the temperature even began to rise. These are natural changes that do not require the attention of a sleep specialist: as soon as the tooth erupts completely, everything returns to normal.

How much money I spent on my child’s sleep

I calculated the expenses for everything that helped my son sleep better. I don’t take into account the crib, mattress, bed linen, pajamas, curtains and the YouTube Premium subscription in the calculations, because I would buy all this anyway. Spending on sleep is one of the most useful expenses for a child: he is vigorous and develops well, and I have the strength to take care of my family, because now I also get enough sleep.

Expenses for solving problems with a child’s sleep — 14,999 R

Working with a consultant	13 300 Р
Bed rails	999 Р
Pleated blinds	599 Р
Foil	101 P

Working with a consultant

13 300 r

sides per crib

999 r

Lulyuzi-pliss

599

foil

101 R

Remember

1. If your baby is not sleeping well, this can be corrected.
2. It makes no sense to teach a child under four to six months to fall asleep on his own.
3. Until the physical comfort and conditions of falling asleep are worked out, it makes no sense to take up the regimen and associations for falling asleep.
4. A sleep diary will help you build a rhythm of sleep and wakefulness.
5. See a sleep consultant if you can’t manage on your own. But just paying a specialist in the hope of solving the child’s sleep problems in this way will not work: first of all, this is a difficult and painstaking job for parents. Nothing will come of it without her.

Co-sleeping: how it happens

where it all started
The idea of ​​a joint night sleep of a mother (or both parents) with a child in our country has become popular only in the last ten to fifteen years. Prior to this, it was believed that the child should only sleep in his own bed, and it was impossible to take him to the parent: this is indecent, dangerous, especially if the baby has his own bed. But then society became freer, women stopped working as before, and began to spend more time in the family, and gradually life with a child changed. Probably, the appearance of free feeding also played a role, because it also implies night feeding. This is how you get up to the baby’s bed several times a night, feed him, put him back, just fall asleep – you have to get up again. At some point, a woman is ready for anything, just so that the child falls asleep and she herself sleeps at least a little. In order to somehow save energy, mothers began to take their children to bed – this is how joint sleep began.

benefits of co-sleeping
Co-sleeping is convenient for many women: you don’t have to constantly get up at night, take the baby in your arms, sit with him while feeding, and then lay him down again. The baby lies nearby, and even if he wakes up, you just need to give him a breast, and then sleep on. And it’s not always necessary to feed: it’s enough just to stroke someone, that is, to show the baby that mom is nearby and everything is in order. Co-sleeping is convenient not only for adults: many children like to sleep in their parents’ bed and nothing more. This is understandable: it’s warm, your beloved mother is nearby, you had a terrible dream or you want to eat – you were immediately reassured or fed. In any case, the child falls asleep faster, which means that the whole family sleeps better.

if you don’t like co-sleeping
Many moms and kids enjoy co-sleeping, but that doesn’t mean everyone does. Each person has his own character, temperament and habits. If some woman sleeps calmly in bed with a child, then another such dream is not suitable. For example, a mother is afraid to crush a child in a dream, sleeps anxiously with him, often wakes up in fear: how is her child, did she crush him? She is not reassured by the arguments of supporters of co-sleeping that the baby’s mother has superficial sleep and she always controls herself and the sleeping child. In the same bed with a child, a woman still sleeps restlessly. It is easier for her to fall asleep deeply in her bed for at least a couple of hours and periodically get up to the baby at night than to sleep superficially, but anxiously with him in a common bed. And why bother then?

Other parents themselves sleep restlessly, pushing each other in their sleep. Where are they in the bed for another baby? Some people like order in everything. For them, this means that the child must sleep in the crib. In general, parents have plenty of reasons to sleep separately. This is completely normal.

what children want
By the way, children also have different attitudes towards co-sleeping. Some people like to sleep with mom and dad, and try to put them separately. No matter how much you pump, no matter how much you sing songs, no matter how much you put in a cradle or even a side bed – no, they will cry until their parents put them in their bed. That’s the only way they want to sleep, and that’s it!

But there are such children (although there are fewer of them) who prefer to sleep in their own bed, they prefer it, that is, they like this sleeping place more than their parents’ bed. If you put them in your crib, then they sleep peacefully in it, but in an adult they don’t want to fall asleep at all.

There are other options: it is, of course, more pleasant for a child to sleep with mom and dad, but you can persuade him to sleep in your own bed. And someone just needs to fall asleep with his mother, and then his parents easily transfer him to a crib.

what to do
So how does a child sleep: with their parents or in their own crib? Each family decides for itself. Parents agree to sleep in the same bed with the baby, it is convenient for them, everything suits them, they get enough sleep, which means that the family sleeps together. If dad is unhappy, and mom can’t sleep well in the same bed with the child, one of them is uncomfortable sleeping together or just doesn’t feel like it, then it’s better to sleep separately from the child. And here it is necessary to take into account only the opinion of the family, and not friends, relatives, acquaintances, psychologists and any other strangers. Each family has its own habits, its own way of life.

By the way, there is an excellent compromise option – a side bed at the level of the parent bed mattress. On the one hand, the child sleeps next to the mother, and on the other hand, he is still at a safe distance from her. It is convenient for everyone: both the baby and the parents.

if you want to sleep together
If parents sleep with a child in the same bed, then it is necessary to ensure his safety.

1. The mattress on the bed should be sufficiently hard and wide.

2. It doesn’t matter where the baby sleeps – on the edge or in the middle, there should be a side on the bed so that the baby does not fall.

3. There should be no pillows or soft cushions near the child.

4. Do not cover the child with a parental blanket.

5. You can not sleep with a child after taking alcohol and strong drugs

You should not worry when you hear a variety of opinions: “Now he is sleeping with you, which means that later he will be a little boy. Put him in your crib – so he will become independent faster! “Sleeping together is pampering, then you won’t remove the child from your neck.” Or vice versa: “The child should be day and night next to the mother. Joint sleep will help him become open to the world, less anxious, smart, kind … “” Joint sleep will strengthen ties in the family, the child will be closer to his parents …” No, it’s certainly nice to think that all night sacrifices are not in vain and sleeping with the child together or, conversely, by accustoming him to independent sleep in a crib, you are programming him something so exceptional for the future. And then, as a result, your child will grow up and become a smart top manager of Gazprom, making independent decisions, or, in extreme cases, at least a glass of water in old age. Be realistic: no one knows how things will turn out.

Sleep is needed to recover and rest, which means that at night you need to gain strength for the next day. And it is very difficult to do this with young children! So it doesn’t matter if you sleep together or apart – sleep the way you like.

• Co-sleeping is convenient for many women: you do not have to constantly get up at night, take the baby in your arms, sit with him during feeding, and then put him down again. The baby lies nearby, and even if he wakes up, you just need to give him a breast, and then sleep on yourself further
• Many mothers and children like co-sleeping, but this does not mean that everyone. Each person has his own character, temperament and habits. If a woman sleeps calmly in bed with a child, then another such dream is not suitable
• There is an excellent compromise option – an extra bed at the level of the parent bed mattress. On the one hand, the child sleeps next to the mother, and on the other hand, he is still at a safe distance from her.

How to sleep with a baby

establish a general routine

What do most women do when their baby falls asleep? Someone rushes to cook, someone begins to hastily clean the apartment, iron, wash – there are always plenty of things to do in the family. But in vain. You can do household chores even when the baby is awake, but he definitely won’t let you sleep. Therefore, if a son or daughter falls asleep, drop everything and go to bed with the child. There is no perfect order or dinner is not prepared? You can do all this later, when you rest, and, by the way, you will most likely spend much less time and effort. Therefore, the first rule of mom’s regimen: sleep when the baby sleeps. To feel normal, a woman (especially a nursing mother) must sleep both at night and during the day. So adjust the general regimen of the day: you can adapt to the child’s sleep, or, on the contrary, you can adjust the child’s sleep to your routine (although this will be more difficult to do).

get help

Use volunteers as often as possible to babysit, walk, or just feed. And here the help of the husband, grandparents will be invaluable. Do not trust the baby mother-in-law? Do you think that dad will not be able to entertain the baby for a couple of hours? Worried that grandpa will get lost with the baby while strolling around the house? In vain. Your loved ones are adults, they wish both you and the baby only the best and are unlikely to harm him in any way. At most, a diaper is buttoned crookedly, an extra blouse is put on the baby, or they give him the wrong nipple.

If possible, make arrangements with your family so that they can babysit at least two or three times a week, giving you a couple of hours to sleep and rest. By the way, for this you can invite a nanny. And again – no household chores at this time, only – sleep!

sleeping with the baby

Co-sleeping has many advantages: the mother does not have to get up, wake up, go to the crib, get the baby out of it. She can feed the baby and at the same time almost never wake up: after all, the baby will find the breast on its own. Yes, and many children sleep only with their parents – in order to fall asleep, some babies need to feel the familiar smell and warmth of a loved one. This method has both its supporters and opponents, but in any case, if you choose to sleep together, you need to ensure the safety of the child. You can not put the child on the edge of the bed – he can turn around and fall to the floor; you can not put it next to the parent pillow – the baby may turn unsuccessfully and his breathing will be disturbed.

And it’s best not to put the baby in the same bed with adults, but simply move the crib to the parent’s bed, after removing the side rail from it (today there are even special cribs for sleeping together). So the child will feel the closeness of mom and dad, and parents will sleep peacefully, without worrying about his safety.

“Stock up” with sleep

Scientists have found that lack of sleep or insomnia is fully compensated by a full rash preceding it (or subsequent after it). And if so, then you can “stock up” on sleep. A couple of times a week (well, or one for sure) you need to arrange a day for yourself when the dream lasts 8-9hours per day. Here again, relatives or a nanny will come to the rescue. You can select once a week when you sleep all night, and dad gets up at night for the baby. True, this is convenient when the child is bottle-fed or at least agrees to drink expressed mother’s milk from a bottle at night. If this is not possible, then you need to agree with your husband that, for example, on the weekend he takes the child and works with him for a couple of morning hours, and you fill up the missing time. Or let your grandmother (nanny) come in the morning, who will also let you make up for a night’s sleep.

go to bed together at night

Usually, after putting her baby to sleep, the mother either rushes to finish the day’s work, or tries to find time for herself (surf the Internet, read a book, watch TV, get a manicure). But it is the first three to four hours of sleep at night that children sleep best. Take note of this and go to bed at night at the same time as your baby. Otherwise, you have not yet had time to fall asleep (or just fell asleep), as the baby woke up for night feeding or just like that. As a result, you will get not only a shortened night’s sleep, but for sure at night the baby will wake up a couple more times and interrupt it.

put the child to bed early

As a rule, an adult who goes to bed early wakes up earlier. But in children there is no such pattern. Therefore, do not be afraid that today, having fallen asleep before 9 pm, tomorrow the baby will wake you up at dawn. On the contrary, the later the child falls asleep, the worse and more restless he sleeps. And just early laying gives a more complete and prolonged night’s sleep. And this is exactly what a tired mom needs! But in order to establish such a daily routine, all family members will have to try. But then it becomes much easier for them.

Try to improve your routine and sleep more, and the whole family will feel much better. Even with a small child, it is possible not to feel sleep deprivation. Try it and see for yourself.

If this arrangement suits all members of your family, practice co-sleeping. This is a real salvation for mothers whose children often wake up at night. Sleep deficiency disrupts the formation of serotonin in the body – a biologically active substance, which is also called the hormone of happiness, calmness and good mood. As a result, a person deprived of normal rest constantly experiences irritability and a feeling of depression

Try to instill a regular sleep-wake schedule in your child. This will make your day more organized and make you less tired.

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How to wean a newborn baby from sleeping only in their parents’ arms? Going from endless motion sickness to falling asleep on your own in a crib

How to wean a newborn baby to sleep only in the arms of their parents? We are moving from endless motion sickness to falling asleep on our own in the crib

The baby sleeps most of the time, but parents face difficulties in getting to bed. For many, motion sickness becomes a habit, the child sleeps only in his arms. It takes time and patience, parents get tired, they are interested in how to wean a baby from addiction.

Contents

• Causes of “manual sleep”
• Sleeps in arms during the day
• Is motion sickness necessary?
• Komarovsky about the problem
• What to do?
• Common errors

Causes of “manual sleep”

During childbirth, the baby experiences severe stress, gets into an aggressive environment and is forced to adapt to difficulties. In his arms, he quickly calms down, falls asleep soundly and for a long time. The smell, warmth, mother’s voice and the beating of her heart remind the newborn of the intrauterine environment, are associated with safety. Tactile contact is a natural need, it helps to strengthen the psychological connection.

The closeness of the mother builds confidence in the outside world, has a positive effect on the nervous system and the overall development of the baby. It grows better, has a strong immune system. Touching helps the baby feel the significance, love of relatives. Psychologists recommend spending more time next to the baby before reaching six months.

It is important to understand why the baby sleeps only in mother’s arms. The main reason is anxiety caused by various factors:

1. Overexcitation – due to increased activity or characteristics of the nervous system;
2. A tense situation in the family, quarrels – the baby subtly feels the negative;
3. Discomfort due to uncomfortable clothing, cold or heat in the room;
4. Extraneous sounds, bright light;
5. Change of scenery, visiting relatives, traveling.

Being near the mother helps to calm down faster in case of pain, teething, makes the newborn feel better during colic and bloating.

Sleeps in arms during the day

After falling asleep in their arms, they become awake when trying to shift to the crib. Toddlers may refuse to fall asleep on their own for various reasons:

1. Active games, activities before bedtime, leading to overexcitation of the nervous system;
2. Hunger due to poor diet or decreased lactation;
3. Lack of walking during the daytime. Sometimes a child gets used to resting in a stroller on the street, and at home he sleeps during the day only in his mother’s arms.

You need to rest at the same time to form a habit. You won’t be able to immediately refuse to fall asleep in your arms, you need to try to shift the sleeping person into the crib. You can first wrap the baby in a diaper – this will reduce his sensitivity. Should be shifted during the deep sleep phase – the first 20-40 minutes. At the same time, the baby is motionless and does not wake up in the crib. The phase alternates with periods of REM, light sleep, when the baby is easily awoken.

Sling

A baby sling can be a way out, freeing mom’s hands for household chores. But convenience is relative: the position of the child is different from normal, constant movement makes sleep superficial and reduces its quality. Many are laid next to them on an adult bed, if it is convenient for mommy to fall asleep with a child in the daytime.

Extraneous daytime sounds

Parents advise to lie down in the background of noise, which is not always acceptable. The option is optimal up to 3 months, when children sleep in any conditions. During intrauterine development, they were constantly accompanied by sounds similar to a working vacuum cleaner. After birth, out of habit, they fall asleep better in the background of noise. After three months, the child’s body is rebuilt, extraneous sounds begin to irritate. At this time, it is necessary to ensure silence for a full sleep.

Is motion sickness necessary?

Many experts do not recommend rocking a baby because of the negative impact on the development of the vestibular apparatus. Uniform movement has a hypnotic effect, the baby falls asleep faster. Sickness in the arms often becomes a habit and the reason for the refusal to fall asleep in the crib. The alternative in the form of a cradle also forms an addiction. If you stop rocking a sleeping child, he may wake up. Parents are forced to spend time and effort, and later nerves, trying to wean the baby from this habit.

Komarovsky about the problem

Dr. Komarovsky explains that falling asleep in arms is harmful primarily for parents, speaks of a lack of patience and willpower on their part. The need to sleep is natural, long whims speak of additional annoying factors that need to be eliminated.

Many parents take a crying child in their arms instead of finding out the reasons for his dissatisfaction. Komarovsky recommends optimizing the lifestyle of the baby so that he falls asleep on his own.

What to do?

How to wean him from the habit of sleeping on his hands? It is necessary to gradually select other ways of interaction. A few recommendations:

• Swaddle until one month of age. A newborn child does not control his movements, in a dream he may be afraid of his hands;
• Properly organize a place to rest. Dress and cover according to the environment. It is necessary to eliminate irritants in the form of a working TV, bright lighting, street noise penetrating through an open window. In the daytime, close the curtains tightly to black out;
• Pick up more often when awake. Use this time to study at home, when the baby begins to actively explore the world around him. This will help to gradually move away from the “hands-falling asleep” association;
• Talk affectionately, sing a lullaby so that the baby feels the closeness of the mother. At first, maintain tactile contact by holding a hand near or gently stroking it. Gradually reduce the time, the baby will learn to fall asleep on its own. You can put your mother’s thing in the crib, the familiar smell will soothe the baby;
• Come up with a ritual for falling asleep: a bath with herbs, a relaxing massage, reading a book or a lullaby. Calm music will do;
• Avoid active play for 30-40 minutes before bedtime. Adhere to the rest regime, put the child at the same time every day;
• Watch the baby, remember under what conditions he quickly fell asleep in a crib without a mother. Learn to distinguish manipulation from crying for other reasons. In case of pain, children do not calm down in their arms for a long time, if the need is only for attention, they fall asleep almost immediately.

A child older than six months should be explained in a calm and reasonable tone that they need to sleep separately. Then try to put to bed without interrupting tactile contact and affectionate conversation. In case of strong crying, pick it up again, repeat the steps. It may take several attempts until the baby calms down.

Common mistakes

Falling asleep in your arms leads to a lack of time, a decrease in the quality of mother’s sleep. As the weight of the baby increases, the load on the joints and spine of an adult increases. This takes parents to extremes.

Negative

Dissatisfaction, anger at the child or the current situation. Negative emotions are transmitted to the baby, aggravating his condition. An adult should be able to cope with a bad mood and look at things positively. The psychological and physical health of the baby depends on this.

Sudden change in upbringing tactics

Abrupt weaning from hands – deprives the child of the necessary caress and is a great stress. It is necessary to act gradually, to select alternative ways of laying, at first to be near the crib.

Loneliness

Leaving a crying child alone for a long time. The technique was proposed by the American pediatrician Benjamin Spock, who admitted his mistake. The baby really screams less and less, gradually gets used to falling asleep on his own. At the same time, he experiences great stress, causing nervous disorders in the future. The healthy formation of a psycho-emotional connection with the mother is disrupted. +

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Co-sleeping – suitable for newborns and premature babies. This can be dangerous for the baby, requires sensitivity from adults. If co-sleeping develops into a habit, parents will face the baby’s fear of sleeping separately. This will take time to unlearn and become a new stress.

Many parents pick up the baby if he makes sounds when he is sleeping. It is better to wait a couple of minutes, the baby can calm down on his own. If the crying intensifies, then there is a significant reason: discomfort, pain or hunger, they must be eliminated.

Weaning your baby from sleeping in your arms takes patience, but is an important step in developing independence. It may take a few days, but the effort will be rewarded with a calm children’s sleep and will allow parents to fully relax. In case of difficulties, you should consult a pediatrician on how to wean a child from hands.

Children can sleep with their parents, but not for long. So when should they be evicted from their parent’s bedroom?

In terms of emotional charge, there is only one topic comparable to “sleeping” – weaning. And, apparently, for good reason. So many traumas and unconscious processes are involved in deciding where my baby will sleep.

Mothers today mainly represent two generations – “Dr. Spock’s children” or “perestroika children”. For both, infancy and childhood were overshadowed by early or very early separation. In the maternity hospital, newborns lie separately from their mother. At the slightest problem, the child is put in the hospital – again, it happens without a mother. Nursery, at best, from a year, or even from 7-8 months. Breastfeeding according to the regimen or with the transfer to artificial in three months. Because there are no conditions. None. Mother has to go to work, father’s salary is not enough, we live in cramped circumstances. Plus, as a destabilizing factor – the grandmothers of the military or post-war generation with their experience: “Cry – calm down, why are you jumping up to him like a scalded? It’s too early to feed, three hours have not passed. It is necessary to wean from night feedings, what kind of fashion is this? Put me in bed and go away.”

How many times have I heard stories at the reception about how a child screams behind a closed door. And under the door, his mother is flooded with tears and milk, but she doesn’t come in, doesn’t take him in her arms, doesn’t start feeding him, because you can’t – you spoil, spoil, you have to teach him to be independent so that he can endure.

Endure, yeah. Bimonthly.

When psychologists appeared in our country, they began to publish articles about the formation and destruction of attachment, when Martha and William Surze’s wonderful encyclopedic work “You and Your Child” came out. And the economic and legal situation in the country has also changed – these girls, cut off from their mother’s breasts so early, finally received the legal (approved by experts and almost accepted by society) right to be with their children as long as they want. To be at home with them, not to rush to work and nursery at seven in the morning, to do modeling and applications from cereals, to wallow on special children’s rugs, to read picture books. And yes, breastfeeding endlessly, sleeping in the same bed, growing, feeding, loving your inner baby, so early and cruelly deprived of maternal warmth and affection.

Sleeping with a child up to 1.5 years old – yes

While the child is really a baby, co-sleeping often becomes the only way for the whole family to survive: the night feeding procedure ceases to be a difficult quest. Compare: hear when he has already screamed at the top of his voice, emerge from unconscious oblivion, crawl out of warm into cold, pull out (sometimes already quite weighty) arching body from a deep bed, feed, trying not to fall asleep and not drop, change clothes, put back, start falling back into sleep – and then he woke up again, because somehow he didn’t have ice. And so three to six times a night. Or, without opening your eyes, turn around, stick your chest in, pass out in the same second, and we’ll deal with the diapers in the morning.

Therefore, if conditions permit, I am wholeheartedly in favor of co-sleeping with babies. But! Not all children need it, not all mothers are comfortable sleeping with children – sometimes this just gets in the way. I would advise putting the newborn in a basket / cradle / crib close to the parent’s bed and observe. If everyone is happy – great, we leave it that way. If in a month you feel like a zombie, called to active work by voodoo witchcraft, try putting the child next to you. If it doesn’t get better, the problem is not the distance, but something else.

The child grows, develops, his needs change. And for some reason, adherents of co-sleeping and breastfeeding before school miss this moment. For the first year and a half, the main task of any person is to establish a strong, reliable connection with loving loved ones. This is the basis of future well-being, the key to mental and somatic health. The child must be constantly “with someone”, and during sleep too, so as not to waste precious energy on a minute-by-minute check “Didn’t all my fellow tribesmen die by chance, wasn’t I left alone in the wild?”.

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But from the age of 1.5, the child is ready to move to another bed

With normal development, by about a year and a half, Shnyr lives in our house: an inquisitive, nimble clot of energy that sticks its nose everywhere, does not obey, runs away, argues, demands, gets angry, throws tantrums out of the blue, still does not know how to control himself, but really wants to be in charge. This is a difficult time for parents, because you can’t take your eyes off him, running like that, once again, and he still doesn’t know how to play, and “voice control” is still poorly installed.

This phase of development is called “separation” – that is, separation. Everyone has heard this word, but few understand what it means in practice.

And here’s the thing: if before the beginning of this stage the child perceives himself as a single whole with the mother (and in the prenatal, intrauterine period it is so, and in the breastfeeding period it is almost so), then after 18 months the child begins to realize that he and his mother are two different people. Moreover, it would be good if the mother also began to realize this. If a child speaks, then by the age of two he should already be talking about himself in the first person: “I fell” instead of “Sasha fell.” He can quite calmly remain without his mother, but not for long, he can keep her image in his memory instead of a living person. That is, a two-year-old understands the words “mom went to the store and will come soon”, and does not sit near the door for two hours and does not yell “maamuu want!”

The most important thing is to stop breastfeeding. To console, calm, please the child, the mother already uses other methods than “give breasts”: she can hug him, kiss him, talk, explain, spend time with him in the game.

Including – at night.

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Set a clear rule: everyone sleeps in their own beds

In many families, putting the child to bed is the most difficult and painful procedure.

“He only agrees to sleep with me. He falls asleep only with his breast. My husband has been sleeping on the sofa for two years now. We don’t know how to fight it.”

I really sympathize with you, my friends! Indeed, after a tiring day filled with worries, anxieties, work, the last thing you dream about is another round of struggle for power. It is much easier to let the child have his own, albeit illegal, but familiar place in the marital bed. So what if dad is unhappy. It’s better than no one gets enough sleep!

No, not better. Yes, tactically you win: the child sleeps peacefully all night, there are no endless walking back and forth, no need to get up several times during the night to put the defector into his borders. But in a mental sense, you lose a lot: the main thing is that your married couple suffers.

Instead of the couple “husband + wife”, a couple “mother + child” appears, in which there is simply no place for the third

The child receives a false idea of ​​himself as a partner of the mother, and the father becomes an exile. For a child, this is a destructive construct. The most important message that he should receive from his parents at this stage is: “We have power in the family. We love you very much, we will take care and protect you, but we will manage your life, and not vice versa. The child is loaded with an absolutely unbearable burden for him: to be the head of the family. What did you think? If who, with whom, where and when sleeps depends on his desires – who is he? Of course, the king and god!

The role of the father is very important in this struggle. It is necessary that he enter into this situation not from the position of a jealous senior sibling – “My mother!”. And from the position of a parent: “My mother and I decided this. Everyone sleeps in their beds. I am ready to sit with you before going to bed, read, tell stories, but you will sleep in your bed. Because this is the order. By the way, in my experience, when parents act in concert, children obey much calmer and faster.

Yes, you will have to endure the grief of a beloved child. He really grieves, mourns the lost paradise, when he was one with his mother, she belonged and obeyed only him. Facing reality can be painful. Our duty is to help the child survive this loss, to be there, but not to rush to return everything back. After all, now you are teaching him how to deal with the problem “When you really want to, but you can’t.” Humble yourself, mourn and live on at a new level.

Otherwise, we end up with a whole generation of people who are deeply and sincerely convinced that “you just have to want it the right way – and everything will work out.” No, my dear, one desire is not enough. Some things we can get if we put in the effort, and some we never get. I’m sorry you’re so upset, I can stay by your side, but the situation will not change: no means no.

Technically, this means that at about one and a half years the child moves into his own crib in the parent’s bedroom, and closer to three years – in his own room (if any). At first, of course, he will try to come to you in the middle of the night. If it is acceptable for you, let him sleep with you. But the rule must be stated: everyone sleeps in their own beds.

Photo: Shutterstock (Sunny studio, ArtTim, Monkey Business Images, leadenpork). Illustration: Shutterstock (Silmairel)

How to put a child to sleep without breastfeeding

04/21/2011

1025650

1263

Feeding and sleep

9000–9 months –1.5–3 years

years

Author of the article

Elena Muradova

Elena Muradova

Head of the BabySleep Center, the first sleep consultant in Russia, author of the BabySleep 9 methodology0003

Mother of three

One of the most common questions a sleep consultant gets is how to get a baby to fall asleep without breastfeeding. Is it possible to separate sleep and food, and should a child be taught to fall asleep without breastfeeding?

Baby crisis calendar

Why does the mother want to stop breastfeeding?

Between the ages of 9 and 15 months, many children experience severe sleep problems. The baby may wake up 8-10 times a night or even more often, it is difficult to put him back to bed, he constantly requires feeding (especially if he is used to breastfeeding on demand).

Mother and child do not get enough sleep. Constant sleep disturbance, irritation and fatigue are unbearable.

The mother is told that “the baby cannot sleep well if you are breastfeeding”, “only the completion of breastfeeding helped with the baby’s sleep”. It seems that neither she nor the baby can sleep properly because of breastfeeding. Mom decides to wean the child from breastfeeding.

Stop, mother!

Baby’s sleep problems are not related to breastfeeding. It’s all about dream associations. This is how the child is used to falling asleep. If you want to keep breastfeeding and still sleep well, you need to separate food and sleep. That is, to divide the time of sleep and feeding. You will be able to feed the baby before bedtime, and then he will fall asleep. On nighttime awakenings, you will quickly put him to sleep again. You will cut down on nightly attachments, but keep breastfeeding comfortable.

This is a very important topic. It is very difficult to defeat a stereotype that has existed for a long time. Year after year, moms improve their babies’ nighttime sleep through weaning. Sleep and food are separated, the association for sleep – breast sucking – is removed, and the child begins to sleep wonderfully at night.

The delighted mother tells all her friends about this method of improving sleep and willingly shares the secret of good sleep on the Internet. Sometimes she regrets that she had to turn off breastfeeding so early, she wanted to feed longer, and the child gets sick more often. But sleep is more important. It was simply impossible to endure sleep problems anymore, the child had to be weaned, there was no choice. But there is a choice!

How does a baby who sleeps on his chest sleep?

Let’s see how a baby sleeps who falls asleep exclusively at the breast. Evening, the child is tired, it’s time for sleep. From birth, the child is used to the fact that the mother gives him the breast to fall asleep. It is so natural and pleasant, warm and comfortable. This is the association for sleep. To fall asleep, the child needs to eat, that is, sleep = food. Many somnologists in Russia, America and Europe consider falling asleep on the chest a “wrong” association for sleep. Why wrong? Because it impairs sleep. Waking up at night, the child cries and demands to create the conditions in which he is used to falling asleep. That is, he does not need food, but help to continue sleeping.

Indeed, children often wake up at night, and this is an absolute norm. The child sleeps with awakenings between sleep cycles. We adults do too. But we immediately fall asleep again and do not remember this. And in order to continue sleep after the next awakening, the child needs the usual conditions for falling asleep (after all, he simply does not know how to fall asleep in a different way), in our case, the chest.

Should everyone separate food and sleep?

I don’t think going to bed breastfeeding is a bad association for anyone. In the world, most sleep experts are men. Probably, they cannot fully believe that many mothers do not even know exactly how many times their baby is fed during the night when sleeping together with a child, because. Night feedings do not interfere with their sleep. The main criterion in this matter is a calm child and a sleeping mother.

What else affects a child’s sleep?

Now we know why the situation “hangs all night on the chest, doesn’t eat much, but it’s impossible to lay down again without a breast” can arise. The baby falls asleep as best he can, and he only knows how to fit with his breast in his mouth. At the age of 9-15 months, there are other reasons for a child’s poor sleep (not counting the “eternal teeth” and diseases):

• Stage of development: baby gets up, tries to walk. He can do this at night too – jump up right in his sleep. This is how he develops a new skill.
• Change of mode, transition from 2 dreams to 1. This can affect both the duration and quality of a night’s sleep.

You need to help the baby survive the difficult stage, but try not to introduce new associations to sleep – for example, motion sickness.

How to separate breasts and sleep without curtailing breastfeeding?

It has been decided, we will not introduce new unwanted habits, but what about feeding at night? Maybe curtail breastfeeding, and the association food = sleep will disappear? But WHY finish HB if it’s enough just to separate feeding and falling asleep a little in time?

How to teach a child to fall asleep without a breast? When to feed the baby?

You can breastfeed 20-30 minutes before bedtime. And keep feeding in the morning, at 5-8 o’clock, if you want to keep lactation. If you want to sleep better, you can and should help your child learn to fall asleep on their own. Waking up at night, the baby will calmly roll over to the other side, or it will be enough to say: “sleep, my dear,” and he will continue his sweet dream. There are many methods of teaching self-sleep to sleep, but this article is not about them. Now we are interested in how to teach a child to fall asleep without a breast, how to separate food and sleep?

I will give you some practical ways that you can adapt to your situation.

How to separate food and sleep? Practical advice

1. When a 4–6 month old baby suddenly falls asleep without a breast — rejoice!

If the child himself gives you such an opportunity, do not miss it. This ability (natural for many children) will greatly facilitate your life in the future. When the baby wakes up, feed him well. When it’s time for bed, try laying him down again without breastfeeding. When the baby falls asleep on the chest – good; when without – support it. As a result, sleep will not depend on the breast.

2. Prepare

If you decide to teach your child to fall asleep without a breast:

• Spend as much time as possible with your baby. Physical contact and closeness are very important. A lot of attention during the day – a calmer sleep at night.
• During the day, offer not only the chest, but also other ways to calm down – hug, carry in your arms, stroke, lie on the bed.
• Trust that peace and comfort comes from YOU, not just from your chest. Your confidence will be passed on to your child.

3. Change environment, bed ritual or “layer”

Mom will breastfeed, and then dad or grandmother will read a book, sing a song, hug and help fall asleep. On the first night, for example, on the handles, the main thing is without breasts. Practice shows that this method often works. The chances increase if there is a fairly clear regimen, a ritual of going to bed, masterful abilities of family members: an affectionate, calm, confident voice and the ability to distract.

4. You can apply a quick method of learning to fall asleep on your own

There are different teaching methods. BabySleep does not use or recommend separation between baby and mother (“leave to cry”). Our techniques combine softness and fast efficiency. The methodology is selected by the consultant individually – the choice depends on the age of the child, his individual characteristics and temperament, habits, wishes of the mother and many other factors.

5. Fading technique

Fading is the gradual separation of food and sleep. No tears at all, very soft. But, unfortunately, this way is quite long. We act according to the rule “two steps forward – one step back.”

Essence: We do not refuse to suck before going to bed! Mom feeds, and then offers to listen to a fairy tale or a song, talk, stroke – you need to experiment and find a way to distract.

The baby may ask for a breast again. It is important that entertainment and breastfeeding do not occur at the same time.