How to Get your Baby to Sleep through the Night
Dr. Cason on May 15th 2008
I think all parents have this issue at some point in time with one of their children. The key to getting your baby to sleep through the night is their bedtime routine. Some kids will spontaneously start sleeping through the night at about 4 months of age and others need a little coaxing. Parents will think their child wakes up a lot but remember that we all wake up in the middle of the night. We just usually go back to sleep. Your baby is probably arousing at a normal rate but then failing to put her self back to sleep on her own.
Most children who can’t put themselves back to sleep probably have a sleep prop. A sleep prop is anything she requires to help her fall asleep. It could be a bottle or pacifier or just being rocked to sleep. Remember that when we fall to sleep with something – “a prop”- then we need that same prop to be present to fall asleep again. When she wakes up and it’s not there then she’ll start to cry until it is offered again. So you see it’s really not unreasonable for her to be crying. It’s just what she been taught.
I ran across a good explanation once. They explained that it was like us falling asleep with our favorite pillow. If we were to wake up in the middle of the night and find our pillow was gone, we’d be up and aroused looking for it. If someone quickly gave us our pillow when we stirred, we would roll over and go back to sleep. But if it wasn’t replaced then we’d be tossing and turning and really mad. But what if we never went sleep with it in the first place? We’d quickly adapt and soon falling asleep and staying asleep without a pillow would feel normal to us.
So the first thing to do is eliminate the bed time props. For a lot of babies this is a bottle, whether it be held by a parent or placed in bed, an infant gets used to the drowsy comfortable feeling of a full tummy and links this to sleep. To start disassociating feeding with sleeping make sure you don’t give her anything to eat after her bath. Besides you’ll be brushing her teeth and she doesn’t need to have food or milk in her mouth. Then read her a book and put her in her crib while she’s still drowsy but not asleep.
Your night time routine should look like this:
• Dinner
• Playtime (Light playtime – No roughhousing. You don’t want to amp her up!)
• Snack or Bottle
• Bath
• Brush teeth
• Book and Cuddle time
• Bed… night- night lights out!
When she can fall asleep, by herself, in under 5 minutes then you know she has developed the ability to fall sleep on her own. After this occurs, you can let her put herself back to sleep for the rest of the night. Don’t worry about letting her wake up her twin. He’ll get used to it and soon they both will be sleeping through the night. You’d be surprised how quickly kids adapt.
That’s it. There’s nothing special or fancy to it! In reality there is no “best” way to get your child to sleep, there are just different ways. You need to decide what is best for you. Remember it’s a parenting style, not a moral decision. You’ll always find people that agree with your method and others who won’t. All of my children needed help “learning” to sleep through the night.
