Are you getting enough Zzzz's?

It’s not a secret, my kids are fantastic sleepers. They sleep 12 hours at night and take a 2-3 hour nap during the day. I’ve heard many times how lucky I am that my kids sleep so well and frankly luck has nothing to do with it. I am a firm believer in sleep training your children. By sleep training I absolutely do not mean to let your child scream in their bed for an ungodly amount of time.  I simply mean to teach your baby or child how to go to sleep on their own and how to self soothe if they wake up in the middle of the night.

Recently, one of my past doula clients (and now my great friend) had asked for my advice about helping her daughter become a better sleeper. I sent her a quick e-mail about the techniques I used with my kids. She began implementing some of my strategies into her daughter’s bedtime routine and was having positive results. She emailed me a few days later and wrote:

“Vicki-

Your sleep advice is going viral. I have had so many people asking me to forward it to them. It looks like I wasn't alone!”

After some prompting from my friend I decided to post my advice here on my blog. So here it is:

I want to warn you that this is not fun but your child won’t be scarred from it and it will benefit her greatly in the end. It'll take about three days/nights and then she will get the hang of it. But it'll be a tough few days for you.

Before you start your child’s "sleep training" make sure that she is healthy and not constipated.

The major problem I am seeing is that children can't self soothe. I use a modified version of Ferber Method and it worked for me.

1. Have a bedtime routine such as bathing, reading stories, praying and cuddling. Do the same thing every night so it signals to your child that it’s time for bed.  If your child is still young, nurse/feed your child a bottle before bed but try to keep her drowsy instead of sleeping.

2. Put her in bed drowsy. She will cry, scream, kick, throw pacifiers out and be mad. It's ok!!

3. Let your child cry for about 5 minutes. Then when you go into her room, DONT pick her up and DONT talk to her. Just lay her down, give her the pacifier, you can rub her belly or cheeks and then walk back out of her room. This teaches her that you are always there and that she’s not abandoned but she also is forced to learn how to soothe herself.

4. Increase the amount of time that you allow her to cry each time you leave her room. I usually increase by 5 minute increments but if that doesn’t work do three minutes or whatever you are comfortable with.

5. Continue this until she either goes to sleep or it's been 1-2 hours and you can't take it anymore. After you hit that 1-2 hour mark, go ahead and do whatever works to get her to sleep and try again the next day. You will feel like this is never ending but every day she should get better.

6. Babies really like white noise so I always have a white noise machine in their room to help them sleep better. Also, during the screaming fits I will run the vacuum or hair dryer outside their bedroom door. The white noise really helps them soothe themselves.

7. If you feel like you are going to lose your mind, its normal. Sit on your porch or put ear buds in while she screams so you don’t go insane.

If your child is not sleeping through the night AND IS OVER 4 MONTHS OLD, do this same thing in the middle of the night too. When she first wakes, let her fuss a little before you go into her room. Then do the increased increments of time every time you go back into her room. If your child is getting enough to eat during the day I highly doubt she needs to eat in the middle of the night, waking up is probably just a habit.

A set nap schedule is also important for babies. My children took 2 naps a day until they were about 13 months old. After that they took one long afternoon nap. I was always flexible with the morning nap but definitely made sure that I was home so the babies could sleep in their cribs in the afternoon. If your child doesn’t like to nap in their crib, you may have to do the same sleep training that you do at night until they get accustomed to sleeping in their bed.

It'll be really tough on you for about 3 days but honestly once they learn how to sleep, your child will give you a good 12+ hours of sleep at night and a nice nap during the day.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!