The Baby Sleep Book: How to help your baby to sleep and have a restful night. Martha Sears

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СКАЧАТЬ rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_659c5b29-e79e-57dd-a10b-8a012a1f5060">page), anticipate it, get into the bedtime routine early, set the stage for sleep (review page), and do this consistently night after night. You may also need to eliminate any afternoon naps (see “Getting Baby to Nap at Predictable Times”, page). (See related situations, “Establish a Set Nap Schedule”, page.)

      Also, take inventory of what else is going on in your family. Does your child miss you during the day and want to make up for it at night? Are changes in your routine, such as a move, a change in childcare providers, or the arrival of a new baby, upsetting your child? Some children don’t want to go to bed because they are afraid of going to sleep. Others resist bedtime because they don’t want to be separated from their parents or because they want more “quality time” with their parents. In our family we noticed that the busier and more preoccupied we were during the day, the more our children lobbied for quality time at night.

      You know that your son needs to get to bed earlier so that he can get enough sleep. And you and your partner may need some couple time in the evening. So how do you take what you have figured out about why your child is resisting bedtime and use this insight to get him to sleep earlier?

      If there are stressful situations that make it hard for your child to sleep, try to remedy them. Make an effort to spend quality time with your child at times other than bedtime. Encourage lots of active play, so your child really is tired at night. Turn off the television.

      Plan ahead for an earlier bedtime. Start your winding-down-for-bed routine earlier. Have your child take a bath and get his pyjamas on earlier in the evening. Then at least he is ready for bed, and you don’t have to hurry through the whole routine when you are both tired and cranky. Then use the time between bath and bed for quiet games and other activities that you do together.

      It may be that your child is just not ready to go to sleep before 10pm. Throughout this book we have stressed the importance of earlier bedtimes, especially for infants and children. Yet, an early bedtime may not work well in your family. With today’s busy schedules, parents may not have much time with their children during the day. As a result, children demand more attention from their parents in the evening and balk at bedtime. If your child is, on the whole, well rested (maybe he’s taking a long afternoon nap that helps him stay awake at night), a later bedtime may be more realistic. When your child goes to bed is not as important as going to bed at the same time from one night to the next.

       Wakes up too early

       Our almost three-year-old wakes up at 5am to play. He’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to go, but I’m not.

      Some children are like roosters. They wake up and are ready to go with the first ray of sunlight on their little faces. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get up at the crack of dawn.

      Put blackout curtains on the windows in your child’s room. This should keep the little rooster asleep for an extra hour or two. But you will probably have to let him stay up an hour later at night. To do that he may need a slightly later nap. In other words, everything gets pushed forward clockwise – later rising, later nap, and later bedtime. You have to decide if you want more time for yourself in the morning or in the evening. You won’t get both.

      If Dad gets up early, your toddler can tag along with him while he does all the guy things – shower, shave, dress, fix breakfast – while you get longer to sleep. It’s a good father/son “alone together” time.

      If that’s not going to happen, you can get up and lie with your toddler on the couch – while he plays quietly, you can snooze or at least be horizontal long enough to feel more rested once the clock says it’s a more reasonable hour. By modelling that it’s still sleepy time for you, your toddler will get the message that it’s a good idea to play quietly. Of course this assumes that your house is thoroughly childproofed, the doors to outside are locked, and any off-limit areas are gated off. Even though most youngsters won’t wander all over the house when they could be by you, you’ll rest easier knowing he won’t get in trouble if you really doze off. Dr Bob’s partner positioned her toddler on the couch in a way that he’d have to crawl over her to get down, which meant she’d know if he was on the move.

      Place a child safety gate in your child’s doorway. Set up a water bottle and small snack (something non-chokable) on your child’s nightstand before you go to bed. Teach your child to play and eat quietly and safely in his room when he wakes. You can even set an alarm clock and tell him he can call for you when the alarm goes ding. Even better is a music player with a timer that you can set to come on with your child’s favourite music (a regular alarm buzzer may be too scary).

       Wakes up to play

       Our eighteen-month-old baby sleeps in a cot next to us and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night eager to play. It’s cute, but we’re not in the mood to play at 3am. How can we stop this habit?

      First, you can be encouraged that this is usually just a phase as baby discovers new milestones. It often passes within a few weeks. Despite this, your toddler needs to learn that nighttime is for sleeping, not for playing. Here’s how we discouraged middle-of-the-night playmates. When our toddler was sleeping close to us and woke us up, we acknowledged her presence but then told her “time to sleep”. Then we pretended to go back to sleep. If we “played dead” long enough, she would decide that it wasn’t very interesting to be awake in the dark, and she would go back to sleep. If baby protests this silent treatment, you can cuddle her close to you (use a firm hand) and repeat the sleep cue: “time to sleep” or “sleepy-sleepy”. Or roll over and lie with your back to baby. Most babies eventually give up and after a few nights, go back to sleep easily.

      If this phase lasts too long, and is obviously not going away, in the interest of letting one of you actually get to stay asleep, the one who is feeling generous can get up and walk or rock baby back to sleep. Don’t turn on any lights (there will be enough “night light” coming in to find your way around). After she gets bored she’ll be ready to go back to sleep. Then you can both make your way back to her cot, or your bed.

       Discouraging the midnight visitor

       Our two-year-old comes into our room, where he used to sleep, at all hours of the night. How can I get him to stay in his room short of locking him in, which I obviously don’t want to do?

      Like salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn, children often naturally gravitate back to their preferred sleeping place. Those middle-of-the-night visits, though disrupting, are a usual developmental stage, especially if your child is making the transition from sleeping in your room to sleeping solo in his own. Here’s how to give your child extra nighttime security without disrupting your sleep:

       Have an open-door policy, but with rules. Put a futon, mattress, or a cute sleeping bag at the foot of your bed and market this as his “special bed”. Then show and tell him this rule: “You can come into Mummy and Daddy’s room at night if you need to and sleep in your special bed, but you must tip-toe in as quietly as a mouse and not wake up Mummy and Daddy. Mummy and Daddy need their sleep, otherwise we will be cranky the next day. And a cranky Mummy and Daddy are no fun to be with …”

       Try not to view this nighttime visit as bad behaviour. It is natural and normal. It will diminish in time without you even needing to discourage it.

       To reinforce both your availability and the message that nighttime is when everyone СКАЧАТЬ