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

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СКАЧАТЬ tell game. During the day walk with him from his room into yours and show him how to slip quietly into his special bed without waking you up.

      Here’s how some parents in our practice negotiated with their midnight visitor:

       After we moved, our four-year-old, Josh, wanted to sleep with us all the time. Even after he fell asleep in his own bed, he’d creep in with us at about three o’clock in the morning. Even though we enjoy cuddling with him, especially as we all fall asleep, he’s an after-midnight kicker, and we’d spend most of the nights he was with us crossing our arms over our sensitive body parts. So we made a deal. We told Josh that we loved sleeping with him, but now that he was bigger, we didn’t sleep well when he was in our bed all the time, and this made us tired and grumpy parents. We further explained that we could probably handle feeling that way once a week. So we made up a chart and told Josh that if he stayed in his own bed all night Monday through Saturday, he could sleep with us all night on Sunday. Now Josh is eager to sleep “well” on his own so that we can all enjoy our Sunday night snuggles.

       Weaning off nighttime bottles

       Our two-year-old still insists on a bottle at bedtime and if he wakes during the night. I know this isn’t good for his teeth, but he really seems to need the comfort. I also wish he’d stop needing the bottle during the night. What can I do?

      This is a common dilemma. A toddler who is used to the comfort of sucking on a bottle to get to sleep won’t give this up easily, but it’s true that milk or juice sugar that stay on the teeth at night can cause cavities. In chapter 6 we’ll discuss this situation in detail, but here’s the basic approach we recommend:

       Go sugar free. Slowly dilute the milk or juice with water over a couple weeks until it is all water. If your child clues in to this trick, back off for a few days then continue again. This at least eliminates the risk of cavities.

       Have a bye-bye bottle party. Have a ceremony where you toss the bottles into the outside dustbin, watch the rubbish trucks take it away if possible, celebrate with songs, dancing, cake and presents. Encourage your child that he is all grown up now and tonight will “go night-night as a big boy”. Have a hidden spare bottle handy in case your child decides he doesn’t like this idea come bedtime and his hysterics are beyond what you feel is ok. Some of his presents can be other bedtime props, like a musical stuffed toy, new pillow, or blanket.

       Substitute yourself. You may find that once you’ve taken the bottle away you need to find something to take its place. Your child may declare that that something is you. You may need to spend a few weeks helping your child go to sleep if you feel he needs you.

      If you’re using other substitute props, make sure your child knows how to find them during the night when he wakes up and asks for the bottle.

      If you feel your child really needs the comfort of a bottle with water, that’s okay. You know best when to be rid of the bottle once and for all.

       Becoming a bed hog

       Our thirteen-month-old has been sharing our bed, and up until now it has been great. Lately he has started moving around while he sleeps. It’s like he thinks he owns the bed. My partner and I are starting to feel the effects of a third person in our bed. Help!

      Funny – and not so funny – things happen when baby shares your bed. Three familiar, though sometimes annoying, sleep positions that family-bed babies seem to enjoy are the heat-seeking missile, the starfish, and the H-sleeper.

      The “heat-seeking missile” snuggles comfortably into a parental armpit or a breast and refuses to back off. Like a mother hen, you instinctively put your wing (your arm) over the top of your baby’s head. He may want to stay in touch with, or actually attached to, your warm body all night long. Baby sleeps great, but you may not. No worries, though, about this baby falling out of bed.

      With the “starfish”, baby sprawls his arms and legs out as far as they can go, sometimes stretching out so much they seem to force you right off the bed. Starfish sometimes become thrashers.

      The H-sleeper enjoys physical contact with both parents. He falls asleep between the parents, parallel with their bodies, and then strategically rotates himself until he is perpendicular to the parents, resting his head on one parent and his feet on the other. Isn’t that nice? He loves you both! Again, baby sleeps comfortably that way all night – but you may not, especially if you’re the one getting kicked in the ribs.

      Baby’s head in mother’s armpit.

      Usually when an infant or toddler starts taking over the bed in these positions, dads announce, “It’s time for a big boy bed!” Is Dad right?

      Here are your options. If everybody is sleeping reasonably well, you may be able to laugh this off and hope it’s passing phase. Yet if baby’s nighttime frolicking means baby is the only one who is sleeping well, you need to take some action:

       “Draw the line.” Put a line of pillows between you and your toddler. He gets one-third of the bed space; Mum and Dad get the rest.

       Try Dr Jim Sears’ trick he calls “staying in your own lane”: Jonathon sprawled across the bed with arms stretched out forming the letter H with the three of us. When he was around two years old, I was watching a swimming competition and I was paying attention to the lane dividers that kept the swimmers from swimming on top of each other and it gave me an idea. What if I could keep Jonathon in his own lane in the bed? We had tried pillows but they just took up a lot of room and it was hard to have an entire pillow between him and us. Even though we had a king-size bed they just didn’t seem to do the trick. When I saw these lane dividers in the swimming pool I thought, “hmm, something like that might work” so I went downstairs into our garage and noticed that we had some of those water woggles, long thin cylinders made of firm foam. Using ones that had hollow centres, I slid broom handles in to add some rigidity. After Jonathon fell asleep I placed one on each side of him, each one running the length of the bed, and this worked beautifully. If he started to roll over or rotate sideways the foam was firm enough to keep him from going over it. These were perfectly safe because they were rigid enough so that he didn’t become entangled and light enough that he wouldn’t be hurt if he somehow slipped under. They were also easy to store under the bed when not in use. One point: I don’t suggest using old woggles that have been sitting in the pool in the sun for months because the foam tends to break down and be quite flaky and makes a mess. Go out and get some new ones.

       To give everyone more space, put a twin bed next to your queen- or king-size bed.

       Take bed sprawling as a sign that it’s time to start transitioning baby to his own bed. Dad may be right! (See chapter 7, “Moving Out!”)

       Fear of monsters

       Our three-year-old wakes up yelling about the “monsters” in his room. I try to tell him there really aren’t any monsters and that Daddy has chased the monsters away. Is this the best way to deal with this? I don’t want him to believe that there really are monsters in his room.

      Children’s dreams distort reality, СКАЧАТЬ