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

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СКАЧАТЬ yawning, don’t miss it! Watch for drowsy signs. Try to catch her by the third yawn. Observe your baby’s need-to-go-to-sleep signs as you do her hunger cues. When babies begin to show signs of being tired, there is a 10–15 minute window of opportunity in which they will fall asleep fairly easily. If you miss this window of opportunity, the tired baby may get progressively more cranky and revved up (the proverbial “second wind”). Even though baby is growing more tired by the minute, this cranky mood makes it harder for him to relax and fall asleep.

      sleepy signs

      Get to know your baby’s “I need to go to sleep – NOW!” signals. Here are the usual ones:

       Change in mood. Baby starts to fuss. Some babies become quieter when they are tired or they get less coordinated and their limbs get more “floppy”. A great deal of fussing may mean baby is overtired and you missed the earlier signals.

       Drooping eyelids

       Nodding head

       Glazed look, “zoning out”

       Yawning

       Whimpering

      Toddler signs:

       Rubbing eyes

       Lies on floor

       Grabs favourite sleep prop or “cuddly”

      The reason for figuring out when your baby is most likely to be tired is so that you can work out when to begin your baby’s bedtime ritual (more about bedtime rituals below). If you wait until baby is actually showing signs of being tired and then you give him a bath, put on his pyjamas, feed him, and rock him to sleep, the tired time will be over and baby will be revved up and ready to rock and roll for another hour. A better strategy is to begin the bedtime routine twenty or thirty minutes before the expected tired time. That way, baby will be feeling sleepy just as you get to the part of the bedtime routine when he is supposed to fall asleep. What’s more, since sleepy feelings begin to creep over baby as you go through the bedtime ritual, he will eventually learn to associate these drowsy feelings with his usual bedtime ritual.

      A prompt response at tired times is especially important in energetic, alert babies and toddlers who fight sleep. The baby or child who is tired but who is resisting going to sleep is trying to tell you, “I don’t know how to relax. Please help me!” The longer he fights it, the harder it gets. If you can jump in and ease baby off to sleep before he starts to put up a fight, he will go to sleep more easily and stay asleep longer. He will also learn to associate these first signs of being tired with going to sleep immediately – both at naptime and at nighttime.

       As soon as he seems tired, I pick up on his cues. I talk very softly, hold him, feed him, rub him (but not in a stimulating way), and gradually lower my voice and slow down my lullaby. This is his cue that sleep is expected to follow.

Charting your baby’s tired times. On the chart below, write down baby’s tired time every evening for one or two weeks. Do you see a pattern? Does your baby get sleepy around the same time every night, give or take 15–30 minutes? In our experience, most babies have their natural sleepy time between 6:30 and 7:30pm if they routinely take a nap in the early afternoon, or around 8:30 or 9 if a late afternoon nap is the norm.

      Or does your baby get sleepy at times that vary by more than an hour? Your baby’s internal clock may not yet have developed a routine sleepy time, especially if he’s still quite young. Or, this may be because baby’s naptimes are not yet consistent. It may also be because your family’s day-to-day schedule is not predictable.

      tired time chart

      Write down your baby’s natural tired times over one week. Tired times are not the times when baby actually falls asleep. They are the times of day when you observe tired behaviour, regardless of whether or not you get baby to sleep at that time.

	Naptimes	Nighttimes
Day 1	_________________________________________________________
Day 2	_________________________________________________________
Day 3	_________________________________________________________
Day 4	_________________________________________________________
Day 5	_________________________________________________________
Day 6	_________________________________________________________
Day 7	_________________________________________________________

      If five out of seven of these times are all within 30 minutes of each other at naptimes and bedtime, then you have likely found a predictable sleepy time.

      Your baby’s predictable Tired Times at this age are:

      _____________________ for naps and _____________________ for bedtime.

      If your chart is not showing you a predictable evening sleepy time after one week of observation, continue charting for another week. Be sure baby’s naps are on a fairly routine schedule. If you still don’t find a routine evening sleepy time, you may need to focus more on nap scheduling. In that case, read “Naptime Parenting”, chapter 9, now. It takes effort to get baby on a nap schedule. It may be easier to let baby nap whenever he happens to, but in order to get a predictable sleepy time in the evening baby needs to take naps at predictable times as well, most of the time.

      Changing your baby’s tired time. If you have determined your baby’s tired time is around 7:30pm, and you want baby to have an early bedtime, then you’re all set. But what if your baby is happily wide awake at 7:30pm, at 8:30pm, even at 9pm? What if your baby doesn’t act tired until 10pm? You can either accept this and help baby fall asleep at his natural time, or you can try to change it. If you want your baby to be in bed earlier in the evening (for whatever reasons), put baby down for a nap earlier in the afternoon. You may enjoy having baby’s company at night, especially if you are away from your baby during the day. In this case, don’t worry about working on an earlier bedtime. What if you would rather have your baby stay up late with you, but baby is always tired by 7:30pm? Again, you can adjust baby’s afternoon naps. We’ll show you how in chapter 9.

      To summarize: find your baby’s predictable tired time, schedule your baby’s naps if needed to get a more predictable bedtime, start your bedtime ritual about 30 minutes before tired time, and baby will eventually learn to fall asleep easily and predictably.

       to schedule or not to schedule?

      A week or two of charting baby’s tired times may show you that your baby’s tired times are more predictable than you thought. Or it may show you that your baby’s naptimes and bedtimes depend a great deal on what else is going on СКАЧАТЬ