Summer used to be my favourite time of year. Late nights, barbecues with friends, lazy mornings. Since becoming a mother, my ideal summer has changed somewhat. Now I have the challenge of a child struggling with sleep. Here are my best 3 tips to help you survive the summer months and promote the best opportunity for sleep for your entire family.
Sleeping in the summer months can be tricky for everyone.
1. Darkness
Our bodies need darkness to produce melatonin. Melatonin is what makes us sleepy. During the summer months, it can still be light outside making it more difficult for your child to fall asleep. Try your best to use thick, block-out or blackout curtains in your child’s bedroom. This is also really important in the morning when the level of melatonin in our bodies is at it’s lowest. The smallest amount of sunlight can wake your child ready to start the day!
2. Temperature
If our bodies are too hot, we find it difficult to sleep. If your child has been running around, offer a lukewarm bath or shower to help drop their body temperature a little. Provide quiet, calm activities before bed.
If you live in a hot house like me, dress your little one in very light layers when they first go to bed. Later in the evening, you may want to add another layer over the top, because as the temperature drops in the early hours, you do not want your child to wake feeling cold. It can be really tricky getting the right balance so sometimes it is a bit of trial and error. For safe wrapping, visit here.
3. Avoid Over-Scheduling
This is a busy time for many families. With so many social events filling up our diaries, it can be hard to say ‘no’. I say everything needs to be in balance. If your child has had a late night or a day of missed naps, then the next day, try to stay closer to home and offer the best opportunity to catch up on lost sleep.
Our children’s bodies do need a certain amount of sleep each day. If that is reduced, then they carry a “sleep debt”. If that sleep debt if not addressed quickly, it will impact on your child’s sleep permanently. A child not sleeping is one tired and cranky household!!
The overall message here is be consistent with bedtime as much as possible. If there has been any missed sleep, make sure your child has a chance to catch up. Make sure your child’s environment is perfect to promote the best quality sleep possible.
Many of you twice year need to prepare yourselves for daylight savings. As an adult this can be hard enough, but trying to tackle it with a child’s sleep schedule to consider and be a nightmare!! Here are some quick tips to help with the transition…
Surviving Daylight Savings!
Daylight Savings
For a gentle approach, adjust the time by 10-30minute increments every 3 days. Depending on your child’s ability to stay awake without becoming too overtired will determine the speed at which you make the change. Every child is different so you need to watch and observe. This gentle time change applies at the beginning and end of daylight savings.
If you are brave, change to the new time immediately but this can cause overtiredness. For a little while you child might protest at sleep time or cat nap. Hang in there and don’t panic. The more you try to “fix” things, the more problems you could create.
Watch for tired signs especially at night. An overtired child will have difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep. Due to the change in sleep schedule, your child may experience night wakings for a short period too. Again, don’t panic! Let things rectify on their own.
Be patient. Change takes time. It may take up to a month for your child’s body to fully adjust.
Early morning wake ups. Try really hard to keep your little one in bed until a reasonable wake up time. These wake ups may be the most difficult so hang in there, it will get better.
Use light and darkness to your advantage. Use lots of sunlight and fresh air to stay awake, use darkness to get to sleep.
The biggest thing to avoid for yourself and for you child is to constantly refer to the “old time”. The quicker you move to the new time the better it will be for all of you.
Janelle Jeffery Child Sleep Consultant for Sleepytime.
Have you felt like you have tried every method ever invented?
When I speak with frazzled parents about their child’s lack of sleep, I am always asked “I have tried everything and nothing has worked so why are you different?” and, “Do you practice “cry it out?”
I have considered this a lot lately because the “method” you use to help a child become an independent sleeper is engulfed in controversy. Everyone has an opinion and it is a polarising subject.
I want to let you in on a secret – it is not the method that is standing in the way of your child’s sleep success.
It doesn’t matter if you use {insert your method here}, they are all going to eventually fail because of this one thing. You haven’t actually addressed the root of the problem. If you don’t understand WHY your child is having difficulty sleeping through the night or is cat napping during the day, then whatever method you apply will not work because you are focusing on the wrong thing.
You sure are feeling frustrated, because you HAVE tried every method ever invented but you still have a child who cannot sleep. How do you solve this? Simple, hire me!
The first step before I write any sleep program is to perform a full sleep assessment. This enables me to establish the cause of your child’s sleep issue or issues. I make those necessary changes first. Next I look at establishing 5 sleep cues to prepare your child for sleep. The very last thing I decide upon is the method to achieve long-term sleep success.
So if you are tired of being tired and actually want to see the light at the end of the tunnel, contact me here. Change is ready for the taking, you just need reach out for my help.
Janelle Jeffery Child Sleep Consultant for Sleepytime
If I buy shoes that are too small for my daughter or push her into activities that she doesn’t enjoy or keep her away from the things that she excels at because it differs from what her peers wear/do/are good at does this mean I’m a good mother? Of course it doesn’t.
It is so easy to see in this example how expecting something from my daughter that doesn’t fit with her own unique comforts, interests, and abilities can begin to harm her physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
I don’t see my role as a loving mother to coerce my daughter into a certain way of being or to tell her what she does and doesn’t need. It is my job to use my mothering instincts to listen very carefully and try all options available to me to create a safe, comforting, loving environment to encourage the optimal development of my little girl.
There is no doubt in my mind that you and all other mothers and fathers out there agree that we would do anything for the best interests of our children.
So why do we throw stones when one parent doesn’t push and force their beautiful baby into the mould that so perfectly fits our own baby – especially when it comes to sleep?
There is so much hate directed towards each other between the Cry-It-Out “dictators” and the Co-Sleeping “hippies”. My problem is not which method is chosen; my problem is why on earth does another baby’s needs bother you so much? (Notice how I said another baby’s needs?)
I’m not a sleep expert but I’ve tried almost all options available to me in order to help my baby girl to have restful sleep. We have all heard the horror sleep stories and I’m at neither extreme of the sleep scale but I suppose you could say my bub was closer to the no-sleep end of the spectrum.
Like some of us, I like a certain level of control in my life, and as diligent pregnant women I casually researched and talked to other mums to get advice and ideas on how to best raise our child. Before she was born, my husband and I compared notes and had a general idea of which direction we would want to take and how we could best implement these ideas.
Then our beautiful baby was born. I cuddled and hugged her, fed her to sleep, I laid down with her, I kept her by my side in a bassinet, I jumped at every murmur to feed, and cuddle and let her know I was with her. My husband stayed awake with us at every feed and every wake-up to let her know that he was there also. I carried her against me as much as I could.
She hated it. She cried and cried. Didn’t sleep in the car, didn’t sleep in the carrier, didn’t sleep in the pram, didn’t sleep in my bed, didn’t sleep in my arms. The only time she did sleep in any of these locations is only after crying until she was exhausted.
I thought I was doing the right thing by holding her close, showing I was there for her and living with her on me. It’s what she was used to after being in my belly for over 9months, it’s what she is supposed to want – right?
As a Registered Nurse and a Kinesiologist, ruling out a medical issue was first on the list. So if not that, then what was it? Why did she not do as the books said she would do? Why did she not like what the ‘experts’ said she would like?
It’s because she isn’t the print within the pages of a book, she isn’t a science experiment, she isn’t your child or your friend’s child, she is my child and she likes what she likes, and doesn’t like what she doesn’t like.
After 4 months of experimenting and trial and error, my husband and I were none-the wiser on what to do. We tried to co-sleep, we tried rocking her to sleep, we tried having her next to us in a bassinet, we tried having her outside our bedroom door, tried her in her own room and then briefly tried the cry-it-out method with friends and family there to monitor it with us – nothing worked and she would just cry herself to sleep.
It was heartbreaking – not to mention exhausting – to see our little girl struggle to get to sleep no matter what we did.
As corny as this may sound I couldn’t believe that I was unable to love-her to sleep like I was yearning to. She was, and still is such a bright, attentive, curious and happy baby by day but at naptime and bedtime it was an hour/s long process.
At this point, as with most 4-month olds, her development reached a new milestone, meaning her already short naps were getting less frequent and she began waking up more at night.
We knew it was time to get professional customised support but I was terrified of calling a sleep consultant.
I thought that I would have to re-live the cry-it-out torture but the thought of continuing to pace and rock my little girl to sleep while she cried and fought sleep for 40 minutes (after an hour-long breastfeed to get her sleepy) and then starting that whole process again after she woke 15minutes later pushed my sleep-deprived mind into making that call, booking that skype chat and listening to what our consultant, Janelle had to say.
Janelle was so thorough and created such a specific and personalised plan for our girl that I felt that maybe she could help us. I was doubtful that such a simple process could work seeing as I felt like I’d tried everything already, however we completed the program and it worked!
I cannot explain how it worked, other than seeing for myself that by rocking her in my arms I was assuming that she needed me to fall asleep, I was trying to make her fit into a mould of what I thought a baby’s sleep time should be like, but it turned out that I was hindering her and not meeting her unique needs.
I didn’t just learn how to help my daughter to sleep; I let go of my guilt and assumptions and let my daughter be her. I accepted her for what she needed from me and for what she didn’t. After changing my approach, she fell asleep within a fraction of the time; she was being put in bed awake and falling asleep on her own.
Nowadays my girl is 18 months old and still whines on falling asleep it’s just her way.
I’ve interrupted her whining-to-sleep process and asked if she was ok and she said “yes” and if she wanted me to leave and she said “yes”.
She now sleeps peacefully in the car, carrier, pram and bed but still doesn’t like the stimulation of physical contact when going to sleep. Luckily she makes sure she gets her fill of kisses and cuddles while she is awake!
Kate Lethbridge – Guest Blogger for Sleepytime
Kate Lethbridge is a Registered Nurse, Holistic Kinesiologist, Mind Body Medicine practitioner and mother who has a passion to facilitate others to achieve their biggest goals one-by-one by helping her clients become their ultimate self physically, mentally and emotionally.
For more about Kate and her services visit the following pages:
All opinions represented within this article relate to the best interests of the author, her family and her child – please make your own health care choices are based on the best interests of your own child/ren and family. Most of all, please respect the needs of other babies and don’t throw stones at their mums.
Sleep is a very complex issue. Just when you think you have this gig sorted, your child begins to wake up again. There can be many explanations for this but sometimes the simplest answer can solve the problem. Is your child getting cold?
With summer gone, autumn brings unpredictable weather. Some nights it’s hot and you’re sweating, other nights you contemplate getting the electric blanket out.
As adults, we can regulate our temperature pretty well. When falling asleep we may have the fan on, then somewhere during the night we turn it off and pull the blankets up. Our children cannot do this for themselves. Keeping a regulated room temperature throughout the entire night is difficult and usually impossible to achieve. Here are some tips to help with the change in weather to prevent those 2am wake ups.
1. Use a sleeping bag but now increase the tog (blanket weight). Most sleeping bag companies will give you a guide as to what sleeping bag to use for each bedroom temperature. Not all houses are the same so choose the right one for your environment.
2. Choose what you dress your child in for sleep carefully. Choosing the correct sleeping bag tog is important but so is what you clothe your child in. Though the aim is prevent your child from waking up from the cold, you also need to make sure you are not over heating them either. Layers and full-length pyjamas will be needed soon.
3. If it is hot when your child first goes to bed, put a fan on. When it is time for you to go to bed, turn the fan off. Leaving the fan or air conditioner running all night will wake your child because they will get a chill.
4. If it is going to be a cooler night, also consider safely tucking in a lightweight wrap/blanket over your child when it is time for you to go to bed. Only use cotton or muslin wraps that are breathable as many other wraps can cause over-heating. Babies control their temperature through the face so it is vital that you follow all the recommendations for safe sleeping here to prevent the increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
So preparing your entire family for the cooler weather can prevent very early morning wake ups. Sometimes though it is a bit of trial and error.
