Hello and welcome to Sleep Matters with Lucy Wolfe, I am so pleased that you have found me; I can help to transform your disrupted sleep life wherever you are located in Ireland and all around the world. Little ones who are upset should not be alone at any stage and so, in terms of how long should your baby cry, the answer is minimal,” she adds. Know when baby’s tired. Watch for sleep cues like yawning, eye rubbing or crankiness, which may happen around the same time every night. It’s important to put your baby to bed when she’s sleepy but not overtired, since overtired babies have a harder time settling down for sleep and are more likely to sleep fitfully or wake early. While it may seem harsh, CIO is harder on you than on your little one. With consistency (that’s the key!), your baby should begin falling asleep on her own within three to four nights, give or take. Ferber method

As the weeks passed, the sleep routine schedule not only allowed me to be happier and more present with my children and husband, but it allowed me to get to know my youngest son better and understand the 'why' to some of his behaviour. Now that he was having naps (long ones, thank god) and was more rested and happy, it made other issues come to light, such as his sensitivity to certain foods I was giving him. If you’re stressed, anxious and unwell, the baby will tune into it.” Parents, especially mums, she adds, should not be afraid to talk about post-natal depression or feel ashamed to look for help. You can apply the same nighttime sleep training strategy for naps. If you’re trying cry it out or Ferber, keep in mind that after 30 minutes of crying, a good portion of the nap may be gone. So you may want to set a limit on crying (say, 10 or 15 minutes) before trying another method of getting your baby to sleep. How long does sleep training take?But - it is intense - I’ve become so obsessed with the timings of everything, because she now really struggles to fall asleep if overtired and going to sleep even 10 min late can cause loads of crying. Maybe this was always the case and I’m now more aware of what’s going wrong. So this means naps are a bit of a lottery and several times a week we will have horrible screaming nap refusal, but she’s exhausted, and now her sleep anywhere other than the cot is really poor. But when timings are right she will have two beautiful 1.5hr naps in cot and it all feels worth it! Hopefully she’ll fall asleep fast, but if she cries a lot, take her out of the crib for a set amount of time (say, half an hour) and then try again. Lucy Wolfe, HDip RM, MA Sleep Consultant and Co-Creational Relationship Mentor Author of The Baby Sleep Solution, All About the Baby Sleep Solution, Creator of Sleep Through brand, TV Columnist, Writer and Mum of Four I don't think he's ever getting hungry in the night as I always feed him before I actually gets hungry! While some parents worry that some methods might harm a baby's health or create attachment-related issues down the line, research shows that sleep training doesn’t increase the risk of behavioral or emotional problems later in childhood.

From birth you can begin to gently shape your child’s sleep in the first 6 months and implement my effective and caring, percentage of wakefulness approach and from 6 months onwards up to age 6 you can learn all about my stay and support method and sleep guidance that promotes sleeping through the night and napping well by day, when your child is developmentally able to do so. Limit the use of electronic media and television, obviously, in the last hour before bedtime, but also through the course of the day. As parents, we can often rely more heavily on gadgets than we would like and routinely their use derails sleep - cutting short the amount of deep, restoring sleep they have and alerting the waking part of the brain when we want it to slow down. It can be challenging to alter our device use, but a challenge that can pay dividends in terms of sleep improvements.Closer to four and five months of age, she adds, “your baby’s natural bedtime will get earlier and move towards somewhere between 7 and 8pm”.

There’s no one way to sleep train, but many parents find that one or a mix of the following sleep training methods works for their families: Cry it out (CIO) Parents should not leave their child to cry for prolonged periods, says Geoghegan. However, it’s fine to give your baby a brief chance to cry and resettle before attending to them. In my books, I have introduced my ‘Stay-and- Support’ approach with an emphasis on your baby and child’s emotional well-being. This practise has helped thousands of parents and babies around the world achieve better sleep, with most parents reporting improvements within the first 7 days of making the changes. However, O’Reilly says that if at all possible, a bedroom should be a place to sleep. “Keeping it free of too many toys or ‘things to do’ will create a sanctuary and peaceful space for babies and older kids.” As a parent myself, going through the various challenges of parenting, I was disappointed to discover that there were limited resources for struggling parents in the field of children’s sleep. I began to pursue training and certification to enable me to help parents teach their children good sleep hygiene without using controlled crying and cry it out techniques. There is no one solution for any family and the strategies and techniques that I will combine for you individually, will help you become the parent you want to be and enjoy your family as it should be.Re-establish the day time sleep. Sleep issues feed each other. If your child is under 5 and not sleeping well at night time, consider reintroducing the nap in an effort to help them become better rested. Most children up to age 3 will still biologically require a daytime sleep, so help it happen. After 18 months a lot of children will need just one nap and the ideal time for that to happen is from 12 noon onwards. If they are resistant to napping in the cot or bed then I suggest that you just help the nap happen in any way possible - car, buggy, couch. If a nap is not achievable, encourage quiet time instead. Please ensure that quiet time does not include television but rather reading or listening to audio books for example. Anyway, my question is... how will I know if he's genuinely hungry in the night? At 6 months is there w possibility he might actually wake due to hunger? We probably had a couple of months of going in and out to him every few mins at bedtime (usually for max 15 mins?) and then he was great after that at going down and has been ever since. To achieve good sleep, you do not have to give up breastfeeding, room sharing, co sleeping, get rid of dummies for example and you definitely do not have to cry it out.

I don't want to confuse him so that he can be fed sometimes and not others but I also don't want to feed him unnecessarily because how things are right now is not good for any of us. She also says “some naps are better than no naps” – so if child will only sleep in the buggy or car, go with that and you can work on other elements later. Become as informed as you can be - then begin to lay a solid foundation - discover your child’s language for sleep - and attempt naps by day before they become overtired.

Frequently Asked Questions

Know the times that your baby naps and try to plan your outings to accommodate these, she suggests. “Baby can nap lying flat in the buggy in a busy coffee shop or out for a walk. If your baby only naps in a quiet dark room then he/she will have difficultly ‘napping out’ or in a bright noisy creche as they grow older.”