Title: And to All A Good Night: Fresh Thinking on Babies and Sleep
1And to All A Good NightFresh Thinking on Babies
and Sleep
- Presented by Ann Douglas, author of Sleep
Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler
2Whats new and fresh?
- Prenatal preparation for the sleep-deprivation of
early parenthood. - A family-focused approach to sleep.
- No one-size fits-all sleep solution.
- Sleep education and sleep choices to allow
parents to feel more in control of their sleep
situation. - Minimizing sleep guilt.
3 - Providing information about sleep norms so
parents wont feel so much pressure/guilt to make
the right sleep choices, starting right after the
birth. - Encouraging parents to tap into their support
systems as an alternative to solving their
newborns sleep problem -- something that might
not actually be a problem.
4Sleep Education An Important Aspect of
Preparation for Parenthood
- Childbirth and postpartum professionals have an
important role to play in preparing parents-to-be
for the realities of life after baby. Sleep
education is part of this preparation. - Parents dont feel prepared.
- Dana Breen The hurdle model of childbirth.
- Not discussed seriously.
- Difficult to fully convey the realities of new
parent exhaustion.
5Sleep Stats
- Late pregnancy 97 percent of pregnant women not
sleeping well - New parent sleep debt 550 hours during babys
first year - 80 percent of parents of babies up at least once
in the night
6What the numbers dont tell you
- Dont know when sleep is going to be interrupted
next. - Conflicting advice from the experts.
- Unsolicited advice.
- Hard on parenting self-esteem.
7 - Brain feels foggy and sluggish communication
skills plummet problem-solving and creativity
skills nose-dive more irritableless energy
difficulty sleeping physical complaints (hunger,
gastro complaints, itching/burning eyes,
increased susceptibility to illness) more
emotional increased risk of PPD.
8Sleep is the new sex
- Conflict over who is and isnt pitching in enough
at night can be more fuel for the relationship
fire. - Rethinking whats fair in terms of sharing
sleep resources. - Playing to one anothers strengths.
9Sleep Strategies Maximizing Opportunities for
Sleep
- Sleep when the baby sleeps
- Call for backup
- Practice good sleep hygiene (sleep environment,
food/alcohol/coffee, relaxation techniques),
boost energy with fitness and nutrition so that
you feel better physically even if youre not
getting as much sleep as youd like.
10Sleep Science Babies and Sleep
- Newborns sleep 16-18 hours/day in 6-7 separate
chunks of time. - They spend more than half of their sleep time in
active sleep -- the type of sleep which processes
information that has been learned. - They are light sleepers, so they tend to wake up
easily and often. - They need to go back to bed about 2 hrs. after
they wake up. - Their daytime naps are very short initially -- 30
to 45 minutes on average.
11 - Moms of breast-fed babies and bottle-fed babies
get roughly the same amount of sleep in each 24
hour period. - A newborns longest period of sleep -- 3 to 5
hours -- is likely to occur during the evening
hours. - Around age three to four months, a predicable
body temperature rhythm begins to help regulate
the babys sleep patterns. - By age six months, 50 to 75 percent of babies are
sleeping through the night. Some babies who were
sleeping through the night start waking in the
night again as they pass through various
development stages, if they are scared or ill,
etc. Not a one-way street.
12Nap numbers
- 76 of newborns have three or more naps/day.
- Age six months 2 naps/day is the norm.
- Age 12-17 months one nap/day.
- Only 13 of four year olds are still having a nap.
13Tired vs. overtired
- Babies need 14-15 hours sleep/day to feel their
best, according to the National Sleep Foundation,
but typically get 13 hours/sleep day (age birth
to six months) or 12 hours sleep/day (age six
months to 12 months). - An over-tired baby is hard to settle down to
sleep and will tend to wake up in the night or
too early in the morning. Sleep begets sleep.
14Top Eight Sleep Strategies for Parents of Babies
- Learn to spot the difference between tired and
overtired. - Teach your baby the difference between night and
day -- and expose your baby to sunlight to help
cue his biological clock. - Establish a predictable, soothing bedtime
routine. - Let your newborn practice falling asleep on his
own. - Learn how to differentiate between the normal
noises your newborn makes and bonafide pick me
up noises.
15 - Treat daytime sleep as a priority.
- Recognize when your child no longer needs to be
fed in the night and use non-food methods of
soothing your child back to sleep so that hell
be more likely to sleep through the night. - Remain as calm as possible when youre dealing
with sleep issues. If you become stressed, your
child will pick up on how youre feeling and his
own feelings of stress will escalate.
16Key points to discuss with parents
- How does sleep deprivation affect a
sleep-deprived parent's physical, emotional, and
cognitive functioning? how can it impact on the
sleep-deprived parent's relationship with other
people and his/her enjoyment of parenthood?)
- The basic facts about sleep and sleep deprivation
(e.g., what are "normal" sleep patterns for
newborns and their parents? how do these patterns
typically evolve during baby's first year of
life?)
17 - The importance of doing an inventory of your
sleep resources (all the family and community
resources you can tap into in order to maximize
your opportunities for sleep?)
- Ways other people can help you to be a
better-rested parent, even before your baby
starts sleeping through the night - The importance of taking good care of your body
when you're sleep deprived (healthy foods, water,
exercise, stress relief)
18 - The importance of having developmentally-appropria
te sleep expectations of your child - The importance of having some preliminary
discussions with your partner (if you have a
partner) about parenting styles and what approach
the two of you intend to take to sleep training
- (e.g., a formal sleep training approach and, if
so, which one vs. a more laid-back approach to
sleep)
19No one-size-fits-all sleep solution
- Every familys sleep situation is unique.
- While parents should be encouraged to think
through their sleep options ahead of time, its
important to encourage them to remain open-minded
about their options. (Similar mindset to writing
a birth plan.)
20 - Accept the fact that the sleep choices that
parents make in any given situation may be
different than the choices that you might make
under very similar circumstances.
- Encourage parents to research important safety
information and child development information
that relates to sleep issues such as sleep
training.
21What makes each situation unique
- parents should be encouraged to consider their
various sleep training options (options that
well review during this workshop), taking into
account such factors as - their childs age and stage of development (and
which sleep-training methods are considered to be
most age-appropriate for children at that stage),
- their childs temperament,
- any special circumstances that relate to their
child (adoption, special health concerns/issues), - the day-to-day realities of their familys
situation (living arrangements, shift work,
history of losses or other issues) -
22 - whether they are dealing with
- o a sleep concern (the parent is feeling worn
down), - o a sleep problem (the parent is feeling a sense
of urgency to resolve the problem) or - o a sleep emergency (the situation has reached
the crisis point and things need to change right
away).
23The Major Sleep-Training Methods
- Bedtime fading
- Gentle sleep solutions (e.g. no-cry)
(intermittent reinforcement schedule) - Extinction with parental presence
- Pick up, put down (positive routine-stimulus
control technique) - Modified cry-it-out (graduated extinction,
controlled crying) - Cry-it-out (extinction)
- Scheduled awakenings
- Scheduling
24Its Not All About the Baby
- Sleep solutions should ideally take a
family-centered approach, taking into account the
needs of themselves as well as their newborn. - Parents instinctively want to do the best
possible job of nurturing their baby, but they
also have a hard-wired biological need for sleep. - Sleep solutions should ideally involve looking at
the best use of the family's sleep resources.
25Healthy sleep choices
- Sleep guilt"
- The good baby, bad baby trap
- The black-and-white thinking around the sleep
training debate (and how this leads to divisions
among new parents) - Why it's important for parents to research their
sleep options, just as they research their
childbirth choices. Give parents tools for making
sense of conflicting/contradictory information. - There's no one-size-fits-all sleep solution, and
parents really need to feel comfortable with the
sleep choices that they make for their baby.
26Find out more
- Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and
Preschooler by Ann Douglas - sleepsolutionsbook.com
- motherofallblogs.com
- anndouglas.typepad.com/books