And to All A Good Night: Fresh Thinking on Babies and Sleep - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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And to All A Good Night: Fresh Thinking on Babies and Sleep

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Presented by Ann Douglas, author of Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler ... An over-tired baby is hard to settle down to sleep and will ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: And to All A Good Night: Fresh Thinking on Babies and Sleep


1
And to All A Good NightFresh Thinking on Babies
and Sleep
  • Presented by Ann Douglas, author of Sleep
    Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler

2
Whats 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.

4
Sleep 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.

5
Sleep 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

6
What 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.

8
Sleep 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.

9
Sleep 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.

10
Sleep 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.

12
Nap 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.

13
Tired 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.

14
Top 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.

16
Key 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)

19
No 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.

21
What 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).

23
The 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

24
Its 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.

25
Healthy 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.

26
Find out more
  • Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and
    Preschooler by Ann Douglas
  • sleepsolutionsbook.com
  • motherofallblogs.com
  • anndouglas.typepad.com/books
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