Will dream feed help baby sleep longer

What Is Dream Feeding? And How Do I Dream Feed? – Happiest Baby

By Dr. Harvey Karp, MD, FAAP

Newborn babies eat a lot. Breastfed infants eat about every two to three hours and formula-fed babies hit the bottle every three to four hours…and that doesn’t stop when bedtime calls. In fact, bottle-fed babies often continue night feedings until they’re around 6 months old, whereas breastfed babies may continue up to a year. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing you can do to tame night-waking. If your little one wakes up hungry each night, it’s smart to increase daytime milk (research shows that infants who received more milk or solid feeds during the day are less likely to feed at night) and boost their evening calories by way of a dream feed. Think of a dream feed as topping off your car’s gas tank...so there's no need to refuel during the journey ahead. Offering your baby a dream feed will eliminate—or at least delay—one of the top reasons babies wake through the night: a rumbling tummy.

What is dream feeding?

Dream feeding is when you rouse your baby—without fully waking them up—to feed them one more time before you turn in for the night. Babies who go to sleep between 6pm and 8pm often wake out of hunger in the middle of the night. But research has shown that sneaking in an extra feed between 10pm and midnight can reduce night wakings, helping babies stay asleep until a more “reasonable” time of the morning. This can become part of your little one’s regular sleep schedule.

How do I dream feed?

The goal of a dream feed is to offer your little one more meal before you hit the hay, so that you and your baby’s schedule sync better…and you both sleep better. Ready to try it? Follow these steps:

Step 1: Gently take your baby out of the bassinet or crib between 10pm and 12am, or whenever when you go to bed. Keep the room dim and quiet, except for white noise. Doing this during Baby’s more active REM sleep is ideal. During REM sleep your baby may flutter their eyelids, make little squeaks and squawks, or move around more than usual.
Step 2: Keep your baby swaddled. There’s no need to unswaddle—or change your baby’s diaper—if they’ll take the feed that way and their diaper isn’t soiled. (If your baby is super sleepy, you may need to rouse them a bit by gently tickling their toes.)
Step 3: Touch Baby’s cheek with your breast or bottle. Placing your breast or bottle on your baby's cheek or lower lip will wake up their rooting reflex and get your baby to start eating.
Step 4: Offer a brief feed. Encourage nursing for 5 to 10 minutes on each side. For bottle-fed babies, try for about 3 ounces.
Step 5: Burp your baby. Many parents ask: Do you burp a baby after a dream feed? and the answer is always yes. You want to burp a baby after a dream feed—or any feed—before putting them back down on their back.

How to get a baby back to sleep after a dream feed:

Oftentimes, a baby who has just enjoyed a dream feed can be returned to their bassinet with nary a wakeup. But if your little one has woken up during or after a dream feed, you can get them back down with the help of the 5 S’s: Swaddling, Side/Stomach, Shushing, Swinging, Sucking.

First, if you haven’t already, swaddle your baby and put on some rumbly white noise. I recommend playing white noise all night, but you can turn up the volume as you’re putting your baby back down. The most effective white noise for sleep is continuous, monotonous, and at a low-pitch, like my SNOO sounds download or SNOObear, Happiest Baby’s white noise lovey.

At the same time, gentle rhythmic motion can help lull babies to sleep. In fact, a 2019 study in the journal PLOS ONE found that the magical mix of swaddling, white noise, and rocking “evokes an immediate calming response” when caregivers soothe their infants and when they use SNOO, my responsive bassinet. SNOO uses womb-like white noise and motion (and a built-in swaddle!) to quickly settle babies back to sleep after a feed…usually adding sleep for the whole family.

Other time-tested tricks to help a baby sleep after a dream feed include rocking in a rocking chair, walking with your baby in your arms, bouncing on an exercise ball, and offering a pacifier, which fulfills the Sucking portion of the 5 S’s. As an added bonus, research suggests a bedtime paci helps lower the risk of sudden infant sleep death, or SIDS.

As you put your little one back into their bassinet, do my quick wake-and-sleep trick, which teaches your baby to fall asleep on their own. Here’s the gist: Right after you put your baby down, gently rouse them with a gentle tickle on their feet until they barely open their eyes. After a few seconds, they’ll close their eyes again and slide back to sleep. If your little one fusses, pick them up for a feed or a cuddle, then repeat the gentle-tickle-to-wake routine.

Set your baby up for dream feed success:

As I mentioned earlier, the one-two punch of adding daytime calories and dream feeds can really work wonders to help babies sleep longer. Try offering cluster feeds from about 4pm till bedtime. Cluster feeds are a series of quick milky meals given to Baby every one to two hours. They’re meant to load your little one’s system with calories to keep them well stocked with nutrition through the night. At the same time, put your little one down for night-night safely swaddled with your trusted white noise on. Consider this another “dream team” to help Baby sleep better!

Why dream feeds are great for your infant:

A wonderful thing about dream feeding is that doesn’t interfere with your little one’s need to feed at night. Instead, dream feeding simply shifts your baby’s feeding schedule just a bit so that it’s more conducive to your sleep schedule, too. Plus, dream feeding means that…

Your baby will get the extra calories they need to sleep better.
Your baby is eating a meal at a convenient time, so you can sleep longer, too.
You’re not responding to your baby’s crying with food, which is important because reacting to cries with a feed can inadvertently encourage your baby to eat more at night.
Your baby will eat less during the night and therefore be hungrier in the morning, which will boost daytime eating.

Should I wake my baby for a second dream feed?

If your baby frequently wakes around 3:30am despite having an earlier dream feed and using strong, rumbly white noise, consider setting your alarm and giving one more dream feed at 3am. Again, it’s best to keep the lights dim and to not talk or cuddle too much at this hour. You want to be loving when you feed your baby, but you don’t want your little one to think that it’s time to play! The idea is to pick up and feed your little one before they wake you, so you’re giving your baby the nourishment they need, but not rewarding them for waking and crying.

If you must do this early-morning dream feed, every three days, reduce the 3am feed a bit more by giving a little less milk than usual. If you’re nursing, just feed on one side for the second dream feed. If you’re bottle-feeding, you can try doubling the amount of water the formula directions suggest—for just ONE feeding and ONLY for a couple days. This is very important: It’s dangerous to dilute baby formula for meals. It can cause serious health problems. Diluting for this ONE wee-hour feed for a brief period of time is different. The purpose of the extra water is to fill your baby’s stomach with enough ounces, but fewer calories. This can help babies sleep through to morning…when they will be hungry and ready to eat their full bottle again. Again, this is a temporary fix only to be used for the 3am dream feed—and only for a couple of nights.

When should I stop dream feeding?

All babies are different, so there is no specific age recommendation for stopping a dream feed. My general rule is that you can bid adieu to the dream feed 2 to 4 weeks after your baby is sleeping well from the time of your dream feed on through to the morning. (Learn when your baby might start sleeping through the night.) Of course, if the dream feed isn’t working for you, there’s no need to continue!

Final Thoughts on the Dream Feed and Other Sleep Tips

Offering a dream feed to your snoozing baby before you declare “lights out” may give you a chance to catch more precious ZZZs, which, of course, is fantastic! Giving a dream feed can also help train your sweet pea to stay asleep for longer stretches…and that skill can carry over to better night sleeps down the road, too. Beyond dream feeding, if your newborn baby is having difficulty sleeping, you may need a little extra help lulling them to dreamland. This is where I hope SNOO can help exhausted families by automatically soothing fussing with gentle rocking and white noise. You can learn more about SNOO and find other great sleep resources below:

SNOO Success Stories
All About Your Baby’s Wake Windows
What to Do When Your Baby Won't Sleep in a Bassinet
How to Turn On Baby’s “On Switch” for Sleep
Sleep Regression 101

About Dr. Harvey Karp

Dr. Harvey Karp, one of America’s most trusted pediatricians, is the founder of Happiest Baby and the inventor of the groundbreaking SNOO Smart Sleeper. After years of treating patients in Los Angeles, Dr. Karp vaulted to global prominence with the release of the bestselling Happiest Baby on the Block and Happiest Toddler on the Block. His celebrated books and videos have since become standard pediatric practice, translated into more than 20 languages and have helped millions of parents. Dr. Karp’s landmark methods, including the 5 S’s for soothing babies, guide parents to understand and nurture their children and relieve stressful issues, like new-parent exhaustion, infant crying, and toddler tantrums.

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Have questions about a Happiest Baby product? Our consultants would be happy to help! Connect with us at [email protected].

Disclaimer: The information on our site is NOT medical advice for any specific person or condition. It is only meant as general information. If you have any medical questions and concerns about your child or yourself, please contact your health provider.

Why I No Longer Recommend A Dream Feed

What does it mean to give your baby a dream feed and how do you do it? Learn all about the dream feed, why some moms swear by it, how to stop dream feeding, and why I no longer recommend it.

It seems like parents will try almost anything to get their baby to sleep through the night. Sometimes these tips are magical in helping your baby sleep better (hello swaddling!) and other times they are a total waste of time or money.

One of the sleeping tricks I read about in Babywise when I was pregnant with Evelyn was implementing a dream feed. We started it when Evelyn was about 6 weeks old and continued to do it every night until she was 12 weeks.

Looking back, I don’t think it actually helped her sleep at all!

Sleep experts are pretty split on whether to drop a dream feed or keep one as part of your nightly routine. Plenty of sleep books recommend doing them for several months.

I personally don’t recommend keeping a dream feed to clients anymore based on my experience and wanted to share the information so you can make an informed decision for your family.

What is A Dream Feed?

So what is a dream feed exactly?

A dream feed is a way to top off your baby before you go to sleep. Since babies are typically put down for bed between 7 and 8 pm, they get in a good stretch of sleep before their parents go down for sleep.

A dream feed is when a parent goes in before going down for the night—usually between 10 and 11 pm and gives baby one last feeding without waking baby up.

The hope is that this top off will help baby extend their night sleep. Your baby takes the feed while they are asleep or “dreaming” and then goes back down with a full belly.

Mom or dad hits the hay for the night and hopes that baby doesn’t wake up for several hours (or until the morning).

The ideas is that if your baby is sleeping a 4, 5 or 6-hour stretch of sleep at night then a dream feed might help them sleep that stretch during the time that you are also asleep.

Sounds like a dream right?

In theory it makes total sense! But the problem is sleep doesn’t always work that way!

Can A Dream Feed Disrupt Sleep?

Doing a dream feed can actually have the opposite effect on a baby’s sleep, Babies tend to sleep the hardest and the longest in that first sleep cycle. Once they start sleeping longer stretches, they might give you a 5-hour stretch in the first part of the night.

Going in and doing a dream feed can actually disrupt the best stretch of their sleep. By feeding them you are interrupting part of their sleep cycle.

We found when we did a dream feed, we got the same results as when we didn’t do a dream feed. When we fed our daughter at 7 pm and then did a dream feed at 10 pm, she would wake up around 1 am.

When we stopped doing a dream feed and fed her at 7 pm, she still woke up at 1 am.

Filling her with calories at 10 pm didn’t help her 1 am wake ups. Those went away with time and development as she grew! Learn more about how to wean night feedings if you’re struggling!

Dream Feed Pros and Cons

In addition to disrupting a baby’s sleep, another reason I advise parents to stop the dream feed is it doesn’t allow us to focus on other reasons your baby might be waking up in the middle of the night.

Babies often wake up in the middle of the night from being overtired, having inappropriate wake windows during the day, or from having sleep associations like being rocked or nursed to sleep.

When we stop doing a dream feed, we are able to see the whole picture of a baby’s sleep environment and asses if they are truly waking out of hunger.

When to Stop the Dream Feed

When to stop dream feeding is where a lot sleep experts differ. Some people say to continue it up until 9 months old. Others say drop it before your baby turns four months.

We dropped our dream feed around 12 weeks because each time we did it Evelyn took fewer and fewer ounces. Sometimes she would barely take an ounce from the feed, so it became pointless.

The reason some people recommend dropping it by four months is because that is when your baby’s sleeping patterns change, and the 4-month sleep regression often hits.

Around four months old is also when babies start to become more aware of their surroundings. They might start to wake up when you feed them.

If you are doing a dream feed and seeing an improvement in your baby’s sleep, then keep at it. But for many babies, you can stop the dream feed and you’ll get similar results.

How to Stop Dream Feeding

When you’re ready to drop it, it’s a really, really easy feed to drop. Just don’t do it that night!

Take the extra time and try to go to bed a little earlier. We just stopped doing the dream feed cold turkey one night (since she hadn’t been eating much at that time anyway). I was so nervous but she ended up waking at the same time the next morning!

When we have our next baby, I won’t even use a dream feed at all!

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Amy Motroni

I'm Amy and I'm so glad you've stopped by! As a Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant, my goal is to walk you through the process of getting your baby to sleep, so your whole family gets the rest they need!

My blog is full of things to help you celebrate motherhood including baby nursery ideas, sleep schedules and sleep tips, fun printables, baby registry must-haves, and so much more.

How to wake up a baby for feeding and whether it is necessary to wake up a baby in the afternoon

05/29/2020

For any parent, the question of whether to wake up the baby is not easy. On the one hand, there are fears that a child who has been sleeping for a long time will not be able to fall asleep later, and on the other hand, how to raise such an angel who has been put to bed for so long...

so that his sleep is not affected.

Let's start with the smallest children. You've probably heard the phrase "never wake a sleeping baby." But it is not always fair. Some newborn babies wake up on their own for feedings, while others need to be awakened. Whether or not you need to wake your baby depends on their age, weight, and overall health.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends waking your baby for feedings if he sleeps more than 4 hours in the first two weeks of life. On average, a baby needs feeding every 2-3 hours.

Frequent feeding is very important for several reasons:

The baby's stomach is very small, the baby quickly digests breast milk. Faster than a mix. Therefore, physiologically, the child necessarily needs frequent feedings every 2-3 hours.
Babies can sometimes sleep even when hungry, thus malnourished, which affects their development.
After birth, the baby loses 5-10% of its body weight. And in the first weeks he needs to gain weight. Lack of milk or formula slows down this process.
A short interval between feedings helps to maintain lactation. That allows you to avoid problems with a lack of milk in the future.

Tears already signal strong hunger. Therefore, it is better to breastfeed the baby before the baby starts crying. Learn to recognize the early signs of hunger: the baby puts his hand in his mouth, smacks his lips, tossing and turning when he sleeps.

Should the baby be woken up to feed during the day? In general, if an infant sleeps for more than 3 hours in one dream during daylight hours, he must be awakened. Then the mother can feed the already awakened baby. This makes it possible to adjust the work of the biological rhythms of the baby.

How to Wake Up

Help your child gradually fall asleep by stroking their arms, legs or lightly tickling them.
Change diaper. Often this is enough for the baby to wake up and be ready to eat.
Undress and place skin to skin on your chest. You can squeeze a few drops of milk onto your baby's mouth. He will smell and taste it and begin to suck on the breast.
Speak - he will hear your voice and wake up.
Do not turn on bright lights. A dim light is sufficient. The bright light will blind your eyes.
If the baby has attached to the breast but has not begun to suckle, stroke his cheek.

How long to feed

As soon as the baby wakes up and starts to eat, make sure that the feeding is long enough to empty at least one breast. So we will know that he ate hind milk, which is necessary for the growth of the child's body. Some babies take 45 minutes or more to feed one breast, and some do it in 10 minutes.

The sucking reflex promotes falling asleep. Therefore, make sure that the baby does not fall asleep while feeding. If he falls asleep, change position, lift him up to burp, and then start feeding again.

By 6 months you will have a more or less predictable eating schedule. But each baby will have his own. Some of the children eat every 2 hours, and someone is able to stay without food for 3-4 hours by the second month of life. This is especially true for children who are formula fed.

The length of time between feedings increases as the child grows older. By the age of six months, many babies can already go without supplements at night or are able to sleep for longer periods.

If a child wakes up too often after 6 months and asks for food at night, perhaps this is no longer hunger, but a way to relax and fall asleep.

Avoid using a pacifier in the first weeks after delivery. The pacifier helps the child to calm down and prolong sleep. So you may not notice that your baby is hungry. Therefore, start using a pacifier no earlier than 4-6 weeks and when you are lactating.

Should the baby be woken up to feed formula? As with breastfeeding, the newborn needs frequent formula feeding. But the interval will be more than 3-4 hours.

When it is necessary to wake up the child

It is important to wake up the baby in the morning if he has fallen asleep later than 7.00. This is especially true for children who still sleep 1-2-3 times during the day and have already developed a relatively stable routine. So you create the perfect routine in the morning.

After waking up, children need time to work up their fatigue for their next nap, the ideal window for which is around 9 and 1 pm (depending on age).

Therefore, if the baby slept until 8 am, he simply will not be able to fall asleep in his first daytime sleep.

In order for the baby to wake up calmly without tears, you can enter a wake-up ritual. It allows the child to smoothly transition from a sleepy state to wakefulness.

Example of a wake-up ritual:

Open curtains/turn on lights
Welcome words and a kiss
Snacks, nursery rhymes after sleep
Happy song

Then you can get up and start breakfast. For older children, such a ritual is also necessary.

The awakening ritual has different purposes:

Marks the end of sleep,
Teaches a child that everyday sounds are not a reason to wake up,
Helps prevent baby from crying when waking up.

It will also be useful to have a light alarm. If the baby wakes up early, he will stay in bed until he sees the light on the clock.

When to wake your baby up after a nap

Many babies from 4 to 8 months sleep three times a day.

In this mode, it is important to wake up the baby after the third nap no later than 17.00. The duration of this segment is about 45 minutes, but not more than an hour. Then you can easily put the baby to bed by 19 o'clock.

Transition to one nap

At the age of 15-18 months there is a transition to one nap. It can be long and take place in different ways.

For example:

In the morning, the baby falls asleep easily and sleeps up to 2 hours. But then it is difficult to put it in lunch. And by the evening without rest at lunchtime, he is already overworked and falls asleep with difficulty.

So if this is your case, you can pick up the baby after 60-75 minutes. At the same time, move the start of the second sleep 15 minutes later. But if the baby sleeps for 1 hour in the morning and then it’s already difficult to fall asleep a second time, start putting him down only at lunchtime.

One nap after 2 years

Between 2.5-5 years, naps may disappear. Here again, the story described above is often repeated. It seems that the child falls asleep perfectly during the day, sleeps for a long time, but in the evening, laying down is delayed until 10-11 pm. The problem is that getting up early in the morning to the garden usually does not allow you to sleep the necessary 10-11 hours per night. And again, you will have to gradually limit the duration of daytime rest. Wake your baby up after 60 minutes first, then skip the daytime so your baby sleeps better at night.

Keep an eye on your baby while doing this. If he is calm in the evening and falls asleep easily, and wakes up later than 6 o'clock in the morning in a good mood, then you are doing everything correctly.

If you notice excessive moodiness in the late afternoon or regular awakenings too early, then it is worth giving the baby more time to rest at lunchtime.

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how often and how long should sleep, sleep conditions, sleep problems in a newborn

Olesya Ogurtsova

solved the problems with the child’s sleep and sleeps peacefully

Author’s profile

In December 2019, I became a mother for the first time and learned that a baby’s sleep — or rather, its absence — can create problems for the whole family.

To solve them, I had to study a lot of information, spend 15,000 R and an incalculable amount of nerves. But I have walked this path and continue to follow it. Now my son is a year and four months old and it suits me how he falls asleep and sleeps. I’ll tell you about the sleep problems we had and how I solved them.

Why I started doing baby sleep

Newborn babies are said to sleep all the time. My son didn't do that. He could not sleep for a couple of hours in a row, and even throw a tantrum for half an hour when I tried to rock him. Before pregnancy, I told myself that I had no voice and hearing, so I would never sing lullabies. But already on the first night in the maternity hospital, she sang “Tired Toys Are Sleeping”, however, then it didn’t help much.

By the end of the first month of my son's life, I found ways to put him to bed: he fell asleep well only on his chest or in a stroller. My son slept with me on the bed and it was comfortable. I was not afraid that I would crush him, since I have a light sleep and I do not twist at night. At night, he woke up five to seven times, I gave him a breast and he quickly fell asleep.

During my pregnancy, I read many books on parenting. Almost nothing was said about sleep there: it was only about the temperature and humidity in the room. I always thought that sleep is a natural need of the body and there can be no problems with it. “A tired child is sleeping,” says the popular pediatrician Yevgeny Olegovich Komarovsky. Therefore, I was very surprised when I saw an ad for a baby sleep consultant on Instagram. At a certain point, I had to use the services of such a specialist, and I discovered a lot of new things for myself.

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It turned out that even perfectly healthy children can have problems sleeping:

a baby can cry when laying down and not fall asleep for an hour and a half;
can fall asleep only under certain conditions: with breast in mouth, while rocking on a fitball, in a moving car;
can only sleep for 40 minutes after half an hour of bed;
may wake up 16 times a night and again demand help to fall asleep.

These problems are most common in the first two years of a child's life, but may occur later. During the year of motherhood, I encountered most of them.

How often and how long a child should sleep

In 2015, the National Sleep Foundation made recommendations for sleep duration at all ages.

Sleep norms for each age

Age	Recommended sleep time
0-3 months	14-17 hours
4-11 months	12-15 pm
1-2 years	11am-2pm
3-5 years	10-13 hours
6-13 years old	9-11 am
14-17 years old	8-10 hours
18-25 years old	7-9 hours
26-65 years old	7-9 hours
Over 65	7-8 hours

Age

Recommended sleep time

0-3 months

14-17 hours

4-11 months

12-15 hours

1-2 years 9000

3-5 years

10-13 hours

6-13 years

9-11 hours

14-17 years old

8-10 hours

18-25 years

7–9 hours

26-65 years old

7-9 hours

Over 65

7-8 hours

Counselors divide sleep into daytime and nighttime. They also advise how many times to feed a child at night during the first year of life, how many times he can wake up and at what age he acquires the ability to sleep all night long. If the baby rarely wakes up at night and gains weight well, you should not wake him up to feed him. And if more often, it may not be related to hunger at all.

It is important to remember that any tabular norms are not dogma, but an occasion to carefully observe the child and evaluate whether something needs to be changed. Different sources give different figures, there are no common standards in world and Russian practice. The age of the child is counted from the expected date of birth. For example, if a baby was born at week 36, it makes sense to look at sleep values a month younger than the baby's current age. If the child was born later than the predicted date - vice versa.

A newborn can only sleep 14 hours a day and that will be fine. You can judge for yourself how far 14 hours are from "constantly sleeping".

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There is a concept of "individual sleep rate" for a child. The individual norm shows how many dreams a child needs and how long they should last. It is important to calculate it in order to properly organize the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness of the baby. To do this, you need to record the duration of all the dreams of the child for five to seven days and calculate the arithmetic mean. It should be borne in mind that these should be the most ordinary, event-poor days: without trips, guests, illnesses, transitions to fewer dreams, without learning to fall asleep on your own, and so on. You should get a sleep time at which the child feels good during the day: he looks cheerful, does not act up for no reason, falls asleep calmly and not too long, and wakes up in a good mood.

At around four months, sleep regression occurs. This changes its structure: sleep has phases and cycles, like an adult. One cycle at this age lasts about 40 minutes, after which the child wakes up and, as it were, checks whether everything is fine. When the brain is convinced of this, the child instantly falls asleep further. But if something has changed, he may feel anxiety and not fall asleep: for example, if he fell asleep in his mother's arms, and woke up alone in an empty bed.

When they want to solve the sleep problems of a healthy child, they work on physical comfort, sleep conditions, routine and associations for falling asleep. Over time, you have to teach the child to fall asleep on their own, that is, without the help of parents in the process of falling asleep.

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What influences a child's sleep

Physical comfort

It is difficult for a child to fall asleep if he is irritated by a leaky diaper or a pajama tag. Therefore, it is important to check all the things that the baby physically comes into contact with during falling asleep and sleeping.

I did it in literally five minutes. Everything was in order: there were no crumbs in the bed, the sheet was soft, and we carefully cut off the tags from the pajamas as soon as we brought things from the store. It seemed that the child did not like pajama pants: he wiggled his legs when I put them on. It was summer, I decided to style without them, but he didn’t start falling asleep faster because of this, so I returned the panties.

What influences a child's sleep

Temperature and Humidity

It is generally said that the baby sleeps well at 18-22°C and 40-60% humidity. Our apartment is warmer and drier, so I regularly ventilate and turn on the humidifier. I have not noticed that these parameters greatly affect my child's sleep. Perhaps because they did not reach critical levels.

Separately, I want to say that with the onset of winter, my son began to fall asleep faster in the stroller, and once he even fell asleep on his own, without my motion sickness. He is not one of those who can fall asleep with toys or on the potty, but one day we were just driving home in a stroller, and at the entrance it turned out that his son was already sleeping. I concluded that it was the frosty air and the slight rocking of the stroller that affected him. Many mothers note that in winter the child sleeps better on the street than in summer. Therefore, I try to ventilate and cool the room well before going to bed.

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What influences a child's sleep

Darkness

In the first month of my son's life, we had a night light on all night, but I needed it more than the child. I constantly checked how he was sleeping, whether it was time to change the diaper, and it was easier to breastfeed in the light. Then I realized that the light still prevents me from sleeping, and the recommendations on the Internet about the child were different. We decided to sleep in the dark and turn on the night light when we need to change a diaper or feed our son. In the light, he woke up and began to cry, but then quickly calmed down and fell asleep. During the day, I just closed the curtains. Even before the birth, we bought them as a blackout, and I was sure that the room was dark enough. When I started working with a consultant at six months, it turned out that I was wrong.

It turned out that for most children with poor sleep, including my son, mere darkness is not enough to fall asleep comfortably. What was needed was absolute darkness, which "at least gouge out your eye."

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Our curtains turned out to be a so-so blackout, they still let in a little light: this is easy to check with a flashlight if you shine it through the curtain. I didn't know this when I bought it. But even a real blackout, which does not let in absolutely any light, is powerless where there are gaps between the curtain and the ceiling above and the walls on the sides. Therefore, we did not change the curtains, but added a blackout to the windows.

The sleep consultant advised me to cover the windows with foil, which we did. We took a roll of ordinary foil, in which we usually cook, sprinkled plain water from a spray bottle on the glasses and laid the foil on them so that light did not break through them. This was to test how much my child really needs absolute darkness.

The method is fast, simple and cheap, but it has disadvantages. When the water dries, the foil falls off, you have to fasten it again. In some areas, the foil, on the contrary, "sticks" to the glass so that it cannot be removed from the glass without a blade. After sleep, the child needs natural light, it is difficult to remove the foil every time. They found a way out: foil was left on the window section with a window leaf, and Shottis paper pleated blinds from Ikea were attached to the central part. They do not fit close to the window, so light breaks through from the side, but it is convenient to lift them.

If we cover all this with our not-quite-blackout, the light still breaks through. But such darkness was enough, the baby began to fall asleep much faster. I myself appreciated how much more comfortable it became to sleep.

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Light comes through the curtains. There is no foil and paper blinds here yet

Added foil around the edges and blinds in the middle

Light comes through the curtains. There is no foil and paper blinds yet Added foil around the edges and blinds in the middle Now light only passes through small gaps

What influences a child's sleep

Absence of sharp and loud sounds

In the morning, the husband goes to work when the child is sleeping, and comes in the evening when the child is just falling asleep. The sounds of the door lock, the door itself, steps and other movements in the corridor interfered, so we began to turn on white noise. This is a uniform background noise, similar to the sound of a waterfall. It hides other sounds. It is important to choose a comfortable volume, up to 50 dB - it's like the sound of rain or water in the shower. There is no information that sleeping under these sounds is harmful, but I constantly saw a positive effect.

White noise can come from toys with audio modules, a phone or a Bluetooth speaker. There are toys that not only play white noise when you press a button inside the toy's paw or tummy, but also automatically turn it on if the baby starts making sounds. This is convenient if you do not want to listen to white noise during the entire sleep of the child. The baby's sleep cycle ends, he starts to wake up, he can cry a little - and the toy will immediately turn on white noise, which will create the atmosphere that accompanied the child when falling asleep. The baby is expected to fall asleep immediately.

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I didn't buy this toy for two reasons. It seemed to me that if the child was already awake, then an unexpected white noise would wake him up even more. In addition, such a toy must be placed close to the baby so that it catches the first sounds when it wakes up.

Instead, I turn on a twelve-hour video on an old smartphone and put the device face down. First, she played the video on YouTube under the Premium subscription, that is, without interruptions for advertising. Then I downloaded it to my phone so as not to depend on the Internet. White noise works throughout falling asleep and sleeping, even at night. At first it bothered me, but not for long: I got used to it.

I especially appreciated the white noise when one of the neighbors started a renovation. White noise does not muffle the sounds of a perforator, drill and hammer, but it helps not to flinch at the moment when someone starts working. The son falls asleep as usual and does not wake up until he has had enough sleep.

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Also, white noise helps to create a familiar environment if you put your child to bed at a party, in the country or somewhere else. I take my phone with me in the car and in the stroller. True, the rule about a distance of one and a half meters is not observed there, but I make it quieter and lull my conscience by the fact that my son rarely sleeps outside the house.

Old phone for white noise. There is no video sequence in the video, there is this static picture

What influences a child's sleep

Place to sleep

The child does not have to be in a crib: he can sleep in the same bed with his mother or both parents. In this case, for the sake of safety, a number of conditions must be met:

There must be a parent on one side of the child, and a fence on the other: a wall or a special limiter.
The mattress must be sufficiently firm and in good condition: make sure that it does not collapse under your weight, that there are no sagging areas in it.
The bed should not have a lot of pillows and other things.
The parent must not smell of alcohol or strong odors.
Parent must not take sleeping pills.

These conditions are also needed to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome - SIDS. For the same reason, the child is not recommended to be tightly wrapped up - to overheat - and put to sleep on his stomach until he learns to roll over on his own.

As a transitional option between co-sleeping and a separate bed, you can use an extra bed: put the baby bed close to the adult, and before that, remove one of the walls from it. It is important that there is no space between the beds into which the child can fall or stick his hand. It is desirable that the beds be on the same level or a crib a little lower than an adult: in this case, the child will not fall if he decides to move to his parents.

The classic version is a separate bed in the parent's bedroom or a separate room. It is important that the child cannot get out on his own: the walls of the crib should be high enough, not lower than the child's armpits, but better higher. To prevent the child from bumping his head, you can install soft bumpers. They should not have elements that can be torn off and stuffed into the mouth. In addition, the sides create additional blackout. This is true if you turn on the phone when the child is sleeping. It is desirable that the sides and bed linen be calm, discreet colors.

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Here the cushions are twisted from blankets, and the side is raised. A child does not need a pillow until one and a half to two years old, so it is not available. For the same purpose, babies in the first months of life are often swaddled to sleep. It is important that swaddling is not tight. Instead of a regular diaper, you can take a diaper bag; with it, swaddling skills are not required.

When walking, the child can be placed in a stroller or sling. The rocking sensation lulls the baby to sleep. The same effect is produced by a moving car, children's swings and sun loungers.

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I went from co-sleeping to sleeping in a crib at the other end of the room. Even at the maternity hospital, I started taking my son to my bed, so we both got better sleep. He did not want to fall asleep in his crib, and we used it as a playpen. But sleeping three of us on the bed was uncomfortable, so when I started teaching my son how to fall asleep on his own, I put him in a crib, which was placed close to ours. At that time, the child was six months old.

We removed one of the walls, but the bed was lower than our bed. At that moment, my son wasn’t crawling yet, so he couldn’t get over to us on his own, but I could calmly take him at night to feed him, and that suited me.

Later, my son learned to climb over to us, and I had to put a low side so that I could take him out of the crib while sitting on my bed. When my son learned to stand up, I had to raise the side higher. It became inconvenient to take him for feeding, but by that time I was only feeding him three or four times a night.

When I cut down on all nighttime feedings, we moved the crib a little and later moved it to the other side of the room. My son began to sleep better in the morning.

For the first six months my son slept on our bed on his side or on his back

The son is already sleeping in his bed, which is attached to ours. Roller for tightness, I first made from a pillow for pregnant women

Now the crib is separate from our bed. I removed the roller from it when my son started to get up

The son is already sleeping in his bed, which is attached to ours. I first made a cushion for tightness from a pregnancy pillow.

Now the crib is separate from our bed. I removed the roller from it when my son started to get up

What influences a child's sleep

Rhythm of sleep and wakefulness

With a child under one year old, it is more correct to talk not about the regime or routine, but about the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. Because all deeds and dreams are tied not to a specific time, but to the moment of awakening. The time until the next sleep is counted from it.

The time between sleeps is called waking time: this is generally all the time that the child does not sleep, including bedtime. In order to qualitatively prepare the child for sleep, the time of wakefulness should be divided into stages.

Active wakefulness. This is the stage when the child has fun and noisy time, moves and plays a lot, gets new impressions and experiences vivid emotions. This stage begins immediately after sleep and lasts about 3/4 of the time of wakefulness. At this time, the room should be light, or you and your child should be outside. It is important that he is tired, but not overexcited and not overtired. At this stage, we usually eat, go for a walk or play, bathe the baby. Bathing can be relaxing for some children, but mine, on the contrary, is fun.

I gave my child vitamin D, which is prescribed for absolutely all children. When we missed an appointment for several days because the old bottle was over and the new one had not yet arrived, I noticed that my son woke up less on those nights. The usual number of awakenings returned when the vitamin appeared again in the diet.

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Calm wakefulness or "bridge to sleep". This is also a common pastime, but already quiet games with a slightly dimmed warm light. This stage should calm, slow down, but not lull the baby. We do not yet tell the child that it is time to sleep, but we are already preparing the ground for this. The bridge should take up about a fifth of the total waking time.

We usually start the bridge with a snack, collect toys and things, at the end of the bridge we change into pajamas and read a book. The same activities calm some children, while others amuse, you need to look at the reaction of the child. Muted light helps me well - instead of a chandelier, we turn on a sconce.

Ritual — actions repeated before each sleep that unequivocally tell the child that it is time to sleep. Usually takes 5 to 15 minutes. The shorter the wake time, the shorter the ritual lasts. Actions during the ritual should relax the child and be the same every time. Mom, dad and grandmother may have their own ritual. The main thing is that the child has time to remember and understand that after these actions he falls asleep. The atmosphere should be even calmer than on the bridge stage, the lights should be dimmed more. To do this, we close the windows with foil and blinds, but the sconce is still on, and the curtains are open.

We have the following ritual: turn on white noise, tell my son that it's time to sleep, carry around the room on my arms, say kind words. In the process, we close the door, the curtains, turn off the light, in complete darkness I put my son to bed, I say “fall asleep, baby”, I pet him a little and go to my bed. This is where the ritual ends and the child begins to fall asleep.

The process of falling asleep can take from a minute to infinity, but it is better if it lasts no more than 20 minutes. If it is much longer, most likely, there are shortcomings in the organization of sleep. A child can fall asleep by kissing his chest, sitting on the arms of a parent who is rocking him, lying in his crib or in some other convenient way for him.

For the first six months, my son most often fell asleep while suckling. It was difficult to accurately determine the moment of falling asleep: even in a dream, the son would not let go of his chest and could toss and turn. Now he falls asleep separately from me, lying in his bed. I listen to how he crawls on it, sometimes makes some sounds. I understand that the dream has begun only if the silence lasts a few minutes.

Falling asleep is called independent, in which there are no active actions of an adult. That is, they put him in a bed and left. This dream of many parents is not so far-fetched. But if a child has strong associations for falling asleep - chest, motion sickness - you will have to work. I will talk about avoiding such associations later in the article.

From birth to six months, my son fell asleep mainly on his chest, once a day in a stroller on the street and sometimes in his father's arms while swinging on a fitball and singing. The husband did not always sing classical lullabies. The repertoire consisted of calm songs of Russian rock. Therefore, when at six months I began to teach the baby to fall asleep without a breast, I also sang, including my father's songs. Over time, four lullabies remained in the repertoire. Now my son falls asleep more often and prolongs sleep without lullabies. But sometimes you still have to sing if the son cries when going to bed, when he takes a walk or is overexcited - about once every couple of weeks.

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It can take more than one week to build a proper sleep-wake rhythm for a child. To understand when it's time to go to bed, you need to focus on the approximate norms of wakefulness and monitor the signs of a child's fatigue. He can rub his eyes, tug at his ears, yawn or fix his gaze at one point.

You need to learn not to confuse signs of fatigue with similar, but not sleep-related actions: rub your eye because a mote hit, yawn because the game is boring, as well as with signs of overwork when the child went too far or got overexcited during the game. Usually at this moment the child becomes more nervous, may crash into an obstacle or burst into tears out of the blue. In order not to confuse whether his behavior is related to sleep, you need to compare the actions of the child with the time of his wakefulness and carefully observe him. Therefore, it will not work to build a regime in a day or two: most likely, it will take a week, maybe even two. It is important to work on the regime on ordinary days, without trips and guests, because any emotional load, even positive, can knock down both the time of wakefulness and the duration of sleep.

For example, I noticed from my child that if guests come to us, even in the morning, then at night he will wake up more often. I followed the whole regimen, during the day my son slept as usual, at night he also fell asleep peacefully. But during the night I woke up three times, although usually I could already sleep through the night or wake up once in the morning. The situation with the guests was repeated twice, so I'm sure that the point is in strong impressions.

The right routine, together with the right sleep conditions and physical comfort, solves the vast majority of sleep problems. But sometimes this is not enough and the child has short dreams or frequent night awakenings. Then it is worth working with associations for falling asleep. But only after making sure that the first three points are met, the child does not get sick and does not experience a leap in development. Such periods can temporarily impair sleep.

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Everything that surrounds the child at the moment of falling asleep becomes for him associations for sleep: the place of sleep, the presence and actions of an adult, darkness, sounds and even smells. Associations help the child fall asleep faster. They can be divided into weak and strong. The latter are sometimes called negative, although there is nothing wrong with them. This is breastfeeding or motion sickness in a stroller or on a fitball. Without strong associations, it will be very difficult for a child to fall asleep, even if all the weak ones are present.

It happens that parents want to change their habitual way of bedtime, to change strong associations. It is important to remember that abrupt withdrawal does not work: the child will cry and demand habitual conditions and rituals. To avoid active protest of the baby, you should first expand the set of associations. For example, always lay in the same place, with the same light and white noise, and also introduce weaker associations. For example, when rocking, sing lullabies, while breastfeeding, stroke the baby on the back. After a few days, the child will begin to associate these actions with sleep, it will be possible to gradually move away from strong associations: for example, pump with pauses or feed not until falling asleep, but until calm. When the child completely gets rid of the strongest associations, you can also gradually remove the weak ones. Or leave if they suit you.

There are also several methods for teaching a child to fall asleep on his own. They are divided into hard, but fast, and soft, but slow. The choice depends on your situation. All of them are described on specialized sites, for example, on "Sleep, baby."

Whatever method you choose, before starting work, you should rest, sleep and recover, because you will need strength. The result strongly depends on your mood and readiness to act according to the chosen plan.

If you have worked through absolutely all aspects of sleep organization, taught your child to fall asleep on his own, but he still has problems with sleep, it may be worth taking him to a pediatric neurologist or somnologist. The doctor will deal with the correction of not behavioral, but physiological problems.

How and why to keep a sleep diary

It is impossible to work on the rhythm of a child's sleep and wakefulness without a sleep diary. It is necessary to record the time of sleep and the beginning of all stages of wakefulness, as well as all the features of the day and bedtime: visits of guests, vaccinations and other special events, how many times and what the child ate and how the bedtime ritual went. This will allow you to understand the causes that affect sleep, and choose the optimal time to start each of the stages of the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness.

It is important to record time to the minute, otherwise you may "lose" a lot of sleep or wake time during the day. For example, if a child sleeps four sleeps and on each falling asleep and waking up you round the time by 3-4 minutes, then when counting, you will lose 24-32 minutes of daytime sleep. The time of wakefulness is added by the same amount. This may be important in determining the individual sleep rate.

You can keep a diary in a notepad, in notes on a smartphone, in Google Docs, or in a special application. I tried every one of the options.

The application on the phone asked me to press "start" when falling asleep and "stop" when waking up, you can not write something later. Very strange mechanics, because the child often falls asleep in his arms. To press the button, you need to unlock the phone, and if the touch ID does not work the first time, the phone will vibrate. Then you need to open the application and press some buttons. All this woke up the child and distracted him when he woke up.

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Notes on start instantly. To see the time, just activate the screen with any button and look at it. I wrote down the time when it was convenient, without the risk of waking the child. It was simple, but not informative, I could not analyze such a diary. Therefore, based on these notes, I began to draw graphs in a paper notebook. With their help, I saw a certain trend: if my son got up later that day, then most likely he would have fewer dreams, and I realized that my son was gaining sleep for his age.

Graphs in a notebook. Columns are times, rows are days. The blue rectangles are the time of night sleep, the blue ones are the time of the day. The son’s dream time in the notes on the phone

I wrote down the sleep time in the phone notes in April and May, and when I started working with a sleep consultant in June, she gave a link to the table tables" with its own diary form. It contained formulas for conveniently calculating the time of sleep, wakefulness and bedtime. Everything had to be written down in a diary in great detail. At first, it really tired me, but then I got used to it. I entered the data into the table, the consultant could see them. And then tell me about the shortcomings and explain the patterns that are visible thanks to the diary.

I shortened the form as soon as I finished working with the consultant. She left only the important parameters for me: the time of getting up and going to bed, the start and end of sleep, as well as comments on them. For example, if I had to sing for my son to fall asleep. If the dream passed as usual, then I write down only the time.

I've added a Rhythm of the Day tab to my form. I enter the time of awakening into it, and the time for the bridge and laying down is calculated automatically in accordance with the rhythm that I determined. If I notice that it's time to increase the time of wakefulness, then I change only a few numbers in the document.

The abbreviated form is not enough for learning to fall asleep on your own or finding the optimal rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. It is important to record the time of night awakenings, all stages of wakefulness and describe them in detail. But I completed my active phase of work and at that time followed the developed strategy.

The main sheet of the diary, information on one dream. Four dreams are 184 lines: you need to describe in detail each dream and the time of wakefulness that was in front of it. Another sheet of the diary in the form of a consultant. Here I wrote down only the date, the number of awakenings and feedings, and the rest is automatically pulled up from other sheets. An abbreviated version of the table. I need about 30 lines for two daytime and nighttime sleep. And then I mainly fill in only the time, if active wakefulness, the bridge, the ritual and falling asleep passed as usual, and the dream was without awakenings. The Rhythm of the Day tab for two dreams.

Column C shows the time that needs to be added to the time to get up from the next sleep to start the stage from column A. I enter only the time of getting up in cells B2, B6, B10, and the start time of the stage is calculated in column B automatically

How to choose a sleep consultant

There is a lot of different information on the Internet about a child's sleep, some articles or expert opinions contradict others. As a reader, I could not understand what was better: for the child to sleep with me or to lie in a separate bed, by what method to teach him to fall asleep on his own, and so on. It was easy to get confused, even easier to miss something important. I decided to call a sleep consultant for help to figure it all out.

Here's what I did to find a specialist:

Studied the specialist's blog, looked at it during live broadcasts and webinars. This helped me understand that I would be comfortable working with this person, that I could trust him.
Read customer reviews. I found a review in which a specialist solved the same problem as mine, and this gave me strength and confidence. It would be strange to trust a specialist about whom no one has written anything.
I checked the certificate of completion of special courses. This is a young profession, it is only 20 years old - educational standards have not been formed, this is not taught in universities.

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I did not find out if the specialist is a member of the International Association of Infant Sleep Consultants - IACSC - or the all-Russian public organization "Russian Society of Somnologists". At that time, I did not know about such organizations, but over time I realized that membership in them could be an advantage. Non-profit organizations check the experience of applicants for membership before approving an application for membership. At the same time, there are a lot of good specialists who do not belong to any associations. My consultant is one of those.

It is important to understand that even the best consultant will not do all the work for you. Only you can see the signs of your child's fatigue, calm him down before going to bed, replace one association with another. A consultant is needed to tell how to act, point out mistakes and support in difficult moments.

Formats of working with a consultant can be different. This can be a one-hour consultation or full-fledged support for a month. The latter option is suitable for those who want not only to build a routine, but also to teach the child to fall asleep on his own - usually it takes no more than a month.

You can find a sleep consultant on specialized websites or social networks. But, most likely, the consultant will find you himself, or rather, his targeted advertising. It was the same with me: I learned about the existence of sleep consultants from an advertisement on Instagram. I subscribed to the specialist’s blog and began to slowly read posts, listen to free broadcasts. Then my son was two months old and I studied information for the future. When the child was five months old, his sleep began to deteriorate. Instead of the usual 4-6 nightly awakenings, the son woke up 10-12 times. Before a daytime sleep, he was capricious on his chest for half an hour, and it took an hour to rock him in a stroller.

After a couple of weeks, I realized that I could not cope on my own, and decided to contact a sleep specialist for individual support. I chose my specialist because I liked the system with which she gave information. I was impressed that the story about paid services was at the end, and not at the beginning of free broadcasts.

The night when my son woke up 16 times finally convinced me to contact a consultant. The specialist was just starting a three-week course in the format of "training and individual support". It cost the same as the usual individual accompaniment, 9900 R. My husband gave me participation in it for my birthday.

9900 Р

cost a three-week course on children's sleep

How the consultant and I worked on the quality of my son's sleep

It all started with a table that I filled out every day. Anastasia, that is the name of my consultant, wrote comments on these days. If I had questions, I dictated them on WhatsApp and received answers the same day.

The educational part of the course is about a dozen videos on YouTube. They helped me systematize old knowledge and sort out the details, but it was individual work that brought results. The theory helped to speak the same language with the specialist, we understood each other better.

Based on the results of the first day of observations, it turned out that the room was not dark enough, at the same time we began to build a rhythm of sleep and wakefulness. On the advice of a specialist, I reduced the first time of wakefulness. It can be noticeably shorter than the others, and the last one is longer. Anastasia advised not to rock her son in a wheelchair: there he fell asleep for a long time, with great difficulty. Then she told me to change the number of dreams and the duration of wakefulness, depending on the duration of the first daytime sleep. If it was more than 40 minutes, I reduced the number of dreams from four to three and put me to bed early at night.

Sometimes I wanted to ignore advice. For example, I was sure that the room was dark enough and I would not do anything with the windows. But then she stepped over herself and did as the consultant said. The child's sleep became better, and I began to trust her more.

In parallel with the adjustment of the regimen, we worked on a gradual separation of sleep and chest. This was necessary to exclude night awakenings, but the son did not want to give up the breast even at night. Anastasia and I agreed that I would feed the baby at the stage of the ritual, and put him to bed without a breast for a night's sleep. This did not suit my son, he protested violently, but I calmed him down by stroking and singing. He fell asleep after 15 minutes, although he could have been screaming for an hour.

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It was very hard, but necessary. On the following nights, the son fell asleep easier. When he was completely used to falling asleep without a breast at night, I put him in a crib and began to teach him to fall asleep there during the day.

After three weeks, my son began to sleep better: he no longer needed my participation to fall asleep. At night he woke up half as often, six or eight times, and my husband liked the darkness. I finally felt that I could sleep, although I still couldn't sleep all night long.

This is me telling Anastasia about falling asleep for the first time without a breast

When my son was seven months old, he started having problems sleeping again: he stopped falling asleep for the third daytime sleep, often cried when laying down, the number of night awakenings did not decrease. Therefore, I again turned to Anastasia, and we agreed on individual support for a week. Usually such a service costs 1900 R, but Anastasia offered a discount and in the end took 1500 R from me.

Everything was the same as before: I filled out the diary in detail, and Anastasia commented on this in Google Spreadsheets and WhatsApp. This time there were two problems: the son learned to stand up and practiced this skill where it is convenient - in the crib, because there you can grab the sides. The second problem arose due to my fault. I thought that since my son was a month older, it was time for him to go to bed later and stay awake more.

On the advice of Anastasia, we returned to the former first time of wakefulness and began to practice the skill of getting up. When falling asleep for daytime and nighttime sleep, I gently pressed the child with my hand so that he would not get up in the crib. During night awakenings, they did without it. We noticed that the son began to fall asleep well on the third dream, if the first slept for a long time. It turned out that this is also important.

The third time I turned to Anastasia was in November, when my son was 11 months old. He began to wake up three to five times at night, compared to the norm of one or two times. Before the second sleep, he cried for a long time, could not fall asleep at all and asked for an adult bed. This time I paid 1900 R.

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Before that, my son had a growth spurt, he was sick and went to relatives, and I broke the rules: I took to sleep with me, although my son was used to sleeping in her bed, at night she soothed with her breast, although she could soothe with a lullaby, and so on. That is, the son felt that he could demand more, and did it. I had to once again build boundaries, put in order the conditions for falling asleep and prolonging sleep, and overcome the protest. With the support of a consultant, all this was much easier than it could have been. I was sure that I was not mocking the child, but helping him get used to falling asleep again without my help.

I also learned that at the age of 11 months there may be a false rejection of the second dream, but it is too early to switch to one dream. To make it easier for my son to fall asleep for the second dream, I had to be stricter about the daily routine: start the bridge earlier, do more blackout at this stage. The son began to sleep better at night and during the day.

Now my son is one year and four months old, he falls asleep without my help in his bed. I alternate days with one and two dreams, but, apparently, very soon we will finally switch to one dream. My son usually sleeps through the night without waking up, except when he is teething. Previously, the appearance of a new tooth did not cause changes in the behavior and condition of the son, the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness did not change. But gradually the teeth began to erupt more and more problematic: during this period, the son began to become capricious, and after he was one year old, the temperature even began to rise. These are natural changes that do not require the attention of a sleep specialist: as soon as the tooth erupts completely, everything returns to normal.

How much money I spent on my child's sleep

I calculated the expenses for everything that helped my son sleep better. I don’t take into account the crib, mattress, bed linen, pajamas, curtains and the YouTube Premium subscription in the calculations, because I would buy all this anyway. Spending on sleep is one of the most useful expenses for a child: he is vigorous and develops well, and I have the strength to take care of my family, because now I also get enough sleep.