I thought I would start with the burning question on every mum’s mind….how how??

No one expects newborns to sleep 12 hours a night, we all accept when we're pregnant that this teeny baby is going to need us throughout the night.

They'll need feeds, nappy changes, cuddles, rocking, holding and time to learn the difference between day and night, whilst figuring out this world outside the womb!

But what I don't think we expect is for this night time situation to carry on for months and months and months....

Yet we know from your emails and calls that you're facing this exact situation 6, 9 12 months down the track.

Multiple night wake ups, feeds, crying, rocking, house pacing, some of you are even driving at night, sleep deprived and desperate for that tiny human to sleep!

At some point we start to day dream about what 4 or 6 or even 8 hours of glorious uninterrupted sleep would feel like... we start to think shouldn't they be sleeping more than 2 hours by this age?

Is there anything I can do to help them along in this process?

The good news!

100% yes!!! There is so much we can do.

In the first 3 months of your gorgeous baby's life, their sleep was roughly 50/50 nature and nurture, meaning you could control only 50% of how well or how poorly they slept.

But the great news is, that after 3 months the ratios swing in our favour, and sleep is largely nurture.

That doesn't mean the mum who is the most nurturing has the best sleeper, and its a crazy competition... what it means is that what we do as parents... the structure we provide, the sleep conditions, the timing, our interpretation of sleep cues, our actions in response to night wakes will largely be responsible for how our babies and toddlers sleep!

This is fantastic! You can teach your baby to sleep through the night (or 4 or 6 hours depending on whats age appropriate when you're reading this).

1. Days vs Nights

Thinking about your days when you're wanting to improve your nights is a hidden secret.

While we don't need naps to be perfect, or even for your baby to be able to self settle for their naps, we do need to check a few things.

Is there any consistency in your naps?

Are you ensuring your baby doesn't over sleep, therefore robbing their night sleep with their day sleep?

Do your naps support your night sleep? We need a level of sleep drive in the evening to coincide with your babies homeostatic sleep pressure and what their biological clock wants to do.

If these things are out of alignment, your baby will feel off, jet lagged, probably be tearful and struggle to sleep as their need for sleep doesn't match the physiology of what their body wants to do.

You can ensure your baby get the majority of their sleep between 9am and 3pm, with any sleep outside of these times being only a small power nap, this helps ensure your baby is tired enough to sleep well at night, but not over tired.

Our sleep routines are designed to support your babies night sleep with good nap timing.

2. Settling to sleep affects sleep consolidation

Look at how your baby settle’s to sleep.

Does baby require you every time?

Is your breast your babies sleep association?

Are you rocking to sleep?

When we consider sleeping through the night, we are basically asking our babies to be able to consolidate their night sleep, which means they can put themselves back to sleep when they move from a light sleep to awake which happens after each sleep cycle at night.

Thinking about how your baby goes to sleep, we can put ourselves in their shoes. If you were rocked to sleep, and after a sleep cycle that rocking had stopped you would probably be looking for that rocking to get back to sleep.

The way your baby lets you know they are looking for you to rock them back to sleep?

Usually they cry.

Often they are simply crying because they are tired and want to be back asleep, but that rocking motion, or that dummy, or breast they need to get back to sleep is gone.....

This can lead to what we often see when parents call us for private consults.... 1 to 2 hourly wakes at night.

The solution?

If your baby needs you to settle back to sleep – gently withdraw how much you assist your baby to sleep. Use the dummy less – feed less, rock less, or proactively work on self settling.

3. Genuine hunger vs habitual hunger

This is probably one of the most confusing aspects of night sleep....

No one wants to cut night feeds or attempt to drop night feeds when your baby is genuinely hungry!

Working out if your baby needs their night feeds we can look at 3 things to help us make that decision.

One: are they reverse cycling? This often happens around 3-4 months and quickly settles in as a habit. Your baby is reverse cycling if you feel they feed better at night than they do in the day.... They take big full feeds at night, but are quick or fussy in the day. Possibly in this situation you need to drop a night feed and increase day calories gradually to reverse the situation.

Two: Is your baby hungry for their first feed of the day? Looking at how hungry they are at 7am is a good way to work out if their night feed is putting them off their breakfast feed. If it is, we know that in 24 hours calories will remain the same because we can shift them from 3am to 7am. 

Three: Is your baby established on solids? If they are, and they're still waking for more than 1 feed a night, we can be pretty confident if nutrition is in check that those feeds are habitual.

Once you know a feed is habitual or genuine hunger you can form a plan to increase day calories, or teach settling without a feed at night.

All of our night plans are inside our online sleep programs. 

4. Simple fixes like environment matter!

The number of times I have done a one on one consult, and an environmental change has dramatically improved night sleep is amazing.

Too hot and stuffy and your baby will wake thirsty and uncomfortable.

Too cold and they'll wake needing extra layers.

Is their street light coming in? A noisy neighbor, or a rooster waking them at 5am!

Getting the sleep environment in check helps eliminate this as a possible cause, which in turn helps you figure out, what else needs to change.

5. Stop - Pause - Listen - Respond

This is one of those phenomonally small changes which make a big impact on night sleep moving forward.

Scientific studies show that by 12 months there was a stand out variable all babies who are sleeping through the night or sleeping well at night shared. It is the parental response at night and the amount of time spent in their cot.

Translated this means increasing how long you stop, pause and listen for at night, then formulating a response based on your childs needs, not guilt or emotion.

Does your baby need to sleep or feed? Do they need to sleep, or get up and go for a drive?

Often settling and reassuring while keeping your baby in their cot will have you both back to sleep quicker than if we pick up, and pace, and panic because there crying or grizzling.

Remember not all cries are equal, some cries are tired cries, or protest cries, while other cries are hunger or emotional cries. Stop, pause, listen and respond and you'll get it right.

6. Over tired vs Under tired

Is bed time early enough? Or too early?

Getting the balance right is imperative if you want your baby to settle into a deep sleep and stay asleep for a good 4 hours.

Often a bed time before 7pm is required well up until 1 year old. Over tired babies no not sleep well, they produce stress hormones which block their ability to get into that deep sleep, and this leads to what we observe as unsettledness or wake ups before 10pm at night.

Under tired babies might cry at bed time because they simply aren't tired, or older toddlers will be bouncing off the sides of the cot, showing no signs of settling down soon.

Some babies will wake for 2-3 hours and create a split night in response to being under tired at bed time. This comes back to ensuring day sleep supports night sleep.

Get it right, and night sleep easily falls into place.