Baby sleeps through the night[/caption]I thought I’d share with you what insync with infants is about and how it came about that we offer support with newborn care and sleep.
1. I have no bias as to one way of doing things. I like merits in natural parenting, attachment parenting, positive parenting, mindful parenting, aware parenting and present parenting. The commonalities I see in all these is parents finding a philosophy that suits them with a focus on mutual respect. My goal and skill is to support you in finding your way.
2. I enjoy working with new parents particularly. They are full of questions, ideals and conflicting thoughts and wanting to get it right. Again my goal and role is to support parents in finding their way and explore ideas and ways that feel right for them and build their confidence and self belief that they are a “good ” parent and doing the “right” thing.
Leisa ♥
There is a way to your baby sleeping better without hours of crying, I promise.
Leisa
If someone could bottle it , it would be worth an absolute fortune. It is a common question to ask what about those babies who seem to sleep easily? What do they have or do that makes it seem so easy?
Certainly parents who have more than one baby, often see a difference from one child to the next. For some the first baby sleeps easily. For others the second child sleeps easily. When you are in the throes of sleep deprivation it is hard to work out the difference as to why one child sleeps well and the other not so well.
1. Your baby is well. This just means that there is nothing causing your baby to feel yucky. If your baby is unwell such as tummy upsets or having a cold or some illness, they may have pain associated with it (eg headache) then this will undermine any attempts for your baby to sleep. When your baby is feeling well and comfortable, he or she can relax enough to go off to sleep. If your baby doesn’t sleep well because of being unwell, once you fix the cause, often sleep falls into place more easily.
2. Your baby feels comfortable. Usually this would be things like gut upsets or discomforts caused by foods, formula, pain from teething, reflux or wind, feeling too hot or too cold. This can also mean not quite being satisfied and needing just a little more feeding. While your baby is uncomfortable he or she will find it harder to go to sleep. If they do go to sleep it is often from exhaustion and often only for a short time. Once this discomfort is fixed, your baby can then go off to sleep more easily.
3. Your baby needs to feel secure. This is more so for newborns and up to about 3 to 4 months of age. In this time, your baby is very immature and needs to build trust that all his or her needs will be met. Most parents do this very well and by the time your baby is over 4 months they have built up the trust in you to give them what they need. For newborns, swaddling gives them a sense of security when not in your arms. If your baby settles well without swaddling – great. If not- it may be worth considering. Incidentally, there are a number of ways to swaddle and some are more effective than others.
Once you know that these basics are sorted, then we would look more at what else is happening for sleep but making sure that your baby is well, is not uncomfortable and feels secure are the first things to work on to ensure your baby gets good sleep.
Some of you may have heard about your baby having a long sleep or having a short sleep. What is the difference? What makes a short sleep and what makes a long sleep and what is the significance? Well , here are the basics.
We all have sleep cycles. Very broadly we go to sleep, have a very short deep sleep and come to a light sleep. Of course sleep is much more complex than this. I have just simplified it here to the main points to make it easier to illustrate.
The first sleep cycle is usually the shortest. You can see the end of a cycle when your little one stirs or wakes up after a certain amount of time that you can usually predict. For example, people will say “ He only sleeps for 30 minutes, never longer”. This would lead me to think that this particular child’s sleep cycle is 30 minutes.
Newborns often have only short sleep cycles. They are often only about 20 minutes long. Newborns may or may not get past the first sleep cycle. It is normal for newborns to wake frequently. As your baby grows and matures, sleep will mature too.
When your baby only sleeps for one cycle we would term that a short sleep. When your baby sleeps longer and gets into the second cycle, that would be termed a long sleep. In the second cycle is when your baby gets the deep restorative sleep.
A short sleep may be all that your baby needs for this particular sleep time. Babies under about 12 months often have a number of sleeps a day and some of them may be short sleeps.
The key is to watch your baby’s behaviour, know the signs and be able to take action in a timely fashion so that your baby doesn’t become over tired.
sleep changes as your baby ages 0-18 months[/caption]
Crazy busy week this week with lots of newborn baby help. It's energising and love seeing
