SLEEP STRATEGIES
Baby bedtime solutions
And it was all going so well.
Wyatt Jespersen, the newborn son of local broadcasters Kari Skelton and Ryan Jespersen, was sleeping, yes, like a baby. By the time he was six weeks old, Wyatt was snug as a bug nine hours at night. His parents thought they were home free.
But then, at four months, it all changed. Suddenly, Wyatt stopped sleeping at night and was up every 45 minutes to two hours. His parents were distraught, not to men- tion exhausted. Especially Skelton, who is breastfeeding the baby while on maternity leave.
“I’m not good with no sleep,” says Skelton. “I wanted to be the best I could be for him during this precious time. I wanted to be aware and present.”
Jespersen and Skelton turned to a certified sleep consultant to help them through a trying period. Sure enough, with some tools including a dark room, soft toy and sleep sack, Wyatt was back on track within a few nights.
Other folks aren’t so lucky. How to get a baby to sleep is one of the most common questions posed to nurses at Edmonton’s public health units, where parents take their wee ones for immunizations and checkups. Often, there is no satisfying solution.
“There is no perfect answer that fits everyone, "says Denise Malanowich, a maternal child consultant with Alberta Health Services. “But a lot of questions can be answered by considering the growth and development stage of the baby. Sleep is a developmental milestone. When parents understand that a twomonth-old baby isn’t supposed to sleep 10 hours a night, then the fact that the baby is waking every three to four hours is absolutely OK.”
A new report by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says babies between four and 12 months need 16 to 20 hours of sleep a day, including naps. Malanowich notes that at two months of age, a baby’s neurological system isn’t completely developed.
“Babies are hungry, and they have growth spurts and may need to feed more in the night. They need to wake up, be fed, soothed and go back to bed.”
Still, it’s also true that chronic, poor sleep among babies can be a sign that something is wrong, so parents are smart to make inquiries at community Child Health Clinics and with their doctors. Professionals can walk parents through an assessment process to determine if something else is at play. Most of the time, however, splintered sleep is normal, and by about 12 months, babies will generally sleep nine to 10 hours at night.
For parents who want to do what they can to create a sleep routine that works for their family, there are a number of options to maximize baby’s time with his eyes closed. Malanowich calls it the ABCs of good sleep — an acronym for Age appropriate Bedtimes and wake times with Consistency.
“What that means is a routine,” says Malanowich, adding that the busy pace of family life sometimes means parents expect babies to go with the flow, which doesn’t work for an infant who functions better with a stable schedule for eating, sleeping and napping.
There are online tips for infant sleep available at healthyparentshealthychildren.ca, and at public health clinics.
Skelton and Jespersen, however, appreciated the personal touch afforded by a $300 investment in the expertise of certified sleep consultant, Pam Edwards, who lives in Grande Prairie and consults via Skype.
Edwards created a 12-page document for the family, which felt overwhelming in the beginning. The couple had to install blackout blinds and get a white noise machine. Edwards suggested putting Wyatt to bed when he was awake but calm, because babies need to learn how to put themselves to sleep. Previously, Skelton and Jespersen had been rocking him to sleep.
The first night proved too traumatic. Rather than picking up Wyatt when he awoke crying in the night, Skelton and Jespersen talked to him gently from the door of his room as Edwards advised. They retreated after assuring their son that everything was fine. Wyatt did not think it was fine, and upped the crying.
“I threw in the towel,” recalls Skelton. “I was crying. I couldn’t do it. I gave him the soother, picked him up and walked him to sleep.”
But the couple kept at it, and within a few nights, Wyatt was sleeping longer and longer at a stretch. Now at 11 months, he goes to bed after a bath and story, and sleeps for 12 hours. He has a “lovee,” a soft toy, a white noise machine that runs throughout the night and sleeps without covers, but in a big, cosy sack.
“We didn’t want him to still be sleeping in pockets of two or three hours when he was three,” says Jespersen. “The thought of that motivated us to put in the work early.”
As Malanowich notes, it takes both parents to deal with an infant sleep issue.
“One option, as parents, is to spell each other off, understanding where your baby is at,” she says, noting that many modern fathers get up at night with babies, even if they are working the next day.
Moms may worry that their husbands are going to work tired.
“We say, ‘he’s the other parent, and you can’t do this alone,’ ” says Malanowich. “And there is an increased acceptance of what it takes. Dads often don’t know how to support without guidance. And once they are aware, they’re more than willing to buy in. The whole bottom line of that is that it’s important to approach infant sleep as a team.”
Another tool for parents is to seek support among other families. While it’s important to not compare children, as they are all different, it can help to share your struggles.
“Talking amongst other moms, and recognizing that other families have the same issues, is reassuring and reinforces the fact that baby’s sleep is pretty unpredictable,” says Malanowich.