Baby Sleep Consultant

Lincoln, 9 months had been following Lullaby’s age specific nap schedule before his Mum, Brooke, contacted me grasping at straws because Lincoln was waking around 11.30pm every night and screaming the house down.

She had tried everything to resettle him back to sleep - cuddles, pain relief, a feed, anything she could think of to help Lincoln back to sleep – but nothing was working and it had been going on for weeks on end.

After looking at Lincoln’s intake form, I could see that his naps were looking good during the day, he was eating well, and his sleeping environment looked spot on. What was happening to make Lincoln wake in the middle of the night so upset I wondered? Then I looked at what was happening before bedtime.

Hey Duggee.

Bingo.

Before bedtime, Lincoln would watch Hey Douggee with the lights off – as this would help Lincoln to calm down of a night time.

When actually, the opposite was happening.

To understand what was happening, lets have a look at Lincoln’s routine in the afternoon:   Bath time at 5pm, dinner at 5.30pm then TV time with the lights off followed by a bottle in a dark room at 6.30pm then bed. Looks ok, right?

What was actually happening was Lincoln was being over stimulated by Hey Duggee. While it was keeping him content, it was loading him up with overtired hormones and blocking off the production of melatonin. When it was time for bedtime, Lincoln would crash out because his body was exhausted however he would wake again after a night time sleep cycle due to the overtired hormones still in his system. A comment Brooke wrote really stood out to me, “It’s like he just gets worked up and can’t be settled” which was an indication to me that Lincoln was overtired before he fell asleep.  

How do we get around this with two kids, working parents and a household to run?

It was easier than you think!

We swapped bath time and dinner time, making dinner time at 5.30pm and bath time as part of Lincoln and his sister’s wind down ritual so that everyone started to relax after dinner. Instead of Hey Dougee before bedtime, the lounge room was darkened with no TV and Lincoln would have his bottle generally at the beginning of the wind down ritual around 6.15pm.

Brooke would then move off to Lincoln’s bedroom where white noise was playing, read a little story, gave Lincoln his dummy then put him in his cot and left the room (he was always able to self settle).

Over the following two weeks, Lincoln’s sleep logs were GREAT, he was sleeping through the night, often waking to have a bubbly chat to himself, falling back to sleep until around 7am.

The advantage Lincoln had in this situation is that he was already in a great nap routine – which made the small changes a lot easier for the whole family to work around.

The household is a lot more harmonious as anxiety has reduced around bedtime leading to a much more relaxed environment.  

Lincoln’s sleep journey is another great example of the power of pre-sleep routines.

Sleep Regressions 

You may have noticed as a Newborn, your baby slept for long periods of time in between feeds? Then around the four month mark you may have started to see a change in your baby's sleep cycles? Instead of sleeping for long stretches, your baby may start to only sleep for 45 minutes at a time or even 20 minutes at a time during the day and waking often of a night time.  

This is due to a maturation in baby's sleep development leading to a regression in how well they are sleeping - it is totally normal for this to happen. 

I received this message yesterday from a lovely Mummy:

It's a boring word ah?