Towards independent sleep

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• Independent sleep
• Making decisions about independent sleep
• The key strategies
  
• Emphasising the difference between night and day
• Putting baby to bed drowsy but awake
• Starting a feed, play, sleep routine
• The importance of daytime sleep
• Feeding and sleep

Independent sleep

A baby achieves independent sleep when the baby:

• sleeps for 6-8 hours during the night
• can settle back to sleep without calling out to a parent after waking in the night.

Around 60% of babies can do this by six months of age.

Although there are no guarantees, research suggests that parents can do some simple things to assist even very young babies to become independent sleepers – when the babies are developmentally mature enough.

Making decisions about independent sleep

Your newborn will need you during the night. But you might like the idea of your older baby (from 6-12 months) settling quickly and sleeping during the night without calling on you unnecessarily.

If so, the suggestions in this article can help you achieve this. When children receive plenty of affection and attention from their parents during the day, there is no evidence that independent sleep disadvantages children in any way.

On the other hand, you might prefer to be on call for your child during the night and day. If so, these suggestions might not be relevant. Instead, you might want to work at fitting in around your child’s sleep habits.

The key strategies

Recent research shows there are three things you can start doing in the first 3-4 months of your baby’s life to set the scene for independent sleep habits:

• Emphasise the difference between night and day.
• Put your baby to bed drowsy but awake.
• Start a feed, play, sleep routine.

When to start
Your newborn’s biological sleep clock is programmed so that your baby wakes at night. This ensures baby gets enough food in this time of incredible growth and development. So your newborn baby will need your attention during the night for feeding and settling for at least the first 3-4 months.

During this time, though, your baby’s sleep patterns and rhythms mature rapidly. You can take advantage of this period of rapid change by gradually introducing the approaches suggested here. Flexibility rather than total consistency is the key at this stage. Slow and gradual is best.

Emphasising the difference between night and day

Your baby doesn’t understand the difference between day and night. It’s quite common for babies to be wide awake during the night – when you are desperate for sleep – and then sleepy during the day.

A newborn will sleep and wake around the clock. But you can help your child make the eventual adjustment to more sleep at night-time with the following strategies:

• During the night, keep your baby’s room as dark and quiet as possible (babies don’t need total dark or quiet to sleep).
• Use a dim light when you need to attend to baby during the night.
• At night, respond to baby’s cries quickly, and settle or feed as soon as you can. You might also want to give night feeds in your baby’s room. This will help keep night feeds brief, and make them different from daytime feeds.
• Play and talk after a feed is good during the day. But at night, adopt a soothing, quiet approach to interacting with your baby. Keep play for daytime.

Putting baby to bed drowsy but awake

Get into the habit of putting your baby to bed drowsy but awake in the first 3-4 months. This will help your baby develop sleep associations that don’t rely on you for comfort and settling in the middle of the night.

 ‘Sleep associations’ are the routines, habits and patterns that we connect with feeling sleepy. Sleep associations help us go off to sleep. They also help us go back to sleep when we wake during the night.

There is nothing wrong with rocking or feeding your baby to sleep. Many parents find it rewarding and relaxing. Many a newborn baby will go to sleep on the breast or in dad’s arms. It’s only a problem for parents who don’t want to be doing it again in the middle of the night.

If your baby is routinely put to sleep by being rocked in your arms or fed to sleep, baby will expect to be fed and rocked back to sleep after waking in the night. If your baby routinely falls asleep in the family room and wakes up in the cot, baby will wonder how that happened. Such a surprise might make baby upset and cry out for you.

Teaching your baby to self-soothe
Self-soothing is when baby can calm down, relax and go to sleep once in bed. Babies who can self-soothe have longer uninterrupted periods of sleep and longer total sleep times at night.

If you routinely feed, cuddle, walk or rock baby to sleep, you are effectively doing the soothing for your baby. While baby’s got that, there’s no need to develop the ability to self-soothe. Again, this is a problem only if you’re not happy to get up and settle your baby during the night.

Several other factors influence the development of the ability to self-soothe:

• baby’s growth and maturity
• baby’s temperament. Some babies take longer to fall into regular patterns. Some are more sensitive and easily upset than others
• aspects of family life. Poor parent-baby relationships, and depression or other mental health problems in mothers, have been found to be associated with disruptions in babies’ sleep.

Looking after yourself as a parent and getting adequate support is very important to your baby’s wellbeing.

Settling baby in the cot
A few ideas might help you to settle baby in the cot:

• Be aware that it’s natural for babies to grizzle when you put them to bed. Grizzling can be a sign of tiredness. Baby might just need a little time to get to sleep. If you pick your child up straight away, it can interfere with your child getting to sleep and learning to self-soothe. If the grizzle becomes a real cry, your child does need help to settle.
• As your child gets older, you might take a wait-and-see approach to grizzling when your child wakes during the night. Your child might re-settle without your help. Again, if you hear real crying, you might need to offer some help with re-settling.
• Try the patting settling technique. The advantage of patting over cuddling is that baby is still going to sleep in the cot. Ideally, you stop patting when baby has calmed, but just before sleep comes. If the patting doesn’t work, by all means pick baby up, and cuddle or feed. You can always try again next time. 

Of course, the first three months of life is not the time to be strict or inflexible with your baby. If, from time to time, your baby happens to fall asleep at the breast or before bedtime, don’t feel that you need to wake baby just to put baby to bed. Likewise if baby is really unsettled.

Starting a feed, play, sleep routine

When it feels right for you, it can help to start doing things in a similar order each day – feed, play, sleep. A consistent routine like this will help your baby settle into a regular sleep pattern.

So when your baby wakes up:

• Offer a feed.
• Change your baby’s nappy.
• Take time for talk and play.
• Put your baby back down for sleep.

Again, with a newborn, it pays to be flexible about feeding and sleep times, but it can still help to start to do things in a similar order.

The importance of daytime sleep

It can be tempting to try to limit a baby’s sleep during the day so as to improve sleeping at night. This is not helpful if it means a tired baby.

In fact, a tired baby often finds it harder to get to sleep. Little babies get tired after around 10-20 minutes of play or interaction. Let your baby’s body language tell you when it’s time for a rest.

Feeding and sleep

Generally, newborns need to be fed every 2-4 hours. Your baby will sleep better after a good feed. Milk has a sleep-inducing effect.

If your baby has been fed in the last two hours and still can’t sleep, give baby a little bit of time to settle to sleep. If sleep doesn’t come, an extra cuddle before putting baby back in the cot might do the trick. You could also try topping baby up with another feed.

Night-time feeds
At around six months of age, most babies no longer need night-time feeds for nutrition. But many will keep asking for them!

For many parents, continuing to feed at night after six months is no trouble. Breastfeeding mothers might continue to feed at night to help maintain milk supply.

Even if you decide to continue night-time feeds, you can still practise putting baby to bed drowsy but awake, and keeping your night-time interaction warm but low-key. This will make it easier to wean baby from night feeds when the time is right for baby and you.

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