Toward independent sleep

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• Independent sleep
• The key strategies
• When can you start?
• Emphasising the difference between night and day
• Putting baby to bed drowsy but awake
• Self-soothing
• Settling your baby in his cot
• A  feed, play, sleep  routine
• Daytime sleep is important too
• Feeding and sleep

Most parents look forward to nights of relatively uninterrupted sleep. Yet for as many as a third of parents of children under three years of age, settling and waking are still a problem.

Can these problems be prevented? Being problem-free cannot be guaranteed; however, recent research suggests that there are some simple things that parents can do to assist their babies from a very early age to become independent sleepers when they are developmentally mature enough.

Independent sleep

What is it? Independent sleep is generally thought of as a baby having a block of sleep of 6-8 hours during the night, and the ability to settle back to sleep without calling out to a parent when he wakes during the night. Around 60% of babies can do this by six months of age. See About sleep for more information.

Do you want independent sleep for your baby? Your newborn will need you during the night. But if you like the idea of a future where your 6-12 month old baby settles quickly and sleeps during the night without calling on you unnecessarily, then these suggestions may 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.

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

There is no right and wrong thing to do here – it’s a question of what you think is best for your child and family. This is a decision only you can make, and you don't have to conform to one view or the other.

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 can you start?

Your newborn’s biological sleep clock is programmed to wake him at night to ensure he gets the food he needs in this time of incredible growth and development. So your newborn baby will need your attention during the night for feeding and help with settling for at least the first 3-4 months.

However, during the first 3-4 months, your baby’s sleep patterns and rhythms mature rapidly. You can take advantage of this period of rapid change by gradually introducing these approaches. Flexibility rather than total consistency is the key at this stage. Slow and gradual is best.

Emphasising the difference between night and day

Unfortunately for you, your baby does not discriminate between day and night and it is quite common for him to be wide awake during the night – when you are desperate for sleep – and then sleepy during the day.

However, while a newborn will be sleeping and waking during the day and night around the clock, there are things that you can do to help him make the eventual adjustment to more sleep at night-time:

• During the night, keep your baby’s room as dark and quiet as practicable (babies don’t need total dark or quiet to sleep).
• Use a dim light when you need to attend to him during the night.
• At night, respond to his cries quickly, and settle or feed him as soon as you can.
• Play and talk after a feed is the order of 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

The importance of sleep associations
Unfortunately, human beings don’t come with a sleep button. We can’t consciously control the onset of sleep. Instead we rely on routines, patterns and sleep habits (or sleep associations) to create the conditions under which we can fall asleep. For adults, sleep associations can be the time of night, bed, a particular pillow and so on. If we wake during the night, and something is awry with a sleep association (e.g. the pillow has fallen off the bed), we wake fully to fix the situation. If things are as they should be, we tend to roll over and go back to sleep without remembering waking briefly.

The way you put your baby to bed creates sleep associations that he uses to help himself fall asleep at bedtime and when he wakes during the night. If your baby is routinely put to sleep by being rocked in your arms or fed to sleep, he will expect to be fed and rocked back to sleep when he wakes during the night. If your baby routinely falls asleep in the family room and wakes up in his cot, he will – just as you would if you fell asleep in one place and woke up somewhere else – wonder how he got there. Such a surprise may make him upset and cry out for you.

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 his father’s arms. It’s only a problem for parents who don’t want to be doing it again in the middle of the night. To help your baby develop sleep associations that don’t rely on you during the middle of the night, get into the habit of putting your baby to bed drowsy but awake in the first 3-4 months. This will help him learn to associate his cot (rather than you) with going to sleep. Which means that when he no longer needs feeding during the night, and he doesn't need your help in getting back to sleep when he wakes, everyone gets to have uninterrupted night-time sleep!

Self-soothing

Once in his cot, the next critical issue is how your baby manages the transition from being awake to being asleep. Another key ingredient to an independent sleep pattern in the longer term is your baby learning to self-soothe – calming, relaxing and putting himself to sleep once he is in his bed. Babies who can self-soothe have longer uninterrupted periods of sleep and longer total sleep times at night.

Simple growth and maturity is the main factor in the development of the ability to self-soothe. There are other factors too. Your baby’s temperament is one. Some babies take longer to fall into regular patterns. Some are more sensitive and easily upset than others. Aspects of family life can also affect babies’ self-soothing abilities. 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 so important to your baby’s wellbeing.

However, there is evidence that what parents do at bedtime can promote or delay the ability to self-soothe. If you routinely feed, cuddle, walk or rock him to sleep, you are effectively doing the soothing for him. While he’s got that, he has no need to develop the ability to self-soothe. Again, this would not be a problem for most parents, if it were not for the fact that babies who rely on a parent for soothing will need a parent’s help again repeatedly during the night.

Fortunately, the solution to the problem of poor sleep associations and the development of self-soothing is the same – put your baby down in his cot sleepy but awake. This gives him a chance to associate his bed with sleep and learn how to self-soothe.

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, do not feel that you need to wake him up just to put him to bed.

Settling your baby in his cot

The first 3-4 months is not the time to introduce a rigid approach if your baby is really unsettled when you put him in his cot. Feel free to do what you need to do to help calm and settle your newborn.

However, a couple of ideas may help. First, be aware that it's natural for a baby to grizzle when you put him to bed. Grizzling can be a sign of tiredness. He may need a little time to get to sleep. If you pick him up now, you may interfere with him getting to sleep and he will lose an opportunity to learn to self-soothe. If the grizzle becomes a real cry, then he does need help to settle. Similarly, as he gets older you might take a wait-and-see approach to grizzling when he wakes during the night to see whether he will re-settle himself without your help. Again, if he is really crying, then he will need your help to re-settle.

A useful strategy for helping your baby settle in his cot is rhythmic patting. The advantage of patting over picking him up is that he is still going to sleep in his bed. Ideally, you stop when he has calmed, but just before he goes off to sleep. If the patting does not work, then by all means pick him up, cuddle or feed him. You can always try again next time.

A feed, play, sleep routine

A consistent routine will help your baby settle into a regular sleep pattern. Again, with a newborn, it pays to be flexible about feeding and sleep times, but it can help to start to do things in a similar order. As your baby gets older, you can begin to start doing things at the same time each day.

Daytime sleep is important too

It can be tempting to try to curtail a baby’s sleep during the day so as to improve his sleeping at night. This is not helpful if it means a tired baby. In fact, although it sounds like a contradiction, 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 he’s had enough.

On the other hand, many infant health professionals suggest not letting a baby sleep over four hours at one time during the day. Newborns will need feeding anyway, and limiting very long sleeps during the day will help establish a pattern of solid sleep at night-time.

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 him a little bit of time to settle himself to sleep or you might need to comfort him. An extra cuddle before putting him back in the cot might be just what he needs. You could also try topping him up with another feed to help send him to sleep.

Your baby is likely to continue seeking a feed even after he no longer needs feeding for nutritional reasons at around six months of age. For many parents, continuing to feed at night after six months is no trouble, and breastfeeding mothers may continue to feed at night to help maintain milk supply. Even if you decide to continue to feed, you can implement these ideas of putting your baby to bed drowsy but awake, and keeping your night-time interaction warm but low-key. This will make it easier to wean him from night feeds when the time is right for baby and you.

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