Baby Sleep Help - Natalie's Response

Mum Zone's resident Sleep Expert Natalie of Sleep and Settle is available to answer some of your questions about settling your baby and more.

Topics include: Sleeping and settling, moving from bassinette to cot, cot to bed, breastfeeding/formula, solids, floorplay for babies and play for toddlers/children, wrapping/sleeping bags/dressing baby, behaviour/tantrums, what's normal? bedroom environments, music, lights, entertainment, mattresses, mattress protectors, sheets, unsettled babies and the 0-12 week afternoon arsenic hours, reflux/colic, teething, worms, toilet training, night terrors/nightmares, the older child issues 5-10 years and single parenting/separation/divorce.

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Reader's Question

My son is in a bed from being transitioned from a cot 2 months ago. He seems to keep waking during the night normally at 10:30/12 am and then sometimes again around 4am. The only thing I find that settles him quickly and gets him back to sleep is to give him a little bit of milk in a bottle. Could you please give me some tips to erradicate the bottle and get him to sleep on his own during the night?

Natalie's Response

Hi,

I appreciate that you are tired and anxiously waiting for a full nights sleep.

Consider:

• In order to create a full nights sleep make sure your toddler is eating well - fruits, vegetables, proteins, and wholegrain processed foods and that his drink of choice is water. Children do not need cups of milk all day and juice. One cup of milk in a supper cup with stories is all that is needed before cleaning the teeth.
  
  
• Encourage daily active play outside, morning and afternoon. Only 30 mins of TV in the afternoon.
  
  
• Have a fixed bedtime routine including stories before bed and cleaning the teeth.
  
  
• If children get uncovered they don't pull up the blankets until they are about 7-8 years old. You may like to think about how you are dressing your toddler overnight and see if they are warm enough for sleeping on top of their blankets. The most common reason for waking at 4am is that your toddler is cold.
  
  
• 11pm is a generic pre-programmed wake time for babies and toddlers, so we need to investigate the 'rewards for waking' that your toddler may be receiving.
  
  
• I appreciate that the quickest way to get him back to sleep may be some milk, but this is rewarding the waking, stimulating him, and perpetuating the waking every night. Consider that we the parents create the good and bad habits with our consistency and persistency, not the toddlers.
  
  
• Find a self-settling strategy you are comfortable with, see my Sleep and Settle Sleep Package for a choice of two strategies, and apply your strategy consistently and persistently. In order for your toddler to resettle overnight he needs to be able to put himself to sleep at the beginning of the sleep. The average time it takes for sleeping all night in a big bed is 3-21 days.

Hope this helps.

Happy sleeping.

Natalie

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The opinions expressed on these pages are of a general nature and are by no means a substitute for professional advice. Therefore neither Mum Zone or Natalie Ebrill of Sleep and Settle are liable for any actions pertaining to the use of the supplied information.