[Emma H]

Hi Amanda,

It’s great to hear you have found the content helpful.

Just wanted to make sure that I have a clear picture in my head of your little one’s night before I provide a suggestion.

This is what I am picturing: Your LO goes to bed around 7.30-8 pm and sleeps until 10/11 pm at which point she has a feed. She then goes back to sleep and stays asleep until 3 am at which point she wakes and then continues to wake every 1.5 – 2.5 hours for a feed until she wakes for the day sometime between 7 and 8am? So her feeding times overnight are 10/11pm, 3am, 4:30am, 6am, 7:30am?

Thanks

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Erica,

Congratulations on your new arrival!

Having a newborn can feel overwhelming, so I hope you’re managing alright and have some support from family or friends.

There could be a few reasons for the changes you have noticed with your little one.

1. Your little one is becoming more alert!

In the early weeks, your son probably fell asleep easily during or right after feedings, and you could move him to the bassinet without waking him. But as babies grow, they become more aware of their surroundings, making it harder to transfer them to the bassinet during the day without waking them.

It is a little different at night, as your baby’s circadian rhythm and sleep pressure work together to encourage your little one to fall asleep. This may be why he continues sleeping when you transfer him into the bassinet at night.

2. The Period of PURPLE Crying

A potential reason for your baby’s fussiness during the day is the Period of PURPLE Crying. This is a normal developmental stage that most babies go through, which starts at around two weeks of age, and initially, your little one might just seem fussier or cry more than usual without any apparent reason. This fussiness builds up gradually over the next few weeks, reaching a peak when your baby is between 6 and 8 weeks old. At its peak, newborns will spend around 3 hours per day fussing and crying without any apparent reason. However, don’t be alarmed if your little one cries a bit longer, as it varies from baby to baby.

After this peak, the amount and intensity of crying and fussing will slowly start to decrease. At 4 months of age, your baby’s crying and fussing episodes should reduce significantly and be spread out more evenly throughout the day. At this stage, it also gets a little easier to understand why your baby is crying.

With that said, I want to quickly mention that sometimes a baby’s fussiness and crying due to pain are misinterpreted as the period of PURPLE crying. Since you mentioned your son is generally fussy throughout the day and becoming challenging to feed, I wanted to talk about how you would tell the difference between the Period of PURPLE Crying and pain.

When it comes to PURPLE crying, the crying/fussiness spells typically follow a certain rhythm, tending to occur at specific times, usually in the late afternoon or evenings. During this phase, your baby might unexpectedly turn fussy or burst into tears, seemingly without an apparent reason. And just as suddenly as it came, this fussiness and crying tends to suddenly stop.

In contrast, if your baby is experiencing discomfort or pain, perhaps due to an infection, irritation, or certain intolerance, their crying would reflect an entirely different pattern.

In these instances, your baby might cry, fuss, or squirm throughout the day without any pattern. This unceasing crying and fussing can give the impression that your baby is never truly settled.

If this is the case with your little one, I recommend you arrange an appointment with their doctor or paediatrician to discuss these behavioural changes.

Regarding how frequently your little one is having a BM, pooping every 2 1/2 days is considered normal. Just monitor the consistency of the poop. If you notice your little one starts to poop pellets, this signals that he may be constipated, and you may need to check in with the doctor about possible causes for this.

To help your little one sleep in the bassinet during the day, I recommend that when he stays awake following a feed and starts to display tired signs, you do a simple nap routine, lie him down awake in this bassinet, and use the settling pyramid to help him fall asleep. Do you think this is something that you can do for some of his naps?

I hope this helps,

Emma

[Emma H]

Hey Jackie and JB,

It’s so good to hear you’re seeing some improvements in your LO’s sleep. I hope they continue and you all get more sleep!

Under 4 months of age, there isn’t really a nap schedule. Naps times and lengths vary. After 4 months a nap schedule may start to emerge if you wake your baby up at the same time every morning. When you have a consistent wake-up time, the first nap of the day tends to occur around the same time. For example, if your baby wakes at 7 am and stays awake for 2 hours then that first nap of the day will start to occur at 9 am. Once that first nap time becomes consistent the second nap time starts to become consistent and so on. By 6 months of age, your baby should have a consistent nap schedule in regards to the time they go to sleep and how long they generally nap for.

When they’re having growth spurts what you will notice is they feed more during the day, as well as night. If you notice they are just feeding more at night then it’s likely not a growth spurt. Sometimes this might be occurring because your LO is getting distracted during the day and having smaller feeds (this tends to happen as they become more aware and interested in the world around them, so they start to feed more overnight. If this is the case, try feeding your LO in a distraction-free room (or a room with fewer distractions) during the day to ensure they have a full feed. If it is a growth spurt it’s ok to feed them. Just make sure you are continuing to help them learn to fall asleep on their own (using the settling pyramid) for their naps. What you want to avoid is falling into the habit of feeding them off to sleep for all naps and bedtime.

The timing of when you go out really depends on you and your little one. If your little one can fall asleep out and about (for example in the baby carrier) then you can go out when it’s nap time. As they get older and the nap times become more consistent (so around 6 months of age) it’s often easier to time outings with wake windows.

I hope that helps!

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Monique,

From your answers, it sounds like your little one might be waking every 5 – 10 minutes (until she falls into a deep sleep) because the pacifier has fallen out, and she needs it to fall asleep. The pacifier is falling out, and because she isn’t yet fully asleep, she is waking up fully, calling you to come and put it back in and then resettle her to sleep.

The key to helping her fall asleep at bedtime and for longer stretches overnight is to help her learn how to fall asleep on her own. At the moment, because she cannot put the pacifier back in her mouth independently, this is stopping her from doing this.

So for this reason, there are two options:

1. Teach her how to put the pacifier back in his mouth independently.

Your little one should have the fine motor skills to do this at 7 1/2 months, but it might take some practice for her to learn this skill. It’s better to teach her this skill when she is happy and alert. So, during her next playtime, lay her in her crib and place lots of pacifiers around her. Then, let her practice finding the pacifiers and putting them in her mouth while lying down. The hope is that once she learns this skill, she can find the pacifier during the night and put it back in herself, eliminating the need to call out to you every 5 – 10 minutes at the start of bedtime and throughout the night.

2. Remove the pacifier.

Until she learns to put the pacifier into her mouth independently, you will need to continue to go into her room and put the pacifier back in her mouth. If you would like to stop doing this, I recommend you remove the pacifier.

It’s important to note that removing the pacifier will be challenging at any age, as she will need to learn how to soothe herself to sleep without using it. However, removing the pacifier at this age can be easier than when she is a toddler. Either way, if you decide to do it now or in future years, you will notice a change in her sleep habits as she learns a new way to fall asleep.

If you choose to remove the pacifier at this point, I recommend you stop using it for all sleep (naps and overnight) and use the settling pyramid to help your little one fall asleep. Removing it from all sleep is less confusing and gives her lots of opportunities to learn a new way of falling asleep, which will help her learn this new way of falling asleep quicker.

It will be a little challenging at first, but with time, she will be able to soothe herself to sleep without the pacifier.

I hope that helps!

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Jaime,

It’s so good to hear that the settling pyramid has given you a way to teach your little one how to fall asleep independently, most of the time.

Regarding the early wake-ups at night, it’s great that they don’t happen often. Given that he is waking occasionally at 10 pm and this is 2 hours after his bedtime, what might be happening is that your little one is transitioning between sleep cycles at this time. You may recall that when your little one transitions between sleep cycles, he may partially wake up. If something disturbs him while he transitioning between sleep cycles, it can cause that partial wake to become a full wake.

Did something happen just beforehand on the nights that he woke at 10 pm? For example;

– If you’re sleeping in the same room as your little one, did you or your partner enter the bedroom to go to bed?

– Was there a sudden noise (like someone using the bathroom or showering)?

If you identify it is potentially due to these reasons, then it would be a good idea to start doing whatever is it that disturbed him well before or after 10pm. That way, when your little one transitions between sleep cycles you won’t accidentally turn that partial waking into a full waking.

My other suggestion is to see if you can wait a few minutes before going in to him when he wakes at this time. At the start of the night, their sleep is dominated by deep sleep, so it’s likely that if he does stir and call out, he will fall back to sleep if he is given the time to do so.

I hope that helps,

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Natalee,

It sounds like you both find feeding to sleep enjoyable and it’s ok to keep doing this if you want to.

What happens around this age is that your little one’s sleep matures; as a result, he will cycle through 4 sleep stages and partially wake between sleep cycles. This partial wake happens every 30 – 45 minutes during the day and may result in catnaps. Overnight, you tend to see that your little one may fall asleep easily at the beginning of the night and sleep for 4+ hours before waking for his first feed. This first stretch of sleep is dominated by deep sleep, so he may sleep well. As the night progresses, Stage 2 NREM sleep and REM sleep, which are lighter stages of sleep, start to dominate your baby’s sleep. You may notice that your little one might wake up more often. To get him to fall asleep, you might feed him off. These wakes could be as often as every 90 minutes to 2 hours. If this is happening with your little one, it would suggest he is waking between sleep cycles (not because he is genuinely hungry) and needing a feed to fall back to sleep because that is how he knows how to fall asleep. If you are happy to wake up and feed your little one to get him back to sleep, that is completely fine. You don’t need to do anything.

But if you don’t want to wake every 90 minutes to 2 hours overnight or you’re too tired, you will need to help your little one learn how to fall asleep without feeding him to sleep.

You could start the pre-sleep routine with a feed and then stop the feed when he is drowsy and use the settling pyramid to help him fall asleep in the crib if you wish. Alternatively, instead of rocking him in your arms, do you have a rocking chair or an exercise ball you could use? This way, you can still bring in some calming movement as part of the sleep routine but not need to stand up and rock him. I’m unsure if that would be any easier for you, but I thought I would suggest it.

I hope that helps

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Vivian,

How have the last few days gone? Has he continued to wake after one sleep cycle at night?

[Emma H]

Hi Elen,

I hope the last few days have been getting easier for you both.

It’s great that you were able to work out a sleep training method that works for your little one for day naps. I do find as they get older, sometimes being in the room with them is just confusing and can cause them to protest more, as they see you’re in the room and expect you to do what you have previously done. By exiting the room there is a clear ending to the nap routine.

In regards to the timing of her bedtime, it depends. If you find that she is really upset because she is tired at the end of the day you can shift it to 6 pm. But if she is tolerating 6:15 pm then stick with that.

In regards to your little one crying when she is going to sleep. It might be because the nap time is a little too early. For the next few days, I recommend you continue to put her to bed at 11 am and write down what time she falls asleep. If you notice she is falling asleep at 11.30 am then you could try shifting her nap time to 11:30 or 11:20 am and see if she protests less with a later nap time.

It’s also great that she has lengthened her naps to 1 hour instead of 30 minutes. I would expect that her naps will continue to lengthen. The length of time she will nap for depends on her total sleep needs over 24 hours. At this age, 11 – 14 hours of sleep over 24 hours is considered normal. But 2 hours more or 2 hours less is also considered okay. So given that your little one goes to bed at 6:15 pm and sleeps until 6:30am, she is having a little over 12 hours sleep overnight. This means if she needs 14 hours of sleep in 24 hours she might nap for a touch under 2 hours.

I hope that helps!

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Monique,

I do think once she learns how to fall asleep without the pacifier, she will wake less frequently overnight. She is currently waking every sleep cycle and calling out to you to put the pacifier back in, which results in waking every 2 – 21/2 hours. Once she learns how to go to sleep on her own she will not wake as often and she should start sleeping for longer stretches overnight. Her daytime naps should also improve.

I hope that helps!

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Kostas,

It’s great that you have had time to review the course material. Hopefully, it is making sense.

I would say that if Helen goes to bed at 8 pm, wakes at 2:30 am, and then at 4:30/5 am, she’s hungry. What should happen (as she already knows how to fall asleep on her own) is that the first stretch of sleep will gradually lengthen. For example, she might go to bed at 8 pm, and instead of waking at 2.30 am for her first feed, she might wake at 3.30 am. This might increase to 4.30 am. Then, it might move to 5 am. Then, she might not wake up until 6 am.

I don’t recommend dream feeds (where you wake them up at 10 or 11 pm). That first part of the night is when your baby is in deep sleep so they don’t tend to feed well. But more importantly, waking them up to feed them at this point disrupts the natural process of them gradually extending that first stretch of sleep at the beginning of the night.

If she wakes at 5 am, you can feed her or leave her if she isn’t upset. As you said, sometimes she just falls back to sleep, which is great. You will know if she needs you because she will start to call out pretty consistently. Just remember that for babies, waking up between 6 – 7 am to start the day is very normal.

Regarding daylight savings, what you do really depends on your family routine and what works for you. If you would prefer Helen wakes at 7 am and goes to bed at 8 pm, then in the week leading up to the clocks changing, you need to gradually shift her circadian rhythm an hour earlier.

To do that, you need to do three things.

1. In the week before the time change, shift Helen’s entire schedule 15 minutes earlier every second day.

This will ensure that she will follow her typical schedule when the time change occurs.

This is how you do it:

• On Monday and Tuesday move Helen’s wake-up time, feeds, and sleep periods (naps and bedtime) 15 minutes earlier than usual. For example, if Helen usually wakes-up at 7 am, naps at 9:00 am, 1:00 pm and 5 pm, and then goes to bed at 8:00 pm. On Monday and Tuesday of that week, you will wake Helen up at 6:45 am, offer her first nap 8:45 am, her second nap at 12:45 pm, her third nap at 4:45 pm and bedtime at 7:45 pm.
• On Wednesday and Thursday mornings, you will wake Helen up 15 minutes earlier than you did on Tuesday and offer all feeds and sleep periods 15 earlier. For example, you will now wake Helen up at 6.30 am, and then offer her first nap 8:30 am, her second nap at 12:30 pm, her third nap at 4:30 pm and bedtime at 7:30 pm.
• On Friday and Saturday mornings, wake Helen up 15 minutes earlier than you did on Thursday morning and offer all feeds and sleep periods 15 minutes earlier. For example, you will now wake Helen at 6.15 am and then offer her first nap at 8:15 am, her second nap at 12:15 pm, her third nap at 4:15 pm, and bedtime at 7:15 pm.
• On Sunday morning, you will once again shift her wake-up time, feeds, and sleep periods 15 minutes earlier than the day before. However, because on Sunday morning the clock has moved forward an hour, what was previously 6 am is now 7 am. So you will wake Helen up at 7 am, she will have her first nap at 9 am, her second nap at 1 pm, her third nap at 5 pm, and her bedtime will be at 8 pm.

2. Dim the Lights an Hour Before Bedtime: Bright lights can keep Helen awake longer, which isn’t what you’re aiming for. You’re trying to get her to go to bed earlier, not later. So, make sure to close the curtains and use softer lighting options, like dim lights, small lamps, or nightlights, as you prepare her for bedtime.

3. Bright Lights in the Morning: When it’s time to wake up, make the room bright. Open the blinds and turn on the lights. This exposure to light in the morning will help reset Helen’s internal clock to wake up earlier, which also helps her get to bed earlier.

If you do these three things in the week before the clocks move forward an hour, you will be able to successfully shift Helen’s internal body clock. However, it is important to note that a child’s circadian rhythm needs some time to adjust, so it might take Helen a week to adjust to the new schedule.

Regarding your question about wake windows, the length of time Helen can stay awake after a nap depends on the quality and length of her previous nap. If she had a long nap, you may notice she has a longer wake window – so she might stay awake for 2 1/2 hours. But if she has a short nap, she might only be able to stay awake for 2 hours or slightly less. It’s due to this variability in wake windows, I recommend you look at wake windows as one piece of a three-piece puzzle when determining when Helen is tired. The other pieces are her general pattern (wake, feed, play, sleep) and, lastly, her unique tired signs.

I hope that helps!

Emma

[Emma H]

That’s great! Glad it worked!

[Emma H]

Hi Nikki,

This is huge!

You would have been so excited and it would have been so nice to see your little one fall asleep happily.

I am so excited for you and your little one.

Keep it up and it will only get better from here!

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Kostas,

Thanks for taking the time to give me more details.

It does sound like her sleep might have changed slightly yesterday. As it’s only a recent change, I can’t say if it’s permanent. You really want to see changes for a week or two before thinking it is an ongoing change. As it is new, I wouldn’t expect that it will be ongoing at this point.

Also, I suspect that she was falling asleep when you were reading the book because she was tired (maybe due to the short naps).

It sounds like you have worked out a sleep training method you’re happy with and it’s working for you both, which is great!

Based on her bedtime and overnight sleep pattern before the changes yesterday, you don’t need to be concerned that she is waking up at 4:30/5/6am because she needs a breastfeed to fall asleep. If she depended on having a feed to fall asleep, you would typically see a baby who would only fall asleep for naps and bedtime during a feed and then wake every 90 minutes to 2 hours in the second half of the night. The fact that your little one falls asleep independently for naps and bedtime and isn’t waking every 90 minutes to 2 hours in the second half of the night indicates she doesn’t rely on a feed to fall asleep.

I also don’t think she wakes between 4 and 6 am because she is no longer tired or her circadian rhythm is fixed and telling her to wake up! This is because she falls back to sleep after the feed. If she had met her nighttime sleep needs or her circadian rhythm was fixed, she wouldn’t be able to fall back to sleep.

It also doesn’t appear to be due to environmental noises (as the house is quiet at these wake times).

I think she is waking at 4:30/5 am because she is genuinely hungry. Waking 1 – 2 times overnight for a feed, especially for breastfed babies, is typical at this age. It’s also really common for babies to start their day between 6 – 7 am. This is just a typical circadian rhythm for infants.

I know you want to stop feeding her next month. Before you do this, I recommend you check in with her doctor to ensure she is gaining weight, and dropping the early morning feed will be ok.

I hope that helps!

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Vivian,

As your little one gets older, you will notice that his awake windows increase, and as a result, the number of naps he has will reduce. Given that it was just a change for one day, it’s hard to say if this is an ongoing change. Just follow his tired signs (which it sounds like you are) and use the wake windows as a guide. It might be comforting to know that at 4 months of age, it’s not unusual for them to drop their naps from 6 to 4 and stay awake for longer.

Emma

[Emma H]

Hi Elen,

I think a combination of things might be making nap sleep training a little challenging at this time.

Firstly, your little one has learned that for daytime sleep, she is either breastfed or rocked to sleep; at night, it’s a different routine. So, unfortunately, sleep training during the day is required to teach her the new routine for daytime naps. This in itself is an adjustment that your little one would need to learn.

Secondly, you’re transitioning to one nap a day, which can be challenging. Typically, there is an adjustment time as the child gets used to staying up longer. You’re stretching their wake window, meaning they will initially be pretty tired when it’s time to nap. As a result, they may need more support to settle to sleep. I don’t know which strategy you use to sleep train your little one during the day, but I expect they will need more help initially. Once your little one gets used to staying awake for longer in the morning, the difficulty falling asleep for that daytime nap should also lessen.

It’s important to remember that it can take babies up to 20 minutes to fall asleep. Plus, for daytime naps, only sleep pressure drives your little one to sleep. At night, your baby’s circadian rhythm and sleep pressure work together to fall asleep, so it’s often a lot easier to teach your little one to fall asleep at night independently than to teach them to fall asleep independently for naps.

Be consistent with using the sleep training method you have chosen for naps; your little one will soon learn to fall asleep independently.

Also, during this adjustment period of dropping to one nap, you might need to move her bedtime to an earlier time temporarily. Once she starts to fall asleep independently, the length of the daytime nap should increase, and you will be able to move her bedtime back.

I hope that helps!

Emma

• This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by  Emma H.