Cradle or Moses basket. These baby beds have the advantage of being right next to your bed, but don’t offer the convenience of easy-access feeding like the co-sleeper. Cradles and Moses baskets are portable, however, so you have the flexibility of seeing if baby would sleep well in his own room, too.
Swinging hammock bed. This baby bed is like a soft-bottomed cradle, and it hangs from a spring inside a steel frame, so every time baby moves, the spring gently moves and often lulls baby back to sleep. It too has the advantage of being portable, so baby can sleep in any room of the house. It can sit right next to your bed for easy access to baby at night.
Some of you reading this book may be finding that your baby thinks being in the same room with you just isn’t close enough. Baby needs to feel you right next to him, and if he doesn’t, he wakes up. So, what do you do? Co-sleep!
3. Sleeping with baby in your bed. Perhaps your baby isn’t even born yet, but you’ve decided that you want to sleep with your baby right from the start. You may feel: “after all, she’s a baby. She’s been close to me for nine months.” Or maybe you are just getting to know your newborn, and you aren’t yet sure what you want to do. Or, you may encounter this situation. “When I put our baby in the cot he wakes up a lot, but as soon as I bring him into our bed he sleeps better – and so do we.” Baby is trying to tell you something: “For my well-being I need to sleep closer to you.” Listen to your baby!
Sleeping with your baby has some unique advantages:
You can feed baby back to sleep while you fall easily back to sleep.
Baby can fall back to sleep more quickly because you can comfort him before he fully wakes up, and you fully wake up.
Baby may sleep longer and better because you are nearby.
Baby benefits from eight extra hours of closeness each night.
Working parents get extra “touch” time with baby.
Studies have shown that even though sleep-sharing babies wake up more to feed, co-sleeping mothers actually get more restful sleep compared to mums who don’t sleep with their babies.
These very advantages can also turn out to be disadvantages (depending on how you look at it):
Baby may actually wake more frequently because he feels you nearby.
Some parents don’t sleep well with a baby in their bed. They want their baby close, but not that close.
If Mum sleeps well with the baby, but Dad is a light sleeper and can’t get used to the extra presence in his bed, Dad may not sleep well. This may prompt Dad to find another room to sleep in, such as the pastel-coloured nursery that he painted for the baby.
Once baby gets used to sleeping with you, he may not want to give it up. For some of you, this is an advantage because you welcome this long-term bonding arrangement. For others, co-sleeping may go on longer than you would have liked.
You may have enjoyed sharing sleep with your baby, but now one or all of these disadvantages are interfering with your sleep. If your co-sleeping baby is waking up too much, you can choose either to keep baby in your bed and work through the other steps in our plan, or you can look at the other options for where baby may sleep.
Deciding about co-sleeping isn’t as simple as weighing a short list of pros and cons. Co-sleeping is part of an Attachment Parenting style that can be rewarding for families in many ways. (See the “Baby B’s of Attachment Parenting”,) Because most parents sleep with their baby at some time in the first couple of years, in chapter 5 we will go into detail about sharing sleep with your baby and how to decide if it is the right arrangement for you.
4. All of the above. Most families play musical beds during their child’s early years and juggle bits and pieces of all of these sleeping arrangements. For example, baby may start off in a separate bed or room, then move closer to Mum sometime during the night. Remember, it’s about what’s best for you and your baby, and adapting to everyone’s changing nighttime needs.
Now let’s move on to step two.
step 2: learn baby’s tired times
When opportunity comes yawning, don’t miss it! Watch for drowsy signs. Try to catch her by the third yawn. Observe your baby’s need-to-go-to-sleep signs as you do her hunger cues. When babies begin to show signs of being tired, there is a 10–15 minute window of opportunity in which they will fall asleep fairly easily. If you miss this window of opportunity, the tired baby may get progressively more cranky and revved up (the proverbial “second wind”). Even though baby is growing more tired by the minute, this cranky mood makes it harder for him to relax and fall asleep.
sleepy signs
Get to know your baby’s “I need to go to sleep – NOW!” signals. Here are the usual ones:
Change in mood. Baby starts to fuss. Some babies become quieter when they are tired or they get less coordinated and their limbs get more “floppy”. A great deal of fussing may mean baby is overtired and you missed the earlier signals.
Drooping eyelids
Nodding head
Glazed look, “zoning out”
Yawning
Whimpering
Toddler signs:
Rubbing eyes
Lies on floor
Grabs favourite sleep prop or “cuddly”
The reason for figuring out when your baby is most likely to be tired is so that you can work out when to begin your baby’s bedtime ritual (more about bedtime rituals below). If you wait until baby is actually showing signs of being tired and then you give him a bath, put on his pyjamas, feed him, and rock him to sleep, the tired time will be over and baby will be revved up and ready to rock and roll for another hour. A better strategy is to begin the bedtime routine twenty or thirty minutes before the expected tired time. That way, baby will be feeling sleepy just as you get to the part of the bedtime routine when he is supposed to fall asleep. What’s more, since sleepy feelings begin to creep over baby as you go through the bedtime ritual, he will eventually learn to associate these drowsy feelings with his usual bedtime ritual.
A prompt response at tired times is especially important in energetic, alert babies and toddlers who fight sleep. The baby or child who is tired but who is resisting going to sleep is trying to tell you, “I don’t know how to relax. Please help me!” The longer he fights it, the harder it gets. If you can jump in and ease baby off to sleep before he starts to put up a fight, he will go to sleep more easily and stay asleep longer. He will also learn to associate these first signs of being tired with going to sleep immediately – both at naptime and at nighttime.
As soon as he seems tired, I pick up on his cues. I talk very softly, hold him, feed him, rub him (but not in a stimulating way), and gradually lower my voice and slow down my lullaby. This is his cue that sleep is expected to follow.
Charting your baby’s tired times. On the chart below, write down baby’s tired time every evening for one or two weeks. Do you see a pattern? Does your baby get sleepy around the same time every night, give or take 15–30 minutes? In our experience, most babies have their natural sleepy time between 6:30 and 7:30pm if they routinely take a nap in the early afternoon, or around 8:30 or 9 if a late afternoon nap is the norm.
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