The Baby Sleep Recipe
So here you are, a tired parent - desperate maybe, wondering how to get this tiny human to give you a break and just.sleep.! Maybe you’ve clicked this blog because you want to prepare yourself before baby arrives, or maybe you are in a sleep crisis.
What I will offer here is maybe less of a “magic formula” and more of a recipe which can be experimented with to make sleep feel like less of a struggle and hopefully take some weight off your tired shoulders.
THE SLEEP RECIPE
1. Sleep expectations
While this step won’t directly change your little one’s sleep, it has the potential to make things feel a lot less stressful.
Our culture has put a magnifying glass on our children’s sleep and instead of making things easier or better for parents somehow, it actually drives stress levels up. How many times have you heard someone ask:
“Is she a good baby?”
“Is he sleeping through the night yet?”
“Are you still breastfeeding her at night?”
“Have you sleep-trained him yet?”
There aren’t many parents out there who would feel empowered by having to answer these questions.
I want you to know 3 truths.
1: baby sleep development is not linear (more like an upward roller-coaster).
2: you can’t make your baby sleep - or teach him how to sleep better.
3: as long as you don’t have any serious medical concerns for your baby, you can trust that he will sleep when and as much as he needs without any particular intervention. (And yes, it is completely normal that your baby prefers to sleep in your arms - that’s when carriers come in handy!)
Newborn babies are born wired to wake frequently. They have tiny tummies that digest breastmilk quickly and so need to feed frequently. So, having long blocks of sleep doesn't make biological sense. Also, the ability to rouse easily and frequently is protective for their survival.
Newborns also don’t have a circadian rhythm yet so being able to sleep mostly at night, like their parents, isn’t something they are wired for yet (more on that next).
How and when newborn sleep transitions to more mature sleep patterns is unpredictable for each baby. Some transition fairly smoothly and quickly and may naturally “sleep through” by 3 months old. Others keep waking every 2 hours well into toddlerhood. Both are normal.
Finally, the total hours of sleep each baby needs is much more varied than most people realise. In fact, while one baby may sleep 18 hours in 24 hours, another may sleep only 9. Half the amount of the other baby! And both can be perfectly healthy, normal infants that go on to meet all their developmental potentials.
Quick tip: spend 2 weeks imagining you can trust your baby’s biology and try to let sleep look after itself (even if it means a nap in your arms that ends when you put her down so you can get ready for a catch up with a friend). Naps may be short and unpredictable but they will require less work on your part and you may even find yourself forgetting to care about tracking sleep!
2. Circadian rhythm
Circadian rhythm is the body’s internal clock, telling it when to be asleep and when to be awake. It is regulated by daylight and activity and can take several weeks after birth to develop. Breastfeeding can help with circadian rhythm in the early weeks as breastmilk contains hormones that help signal day-night rhythm.
You can also help set your baby’s circadian clock by keeping daytime… like daytime! Naps in daylight, with the usual household noise around you and your baby (rather than quiet, dark rooms). Or better yet - on the go! At nighttime keep noise and light levels low even if you need to be awake to tend to your baby.
Renee Keogh from the NDC Institute (Possums.org) very wisely advises: “Daytime is for living, night-time is for sleeping”.
Quick tip: Starting the day at the same time every day can be very helpful with setting the circadian clock. The time you “end” the day is much less important and can be more variable based on your own life activity and your baby’s individual sleep needs that day.
3. Sleep pressure
If I told you I would give you one million dollars if you go to sleep right now, could you do it? No! You can’t make your baby sleep in the same way you can’t make yourself sleep at any given moment. You need to be tired enough, or in other words, have enough sleep pressure to allow you to drop off to sleep.
If you’ve had a good night’s sleep, you wake up with sleep pressure at “zero” and it slowly builds up through the day. This can build faster if you’ve been very busy or physically active. At the end of the day, your sleep pressure builds so high that you feel you have to go to sleep. If there are no barriers to you falling asleep (like high levels of stress), you just drop off to sleep! It is the same for our babies though they need naps which function to just take the edge off so they can make it to night time. We don’t want to bring the pressure back down to zero at nap times or else it risks impacting night-time sleep.
Quick tip: plan one thing each day that takes you out of the house and that you enjoy. Maybe call a friend to join you for a walk. Or take a picnic blanket and sit under a tree listening to a podcast while your baby lays down watching the shadows and practices her rolling skills. Trust that whatever activity you choose will provide your baby with sensory stimulation that will raise his/her sleep pressure for a better night’s sleep.
Once we can take away the magnifying glass on sleep and learn to trust our babies' biology, sleep really does look after itself. And we might even find a little more joy in parenting.
