Sleep Nanny

In this blog, we are going to be addressing the fact that you’ve recognized that your baby doesn’t sleep enough, or your little one doesn’t sleep enough. So we’re going to find out why. Where is it in 24 hours that the lack of sleep is coming from? Because understanding this is key.  In the previous blog we started talking about overtiredness and what that does, and the effect of overtiredness. So today, we are going to fully understand where the overtiredness could be coming from.  First of all, could it be lack of daytime sleep? That’s the first one I want you to think about. Is your child under three? If they are, then they probably do still need some daytime sleep. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes they need daytime sleep beyond age three as well. But if they are under three, then it’s pretty much a sure thing that they do need some. And if that’s the case, how much should that be, at this current age and stage that they are? How much daytime sleep would be beneficial for them? And in what sections? How many? How many naps and how long would they be, if they’re going to be doing the best sleep they can do? So if we can understand that we can then understand whether they’re getting enough or not. That immediately gives us a fixing point like, “Ah, okay, my two-year-old, let’s say, is having a half an hour nap in the day.” Okay brilliant, we’ve identified a problem. It’s not enough sleep for a two-year-old, we need to be aiming more towards the two-hour mark. So we already go, “Oh right, okay. That’s what I need to do to help to fix things.” It could be the amount, but it could also be the quality. So you might think, “Oh no, my child gets loads of sleep. They get the exact amount that they need for their age and stage.” But if the quality of that sleep isn’t great that could be the problem. It could be the timing as well. So what if they’re getting the quantity overall, but the quality is poor and it’s in little snatched naps of light sleep. And perhaps, in their case, it’s not restorative enough, and the quality of sleep is down. Also, motion sleep, so the sleep that you have on the go, in the pushchair, or the car, or on the move, motion sleep often won’t give the same quality of sleep as a proper sleep space and ideal sleep environment. It can, but often it doesn’t. So that could be the key and the thing that is causing your little one to be overtired. So these are all things that you can look at and explore to spot it with your little one where’s that overtiredness coming from.  The other thing with timing to look at is if they’re awake for too long between sleeps. So sometimes people will tell me, “Yep, they’re getting enough sleep.” And they are, they’re getting enough. Let’s go back to our two-year-old, perhaps they’re getting nearly two hours every day and it’s brilliant, but they’re taking that a bit late in the day. So actually, from their morning wake-up time until the start of that nap time, if that window of awakeness is too long, even if they’re getting the ideal amount of nap after that, the very fact that wake window is too long could be the reason for their overtiredness, even if they are getting enough naptime. So timing does play a part in this as well.  Timing is something that can easily be overlooked or ignored because you think, “They get the sleep eventually.” Yeah, but that extended wakeful period may have already done the harm and cause the overtiredness. When you look at bedtime itself. Is bedtime late, a bit too late or irregular? Does it move around a lot? That could be another reason for overtiredness, a bedtime that isn’t consistent, or that is too late for a little one.  Most 0 to 6 year olds, some seven-year-olds, will do best with a bedtime around 7:00 PM. That’s if you operate a kind of a day in the life of where you want to wake up between 6:00 AM and 7:00 AM, maybe you have school or preschool, or you are working, and then wind down, your evening meal or whatever, and then to sleep around 7:00 PM, somewhere between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM, for sure. Absolutely, somewhere between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM, for anyone, I would say, 0 to 10 years. You may get a few on the older side that can cope with a slightly later bedtime, but generally speaking, from 0 to 10 years, I would say somewhere between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM, it’s going to fit really, really well. 7:00 PM’s great, right down the middle. The last one that you could look at in terms, if you’re trying to figure out, where is this overtiredness coming from? I know my child’s overtired, I figured that out in the last episode, but where is it coming from? Could it be disturbed nights? Do you have lots of wake ups going on in the night, lots of disruption? Are they up and down? Are they having wakeful periods in the night?  That, in itself, is going to cause overtiredness because not only do they lose those bits of sleep when they wake up, but the very fact that they’re having them means that the sleep cycles are not thorough and they’re not nourishing. We cycle through our sleep like this. And if they’re spending a lot of time up here, they’re not getting their deep, nourishing sleep and having that restorative effect. So it could be the disturbed nights, okay? So have a think about those, see which it could be for you. If this has helped you go, “Ah yes, it’s that,” then brilliant, because you can then move on into my blog, where I’m going to be sharing with you how to actually fix that, how to get them to sleep more. Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

This blog is all about coping when your little one is waking really early every morning, every day. I’m going to be going through three key things that you can use to get through this while you are working on the strategies I shared in the last two blogs about how to actually overcome this problem, and get your little one sleeping beyond 6:00 AM every morning. But, I understand that that can take some time, and so, this is for you whilst you’re going through that. Tip number one for you on how to cope when your little one is waking really early for the day is to try to take turns in being the parent that gets up if possible. Now, I understand that’s not possible if you’re on your own, but if you’re not alone, if somebody else can take a turn either every other day or every few days so that you can rest and have a little bit longer in bed, it makes all the difference because once you get up, it’s really hard to go back to sleep. And even if your little one goes back to sleep, it’s so difficult for you to then go back to sleep. It’s like you’re almost waiting in anticipation. So. You almost do have to resign yourself to the fact that you’re going to be awake now to some level for the day, and having somebody else that can go and take their time with that. Just knowing, psychologically knowing, that it’s not my turn today, I can stay in bed. Just by staying, laying down, and keeping your eyes closed even if you are awake and can hear what’s going on, you’re more likely to, first of all, fall back to sleep, and second of all, you’re also more likely to get some degree of better rest than if you actually get up. So, knowing that somebody else can take care of it and that you can just rest is better than nothing. I actually quite like the two days on two days off pattern. And so, if you could take those kinds of times with a partner, then that could be great because then you get two solid nights where you know that you do not need to get up and respond and that you can wake up when you are ready to start the day, or at least after 6:00 AM. Take turns, if you can. If you can’t, if you are on your own, if you’re a single parent, then is there an occasion or perhaps once a week could you have a relative come and stay with you or a good friend come and stay with you? Or could you go and stay with somebody that would be willing to help and take a turn? Even if it is just once a week on a weekend and give you that little bit of extra rest. It’s not as powerful as if you can do this every other night or every couple of nights, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s really worth asking for that help. The second thing that you can definitely, definitely do is grab a nap in the day. Now, I know that sounds simple, and I can already hear you going, yeah, if only it was that easy. It’s not easy, is it? It’s not easy to go, right quick, okay, here’s an opportunity, little ones to sleep. I’m going to go to sleep. And I have talked about this in other episodes. We don’t just go, oh yeah, just go to sleep. It’s not that simple, but if we just dismiss it and we don’t even try, then we are definitely not going to get that sleep. Here’s what I recommend. Take that opportunity when it comes, when your little one’s having a nap, and the opportunity is there. Do not pick up your phone, do not do the laundry, do not do anything. Just stop. Go and sit down somewhere quiet. Dim the lights, make it dark, sit back or lie down even, rest your head, put your feet up, close your eyes and do some nice deep breathing. If you are good at meditating, then do that. If you’re not, you’re quite a busy minded person, then just let your thoughts flow, but just breathe and really focus on taking those breaths because I know it sounds woo woo, but it’s so powerful just taking those deep breaths, and letting it all go will put you into such a great state of relaxation, which stands you in good stead for a possible nap. Now you might not nap. You might not fall asleep, but the very fact that you’re lying down, you have your feet raised, you have your eyes closed. You will be in a state of rest. That’s better than if you weren’t doing that. So do that as a minimum. And if you can take a nap, take a nap. You’ll know when your baby wakes. They’ll let you know when they need you. And if you can just catch a few Zs, it will help. It will benefit you. In some cultures, it’s normal to do that every day anyway. It’s actually really, really good for our bodies. We’re not really designed to be awake for the whole day in one stretch and then have all our sleep consolidated into one chunk at night. We’re actually not as humans supposed to do that. That’s just culturally what we do. I have got another tip for you. My third tip on coping with early wakings is to go to bed early. And that, again, can be really hard because you think, oh God, I’ve just had a hectic day. I finally got the little one to bed. I just want some me-time. I just want to unwind and binge some TV, or social media, or chat to a friend, or just have some time for myself. Well, yes, but you got to weigh up the cost. And if you are doing what I taught in the last two episodes, and you are finding and overcoming this early rising problem, then you’re not a million miles away from this being over. Would it hurt in the short term to just say, do you know what, I’m tired. And if you are tired, just go, I’m going to bed. And take an audiobook or a podcast with you if that’s what you like to do, but be all ready for bed so that if you nod off, you can go, enough, put it down and just go to sleep. Get to sleep earlier. Catch your Zs so that you are energized, and ready to then implement what you need to do as a parent to help your little one overcome these early wakings with that consistent response to the early waking when it inevitably happens somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 AM the next morning. You can do this. Three simple things there that you can do. Take turns in the early morning response. Grab a nap in the day or at least a good rest wherever possible, and get yourself to bed early. They are simple, but yet it sounds like common sense, but it just hardly ever is common practice. I’ve given it to you now, so make sure that you go and do that. Get yourself some rest, and you’ll be out the other side of this before you know it. Take care, and sleep soundly. 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This blog is all about early waking and specifically today, we’re talking about how to overcome the early waking. This is all about early waking sleep training, we will delve into the steps you need to take and my three R’s on early rising. Number one, you’ve got to spot where the overtiredness is coming from. If you haven’t already make sure you’ve read my blog on early wakings and spotting the signs of overtiredness, I shared why little ones wake early and we’re talking about 4:00 or 5:00 AM wake ups. We’re not talking about night wakings, about how that happens, why that happens and the things you need to do to find out where the over tiredness is coming from in the first place. The first R is Resolve the overtiredness. What do we need to do? Do we need more nap time? Do we need to work on resettling a premature waking from a nap? That’s when the nap should be maybe an hour and a quarter, but they’re waking up after 30 minutes. Do we need to work on nap resettles or do we need earlier bedtimes or do we need a more consistent bedtime? Is it the wake window we need to shrink down or alter slightly or tweak the timing. We need to resolve the place where we can see that our little one’s falling short of sleep and overcome that overtiredness. We know that’s not as simple as it sounds. We don’t just flick a switch and suddenly, we fixed it. They’re not overtired anymore, but if we can spot it and we know where it’s coming from, then we can apply a strategy to resolving it and helping to replenish their sleep and build up a more fulfilled sleep tank. That’s going to be the key element to resolving this early waking. We do have two other things that we need to do simultaneously whilst we’re over there working on replenishing that sleep tank. Second R for you is to respond to the early waking consistently. What do I mean by that? If they wake up 5:00 and sometimes you are like, “Shh, back to sleep, back to sleep.” And sometimes you go, “Oh, whatever, I’m awake, let’s start the day,” or sometimes they get milk or sometimes they get loads of attention and other times you’re like, “No, not happening.” It’s a mixed bag of response or sometimes it’s feed and sometimes it’s a nappy change and sometimes it’s start the day and sometimes it’s not. We need a consistent response and we need a response that says it’s still nighttime. The environment they’re in needs to say it’s still nighttime. You and your body language need to say it’s still nighttime. The whole message needs to come across that it’s not time to get up right now. If you start conveying this just with cues and environmental cues right from baby stage, then when they’re into toddler and preschooler age, this is so much easier because they can then recognize, oh, okay, yeah. This means it’s nighttime. This means it’s daytime. Mummy or daddy, they don’t talk to me when it’s nighttime. Maybe you just whisper. You might give them a little, “Shh, shh, back to sleep.” You might communicate. I’m not saying don’t communicate. You might communicate in a nighttime mode, but it’s very different to how you are with them in the daytime and that’s a brilliant signal and trigger that you can demonstrate right from baby stage. Respond consistently however, that may look. Now, we work out bespoke responses to families when we work with families one on one, because it can very much depend upon the child’s individual personality, age, developmental stage, everything. There’s so many factors that will determine the best response to givI can;t give you all of that detail here but what I can say is that it does need to be consistent. Once you know what it is, be consistent with it every single time so that they know exactly what to expect, and then they can count on you and then they can rely on you, which actually builds trust. The next R I have for you is reward. We all respond to rewards and incentives. That’s how life works. That’s what a job is. You do a job and you get paid. That’s the reward. Everything is rewarded. We want to reward the staying quietly in bed or in the cot. There’s a couple of ways you can do that and it does work differently depending on their age and stage. For a younger baby, it may be the reward may just be the whole concept of you’re sort of soothing them back to sleep, and then it becomes morning and you’re like, “Morning time.” Their reward is that animated interaction from you. That’s the reward, “Well done. You did so well.” Then you start the day and maybe the milk is there and all these things that they’re excited about that could be the reward. As they get a little bit older, you can up the ante on that and give them more incentives. One thing that works really well with this is a sleep wake clock. I love the sleep wake clocks that are black and white, not color, but in terms of there’s a symbol that says it’s a sleep time and there’s a symbol that says it’s a wake time. Preferably, it’s a little character, because then it’s like a little buddy for them and that little character is up or that little character is asleep. The clocks that have various shapes and colors and countdowns can actually lead to little ones staying up because they’re like, oh, there’s only one notch left. It’s going to change soon or that kind of thing. They’re counting down and they have to have the cognitive ability to know what the shapes and colors actually mean, which is a whole other level. Very simple, clear this means day and this means night. You could actually just have a lamp with a timer and the light goes on. I would have it going on dimly because you don’t want to actually wake the child up, but you could have a light that goes on, so when it’s off, it’s nighttime and when it’s on, it’s daytime, and again, you can teach a little one from around 20 months what these things mean and they usually respond quite well to those. From around 19 to 20 months, I would introduce a sleep wake clock or signal. Then you can refer to it. When you come in to respond, you can always go, “Shh, shh. It’s nighttime.” Then when it’s daytime, “Look, it’s daytime. Yes, look!” And refer to it again because you’re showing them, look, this means day and they start to put two and two together. That is accompanied very nicely with a reward chart when they’re two and a half, maybe three, depending again on their cognitive levels, but having a reward chart that praises them for staying quietly in their bed until the light came on or their clock changed or whatever it might be is a great thing to do, so that when they do it, they get a sticker or a star or even maybe a little, I don’t know, a little reward, something that they can go, “I did it!” And feel really, really good about it, so that helps to go along with it. It helps to reinforce it. As a recap: Overcoming the early wakings that you are seeing, you’ve got to spot it, first of all, so go back to the last blog if you want a deeper dive on that, but spot where the overtiredness is coming from, because that’s what’s driving the early wake up. Then we want to resolve that. We want to resolve that by patching up the sleep. Is it more nap time, resettling naps, earlier bed, how can we replenish and top up that sleep tank because it is running short at the moment? Whilst we are working on that, because it’s not a quick fix, we are also going to start to respond to that early waking with a consistent response every morning and every time, if we have to respond five times, same response every time until it’s 6:00 AM or later, and then it’s okay to start the day. Finally, we’re going to reward the excellence of when they do stay put in their bed nice and quietly until it is morning time. Some simple steps there. It takes a little bit of time. Be patient, but be consistent. Once you know what you’re doing, it’s just applying it with consistency and it will prevail. You will get those sleep-ins till 6:00 AM or beyond if you follow these Steps. Wishing you rest for mornings, take care. Take our Quiz and get your free custom sleep plan today!

The focus for this blog is why does my baby wake so early? Why, why, why, why, why, why? I know what it feels like myself because when my eldest was little, this was a big problem for me, in fact he’s a little bit wired that way. So I know firsthand what you’re going through if you have an early riser on your hands. In this blog I’m going to go through everything to explain why this happens, to give you the insight and ability to overcome this problem once and for all. Starting at the beginning, why does your baby wake so early in the morning? When I say early, I’m talking pre 6:00 AM. In our general culture that we live in, where people work a nine-to-five job, we have our school hours etc, we’re talking 6am or beyond is actually perfectly acceptable. I know some people might not like to hear that. But, if it’s pre 6:00 AM, it’s still nighttime and you do not need to start the day that early. So why is your little one waking up at that time? If you’re getting wake-ups before 4:00 AM, then it’s a night waking and that’s another kettle of fish. Wake-ups at 9:00 PM, at 11:00 PM, 2:00 AM, they could be for all kinds of reasons. But the typical early waking time is usually between 4 and 5:00 AM, maybe 5:30, but roughly between 4 and 5:00 AM. That’s what we call early waking. If your little one is doing that, then the reason is they are overtired. Now, think about that for a minute. They’re overtired, so they’re waking early? Makes no sense, does it? You’d think they’re overtired, they’re tired. They need to sleep in. They need to sleep longer. That’s what you would think. But like most things with sleep, it’s completely counterintuitive, which is why our lovely instincts and intuition when it comes to this, lets us down because what actually is going to work for a little one’s sleep is usually counterintuitive. And that’s why it’s the hottest topic among parents. So yes, early wakings are caused by being overtired. It’s to do with how it reacts in the body and how over tiredness creates actually a bigger influx of hormones that actually keep you going and keep you stimulated. And that’s why we wake up more. You may have had this yourself when, if you’ve been traveling, maybe long haul and multiple countries and you’ve got to an airport and you’re like, “Oh my God, I just need to sleep.” But you can’t. And I’ve got to get that next flight and you power on and you power on. And then all of a sudden you feel, “I’m not tired anymore.” And you haven’t slept, but you’re thinking, “I’m over it. I don’t even feel tired anymore.” That’s because your body has released these hormones to keep you going and you push past that tired window and you’re actually overtired, but you feel wired. Little ones will often do this. They will zone out to sleep. They will have a certain amount of sleep, but then they’re awake and they can find themselves awake and wired because they’re overtired. But why? Where’s this overtiredness coming from? That’s the first thing you need to look at. I want to run through a few examples for you right now, so that you can start to understand, why is my little one overtired because it might not be obvious. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it isn’t. First of all, let’s look at naps. How many naps a day did your little one ought to be having? And for how long should each nap be? Because sometimes you might think they’re napping a lot, but actually they’re napping very short like cat naps, so the quality of the nap isn’t great. So it’s about the length and the quality. Also, motion naps, so naps that are induced by motion or kept going by motion can often, not always, but often be less of a quality nap as well because they going into deep sleep and it’s like the motion is just keeping them down and keeping them dozing. Like when you nod off in a car or on a plane, as a passenger. You do that whole head thing and it’s like, you’re sleeping, but you’re in quite a light sleep. A motion nap could be causing light sleep for little one. It could be that the nap’s too short and poor quality. So napping, generally, are they getting enough? Most little ones are not and if you’re unsure, then reach out to us because we have a sleep needs guide. There’s one in my book as well. If you want to get your hands on that and it will give you a pretty good ballpark as to where you ought to be with those naps. The other thing that goes hand in hand with this is the wake window. The wake window is how long your little one can be awake for in between sleeps.We have an ideal target wake window based on the age and developmental stage. But what people forget, sometimes people get so hung up on the wake window and they’re like, “Right, wait window is this long, now it’s sleep time.” They wake up. Right, the wait window is this long again and they’re at sleep time. But actually what they’re not doing is reducing the wake window after a poor nap. So let’s say the nap would be best if it were 90 minutes long, but we’re only getting 30 minutes. Well, then we can’t do the full wake window. We need to reduce the wake window and bring the next nap earlier. So there’s a craft to that. And knowing that the optimal wake window only stands if we’re getting the optimal amount of sleep as well. The other one could be that bedtime’s too late or inconsistent, moving around all over the place. And that’s another thing that people do when they are focusing too heavily on wake windows is they allow bedtime to just be all over the place instead of anchoring in a set time that is consistent every evening, which really helps little one’s body clock. There’s one more thing it could be. There’s one more place that, if you’ve checked all of that off and everything is textbook. And you’re wondering, “But how is my little one overtired? Then and only then it could be that they’ve gone into such a habit with this early wake-up that it’s the early waking itself that’s causing this overtiredness. Just to recap those for you. So maybe then you can have a think and spot, why, where is this overtiredness coming from? Is it the naps? Not enough nap, too short naps that they’re not recycling for, or poor quality naps? Is it the wake windows? Are they the right length, too long, too short, like timing? Timing’s a big piece of this. Is it bedtime and that it’s too late or that it’s inconsistent each night? Or is it the early waking itself, cutting their sleep short and meaning that they’re overtired before they even start the day? The answer here is to find it. Once you find it, then you can fix it. Right now, your homework is to go look at where the overtiredness is coming from, and then you are ready to tackle and overcome the early waking. Let’s get you all sleeping soundly. Thanks so much for watching. 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https://youtu.be/9IueYK86oN This blog is all about dropping the nap, when nap times are no more. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I know people have mixed opinions on that but we will go through when is the best time for this to happen, how you can make it easier on your little one and avoid having it unravel and just destroy nighttime sleep. When are little one’s ready to drop the daytime nap? Actually I would always recommend keeping it as long as you can, but certainly up to age three. Around age three, they may show signs of wanting to drop the nap and some are ready. Some may show signs and not be ready and others aren’t ready until they’re four or even over the age of four. So it’s quite a broad spectrum of time as to when they’re truly ready, but don’t worry, because I’ve got some answers for how you can make this a gradual thing, which sounds weird because you’d think it either has to be a nap is there in the day or it isn’t, but actually there are some little tricks you can use to make it easier. Whilst your little one may need a nap or not need a nap, there’s also the parent perspective on this because for some parents, it’s a case of, “Oh no, please keep napping because that’s my little bit of time to do some things and have some head space.” Whereas other parents are like, “Phew, I don’t need to fight this battle every single day anymore. We don’t need it anymore.” So there are mixed feelings and I would love to know which side of the fence you sit on the nap going completely. Is it something you are excited about or dreading? If you are lucky, in some cases and especially if you have a little one who does already nap well, if they’ve got their nice nap rhythm in place, they’re doing their nice one nap a day, you’re most likely to be lucky and to see the nap very naturally get shorter. This is the organic approach, naturally their nap times just become shorter. You know that they’re okay because they’ve been napping for two hours a day, it’s gone down to an hour and a half a day, maybe an hour and a quarter, and they’re waking up just as happy and rested as they were. They’re not waking up prematurely from a nap and crying and upset and cranky because when they wake up like that that’s usually a sign they’re not done, they’re not finished. Perhaps something disturbed them or they just woke too soon. But that’s a sign that they haven’t actually finished sleeping. But if they’re waking up quite happily in the same way they were when they were having two hours and an hour and a half, you just start to see it naturally get shorter. If you get that, then you are very lucky. It’s a lovely way to just see it slowly, slowly, disintegrate and you know little one doesn’t need it anymore. When that happens, they usually also carry the stamina to go for the rest of the afternoon and through to their bedtime quite comfortably because they are comfortably ready and they’re showing that organically. Some little ones it’s less obvious and things are a little messier. Maybe they’ve never been a great napper. Maybe they’ve never really taken enough sleep. So it’s harder to tell because you can’t really see that the nap’s reducing because it was possibly too short anyway and you’ve maybe been doing backup naps and early bedtimes to compensate for as long as you can remember. So it might not be quite so obvious. That’s when you want to use a little bit of that guide of age but also What else can we look for? Look at how bedtime and nighttime sleep is going. If your little one is settling quite smoothly to sleep at bedtime and sleeping soundly all night long, obviously they do wake, but resettling quite easily with or without your help, if they’re sleeping well at night on the whole, then it is a good chance that they may be ready if you’re seeing signs like suddenly we’re finding it more difficult to settle at bedtime or we’re finding it more difficult to take that nap. That could be a sign that it is time for the nap to go or begin to go. If nighttime sleep, however, isn’t great, if you’ve got a lot of difficulty getting them off to sleep, if you have really disturbed nights and wake ups and difficulty resettling and perhaps even early rising, then the nap is not ready to go. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see is, “Oh, nights are a wreck. We are going to have to get rid of that daytime sleep just to make sure they’re tired enough.” It’s like emptying out the tank just so that they can have that great big sleep at nighttime. That’s not the answer and whilst once in a blue moon that will work, once in a blue moon they will crush out and zonk out for 12 hours and you’ll think you’ve cracked it, but that’s not sustainable and that’s not going to be the norm. That’s going to be the rarity. The norm is going to be these cranky, restless, unsettled nights because they’re overtired. So it’s important to keep that daytime sleep in there if we’ve got problems with night sleep and we’re overtired. If your little one’s overtired, keep that sleep. So what happens when they get to an age where they can’t really nap anymore, but you also know they’re not quite ready to drop it completely? That’s where quiet time comes in. So the nap ideally will get shorter and shorter and shorter until we don’t really nap, but we still have quiet time. If you present your preschooler with quiet time anyway, and actually quite often they do this in preschools, they have the opportunity if they want to curl up and nod off, but they don’t have to. I love things like having a quiet time bag, like a little drawstring bag with maybe a book, not toys, but a book. There could be something sensory in there, like sensory books, touchy-feely things, a blanket perhaps, like a little or comfort thing. You could have a nap mat, the ones that have the little pillow and the covered thing, and set up this quiet time space. Or a beanbag, something like that. If you have this quiet time environment where you dim the lights or you pull the blinds, you make it a little darker, take away some of that daytime stimulation, kill the noise, no screens, TV sounds, distractions. Just make it nice and calm and zen-like, and create this space for them to have that chill time. Actually, it doesn’t matter if they fall asleep or not in quiet time. If they do, don’t wake them. It’s cool. That’s just telling you that they do still need a little bit of sleep and they probably won’t sleep for too long anyway. If they don’t, that’s okay. It’s telling us that they may still need it and not take it, but they may not need it. But they’re still having that quiet time and that quiet time is still clocking up our little Z points. It’s still giving them a level of rest because it’s reducing all the stimulation and giving them some calm and that quiet time counts. It absolutely counts. So if you’re struggling to get your preschooler to nap, when you know they do still need to, but they are having some quiet time, then you’re still winning. It’s better than not bothering. It’s better than just going, “Oh my God, this is too hard. I quit,” and then letting your little one be starved of that sleep or rest or quiet time that they do so desperately need. So use that as part of the process. If you do go without the daytime nap, but you find your little one is tired in the afternoon, a backup nap is fine. There’s no harm in going, “Ah, okay. Maybe today we do need a little bit of sleep,” and just slot a little bit of sleep in there. You can always limit the nap if you need a backup nap and you think, “Okay, they’re asleep now, it’s three o’clock, 3:30, but …” and I see this all the time with mums on the school run and it’s like, “Oh no, they’ve gone to sleep now.” Just let them have a little power nap, but don’t let it go on too long. 20, 30 minutes and just go, “Right. Okay. I’m going to wake them up now, just so that we don’t completely skew the bedtime routine.” A sign that they’re not entirely ready to stop sleeping in the day is when you get the car ride at 4:00 or 5:00 PM and they go to sleep in the car and you’re like, “Yeah, see, there’s still some tiredness in there. Can’t quite resist that,” and you know that they’re not quite ready to go without sleep in the day, but probably are past the ability to settle in their cots or crib and take a nap as such. So it’s a good sign that they still probably need a little bit of sleep or at least quite time and perhaps an early night. Now, early nights. Early to bed is a brilliant piece to use throughout this time and this transit and most little ones will need an early night for probably some weeks, if not a few months, just to help them manage that whole day of not napping and bringing up the time that little bit earlier. It won’t stay there. It’s just temporary until they’ve built that stamina properly up. I hope you find this helpful in what to look for and how to navigate this little bumpy road down the lane of getting rid of that nap completely. I hope it goes smoothly for you and if you have any questions, please do reach out. We’re always here to help. You can book a free discovery call with one of our Sleep Coaches here:

We are talking naps again today, this time we are talking all about the dropping down to one nap per day. So that’s when we’re going from two naps down to one nap. Now this one can take a bit of time and it can cause a few hiccups along the way, but don’t worry. I’m going to address all of that and give you the tools you need to make a smooth transition down to one nap a day. The first question is when do our toddlers or little ones feel ready to drop down to just having one nap a day instead of two? Usually it’s between 13 and 17 months. Occasionally, we see signs around 12 months, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to make the move. And sometimes little ones aren’t ready until closer to 18 months. But typically between 13 and 17 months, this nap transition will start to occur, but this transition is longer than 3 naps to 2 naps. It can take a while. So don’t despair. If you do have a little one that seems to want to make this transition on the earliest side, at 12 or 13 months, you’re more likely to be in there for a slightly longer ride with this, where it might progress a bit and then go back a bit. Hold onto those two naps for as long as your little one seems to be needing them and taking them. If they are enjoying three hours a day, split over two sleeps in the day and sleeping well at night, then don’t change it. Don’t change it just because age changes or just because their friends are changing, stick with it because they’re telling you that that’s what suits them right now, when they are ready to make the change you will start to see signs. What are the signs? What you’re going to see is probably one or the other of the naps becoming a little bit shorter in length or challenging to settle. So it could be the first nap or the second nap. Quite often, it is the second nap, but it could be the first nap. It might be that they take the first nap and they don’t have quite so long. And then they really struggle to settle for the second nap. That’s quite a common example and you just know that something’s changing, something’s shifting. Now I always like to give you what not to use as a sign and don’t confuse this with actually a timing issue because sometimes people think, “We are ready to drop down to one nap now,” when actually they’re not ready to drop to one nap, they just have the timing of the two naps a little bit off. And so if the timing is off, you might find that you have bedtime struggles and feistiness at bedtime. And it’s because the little one is either overtired or untied at bedtime. But that could be because the naps aren’t placed quite right for them at this point in time. And that they’re not having adequate awake windows or they’re too long or too short. So always look at that first, whether it is timing related. On a two nap schedule, we’re usually looking for about three hours in total and no more than three hours a week between sleeps, assuming they’re having a good full nap. Short awake windows, if the nap is shorter than we would like, this can be a timing issue that can confuse us and let us think that actually little one’s ready to drop a nap. Which might be the worst thing to do. So be sure. How do you go about it? And what steps you take? Well, there are a few ideas and things that do work differently for different people, but I would definitely, recommend my favorite approach, which is where you nudge the first nap. So the morning nap later, so you extend the morning wake for window. So instead of waking up at let’s say 6:30 and then nap time happening around 9, 9:30, we start pushing that out. Now we want to push it to as close to midday as we can get it. But sometimes especially if these are early stages with your little one making the transition, they’re not quite ready to go all the way to midday. And you might find that they are falling asleep on their early lunch. So it might be 11, it might even be 10:30. If you can’t get them to 10:30 or 11, they’re possibly not actually ready yet to make this move. And you do still need the morning nap, which means you’re going to need a second nap. It might just mean you need to do a good solid morning nap, a shorter afternoon nap for the time being and wait till they’re really ready. But once they’re ready, if you can push that first nap out and get it as closer to midday, as you can see how long they sleep for that nap, if it’s more than two hours, you’re winning. If it’s less than two hours, they’re going to need another sleep. But if we are getting there, we’re consolidating their day sleep into one good big nap, then we may find that we don’t need an afternoon top up or a second nap. So what options can you have with this? So if they go to sleep, you’ve pushed out that wake for window, they go to sleep and they don’t have a great nap, put a second nap in, just think, “They had about an hour. So let’s give it two hours and then we’ll try for another nap,” and just see what they do. There is a lot of testing and experimenting when you’re going through this transition and it’s like no two days are the same. You have to be prepared and armed with the knowledge of what to do if, and then take each day as it comes and go, “Okay, well this happens. So I do this next.” So take each sleep as it comes. If the nap is great, say they do two and a half hours, three hours, then boom, you’ve got one nap and you don’t need to do a second nap. So just take them through to bedtime. If the wake window is good, fine, if they are exhausted, just bring bedtime a little bit earlier and that will work and that will be fine. And they’ll soon build on the stamina to go for those longer chunks of wakeful time either side of their one good nap in the middle of the day. It does sit best when they are firmly on one nap a day. It does sit best around 12 to 12:30 for it starting and for a good two, like two hours is the minimum. Initially I’d be looking for two and a half hours. Some will do three, but I would still be looking for around two and a half hours until they’re at least two years of age. And once they’re age two, it might start to shrink down to two hours and a steady two hours throughout most of age two is perfectly, perfectly normal and suitable. The backup plan is always you can slot in an extra nap. You can slot in a power nap, a push chair nap, a motion nap or whatever you need, early bedtime, but no more than an hour earlier for bedtime. There is another approach that you may find helpful to know, but it is a bit risky. And this is where you limit the first nap. So instead of letting them take their full first nap, you cut it a little shorter. You actually wake them from it in order to then get that second nap in but without them having too much and it slowly shifts. Now, the reason I don’t like this approach and I find it risky is because if you wake a baby, a sleeping toddler from their morning nap, when they were quite happily sleeping and wanted to be asleep, not only will they probably be quite cranky, but they may have taken the edge off enough and then it might sabotage nap two from happening at all. And then you’re like, “Well, we might not get enough sleep at all today.” And so it can be a risky game. Likewise, if a little one nods off, say in the car on the way home from somewhere in the morning, even five, 10 minutes of a little snooze, you might think, “No, that’s just totally meant that the nap is now going to be impossible.” I’m sure we’ve all done. That thing where we get home and we’re like, “Okay, well we were going to go for nap time, but I know they won’t settle now.” And you end up sitting in the car for a bit with them just to let them have a nice bit of sleep. So, capping naps and waking little ones up for naps, there is a time and a place for it. We call it nap manipulation. I would only probably do that under the guidance of a certified sleep specialist who can give you the clues as to when and when not to do it. Because like I said, otherwise you might end up cutting short on really well needed sleep. I want to remind you too that an early bedtime is always, always, always a good thing to do. And you might find that for some weeks when you’re going through this transition that you are using an early bedtime, don’t worry. It’s not forever. You won’t be able to nudge back to the usual bedtime. Eventually once you’ve got that solid one nap a day in place, but early bedtime up to an hour early is fine and it might just be what you need to do for a while. And if you know, people find it inconvenient because they’re like, “Well, the time I get home from work or we have dinner and it can sometimes be a little bit annoying,” just remember it’s not forever. And it’s for the greater good. It’s for the health and brain development of your little one. It’s for the peaceful night’s sleep for your whole family. So it’s kind of a little inconvenient, but it has a huge payoff. Take care and sleep well. Want to know more? Book a free discovery call today and get your little one napping like a dream.

We’re going to be addressing the change to two naps a day, three to two naps a day. When does this happen? How do you know your little one’s ready and how do you actually go about it? First and foremost, when exactly is a little one ready to drop from three naps a day down to two naps a day? Typically this is going to happen around eight to 10 months. Now that’s typically, of course, you will always get little ones that fall outside of this. Of course, you get little ones that are premature and might be working to an adjusted age and some are just not ready until a bit later, but it will usually, more often than not fall in the eight to 10 month area. What signs might you see that confirm that your little one is ready to drop from three naps to two? Well, assuming you’ve got three naps established, it’s going to be a lot easier to see because you’ll know what normally happens and how you normally do your two core naps and probably your third shorter nap because that’s often how three naps look. If naps are already a complete and utter shambles and you’re like my little one’s nine months and still only cat naps for 30 minutes at a time, all over the place anyway, then it is going to be a little harder to see and you might have to go a little bit by age and developmental stage. But if you’re lucky enough to see the signs, here’s what you may see. If you have three naps in place already, you might find the third nap, it becomes a little more difficult for your baby to settle for the third nap. So you find that the first two naps are fine, third one, more fussing, suddenly more fussing. And we’re eight to 10 months, good chance that they’re ready to get rid of that third nap. It could be that the first or second nap actually becomes a bit challenging too. Maybe they are struggling to settle for it or waking up a bit sooner from it than they usually do. And that could be a sign that they are ready to stretch that wakeful window. They’re ready to be awake for a bit longer in between sleeps, again, it’s telling us that their timings are shifting, the body clock you’re shifting and their needs around sleep are shifting, quite possibly to drop from three naps down to two. What is not a sign is being cranky at bedtime. So if you are thinking, “Oh yeah, my baby’s become really cranky at bedtime. And bedtime feels like a real battle, maybe we need to drop one of the naps.” That on its own, isn’t a sign. And just be really careful because actually that bedtime crankiness could be over tiredness. And by taking a nap out of the equation, you may make that worse. So just be careful and look for other signs and cues along with that, because exclusively just being cranky at bedtime is not a reason to drop a nap. Moving to a two nap routine, how do you do that? What does it even look like? When we go down to two naps, we are ideally looking for 90 minutes each, about an hour and a half times two naps. But what we do want is three hours a day. So if we can get three hours total daytime sleep and the spread is roughly even, you are okay, just if one’s a little bit longer, the other’s a little bit shorter, that’s fine but we want them reasonably balanced. What we don’t want is one being really short and one being really long, but reasonably balanced would be good. When you’re making this transition and know the wakeful window, the wakeful window is around about three hours. So about three hours awake, then nap one. If we have a full nap one, about three more hours awake, then nap two. If we don’t have a full nap one and nap one ends up going wrong or being a bit short, don’t go the full wakeful window before nap two, you want to shorten the wakeful window a bit, to make up for the fact that the first nap wasn’t long enough. Whilst you’re making this move down to two naps and getting into a nice two nap schedule, you may find your little one is a little bit tired and you might find just because naps don’t always go perfectly, and because they don’t always take the two naps that equate to three hours a day and you are left with a chunk of afternoon before bedtime. And you’re there thinking we’re just not going to get through from here to bedtime without being really tired. So backup plan, either put in a third little catnap, power nap, which you could do by motion, you could do a push chair walk or whatever, or bring bedtime earlier. One of those two makes for a really good backup plan at any stage, really, but particularly when you’re making this nap transition. If you bring bedtime earlier, only bring it earlier by up to one hour earlier at the most, any more than an hour earlier and you are really shifting their nighttime completely. They can tack on some of that day sleep to the front end of the night sleep. But if that’s just not really going to fit, then I would recommend a power nap, a motion nap, a little top up catch up nap. It doesn’t have to be really long, 20, 30 minutes can be fine just to bridge the gap between the last sleep and bedtime sleep if things haven’t quite gone to plan. So have that up your sleeve as a backup plan. Things don’t go to plan with babies. There will always be that element of hoping that today is a good day, filled with the right amount of sleep. But when you know how much sleep your little one actually needs, and whether you are falling on par or below par of that, you can adjust. Knowing that you’ve got the tools to adjust, I can add in an extra catnap here, I can bring bedtime a bit earlier there, that awareness that you know if your little one is undernourished in the sleep department, then you can take those actions to top them up. And this nap transition from three naps down to two, doesn’t take too long, it’s usually only a couple of weeks, unlike the next one. So I hope this has helped you. If you are going through the nap transition, then get in touch and let us know how it’s going, any challenges you have with it or book in for a free discovery call with one of our coaches to get a plan in place.

If you are ready to overcome nap challenges and win a good night’s sleep, then you are in the right place! This is all about new baby naps. We’re talking about how napping looks in those first months, 0 to six months and everything you need to do to get your little one napping to the best that they can in those early few months. First and foremost, I just want to say that napping in the early weeks is pretty disorganized. It can be really quite haphazard. They’re napping. It feels like they’re almost napping 24 hours a day, and taking little sleeps on and off all the way through the 24 hour cycle. And that’s normal. So if you’re in that phase right now, don’t worry, it will get better and it will become more organized and more rhythmic, but it is quite common for it to be a little more disorganized in those early weeks. However, there are things you can do to help to get it a little bit more rhythmic and a bit more organized. Some little ones do fall into this quite naturally really early on. And I find that’s often when they are either on the larger side. So they have the capacity to sustain a bit more of their milk, and they’re not waking up so much from hunger. If that’s the factor, it can play a part. So their capacity, their weight and their size can have a role in that. That said, there is no reason why a smaller and breastfed baby who obviously we know that breast milk doesn’t keep you feeling as full for as long, but there’s absolutely no reason why a purely breastfed baby on the smaller side, can’t sleep just as well as a larger baby or a formula fed baby. They all can do it. It’s just that there are sometimes factors that can play a part in how easy or how challenging it comes. They may sleep little and often in the beginning and that’s okay. What we want to look for is, when can they do their longer stretch and ideally we want that longer stretch to be in the nighttime, not in the daytime. I’m sure some of you can relate to this concept of’ my baby is awake all night, but sleeps all day’. You can help shift that. We want to get their body clock and their circadian rhythms firing up so that it recognizes, the system recognizes when it’s daytime, when it’s nighttime. And you can do that with environmental cues, just things like making sure it’s light and bright in the day and dark and dim at night. Those are simple signals to the brain as humans to know nighttime sleep, daytime wake up and light gives us stimulation and creates all kinds of chemical releases in the brain that we don’t have so much when it’s dark. Those things will help your little one to sleep better at nighttime and to feel more stimulated during the daytime. But that said, we do still want the daytime sleep to be there as well. Other things you can do are to really think about rhythms and cues beyond just the light and dark. And you are one of those things, yourself and how you act and how you relate to your little one. So when it’s time for sleep, being in your kind of sleepy mode, which is to be calm, maybe quite placid, softly spoken to a whisper, quite subdued, sort of like nothing to see here, just one person, one on one, not lots of fussing and calm. You can be a sleepy influence on your little one, as opposed to when it’s wake time and you’ve got your full voice. And usually we talk quite rhymingly to our little ones and your face is probably animated with eye contact and all that energy that creates a stimulation and interaction with your little one. So that differentiates when it’s time to be awake, to interact, to play, to be stimulated. And when it’s time to cut the stimulation out and calm down, they will take a lot of that stimulation influence from you. So it’s important that you can adapt to which mode you need to be in. Another thing that happens a lot with the younger babies with the naps is they often happen on the parents or on the go. And we hear from lots of parents who say, oh, I can’t get my baby down for the naps. They’re on me, on me all the time. Or they end up using slings and wearing their baby for all the naps because they know they can’t get anything done or have a life because they’ve just got to hold their baby the whole time. It’s very common and not in any way wrong at all, but what you can do if you’re finding that it is difficult, bearing heavily on you, or perhaps it isn’t giving your little one the sleep that they truly need, because perhaps they’re disturbed quite easily. For whatever reason, if it’s not perfectly working for you and you want to break away from that and find a way to get your baby to be okay, being placed down then working on that is really, really key, practicing. I always say, practice. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s not to hold your baby to sleep or put them down and leave them to it. Whether they cry or not. It’s not that at all. It’s practicing, helping them to adjust to a safe, comfortable sleep space where you are too. You’re right there. You’re physically there. You’re audibly there. You’re visually there and they’re reassured. They feel safe. And at first of course they cry or fuss because it’s new. It’s different. It’s weird. What, where am I? This isn’t what we normally do and you’ll get resistance. But if you persist while showing that loving, calm, and comfort, they do get used to it. They go, oh, oh okay. Yeah, this isn’t so scary after all. Yeah. I’m okay. Because at no time have they got any sense of fear or distress, at no time do they feel abandoned or ignored because you’re right there, soothing your baby. So practice putting your little one down for naps. And even if you only get a little bit of put down nap time, it counts. That’s another notch. That’s another bit of practice. And slowly that adds up and becomes something and the fruit of your labor will turn up. So my closing message to you on this is practice doing that. It is doing more than you think it is. So when you’re doing that, I remember doing this with my youngest and I remember going, I put her down and then I soothe her for a bit, but then she fusses. So I have to pick her up and then I calm her and she’s calm. And then I put her down again and then she’s fussing. So I pick her up. It’s so easy to think well, what’s the point? It’s not working anyway. I’m just going to have to hold her or rock her. It’s so easy to think that, but actually the more intermittent I got with the pickup and calm, the longer those little stretches of see you’re okay. You’re right down here. It’s okay. The longer those stretches became, the better she got at it, the more she adapted to it. And as the weeks went by, I was like, oh, hang on. She’s all right for longer and longer and longer. And then amazing, she’s got it. Just like riding a bike. So keep going even when it feels tough. You can do this. Naps can be crazy, but have a strategy, stick with it and you will get your little one napping really, really well. Take care and sleep well. Why not book a free discovery call if you want to get a plan in place for a better night’s sleep?

In this blog I am talking about all things baby naps, the routine behind them and why they’re important, we’ll be leaving no stone unturned! When it comes to napping, why is it so important and why do so many of us get tripped up by these and spend our lives feeling like we are just trying to get the little one to go to sleep? It feels exhausting just thinking about it, to be honest. First of all, let me just explain that all of us, but particularly babies, we can only be awake for a certain amount of time, in any one stretch, before we need to have a sleep again and top up the tank and replenish ourselves and be ready to go again. As adults, that’s usually in one block, in one chunk of the day, or in some cultures, napping is still a big part of life throughout adulthood as well. But babies, and particularly the younger they are, the shorter the amount of time they can go between sleeps and in between their sleeps, they need a nap. They need a chance to catch up and refresh. Without having those naps what’s going to happen is a little one will get over tired and over tiredness is honestly the root of all evil when it comes to sleep, because being overtired actually causes a bigger deterioration in sleep as a whole. So we want to avoid them getting overtired, but also being overtired can cause crash out sleeps, so it can go two ways when you’re overtired. It can cause a crash out, zonk out and you think you’re winning. You think, “Oh, that is easy. My baby went to sleep easily and had a really good one.” Yeah, that’s an occasional big crash out catch up. But more often than not, what you see is more crankiness, more difficulty settling, more restless sleep, more disturbed sleep and more premature waking up from the sleep, so we need the naps. How do you get into a good nap routine and how does it all work? It’s always changing and that’s the thing. It’s an ever evolving thing as they grow, because as they grow, they can go longer stretches between the sleeps and the sleeps can change in their shape and length. They start smaller, they go up and they go down again, so a new baby, a young baby, will sleep little often, whereas an older one will have maybe one or two longer naps, until they start to drop it completely. I’m going to be covering all of those stages in the next few blogs, so make sure you come back and check those out as I take you through the different stages. You might find that you are at one stage now and you want to come back and watch one of the other episodes a little later when your little one gets to that age. For now though let’s think about nap rhythmicity and why is this important. Right from the beginning, if you can tune in to when your little one needs to sleep and how long they can be awake, you’re going to help them to create that rhythmicity with their sleeps and with their naps. Knowledge is power with this. Knowing how long your little one is going to be optimally awake, before they need a sleep, is such a key bit of information because they don’t tell you and we can’t rely on them to show us and tell us. We talk about cues and signals, but usually with sleep, when we see the signals that they’re tired like eye rubbing, yawning, crankiness, it’s actually too late and we’ve missed the window. The ideal sweet spot, there’s a 30 minute sweet spot, a 30 minute window where, if you can get your little one to settle to sleep in that 30 minutes, they’re more likely to settle with less difficulty and they’re more likely to sleep for longer, or for the length of time that they truly need. If you miss that 30 minute sweet spot, you may try too soon and they’re under tired. They’re not ready to go to sleep yet. But if you miss it the other way and you’re too late, they’re overtired and it looks the same. They fight it. They resist the sleep because they’ve gone past that sweet spot. They’ve released loads of cortisol. The adrenaline is flooding back through the system to keep them going. It’s the body’s natural reaction, and so then they’re like, “Oh, well I can’t go to sleep now because I’ve got all this adrenaline going around my system.” You’ve got a 30 minute sweet spot. Now, it’s not always easy to find, but don’t give up. It’s a case of knowing, getting those rough approximate windows, so you know roughly where it’s going to be, and then just tweaking and trial and error to get it just right. But you will get it right and when you do, you’ll find that your little one will sleep better. Okay, so naps are crucial. They are absolutely vital. Please do not listen to any old fashioned myths about, “Oh, well, if you keep them awake more in the day and when you tire them out, then they’re going to sleep better at night.” It’s just not true and it’s actually really not healthy. They need that sleep for their brain development, their immune systems, their whole entire replenishment comes from those naps as well. So it’s very important to get them in there. Next time, I’m going to go a little deeper on the new baby nap phase. The 0 to six months and what’s going on there. In the meantime, you take care and sleep soundly. Why not download my Sweet Dreams videos series full of tips and tricks to get a good nights sleep?

In the final part of my little bedtime series, this blog is all about putting a baby down for sleep when you just can’t even get them from your arms to down. I know that problem and I have got the solution! You often find that you are stuck with your baby in your arms or on you and you know they need to lay down. Your arms are aching, you need a bit of free time too. Perhaps you need to express some milk or you’ve got just a few jobs to do or maybe actually you just deserve to put your feet up and have a rest but you can’t relax because babies asleep again on you or perhaps you’ve even tried the sling, the carrier and they have to sleep in there and yep, you get a bit more space with your arms but let’s face it, it’s not ideal and it’s not sustainable. It’s okay now and again but what I don’t want to see is you being in this place where you feel like it’s the only way. It’s fine if it’s a way but if it’s the only way and you feel like you actually cannot put your baby down for sleep, that’s who this is for. Here are my micro steps for getting a baby down to sleep. This is something that I would recommend people do if they have a heavy reliance. If baby has got a heavy reliance on being on you to fall to sleep and if you do put your baby down, that’s it, they’re awake, they’re crying again and you’re like, ugh, it’s just not worth it. This is something that I would also recommend for some people prior to starting my fade out approach because, the micro steps are what you need to do first. Once we’ve got through these steps then we can start step one of the fade out. What do we do? First thing you do, change the hold. If your baby typically falls asleep being held in your arms, try the shoulder position. If it’s a shoulder position, try a side position. Change the position in some way. We want it to be noticeable. We want baby to be, hang on this isn’t right. If they don’t really care, try something a little bit different. It’s not a big enough stretch of their comfort zone. Try something that’s enough for them to be, hang on a minute, I’m not sure if I like this. We want them to notice it. Why? Because as I say, it’s stretching the comfort zone. It’s showing them that, hey, look, I’ve changed something but you are still okay. I’m still right here. You’re still with me. You’re still touching me. I’m still here for you. So they’re realizing that, oh, there’s a small change but I’m still safe. This is okay, I’ve got this. So make it subtle but significant. That sounds like a complete contradiction doesn’t it, subtle but significant, but there’s a reason, subtle but significant enough that they are aware of it. Next?. Think about creating a small amount of distance, small bits of distance each time. Perhaps you change the hold. We’ve now stretched the comfort zone there. Now can we create a bit of distance. Can we hold them in a way that’s slightly further away. If it’s a chest thing, can we get away from there? Sometimes people will do the lap hold so you’re sitting and you’re holding baby, cradling them but in a forward feet to tummy and head in hands way across the lap so there’s a bit more distance there. Can you find a way to hold in a way that creates a bit more distance? When changing the hold and creating distance, you could also change parents. If it’s always mummy that does it try daddy, if it’s always daddy that does it try mummy, that can also be an option to make a small change but whilst still giving that comfort and reassurance. Whilst you’re doing that, whilst you’re changing the hold and creating that little bit of extra distance we want to reinforce other forms of comfort. A great one is the shush. The shush sound, it’s a white noise sound that’s reassuring. So reinforcing shushes, even if you don’t think your baby needs it, you’re going to use it later. By reinforcing the comfort of shush or whatever sound you want to make, really whispers, means that as you change things, that thing stays. So they start to go, well, hold on, that’s still there. Oh, that’s still going, okay, that’s still there. It’s a comfort they can take with them through these steps. Makes sense? Now the next stage of this is to lay your baby down so you’re going to put them down in their sleep space and this time with your hands still there. Whatever your current hold position has been, you’re going to move to the next step, which is to place them down but keeping your arms on them, around them in some form for a few minutes, you need to be in a position where you can lean into the crib so that the difference isn’t too huge. You may get a “Hang on, I’m lying down in here, I don’t like it, I don’t like, oh, but you’re still there. You’re still touching me. You still have your hand, ok…”So it’s almost a subtle step but this is by no means the first step, I would take these steps over a number of bed times. I wouldn’t do this all in one night, start the change of hold for one or two nights. I would create some more distance as I go. Then on maybe night three or four, I might try putting them down but if it doesn’t feel like it’s time yet you can take as many bed times as you need to make these differences. Try not to get stuck and plateau in one position or in one hold, make sure you keep moving along piece by piece. Once you lay your baby down and you have achieved the goal of putting them in their sleep space and you’ve got your hands on and hands in there for comfort but they are falling to sleep there, then you are ready for the fade out approach. Use these micro steps, take your time with it and get to the point that you can place baby down even if it does involve lots of shushing and hands on comfort. Once you are ready to move on check out some of my videos on the Sleep Nanny YouTube channel or my book for the Fade Out approach.

 Mum guilt – this is a real thing! Especially if you are a mum that works, or you have your own business, because your work can dominate your thoughts a lot. Sometimes we can think “Was I fully present” or “Did I rush the kids too much…?” But sometimes doing things just for us, guilt free, can be a really great trait to demonstrate to your children. Learn to master your morning with our 1-page parent planner >>> download it here for FREE Get your free copy of our Baby Sleep Guide. Download Now

Co-sleeping and various sleep products cause controversy around sleep safety but it’s important to be in the know. In this video I delve into what parents really need to know and how to stay safe with your baby. Download your free quick guide to learn how to create a safe environment for your baby whilst they sleep —> download HERE   Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Get our FREE printable quick guide to learn how to handle travel and time zone changes with your child >>> download now Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Living in a digital age filled with distractions presents even more ‘mum-guilt’ and knowing how to navigate this all new! We are the first generation to have to figure out how this all fits into parenting and how we do the best by our children who are growing up in such a technologically advanced world now. I’m exploring how we can be present and engage with our children and maintain a healthy environment for them to thrive, without ignoring the reality of the world in which they will become adults. Your 1-page parent planner is here! – Click the link to download it now >> download here Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Understanding how to respond to little ones depending on their unique temperament traits will help you to find the most effective way to help them sleep soundly too. We know that one size does not fit all. The way your friend parents her child might work brilliantly for her but potentially be disastrous if you were to do the same. This episode is for you if you want to gain an understanding of how temperament impacts results when it comes to crafting your approach to helping your little one sleep and, in fact your approach to all-round parenting with the different temperament traits in mind. Leave your comments below and for more support and guidance come on over to www.sleepnanny.co.uk  Get your secret weapon to understanding your child’s temperament traits – click the link to download it now >> download here FOLLOW ME AT:  * Instagram * Facebook * Twitter * Podcast * YouTube Channel Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Why is it that some babies start sleeping through the night blissfully within just a matter of months while yours seems to be taking forever? Of course, we are all different and what fits for your little one won’t suit another at all. But there are some key principles that will help us to determine the most suitable way to help our little ones sleep soundly so that you don’t watch your little one spending her days fractious and clingy without any refreshed energy for her learning and development. The right solution for you and your little one will be unique to you. It will be founded on a method and fine tuned to the ideal, bespoke approach that is just right to get the best from your child’s sleep abilities. I truly believe that finding the right sleep training method for your exhausted child and sleep deprived family is such an honourable and proactive thing to do as a parent. The whole family will be healthier, happier and thriving rather than just surviving. Leave your comments below sharing your experiences with sleep training and what has helped for you. Follow us on Instagram: @sleepnannyofficial Click the link to download our free quick guide to understanding sleep training >> download here Subscribe to receive my weekly email tips and goodness to help you sleep soundly and live with vibrance >> subscribe here free Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

 What is ‘animated wake up’? It is a technique used to show a child that it’s time to get up. It can also be used to break the cycle of repeated behaviour, such as saying “Go back to sleep”. If a child is up and down from bed numerous times, there comes a point where you need to break this. If your child won’t settle back to sleep, don’t just pick them straight up. If you have entered the room, step back outside for 60 seconds, then enter the room in ‘daytime mode’ by saying things like “Good morning” and “It’s time to get up”. This gives the child ‘permission’ to now not be in bed rather than experiencing you attempt to keep him in bed or go back to sleep and then give up and just get him up. But what about when siblings share? If you need to use animated wake up when siblings are in the same room, go into the room quietly, lead the child out by the hand and take them into a lighter room and then begin ‘daytime mode’. Exiting the room needs to be done swiftly, calmly and quietly so as not to disturb the other sleeping child. For our tips and cheat sheets, subscribe for free to Sleep Nanny Insiders Click the link to download our free ‘create your own routine’ cheat sheet to help map out how your routine will work for your family >> Download here Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

What is over parenting and can you really do too much for your little one? Babies and young children learn so much from us as their parents, care-givers and role models and it’s a minefield for us as we bear a lot of pressure to ‘get it right’ I believe ‘getting it right’ simply means doing your best and sometimes we look to learn more about how children develop and what they need so that we can do our best for them. This episode is all about the differences between teaching, guiding and paving the way for our little ones to learn and develop as opposed to doing it all for them and not giving them a chance to try or practice things for themselves. Follow us on Instagram: @sleepnannyofficial Subscribe to receive my weekly email tips and goodness to help you sleep soundly and live with vibrance >> subscribe here free Click the link to download our free temperament detector and discover the best approach to helping your little one sleep based on his or her unique character >> download here Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

There can be a vast difference between one child’s age and another, who are both starting school at the same time. It may be that your child has just turned 4 (a Summer baby) or that they are almost 5 (an Autumn baby) Regardless of your child’s age, a period of adjustment is on its way. If your little one has been used to long days at nursery, it’s easy to assume they will cope with the transition to a school day easily. But nursery is mostly play-based, whereas the adjustment to the structure of a school day, as well as being in a new environment, plus making new friends can all take their toll. They are all mentally and emotionally tiring. Here are three tips to help counter tiredness upon starting school: Early Nights – Why not bring bedtime forward? Anything up to an hour would be achievable. Use your child as a guide, you’ll know when they are ready for bed. After School Snooze – This is perfectly ok, let it happen. Don’t panic and worry this will affect their bedtime. They need this snooze to help cope with the adjustment of their new day. A snooze of 30 minutes or less is ideal. Allow A Weekend Nap – Similar to the after school snooze, the weekend nap is also perfectly ok. Again, don’t worry it will affect your child’s bedtime. Let them catch up and recharge their batteries. This will prevent other issues such as over-tiredness, which can lead to bedtime battles and early rising. It’s sometimes worth planning a car journey for the weekend in order to incorporate a sleep. Grab our free quick guide with top tips on Starting School here >> Download now Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Most of us with young children are used to being yanked from our sleep by the calling, crying or prodding of a little one! Parenting young ones is exhausting and we’ll often sleep until we’re needed again. The thing is, the way sleep works, there are times in our sleep cycle when we’re ready to wake and times when we are really not! Even if we haven’t had enough sleep, waking at the end of a sleep cycle or from a light sleep stage, we’re more likely to feel okay about waking up and getting on with it. When we get disturbed during deep sleep we feel most groggy and often irritable. If you start the day in an irritated way, it can set the tone for your day. Likewise, when you’re prompted to wake up and jump into action to meet the demands of your family, you’re starting the day on the defence – it’s not great for your mindset and attitude towards the day ahead. Have you ever been woken by a little one at say 5a.m and then resettled everyone to sleep and you’re nicely back into a deep sleep then, boom, it’s time to get up?! I have. I know exactly how this feels. The being woken at 5a.m wasn’t too bad and I actually would think to myself, hmm, I could actually just start the day now, I feel okay. But my scrumptious pillow would win me over and I’d go back off to sleep. A short while later, when I’m deeply asleep, I’d be woken again and this time for the day. With two children needing my immediate services! Not only would I feel grumpy because I’d been woken from deep sleep, I’d also feel that instant pressure and demand. This kind of thing fills us with defensive and resentful thoughts particularly as we’re not yet awake enough to think rationally! What time do your little ones wake you up? Let me know in the comments below and tell me how do you feel when you start the day? So, taking back ownership of how you begin your day is going to set you up for a brighter life! Of course, it’s not easy when you have a baby and if that’s you, you just do what you need to do to survive! That entire first year is going to be demanding. But listen up and do this when you can…As soon as you’re little ones are into a blissful sleep routine, wake up before they do! Being a sleep expert, it was naturally a priority for me to get our children sleeping soundly and doing the best they could as soon as they could. It wasn’t easy, the best things are never easy to achieve right? But the committed effort to guiding their development of healthy sleep habits is what led to the eventual ability for me to own my morning again! So once you can, start your day before someone else wakes you up. Take some time to let your mind wake up and process your thoughts. Maybe you’d enjoy some meditation or journalling or even a brain dump onto a piece of paper as us mums always have plenty of open running apps up there! Some exercise at home or a walk if it’s possible are brilliant ways to not only take great care of your physical body and energy but to also free your mind, release endorphins and feel good! Starting the day by taking care of you is a lot like fitting your own mask before helping others. If you’re in a good mental state and have decent energy levels, you’ll be a far better wife, mum, friend, colleague and you’ll feel happier and more fulfilled within as well. It’s not selfish. It’s being your best self for others as much as for you. Like everything else, it has to become a habit for it to be really effective so I like to set little 30 day challenges. It takes 21 days to form a habit but let’s go for 30 to make sure! I’ve created a ‘Master your Morning’ printable for you to download – click the link below to get your copy free. It’s a one-page…. To fill in each day. Do this for 30 days and you’ll feel the improvement to your daily life! Click here to download your planner >> Master your Morning

Although Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA) is a medical condition and not something we treat at The Sleep Nanny®, it can still be helpful to be able to spot the signs which can hinder your progress with sleep training. Signs to look out for are: Audible Mouth Breathing This is different to open mouth breathing – sometimes known as ‘catching flies!’ If the breath goes in and out through the mouth, which can happen both during the day and at night, that’s what you’re looking for. Snoring A narrowing of the airways, such as when you have a cold, can cause you to snore, which can be a sign of OSN. Sweating This is not to be used as a standalone symptom of OSA. It can be an accompanying sign. Some children are just warm naturally, but excessive sweating should be noted. Tiredness If your child seems very tired with no obvious reason and everything is in check with their sleep times etc, it could be that they’re having a disturbed sleep. Can we help a child with OSA? Yes, we can certainly work on the behavioural aspects of the sleep issues. But we’ll only get so far if there are underlying issues. My recommendation would be to book an appointment with an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) specialist to investigate these symptoms. Enlarged tonsils or adenoids are usually present with OSA. Once you have a diagnosis, it will be easier to address any behavioural sleep issues. For our tips and cheat sheets, subscribe for free to >> Sleep Nanny Insiders Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

We hear this a lot! As a parent it’s not unusual to think ‘maybe I’ve got a unique child and we’ll have to just put up with this.’ You’ve probably tried lots of things, most people think this is them. Take a moment to consider this… How Long Did You Try One Thing For? You may have tried for a couple of hours, a couple of days, maybe even a handful of nights. But if you don’t get fast results you may give up. How about sticking with an approach for a week, maybe even 10 days and see what results you get. How Consistent Are You? Did you sometimes see it through, but not every time? Not being consistent in your approach can give mixed messages. We almost always find when we dig a little deeper that inconsistency is more often than not the issue. We understand sticking to something can be tricky when you are tired and sleep deprived, which is where an outside pair of eyes can be helpful. When parents say they’ve tried ‘everything’, one of those things is bound to be the perfect thing for your baby. Chances are you have already touched upon the ideal approach, it’s just that a few tweaks may be needed to see results. So, find the right approach for you and be consistent with it. Don’t give up, don’t write it off after a couple of days. The right thing is out there for you. We can help you unpick, investigate and achieve results. Grab our free cheat sheet on Consistency. You can download it for FREE >> Download free Quick-Guide.               Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

The simple answer to this question (when can I start sleep training?) is that babies are most receptive to sleep training from 18 weeks old. If you’re not at that stage yet, don’t worry as you can still do what we call ‘sleep prep’. This is about setting cues and rhythms to help you baby recognise when it is sleep time. This stage is all about practise. When your baby is ready for sleep training, work out what is going to be the most suitable approach to sleep training for your baby. All babies are different and everyone’s circumstances are different. There are a few things you can do to identify the best approach, with the key one being to identify the temperament of your baby. Knowing this will help you to formulate the ideal plan that you can stick to. It takes away any element of second guessing and overthinking. You will be equipped and ready to respond. Remember, it’s never too early to sleep prep and it’s never too late to sleep train. Grab our free quick-guide to help shape your baby’s sleep. You can download it for FREE >> Download free Quick-Guide.               Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

A lot of parents find that at 4 months of age, their baby’s sleep patterns change. This is usually called a 4 month sleep regression, but is that really what it is? It can often be seen as a regression but here I share with your four ways to help you manoeuvre your way through this. For a handy reminder at your fingertips, I’ve created a printable cheat-sheet for you. You can download it for FREE >> Download free Quick-Guide.             Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Travelling with small children needn’t be a hassle. In this video I share with you 4 tips on how to avoid ‘throwing things off’. For a handy reminder at your fingertips, I’ve created a printable Quick-Guide for you. You can download it for FREE >> Download free Quick-Guide.             Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

In this fascinating discussion with leading child nutritionist Lucinda Miller, Lucy Shrimpton and Lucinda uncover brilliant feeding strategies for babies.   Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

Two year olds start having 5 am wakings for the following reasons: They are overtired Most two year olds are having way too much fun to want to nap and will not show many signs of needing a sleep so it’s up to you, the parent to know better and get that 2 hour sleep in every day! Bedtime creeps later or becomes inconsistent We see a lot of two year olds and their increased stamina fool parents into becoming more relaxed about bedtime, skipping the routine sometimes and having a few late nights here and there. These busy little toddlers need their consistent bedtime of around 7p.m or at least not more than 5 hours after they woke from the nap. Not being able to self settle or resettle back to sleep If your toddler is crashing out in less than 5 minutes at bedtime, he is not truly self settling. Or if he is staying up until he zonks, the same applies. It is incredibly difficult to resettle at 5a.m even for the skilled self settler but one who does not have this skill will find it impossible. Inconsistency Are you offering a range of responses and options to your toddler when he wakes in the night? If so, he will learn to hold out long and hard for the result he most wants. It is vital that you respond consistently each and every time. A very basic reward or incentive can work wonders at this age. A sleep clock combined with lots of praise and positive language or even a small reward when he stays in bed quietly until morning – Keep it simple. For a handy reminder at your fingertips, I’ve created a printable Quick-Guide for you. You can download it for FREE >> Download free Quick-Guide.         Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

 Why go for a red night light? The dim red colour does not affect our night vision in the way that regular lights do. This is especially helpful for […]

 Be prepared for some changes at this stage but don’t write off your challenges to a regression and put it out of your control – This is an excuse. […]

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 Maybe you’ve heard this term or even tried it but what is it and how does it work? I’m going to answer 4 common questions about this method to help you determine whether or not it’s for you… What is Pick-up Put-down? It is quite as it sounds in that, when your baby is fussing you pick her up, you soothe and calm her and then place her back down again while she is still awake and aware of going down. Then you repeat this over and over as needed until your baby is setting in her sleep space. How is it effective? It allows a baby little exposures to her sleep space and the sensation of falling asleep there rather than always falling asleep on someone. At the same time, the picking up and reassurance lets baby know that you are still there, you are responding and you ‘always return’. Your baby gets a little taste of her own sleep environment with the security of your closeness with the physical contact becoming a little more intermittent rather than a constant hold. At what age is it no longer appropriate? It is most effective in the first 6 months as a practice and in the remainder of the first 12 months as a calming technique. You can always use a modified approach of picking up to calm well into early childhood. Is it right for your baby? As a sleep shaping practice in the early months, it is suitable for most but as we pass the 4-6 month mark and they become a lot more aware it may just be too stimulating and become ‘fussing’ as opposed to soothing to your baby. At this point, less is more!I hope this has been helpful for you and I hope that it clears up and give you a better understanding on self soothing and self settling, why it’s important, and how you can actually go about implementing some of that. For a handy reminder at your fingertips, I’ve created a printable Quick-Guide for you. You can download it for FREE >> Download free Quick-Guide.   Become a Sleep Nanny Insider – it’s Free! Weekly inspiration, support and goodies Submit  

 Self soothing is a term that often gets thrown into the pool of Ferberizing, Controlled crying and leaving little ones to cry in order to self soothe…But none of […]

Helping sleep deprived families when little ones are not sleeping as well as they could be – that’s the role of a Sleep Nanny. It’s still a profession many are […]

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 This week’s episode shares 5 tips to help mothers whose identities have been taken over by being a mother. These tips will help you reclaim your identity and your […]

Kerry O’Neill ~ Certified Sleep Nanny Consultant™ How do you know if your little one still needs their dummy? If you’re reading this then I’m guessing you’re wondering if your […]

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 Returning to work after maternity leave can bring about a whole bunch of emotions. Not only are you getting ready to spend time away from your baby, but you […]

For further guidance, do not hesitate to contact me, The Sleep Nanny® or have a FREE 15 minute chat: request a call back here. Take action today and your family […]

 Is sleep training for everyone? In a word, no! But it’s your decision. It can be tailored to everybody’s needs to customise a plan of action to suit your […]

 How do you know when Parental Guilt is driving our actions, or our choices, or even our reactions? Guilt can be anything, it can be something small, or equally it can be something huge. If you’re experiencing any feelings of guilt, listen to my blog to explore this topic further. To find out how The Sleep Nanny® can help you to restore rest and well-being in your family, book a FREE 15 minute evaluation call here. Book Free Call

 Have you got two children close in age? Do you find yourself trying to juggle both at the same time? We all know that new babies need a lot of time and attention but we also don’t want our toddler feeling left out. If this sounds familiar, listen to my blog to discover 5 tips on how to work through this and keep everyone happy! To find out how The Sleep Nanny® can help you to restore rest and well-being in your family, book a FREE 15 minute evaluation call here. Book Free Call

 What can you do when your good sleeper stops sleeping well? Here are a few top tips to help them get back to sleeping soundly! To find out how […]

The Dummy Is The Only Way

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Newborns wake frequently and require regular feeding so it is inevitable that parents will endure broken sleep for a few months. The advice of ‘sleep when your baby sleeps’ is […]

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