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Baby Sleep Routines

When you had your baby, you knew you'd be up and about in the middle of the night for night-time feeds. But your manual said it would all be over by four months. How wrong it was.

Many young children, understandably unfamiliar with these manuals, take years to get the message about sleeping through the night. This is why so many of us find ourselves treading the boards in the small hours - for months on end - the idea of unbroken sleep a dim and distant memory.

Some babies go to sleep like angels, but develop the habit of waking in the middle of the night at around ten months old. They've just learned that things still exist even when out of sight. When they wake up in the night, they now know that you must be nearby, so they call for you. The problem often goes away when the child begins to walk, then reappears around 18 months, as problems of separation normally become a bit worse. Not all babies go through these phases, but many do.

Sometimes children wake up because as babies they never learned how to fall asleep on their own. Babies can become dependent on being held, sung to, rocked, breastfed, given a bottle, or even driven in a car in order to fall asleep. Our daughter wouldn't go to sleep unless I rocked her gently while my husband played 70s rock classics on his guitar. When she was asleep in my arms, I'd place her ever so slowly and carefully into her cot - but if the impact with the mattress wasn't completely smooth she'd wake up with a piercing cry and we'd have to start the process all over again.

If you always hold or rock your baby until he is completely asleep, rather than putting him down in the crib when he is drowsy but still a little bit awake, your baby develops a habit of having to be in your arms before he can fall asleep. Your baby associates the feeling of being held with the process of falling to sleep. Without the holding, he simply can't fall asleep. And if you give your baby a bottle to fall asleep with, he may come to rely on that as a trigger for sleep. Soon you'll find yourself fixing bottles two or three times a night. An illness can also set you back. Your child may have been sleeping through the night for months, but then they get an ear infection, a cold or start teething. Your child may get used to being comforted at night so once the pain has gone he may whimper in the hope of some attention. Can you blame them? When they have been picked up and treated to company and a snack for several nights they learn to rouse themselves from half awake to wide awake to have more fun.

If you don't deal with night-time wakings, the problem probably won't go away - some 10% of four-year-olds still wake up at night. Soon your child will start coming into your own bed and before you know it, the family is playing musical beds. I know plenty of families where the dad either ends up on his own under his daughter's Barbie duvet cover or downstairs on the sofa, while mum is sandwiched between two fidgety young children.


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