A very common topic among parents is sleep – how much their baby or toddler is or is not sleeping, and how that’s impacting them. Sleep is also an area of parenting that many new parents fear, as they often hear that they won’t sleep again until their kids head off to college.
As a mom of three (almost four!) and a pediatric sleep consultant with Via Graces, I’m here to tell you that sleeplessness does not have to cloud over your parenting journey. Yes, those newborn days will come with exhausting nights full of wake ups and feedings, but those broken-up nights don’t have to extend through every month of babyhood or into the toddler years. Full nights of sleep are possible for you and your little one, and in this post, I’m going to share three tips to help your baby or toddler sleep through the night.
Those tips include:
- Following an age-appropriate schedule 2. Establishing and maintaining a consistent routine 3. Teaching your little one independent sleep skills
Follow an Age-Appropriate Schedule
In the pediatric (and adult!) sleep world, we often talk about “sleep pressure.” Sleep pressure is essentially the build up of sleepiness we want happening as our little ones approach their next nap or bedtime. When babies and toddlers don’t have enough sleep pressure, it often makes both falling asleep and staying asleep a challenge. They’re just not tired enough to sleep well, often causing bedtime battles, night wakings, early mornings, and/or short naps.
Oppositely, when our little ones have too much sleep pressure, we start entering the world of overtiredness, which can cause the same challenges of rough bedtimes and overnights, early mornings, and short naps. When our kids are too tired, cortisol starts running through their little bodies and essentially puts them into “fight or flight” mode, which is the opposite of helpful when it comes to sleep!
So no matter how many books you’ve read on sleep or what sleep training methods you’ve tried, if your baby or toddler’s sleep schedule is off, there’s a good chance sleep is a struggle. With babies still taking multiple naps a day, we recommend following awake windows to find the right balance of sleep pressure. And for babies and toddlers on a two-nap or one-nap schedule, we recommend following a more clock-based schedule. To learn what those different schedules look like depending on your little one’s age, snag our free guide to baby sleep schedules!
Establish and Maintain a Consistent Routine
Not only are age-appropriate schedules key when it comes to your little one’s sleep, but so are routines! Having a consistent nap and bedtime routine will help alert your child’s body and mind that it’s time for sleep, and they will know what to expect is coming next.
Having a consistent routine is also helpful so multiple people can put your child to bed and your little one still knows that sleep is coming. It’s also helpful when you’re traveling or sleeping somewhere new – there is safety and comfort in those routines!
While your little one’s bedtime routine will remain fairly consistent from babyhood to toddlerhood, there are a few differences we recommend, and you can learn about those here. Because yes, having certain things in your little one’s routine or too close to bedtime can also negatively impact their sleep! To learn more about nap routines, read this blog post.
Teach Your Little One Independent Sleep Skills
You might have the best schedule in place for your baby or toddler and have been following the same routines since they were born, but your baby or toddler is still waking multiple times throughout the night. Why? This is likely because they don’t have the independent sleep skills to naturally connect their sleep cycles overnight!
All of us, adults and kids alike, experience natural wakings throughout the night. For independent sleepers like you and me, however, we often just roll over and go right back to sleep, often not even remembering we woke up in the first place. That’s the same goal we have for our little ones, however if they don’t know how to connect those sleep cycles, they will wake up and need help falling back asleep – likely the same help they needed to fall asleep at bedtime!
This is why pediatric sleep consultants support families as they sleep train their babies and toddlers! Sleep training is how we go about teaching our little ones to connect those sleep cycles, which not only helps with overnight sleep but naps, as well. When we sleep train, we are teaching little ones to be able to fall asleep without needing to be rocked, fed, or laid with, and to sleep without a pacifier.
Just as potty training is a process that leads to independence on the toilet, sleep training is a process that leads to independence with sleep! And the good news is, there are essentially four sleep training methods families can choose from based on what’s best for them and their child – sleep training is not “one size fits all”.
And yes, you can sleep train a baby who still needs night feeds! The goal is still to teach them how to fall asleep independently so they can naturally connect their sleep cycles overnight. However, when they’re hungry, they will experience a full wake-up and signal to mom and dad that they’re hungry! Then, when they’re done eating, they’ll be able to fall right back to sleep again.
Conclusion
The goal of this blog post is to help you better understand why your baby or toddler might still be waking up through the night, as well as give tips you can start applying today!
If you’re looking for more resources to better understand your baby or toddler’s sleep, as well as other tips and tricks to help them sleep well, check out our online sleep classes!
Similarly, if you are struggling with sleep and just want someone to give you a step-by-step plan and support you through it to ensure your sleep goals are met, check out our one-on one sleep packages so we can guide you through the process.
Finally, at Via Graces, it is also our goal that you experience lots of grace! If your baby or toddler is still waking at night and it’s working for you, or you’re not ready to take steps toward teaching independent sleep skills, that’s okay. You are the best parent for your little one!
About the Author
Lauren Engler is a wife, mama to three (almost four!), and is the founder and owner of Via Graces. She is a former elementary teacher who then had a baby who did not sleep the first ten months of her life, so once they finally got her sleeping, Lauren decided to make a job out of helping other families do the same!
As a pediatric sleep consultant, her goal is to help families transform the bedtime experience from dreaded and exhausting to predictable and joy-filled so that everyone in the family can get the best sleep possible! Her team helps with establishing a sleep foundation with your newborn or sleep training your baby or toddler. Through her online sleep classes, one-on-one support services, weekly podcast/blog content, and regular Instagram activity, the Via Graces team wants families to feel confident navigating their little one’s sleep with confidence and a plan!
