7 Steps to Take Before Sleep Training
So you’ve decided you’re ready to improve sleep for your family, and you’re ready to start NOW. I get it. When you’ve lived in an exhausted state for months (or years!) and decide to make a change, it’s usually because you’re beyond exhausted and need sleep ASAP.
While I always encourage parents who call me to wait on making changes until we have created our highly personalized and thorough sleep plan together, there are a few things you can do now so we’re ready to to jump right in after our consultation:
Get the green light from your doctor.
If you are interested in night weaning from the breast or bottle, you will need to confirm with your pediatrician that given your baby’s age, weight, height, and daytime feeding, they should be able to go 11-12 hours at night without eating.
If your little one has any underlying medical issues, we’ll want to get those under control and have the green light from your pediatrician there as well.
Check your sleep environment.
Subtle environmental changes that you can make anytime include making sure you have blackout curtains and shades for the windows where your little one will sleep, removing any blue light (iPads, iPhones, TV, computer screens) within two hours of bedtime and overnight, keeping the room cool, and using white, pink, or brown noise throughout the night.
Establish a calming bedtime routine.
A predictable, calming bedtime routine is a huge aid in cueing the brain that it’s time to wind down and begin secreting melatonin. Keep your little one’s bedtime routine consistent and about 15-30 minutes long. It should serve to both get your little one ready for bed and as a time of connection at the end of the day.
Start keeping a sleep and feeding log.
Sleep and feeding logs create a picture for us and allow us to see patterns in your days and nights. They can be incredibly instructive as we begin digging deep into why your little one is waking multiple times throughout the night, why they’re waking so early, why they’re protesting nap, or whatever else may be going on. All families I work with keep a log during the course of our work together, and if you’re able to provide a log in advance of our work, we’ll have more useful data as we create our plan and begin working on improving sleep.
Decide whether you want to keep night feeds.
One thing I want all parents to know: you do not have to night wean to improve sleep!!! You can absolutely feed your baby at night and still improve sleep. So if you want to keep feeding your little one at night, that is completely fine. And if you’d like to night wean, that is also completely fine, so long as little one is able to get enough daytime calories and your pediatrician has given you the all-clear. If you’ve gotten the green light from your pediatrician to night wean, consider if that’s the direction you’d like to go.
Decide whether you want to keep the pacifier.
The pacifier can be a great soothing tool. But it can also disrupt sleep before baby is able to re-plug it themselves (typically around 8-9 months). If your little one doesn’t have that skill yet, you’ll still need to re-plug it throughout the night until they master the pincer grasp, or you’ll need to wean the pacifier.
Make sure everyone is on board.
This is critical. The most important factor when sleep training is consistency, so it’s imperative that everyone involved in putting your little one to sleep be on board with your plan to make changes.
With these things sorted out, we’ll be able to jump right in and begin implementing our plan right away. And you and your little one will be that much closer to a full night of restorative sleep!
Rest easy, mama. Sleep is just around the corner. I’ll help you get there.