Do babies learn to sleep if you don't 'train' them?

[Nausika]

Hi
My baby is 10 weeks old and unless in pram/sling, will only fall asleep and stay asleep in our arms. I can get her to fall asleep in rocking crib and bouncer but she always wakes up after 5 minutes really upset and will not fall back asleep on her own. Ditto if she falls asleep in my arms and I put her down. She sleeps in our bed during the night.

My attempts to change her sleeping habits have been tortuous and I am wondering whether it's worthwhile persevering. Won't she change her habits a few months down the road naturally when she is ready? Has anyone else been in the same situation? Did your babies grow out of it on their own? When does it happen?!?!

Oh, I know exactly what you mean. I only got round to sorting DS out because Igglybuff gave me a kick up the backside some encouragement.

Do keep us posted - I have days where I half fancy starting my own sleep consultancy so it's nice to get feedback!

One more thing on the darkness issue: this was an interesting link from another thread about the use of electric lights in the late evening.

Researchers concluded: "room light... shortens the body's internal representation of night duration."

Exposure to normal room lighting (as opposed to dim night lights) messes up melatonin levels and the body's sleep. So keeping things as dark as possible once it's 'nighttime' would be a good strategy. Even nightlights cause melatonin levels to drop by 50%.

Sorry, to answer your last question, I actually don't know how long she sleeps for. From being a newborn her naps were 15 mins max, and only 3 or 4 of them. She's apparently napping for longer now, but she rouses incredibly easily when DH needs to get up so I think she's winging it and enjoying the cuddle much of the time. If she falls asleep during a feed it's only for 15 or 20 minutes.

I sound so crap. We've just been struggling with this for so long I can't see the wood for the trees any more.

Gosh, there have been so many interesting and helpful posts, I don't know where to start but I just wanted to say:

1. for my situation, thank you so much for pointing me in the direction of these hammocks, I had never seen them before, I wish I had! I am summoning up the courage to open my wallet as we speak...

2. Angeldog, you are amazing! You have completely changed my understanding of my baby's daytime naps - this is so exciting!!! (It makes me laugh when I think how bizarre this sentence would have sounded to me before having a baby :)) Thank you.

3. Gaelicsheep, hang in there! I can't begin to comprehend how tough it must be with two little ones too...

Glad it was useful, OP. :) As you can tell, I've spent rather a lot of time reading around the subject.

My goodness, you have! Thank you for sharing it all - I really really appreciate the time you've given. The more I think about it, the more I realize that you saved me from making a grave mistake, which would have been to overtire and mess up dd's day sleeping in an attempt to teach her to self-soothe, which would have jeopardized the good thing we have going with her night-sleeping. Everything you say makes sense when I think about what I have observed about dd's behaviour - and I observe it minutely!

Great - what you've avoided was exactly the situation I was in for the first two months (until we found the sling which saved my sanity and finally gave us a way to get decent naps without loads of screaming).

It really does improve as they get older IMO.

Some babies are more sensitive to overtiredness than others though. I've a friend whose 6 m.o. is definitely overtired and has only had one nap a day for a couple of months, but still sleeps through the night (at the moment at least). My DS is at the more sensitive end of the spectrum, though, and it sounds as if gaelic's DD is too.

Sorry to hijack your thread Nausika. I hope you do manage to avoid the types of problems I'm having.

A couple more things about naps:

Circadian rhythms and ?sleepy times? of day around 9am and 1pm ish don?t get going till 3-4 months (later for some babies, especially those who had colic) as the LO?s biological clocks need to mature first. It?s not till around 10 months on average that babies? body clocks are fully synchronised with the 24 hour day.

Before that point, keeping awake intervals short is the key to naps. A maximum of 1.5 hours is a good rule of thumb, although it varies from about 45 mins ? 2 hours. Awake times usually get longer as the day goes on, so a baby who can only stay awake 45 mins between waking for the day and the first nap may be able to go 1.5 hours between the last nap and bedtime. This pattern continues.

Nap length can tell you quite a lot. Once you get past the newborn stage, naps of less than 30 minutes don?t really count as naps ? they take the edge off the tiredness, but don?t really have a restorative effect & don?t bring down cortisol levels properly. So the effect of a 20 min nap is the same as missing that nap altogether.

Babies come into light sleep after 15-20 mins, so a baby waking at that point may need help to stay asleep ? usually from whatever means you used to get them to sleep in the first place. My DS does this for car / sling naps ? he wakes at this point if the car / sling is no longer moving. He?ll never go off again ? you need to have the movement already going when you hit that point. In his case, I suspect it might be to do with being upright, as he does it if he?s sleeping on your chest while you sit in a chair. It doesn?t happen when lying down in the pushchair or his cot.

30 min naps are often due to overtiredness from being awake too long, although they can also be caused by a developmental spurt, or when a baby is almost ready to drop a nap. 40-45 mins is usually one sleep cycle for a nap. If your baby wakes after 30-45 mins and can be got back to sleep by rocking / feeding / whatever, the issue is an inability to settle themselves between cycles, not overtiredness.

gaelic, if I were in your situation and things didn't improve a bit once your new back-at-work routine gets established, I'd consider getting specialist help from someone like Millpond clinic who have a decent understanding about sleep disorders. I do think she is at the extreme end of sleep dificulties, although I'm no expert.

Have you ever had her checked for allergies? I know they can sometimes affect sleep badly.

I agree with kiwi .

I cuddled my son to sleep, gave him extra bottles etc went to him all night until he was about 11 months old. I then decided that I didn't want to put up with it anymore and could see that I was training him to be up all night and dependent on me. I started controlled crying with him (11 months they can def cope with it!) and he responded instantly and didn't ever cry for more than 10 mins. After 2 nights he slept through the night for 12 hours. It was such a relief.

Once the sides of the cot come off and he got past his first birthday it would have been a night mare to put right. With DC2 I will def get into good habits from the start and have no messing. I need to maintain my sanity for me, my DH and DS.

Wow AngelDog - a fantastic lot of information there. I had no idea that different nap lengths mean such different things! Can you recommend a couple of books that go into detail on this stuff?

Spikydahlia - I do hope for your sake that it is that simple. But I also hope you aren't suggesting you won't respond to your baby's needs so as not to instil "bad" habits?

Yes, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. He is a hard core cry it out sleep trainer (he speaks of leaving babies to 'scream their brains out' on their own for an unlimited length of time) and I personally loathe and despise that approach. But the stuff on nap scheduling was very, very useful.

A note of warning: the book is poorly written, badly organised, patronising in tone and reading the chapter on 'the importance of naps' will fill you with despair. (I suspect he overstates the case, myself.) But I'd still recommend it more than anything else I've read. I managed to get a copy on an inter-library loan.

The AskMoxie blog is a great source of info if you look at the posts categorised 'sleep' or 'naps'
. Reading the comments is really useful too - a bit like MN but with lots more people IMO.

Moxie writes about the effect of developmental stuff (sleep regressions), most of which comes from The Wonder Weeks which I've found really useful but doesn't address naps as such.

Elizabeth Pantley's No-Cry Nap Solution is fairly helpful, as is her No-Cry Sleep Solution (although that's largely about changing sleep associations, rather than babies who can't sleep).

The other book which is supposed to be good is Richard Ferber's Teach your child to sleep, although I've not read it and it's quite heavy going from what I've heard. It's the book which goes into the biology of sleep more than any others I've heard recommended. He's revised it significantly so it's the 2006 version which is the one worth reading. A glance at the content shows a chapter about naps.

HTH

another co-sleeper her, now with our new addition, dd aged almost 8wks, she sleeps in a sling, occasionally in pram or carseat and is in our bed at night.

all four of my boys also slept the same way and they all grew out of it, we have never been able to do controlled crying etc, they do get there, some earlier than others but they all get there eventually :)

if you are happy and baby is happy then go with it if its working :)

thanks for all the really helpful advice Angel Dog - you've mentioned several things which ring a bell for me.

i am also toying with sleep training for my DD who is 10 wks old and suffers - most nights - from colic. the poor love howls from 7/8pm and then finally crashes into sleep exhausted at about 11pm. she will then wakes two or three times to feed in the night. if we dont need to be anywhere she would then sleep till 10am. recently she has also started fighting sleep in the day and simply wont go down for a nap. and now, on top of the colic, she gets overtired and grumpy poor thing. this is so hard to watch in one so small and, if i am honest, hard to keep up with (I am EXHAUSTED).

one way to solve this, which sometimes, but not always works, is to stroll her round in the day. but i have to stroll for as long as i want the nap to be or she will wake up when i stop (yesterday i had to walk for three hours in the rain to get her to sleep, great for my fat behind, not so great for my need to sleep when she sleeps).

i agree that 10 wks is a good age to start to gently help her to sort out this pattern into something that will be less stressful for her - and us. but where to begin? persevere with day time sleeps in her basket/cot which she fights and screams? or keep her awake at 7am so she 'swaps' the 7-10am sleep for a 7-10pm sleep? or wait for the magical three/four month mark when her colic will abate and she wont be so overtired in the evening?

agh! i just dont know what to do but am not sure i can continue as we are indefinitely though if i know the end is in sight without intervention i can struggle on but right now my gut feeling is to introduce gentle sleep training (has to be a no cry method for me at the moment, i cant let her cry uncuddled). but, should i start with naps or evening sleep? should i start now or wait till the colic passes? or are the two linked and making each other worse?

one last point to this looong message - sorry for the ramble - when she is not overtired or windy she can, or rather she has, on a number of occasions, put herself to sleep quite happily in her basket without crying. these are my valuable chinks of light that i hold onto hoping one day they will become the norm rather than the exception.

all advice welcome. thank you!

Clearly, given the problems we have, I should not be dishing out advice to anyone. All I will say is that my DS was very similar. He had colic in the evenings and would not sleep in the daytime. But he kind of sorted himself out over time with little intervention needed from us. We did have to keep perservering with daytime naps, finding different ways to get him to go to sleep and stay asleep, but the nights he sort of did himself. He was sleeping through (with a feed when we went to bed) by 6 months. He's now 4 and a really really good sleeper.

I think your current situation sounds pretty normal personally, and if I were you I would wait until the colic settles down before trying to do any "sleep training" as such. But like I said, given the problems we have with DD I don't feel qualified to give anyone any advice!

eddy - 3 hour non-stop walks in the rain, I feel your pain! You said the pram doesn't always work - I had the same problem and it got fixed when I started using a car seat on the wheels, instead of the carrycot...