Nigh Nigh Sleepy Head (Nigh Nigh)
Beating the transition blues
Let’s face it, as a parent, we’ve all been there and it’s exhausting, frustrating, and makes you want to cry even louder than your baby.
You’ve just spent the last hour plus settling, shooshing, holding your baby horizontally, over the left shoulder, over the right shoulder, you’ve rocked and patted and fed and fed again and changed their nappy twice, burped and re-burped and walked the house until finally the crying stops and they close their eyes and sleep.
BUT…that is only part one because what comes next is every parent’s nightmare…THE TRANSITION!
As you gradually make your way to their sleep space, avoiding the loose squeaky board that wakes them every time, and with little more than a hope or prayer you tenderly and ever so slowly lower them into their cot. Everything becomes slow motion as you straighten their covers and tuck them in, in anticipation of a good night’s sleep.
Then you begin the retreat – one slow step at a time and before you get halfway to the door, they are wide awake. You stop, hold your breath and stand as still as a statue, not knowing if you should make eye contact, and then slowly drop to the floor and attempt to crawl away, but, it’s all in vain!
Your baby is wide awake and now you start the whole process all over again.
Giving cuddles is exactly what your baby needs.
Transitioning from arms to a cot can be very tricky especially for sensitive babies and light sleepers that are yet to learn how to string together sleep cycles of around 45 minutes on average, without becoming wide awake. Developmental age also means your baby needs you to help with the process of falling asleep and learning to stay asleep.
The first phase to helping your baby transition from your arms to their cot requires them to stay in a dreamy relaxed state and a little bit of science and technology helps with this. Maintaining the feel-good hormones like Dopamine, Serotonin and Oxytocin allow your baby to stay calm and relaxed, feel loved, and most importantly feel safe and secure.
To help with this process you need to stay calm. Often changing your baby’s position over and over adds to their distress and the more they cry the more stress hormone is produced. This means their nervous system becoming more agitated, their heart beats faster and they breathe quicker as they move into a biological state of fight or flight. Now they are ready for action, which prolongs their ability to be calm and settle.
Wrapping your baby when they are distressed and you are holding them firmly can help them feel more secure and lessen the amount of time for sleep onset to occur. The wrapping technique when you cuddle 2 sleep is useful for calming any age, even toddlers.
Learning to sleep for all ages often quires a multitude of actions that help us learn to sleep faster and return to sleep quickly and you may have heard of sleep hygiene. This phrase is about your environment and is one big thing, amongst others, that is paramount to sleeping well.
YOUR BABY’S SLEEP space should be free of distraction, uncluttered, safe for sleeping, and a comfortable temperature – coolness is a biological stimulus for sleep, and the room dark. Babies experience a more frequent light sleep phase than adults so they are easily woken from distracting sounds.
Are you calm and focused on the task of helping your baby learn to transition? Babies and children need repetition to learn.
Are you allowing your baby to self settle when in their cot? Some babies grizzle as they settle and every noise they make doesn’t necessarily mean you need to intervene.
Babies love gentle motion and often fall asleep when you rock them, but when the motion stops you move into the second phase of settling and often the hardest part …keeping them asleep and it’s at this point where you can be pushed to your limits.
Feeling exhausted and having to start resettling all over again as soon as you put them down, is frustrating especially when you are hanging out for sleep or some quiet time with another child, your partner, or yourself. If that is you, and you have the opportunity to ask for help, now is the time.
We always do this…At nigh nigh, we use an auditory stimulus like our lullaby sleep music because it gives a multitude of actions that teach you to support your baby’s evolving sleep pattern. It supports your rocking or movement phase and helps you transition your baby from movement to stillness but still keeps them feeling calm and relaxed. Remember you are trying to avoid them feeling stressed.
Rest assured that helping your baby learn to transition from cuddle2cot can be a wonderful process with the ultimate reward of sleep for everyone.
