Wondering why your baby won’t stay asleep?
You have done the work to get them to sleep but then they won’t stay asleep; if your baby is over the 4 month mark then this may be exactly what is going on.
Could this be what is happening to you? Your child wants to sleep, they just don’t know how to do it.
We wake multiple times a night, for not reason other than transistion from sleep cycle to sleep cycle; give your kids the gift of sleep by teaching them how to love sleeping, just like we do.
Need advice on how to put your baby down awake? Book a call so we can connect.
Video Transcribed Below:
“Hey, everybody, it’s Brooke here, owner and founder of Bedtime Beginnings, adult and pediatric sleep specialist. Our thing is sleep. If you didn’t know that already, we love to help people get back to sleep. I’ve talked to a few people recently about this drowsy but awake, and I wanted to kind of hop on here for a few minutes to discuss and offer a few pieces of advice and kind of the science behind maybe why your children aren’t sleeping well. So when our babies are born in that newborn stage, their circadian rhythm isn’t developed yet, so we sometimes see their days and nights mixed up, right.
Speaker 1 (00:35)
We see this where until they’ve kind of been on Earth for a little while and been exposed to the sunlight and the sunset and really getting onto that rhythm, it takes them a little while to start to sleep. Well, usually around the four month mark, that four month sleep regression that we’ve all heard of many times. And if you’ve had babies, you’ve lived it, things start to change. It’s actually around that eight to ten week mark that things start to change. But we often notice it closer to kind of three and a half, four months when our babies become more aware and they start to see a change in their sleep.
Speaker 1 (01:06)
So let’s skip ahead to this drowsy but awake. When babies are really little, this drowsy but awake really helps. We can kind of hold our babies and get them sleepy, and we can put them down, and they’ll stay asleep and it’s beautiful. As they get older, though, and their body clock, their internal circadian rhythm becomes established, this starts to shift. And that first onset of sleep is really the first stage of sleep.
Speaker 1 (01:28)
So for me, it’s falling asleep on the couch, trying to watch a movie with my husband. I’m an early bird, so I can’t hack it. I end up falling asleep and I would actually argue with him. I used to when we were dating, at least that I was even sleeping. Of course, though, then I wake up and I have to get myself to bed, and I don’t cry about it, but it’s kind of annoying having to kind of fall asleep again.
Speaker 1 (01:48)
I say this because this is often what happens with our babies, and I did this myself. I would hold her, I would nurse her, she would fall asleep, and it was beautiful. I’d go to put her down, and she’d either wake up upon putting her down or she’d wake up 45 minutes later and need help again. The biggest change that we had to implement, which I know a lot of you guys would maybe relate to, is the fact that they’re getting drowsy while we’re holding them. This actually messes up their sleep cycles because we’ve now interrupted it.
Speaker 1 (02:16)
We’ve allowed them or held them for the very first part of their sleep, and then we expect that they’ll be able to continue sleeping after we move or put them back down. And sometimes that does work right. And they actually do stay asleep and fall asleep, but then they wake up and it’s really this wake up part that now they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to fall asleep because they’ve been relying on something to help them get drowsy to start their sleep process. One of the biggest things that we do here that we help families with is kind of looking at this factor.
Speaker 1 (02:44)
Is this affecting your baby’s ability to put themselves to sleep and stay asleep? Likely, yes. It’s very, very common. It was the issue with my family. It’s the issue with a lot of families I work with.
Speaker 1 (02:55)
So just one quick piece of advice and quick tip is look at how your baby’s falling asleep. Are they falling asleep with you? Are they falling asleep or getting drowsy even before you’re putting them down? And obviously, if it’s working for you, don’t make any changes. You don’t even need to listen to this.
Speaker 1 (03:10)
But if you’re having trouble keeping your baby asleep or getting them to fall asleep, it could be this onset of sleep part where we need to look at putting your baby down. Tired but awake. And yes, of course, drowsy and tired are a fine line, but they are different. We don’t necessarily want them to be drowsy and already falling asleep when we put them down. We want them to be tired and be able to put themselves to sleep in their own crib.
Speaker 1 (03:33)
If you have any questions or you’re not sure where to go, this is what we do. Book a call, speak with us. We can answer your questions and explain how we can help. I look forward to helping you get back to sleep. Sweet dreams.