​But how does this help night wakings??

There was a great question that was emailed in to me and I thought it was really important to answer.  The question was:

"Hi, I watched the night waking webinar and it was helpful, but I don't understand how those tips solve night wakings.  Can you explain how those those are helpful??  Thank you!"  

I get that figuring out sleep can be tricky and not exactly straight forward!  Why I talk about fixing more during the daytime first is because it's much easier than fixing everything in the middle of the night when you're barely awake.  It's much harder to stick to the plan when you are hardly awake yourself!  The tips that I go over in the webinar such as setting up a daytime routine, nap and bedtime routine, awake windows, and so forth are important for night wakings for two reasons:


 #1) The first is that whatever we do during the day will also affect nighttime sleep.  Therefore, setting up good daytime routines will eventually help your child's overall sleep quality by reducing any unneeded stress that they might experience.  Routines help reduce stress by offering a predictiable day and way for them to fall alseep.


#2) The second and most important aspect is that a good bedtime routine reduces your child's need for help to fall asleep.  When your child is helped or put to sleep at naps and bedtime and then wakes up at night, they don't know how to fall back to sleep on their own.  They need exactly what you've done when they fell asleep to help them fall back to sleep.  This is called a learned assocication and no matter what you do on a regular basis is what your child will learn how to fall asleep.  Therefore, setting up a nap and bedtime routine that doesn't have as many sleep props (things that help your child fall asleep) will help them fall back to sleep on their own during the night.


To help answer what to do next, ask yourself "which part can I work on to help reduce night wakings?"  Maybe your child doesn't have consistent naptime and working on those will help nighttime sleep.  Or you help your child fall to sleep and they need that all night long.


Start with one thing to work on every few days and you will start seeing improvements!


Need to re-watch the replay of the Night Waking webinar?  Click the picture below and be sure to hit subscribe to get more videos just like this!

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If you need more information about helping your baby sleep, use the Happy Sleeping Baby book which has everything you need to know about sleep! Learn more here.

You can also the Parent Resources page for sample schedules and more tips to help your kiddo sleep! Or get in Contact here for more personalized support.  I'm here to help you feel like you again!

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