Your baby's room plays an important role in sleep. Now, I don't actually think the picture is a good representation of a good sleeping environment, but it looks nicer than a completely black picture!
​
Your child's room environment for sleep is a positive sleep prop to help promote sleep.  When your baby wakes up at night, these factors help calm the mind and body to help go back to sleep. These tips not only help babies sleep, but also us as adults too!  To encourage the best sleep for any age, an ideal room should:

• Be dark  - so dark, in fact, that you can barely see your own hand in front of your face!  Use blackout curtains or double up your curtains to block out any light from outside.  If you need to use a light at night, it's best to use a red or yellow tinted light.

• Be cool - 16 to 20 degrees Celsius / 65 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the season.  Our body temperature drops naturally at night, which helps set the stage for our bodies.

• Have white noise - a dull sound that helps drown out any other noises.  Use a sound machine or a fan. Fans can serve two purposes: they produce a dull sound and also keep the room cool.  I really like Relaxing White Noise Sounds for Baby Sleep (click to be taken to the album).

• Have a sleeping buddy - once your baby can hold an object, give them a blanket or stuffed animal (I love the combo blanket with a stuffed animal head).  Make sure to put this next to your baby every time s/he sleeps (naps and nights), but don't use this as a toy.  At first, the sleeping buddy should only be associated with sleep!  Once your child associates this with sleep, then they can use it during the day as well.

If some of this sounds strange, remember that your baby came from inside the womb where it was dark, the perfect temperature, and had a constant whooshing sound.  Re-make your baby's room to be as womb-like as possible and you'll have more success with sleep. This theory even applies to adults! If you have trouble sleeping, try out this room environment too.

​Visit the Parent Resources page for more tips to help your kiddo sleep!  Or get in touch if you have more questions.

This post is taken from my upcoming book, Happy Sleeping Baby ~ Your Guide for Sleep Success, coming out this spring!  Want to know when the book will be out?  Fill out the form below:

​Photo by Bastien Jaillot on Unsplash

 

This post was written by a former client who reached out about creating this white noise album.  I use the playlist often when I'm trying to work or relax! Give it a try via the link below in the post.  ~Courtney


​ Guest post written by: Kaveh Akaber
 
I’m a filmmaker and composer and have professionally experimented with sound all my adult life and nighttime has always been a creative playground for me. But after our first child, I was struggling to fix my random sleep, take care of my child and try to be creative all at the same time. After years of insomnia, I collapsed. My body said stop. Not even music could calm my senses and make me go to sleep. Doctors advised me to take heavy sleeping pills, but after several weeks I stopped. Before I went to bed, I had a feeling of panic and couldn’t calm myself. This reminded me also of my newborn baby that didn’t have the right tools to calm down before sleep. 

I have tried various methods to deal with this issue for many years.  At one point I was reading an article about different sound therapies. How sound and music could redeem Alzheimer’s patients to start remember again and other sounds that can make you sleep easier. It was during this time I started to look for different methods of white noise sound therapy to deal with my burnt-out state of mind. 
 
Sounds are actually ancient life hacks to make you go to sleep. People have used their vacuum cleaner to make noise and get their babies to go to sleep, driving cars for hours, or listening to static on old radios through the whole night. In all of these sounds, you have white noise. Actually, everywhere you go there is noise. Different noise can also be described in various colors depending on which frequency they have. Light waterfalls can be described as pink noise, and heavy waves on sea can be described as brown noise and so on. In my opinion the problem is our surrounding is based on artificial environments with too many sounds that interfere with our senses. We start looking for total silence instead of relaxing or going into deep meditation. But if you think about it, total silence is an even more unnatural state of mind. In our evolution, our minds have developed in light sounds in surroundings. For example, sleeping under the stars, listening to the wind, or sleeping near the sea. White noise can be discovered in all of these natural environments. 

According to professor Göran Söderlund at Lund´s University, if your body is too tired before sleep you can have a sense of panic stress instead and to fall asleep can take a longer time. Especially babies who don’t have the tool to deal with this issue. White Noise can instead increase the state of alertness and make you more awake and then make you tired quicker and put you to sleep.

So, what noise works for you? There are loads of poor recordings and sounds out there, so therefore I started to make my own noises. I created this Relaxing White Noise Sounds for Baby Sleep album inspired by these events and my friend encouraged me to produce one album especially for his baby. I calibrated the white noise with sound recording pulses from other space, the seaside from south Sweden, winds from the mountains in north Scandinavia, and a hairdryer at home. In my studio I almost fell asleep during experimenting with these sounds! So, I thought this might work! This will definitely not solve all your issues with sleeping and a troubled mind, but maybe a good way to make it easier. A strange mind is a strange mind. The only thing you can do is deal with it.
 
 
/Kaveh Akaber
 

Link to the album Relaxing White Noise Sounds for Baby Sleep: 
https://open.spotify.com/album/4zdA0jutWM8NmHmOhLFcSE?si=7m3tRtUlT5GSVzNcGIZOvg

White noise can be a great part to a perfect bedroom environment.  Read more about a great room environment for sleep here.

As you know, I am absolutely passionate about the science behind sleep and helping you and your family finding your way to the sleep you need and deserve. What I’ve found along the way is that it’s not only sleep that weighs in. Nutrition and child development is as important and also goes hand in hand with sleep.

I think most of us have heard or read about the importance of talking to our children to help them with their speech and language development. But did you also know that this will help your kiddo later on in life with things like math, reading and social abilities?

So no matter no matter what their age, it is important to talk to children. I always tell parents to tell their kids what they are doing so that they begin to understand but also because it’s great to hear so many words.

“Children learn best from speech directed to them by their caregivers creating conversations that build on children’s interests.”

And for those of you who are thinking that they can give their child the same benefits by having adult conversations when your child is with them I have to tell you that unfortunately ambient speech will not have the same results. Children thrive when being addressed and engaged in a conversation.

This all sounds good but how do you do it without feeling foolish talking to yourself?

Here are my top 5 tips on how to talk more with your kiddo to make it feel more natural:

1. Narrate your day. 
When I was on maternity leave I talked to baby T about what I was doing, what was around us, describing colors and shapes or talking about how things work. It could be things like, “Mama’s going to wipe your little bottom now and change your diaper so you don’t get a rash” or when out grocery shopping “We are going to need an apple, some carrots and broccoli for our salad today. What color apples do you think we should get? Red or green?”.

2. Sing and talk when playing with your kid. 
Play peek-a-boo and other games where you practice taking turns, talk about what                you are playing and what is happening in your games. This also helps them understand how a conversation works. Sing songs where you use your body to describe what is going on, like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” or “Wheels On The Bus”. Describe the colors and sounds of toys you’re playing with, i.e. “The zebra is black with white stripes” or “What sound does the duck make?”

3. Talk about what is going to happen throughout the day. 
Like “Today we are going to go on a play date with your friend Oliver and in the afternoon we have a check up at BVC (healthcare center for children in Sweden) to weigh and measure you.”I’ve found  that as your child grows it is actually quite good to talk to them about what activities you have planned for the day. It gives them a sense of control knowing what’s up next. And even if they don’t remember, you can remind them throughout the day of what the plans were, i.e. “We’ve met your friend and after lunch we’re off to BVC”. It doesn’t eliminate tantrums entirely but it helps your child feel more included in what’s going on and not be ambushed by new things.

4. Encourage others to talk to your child! 
Grandma’s, grandpa’s, friends who also interact with your kiddo, ask them to engage in            conversation with them and let them know of the benefits of doing this.

5. Read to your child.
Books stimulate your child’s imagination and you can also pause and ask them questions while reading. For              example “What do you think will happen next?”
Let me know what tips and advice you have for talking more with your children in the comments below!

Resources:

Talking with children matters: Defending the 30 million word gap

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Erika Hoff, Meredith Rowe, Catherine Tamis-LeMonda, and Kathy Hirsh-PasekMonday, May 21, 2018

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/05/21/defending-the-30-million-word-gap-disadvantaged-children-dont-hear-enough-child-directed-words/

Barns språkutveckling

19 Apr 2018, kl 08:11

http://www.babyhjalp.se/barns-sprakutveckling/