Experts reveal how babies can be taught to sleep better
IT’S no secret getting an adequate amount of sleep in the first months of a baby’s life is one of the biggest challenges new parents face. But baby sleep experts believe there are some practical steps you can take to help you get more sleep.
Parenting
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IS THERE anything sweeter than a newborn baby peacefully sleeping and for a new parent, is there anything more precious than getting some sleep yourself?
It’s no secret getting an adequate amount of sleep in the first three to six months of a baby’s life is one of the biggest challenges new parents face.
Baby sleep experts believe there are some practical steps you can take that will give you a bonus hour or two each night.
As many as 84 per cent of Australian mums with children aged under three claim to have suffered sleep deprivation with 80 per cent putting it in the range of exhaustion, according to a survey by online program Dream Start Baby.
Further, the report found the average Aussie mum gets less than four and a half hours sleep a night and one in four get three hours or less a night.
Dr Harvey Karp, a world renowned baby sleep expert, says new mothers need more support than ever before to deflect the destructive impact of sleep deprivation.
“We know so much more about the incredible undermining and destructive impact of sleep deprivation today than when I started in paediatrics more than 25 years ago,” he tells BW Magazine on a visit to Sydney from his home in Los Angeles.
“The incredible burden on new parents is there even more now than ever before in the sense that new mothers are supposed to be babied as much as the new baby is babied, but they’re not.
“You’re supposed to have your mother and your sister and your aunt all there taking care of you so you can feed and care for the baby. But mothers today are completely bereft of that support, and what is worse, they think they don’t deserve it.
“They think that a good mother doesn’t need any help, doesn’t need any support, is happily waking up every two hours all night long, smiling and never complaining. And they think that is normal, but it turns out that couldn’t be more abnormal.
“Studies now show that if you get less than six hours sleep at night, you’re the equivalent of drunk.
“New parents on average get six hours, but it isn’t even six continuous hours, it’s broken into little tiny pieces so it’s very inefficient sleep and that’s why it feels like torture.
“And it’s the reason why it’s the number one trigger for post natal depression, breast feeding failure, marital stress, car accidents, over medication of babies and even obesity.”
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A study published in 2016 found the chance of depression in women with poor sleep quality was more than three times higher than those with good sleep quality.
So desperate are new parents for a little sleep, a whole industry has risen around getting a newborn to sleep.
Dr Karp worked for five years on the Snoo, a cot which mimics the environment in the womb cocooning a baby safely in a swaddle-like manner while providing white noise and a swaying motion.
Celebrities including Beyonce, Chrissy Teigen, Mila Kunis and Khloe Kardashian are advocates of Snoo.
Another product, Glow Dreaming, is a night light that produces red LED, the same technology NASA use at its space station to induce the sleep hormone, melatonin. And the Baby Shusher, which was said to be used by Kim Kardashian and Princess Kate, uses loud, rhythmical shushing noises to soothe a baby.
“One of the biggest myths that surround babies and sleep is that you can’t teach a baby to be a good sleeper,” Dr Karp says.
“So here’s this really weird thing we do: you have this baby in the womb where they’re held, rocked and surrounded by sound that is louder than a vacuum cleaner. And once they’re born, we do the worst thing for babies — we take them out of that environment, that symphony of sensations, and we put them on a flat bed, on their backs, we take away the sound, we take away the motion, we leave then unenveloped so the world is too big for them and then we go ‘Why is my baby not sleeping better?’.
“We have to ask ourselves, ‘What are the things that improve sleep in babies?’. The answer is swaddling, white noise, rocking and swaying.”
Cheryl Fingleson, known to her patients as the Sleep Coach, says the fact women are having babies later in life these days makes it harder for them to cope with sleep deprivation.
“A big thing for us to remember is that a lot of new mums are having their babies later in life so they are used to having control of their own life for longer,” she says.
“They can choose which time they go to bed and wake up, so a newborn baby is a real shock to their system and sleep deprivation hits them like a tonne of bricks when they’re feeding every few hours throughout the night.”
Fingleson agrees with Dr Karp’s theory on the fourth trimester, a belief that babies should be in utero a further three to four months longer, but are born early otherwise they would be too big to fit through the birth canal.
Both experts agree that the job of a new parent therefore is to mimic the environment of the womb for at least the first three months of its life.
“When the baby is in your womb, they have the opposite sleep patterns to you in that they are awake during the night when you sleep and are swayed to sleep during the day as you move and walk around,” Fingleson says.
“The first thing a new parent needs to do is teach a baby day from night and the best way to do this is to get them out in the sun during the day.
“But one of the main things that happens when a baby is born is people come to visit regularly and the sleeping baby is woken and passed around from person to person. I tell new mothers to make their baby’s sleep their number-one priority because an overtired baby finds it difficult to sleep.
“Visitors need to understand the mother has been through a trauma, even if it was an easy delivery. Then, consider the fact their milk is coming in, their hormones are in disarray and they’re having to navigate a new relationship with their partner.
“New mothers need to use those first few months to nurture themselves and be brave to tell well-meaning friends that it is not a good time to visit.”
The Dream Start Baby survey also found 53 per cent of new mothers claimed sleep deprivation caused tension with their partners and 46 per cent said being tired made it hard for them to perform everyday tasks.
GETTING BABY TO SLEEP