Kid's Stuff

The Secrets of Floor Play for Your Baby: Essential for Sleeping Success at Any Age!

Why is this so important to your baby’s sleeping and settling success? During my training I was so excited as the pieces of the sleeping puzzle fell into place and the understanding of efficient sleeping, feeding and playing and how the baby’s day affected their night became obvious. Then I became acutely aware of the importance of not just playtime, but floor play and tummy time for all babies from birth.

There are many factors that affect how well a baby sleeps; the daily routine, the bedroom environment, the efficiency of the uptime, communication, cues, consistency and persistency to name the major keys. However, I find myself talking to parents every day on the importance of floor play but more importantly tummy time from birth. It might surprise you to hear that babies don’t develop flat heads because they are sleeping on their backs now, it’s more likely that the baby doesn’t get enough tummy time and spends too much time in a rocker/bouncer/stroller/bed or just on their back on the floor.

Typical stories that indicate not enough floor play include:

The baby isn’t feeding very well during the daytime.
Baby wants to feed all night.
Baby isn’t showing tired signs at sleep time because they’re not tired.
Baby’s sleeps are very short.
Baby isn’t showing any interest in rolling/getting up on the hands and knees rocking/ crawling/cruising on the furniture (at approximate developmental stages).
Expects toys to be given to them rather than able to explore for them, whinges when not being entertained.
Baby doesn’t tolerate tummy time for very long.
Baby cannot play independently with appropriate aged toys.
Baby still has their ‘startle reflex’ past 4.5 months.
Baby still has a head lag when pulled from lying to sitting past 4 months.
Typically these babies spend a lot of ‘Play time’ under a playgym, in a bouncer/stroller, on their back on a small specific play mat or sheepskin or in a playpen.

Playtime is as important for a good sleep for a baby as exercise is for an adult. Your baby feels tired and like they have had a full day’s work when stretching, rolling and crawling in each uptime!

Tummy time is important for the following reasons:

For wearing out your baby and earning their sleep
For stimulating their brain’s social and developmental needs
Helping their eyesight to judge distances coordinating their right and left sides of their body and encouraging crawling, helping their neck muscles get strong for sitting up, starting solids and not suffering as bad whip lash in a car crash.

Tip: Encourage tummy time for as long as the baby can tolerate it, in every uptime from birth and free floor play on an open surface spreading toys out around baby from 6 weeks. Encourage stretching, rolling, crawling, cruising on the furniture and then walking. Even if your baby appears to like being held by the hands to walk, don’t encourage this before baby is developmentally ready to do this by themselves. There is a link between baby not crawling and developing learning difficulties. Crawling encourages learning and coordination of the body especially with sports.

RN, Child and Family Health Nurse. Mother of three.
I want to give you your life back! Would you appreciate being empowered with an understanding of your baby's needs and a gentle strategy that you apply to your baby/toddler's personality? Do you feel like you've read everything and nothing is working?

Visit http://www.sleepandsettle.com.au for my free report “Sleeping Baby Secrets”

Sleep Routines: How to Adjust Your 1 Year Old’s Sleep Routine From 2 Sleeps to 1 and Stay Sane!

Parenting

By Natalie Ebrill

This is a really common question and it is always a great idea to know what to anticipate and how you are going to handle these transitions. I understand that while we know our children may need two sleeps a day (at around 6 to 12 months of age), they take up much of the day and can make appointments, activities and the school run for older children quite tricky. It is sensible however to remember that while two sleeps may be sometimes inconvenient, your baby will make you pay if they are overtired or miss out on the sleep they need. That is why I love car capsules (for flexible transfers between the car and other locations for newborns) and encourage background noise on at home during sleeps, to enable your child to sleep through noise outside the home.

So, how do we know when our 12 month old babies are ready to go from 2 sleeps to 1?

Baby will start to refuse one or both day sleeps but not cope all day until the night sleep.
Or reduce both sleeps to around 30-45 minutes.

Once you can see this happening for about a week and you are convinced they are ready for 1 sleep, try the following:

Decide on a sleep time and lock it in place. I suggest 12 md. Remember you need to keep the sleep in the middle of the day so the baby can cope before and after the sleep until bedtime at around 7-7.30pm.
Once you decide to change to 1 sleep, it is important to keep one sleep and not swap between 1 sleep sometimes and 2 sleeps at other times. Your baby's body clock needs time to adjust and needs consistency for this to happen.
Even though you may have been convinced that your baby was ready for 1 sleep, they will whinge in the morning at around 9-10am when they used to have a morning sleep and appear tired. I call this a 'hump' that you need to distract your baby through (outside is best for fresh air) until they get their second wind and can stay up until 12 md.
Your baby may whinge at 'hump' time for a few weeks to a few months until their body clock adjusts to the 1 sleep. Remember that if you allow 2 sleeps to creep in sometimes you will delay the baby coping with the morning and not whinging.
Baby will probably have lunch at 11.30am.
Avoid ‘power naps’ of a minimum of 10 minutes sleep when travelling in the car or the stroller if at all possible in the mornings. A power nap will prevent your baby sleeping at lunchtime and create a monster to deal with until bedtime.

Tip: Remember that your baby needs to earn their sleep with physical activity, NO TV in the morning and great healthy family meals. Your baby should be so tired that they are begging you to go to sleep! If not, they haven't earned their sleep and have spent too much time sitting in something (a stroller, play pen, swing, shopping trolley, walker).

Visit http://www.sleepandsettle.com.au for my free report “Sleeping Baby Secrets”

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There are many reasons for your baby 9 months or older waking early in the morning around 5-6am and not wanting to go back to sleep. If the early waking is not working for your family and you would like to try and extend the morning wake time, we need to identify the possible causes of the early waking and deal with each issue.

Common issues to address are:

Too much light coming in the bedroom in the morning
Household/environmental noises
Baby not dressed warmly enough for the early morning temperatures
The reward of an early breakfast
Waking for a milk feed
Habits and routine already established as a younger baby, of an early start to the day
The timing of the first day sleep
Your baby's bedtime in the evening
Genetics! Your baby is made up of two parents

So once you decide what the possible causes are you can begin to play with some solutions.

Always give each try at least a week to have an effect on your baby's body clock and be patient.

It is easy to adjust the amount of light coming into the bedroom with appropriate window coverings of any sought. Whatever is handy will work, it doesn't have to be professional or expensive to be effective, just block out the light. Think an old quilt cover, dark sheet, large towels, a picnic blanket, coated block out fabric.

Sometimes we can train the family to be quiet around the house early in the morning, but sometimes outside factors affect your baby's waking. Try playing soft sleep time music such as 'Music for Dreaming' on repeat all night to cover some of the noises and wean baby off the music in a few months

Over 9 months Babies are very mobile in the cot and should be dressed for the night assuming they are rolling around in the cot and will not be under the warm covers all night. Think how you would feel, sleeping in what you have dressed your baby in, if you were sleeping on top of your blankets without a partner. Excess blankets become a SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) risk if your baby is mobile and crawling or rolling around the cot.

If your baby over 9 months of age is currently enjoying early morning milk feeds or gets breakfast as soon as they wake, this is a nice reward for waking. If you are happy to offer these feeds, early mornings are a consequence unless you resettle back to sleep after the feed. If you don't think baby needs these feeds for nutrition and they are simply waking for them as a habit, you can drop them if baby is over 9 months and eating solids well during the day. This is a personal decision.

Sometimes mum and dad need baby to get up early for the working schedule during the week but want to encourage a sleep in on the weekends. Unfortunately baby doesn't understand the difference between a workday and a weekend, so I recommend that you treat every day like a Sunday and encourage a sleep in until the last minute and arrange breakfast for baby at the place of babysitting or childcare.

If you reward your baby waking early in the morning with a sleep shortly after breakfast, you are encouraging early waking.

If you put your baby to bed too early in the evening, they will meet their sleep quota earlier in the night and not be able to sleep in to your reasonable wake time in the morning.

The last and obvious reason is that if you or your partner is an early riser, it is possible that the baby takes after the early riser and will always grace you with their presence when they wake! After all the baby is genetically related!

Tip: If your baby's routine is working for your baby and your family, don't change anything! If the routine needs fine tuning, first look for the possible contributing factors, then put a consistent plan in place confidently and monitor your results to see what works.

Helping Your Baby/Toddler keep their routine on Holiday, So You Actually Have a Holiday!

Parenting

By Natalie Ebrill

Sometimes the 'frontlog' of what you need to do in order to go on holidays is worse that the 'back log' of what you need to do when you get back home! Are you sure you want to go? If the answer is yes! I have some tips for you.
When you know life is going to be busy and you may not be able to follow your normal routine, it is a good idea to plan as well as possible to avoid disaster. Simple things like:
*making sure baby can feed and sleep when they are due to.
*Planning meals, snacks, entertainment and sleep times for your toddler.
*If you are going to be very brave and very social this summer it helps to make sure your baby and toddler are sticking to their normal sleeping and feeding routine as much as possible. Some occasions will clash with sleep times but you will want to go. Just remember that your baby and toddler may appear to cope on one occasion, but the missed or disjointed sleeps will add up and leave you with an overtired baby/toddler and it won't feel worth it. Try and plan to have visitors over at your place rather than going out as often, at least you can be social and your children can sleep in their own beds.
*For those parents who will have their baby sleeping in other places over Christmas or are going on holidays it is a great idea to ask questions about the window coverings where your baby will be staying. (preferably ask a parent not a teenager, who will have no idea!) From experience, your friends places (especially those who don't have little ones) and holiday accommodation never have dark enough coverings on the windows. This may be the last thing on your mind now, but will be the first thing on your mind at 5 am when your little darlings are awake with the birds because the sun is pouring into the bedroom and prevents day sleeps for the same reason! Purchase and pack a king size black sheet (or 2!) some thumb tacks, pegs and creative genius for creating dark bedrooms, or you will never call it a 'holiday' again!
*The other consideration at holiday time is where everyone will sleep! You may have no choice or may decide to save some money by sharing a room with your children in the holidays. This is the next best 'holiday killer' to the sun coming in and is the reason for a lot of my consultations. Contemplate the reason for the travel and remind yourself that you are supposed to be enjoying your self! If you can afford to, get separate rooms. If you can't do this you will need to try and create a visual barrier between yourself and the baby over 3 months of age. When your baby/toddler knows you are right there next to them they have a reason for waking in the night to see you! Then especially when you are at the relatives house and you don't want to disturb them, most parents resort to feeding their baby to keep them quiet (even if they don't need it) and start a new habit in one night!
*When planning to travel, plan the best time of day for your baby/toddler's sleep. Make sure you all have regular breaks for feeding and massaging square , numb bottoms and allow the toddlers to wear themselves out. Plan activities and music for the car and shade for the sun coming in the windows. It might take you longer to get there but it's better not to have a frazzled family at the end of the trip.
Tip: Plan for everything. Sleeping, feeding, playing, (refusing to sleep, feed, play), extra clothing and unexpected delays!! Most of all be flexible and make sure your baby/toddler's needs are met or you won't enjoy the season. There is a reason that lots of families don't go on holidays you know!

Visit http://www.sleepandsettle.com.au for my free report “Sleeping Baby Secrets”

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