Does Your Baby Have Problems Sleeping?

Do you have a young child or infant with erratic sleep patterns that keeps you awake at night? If so, your family will benefit from a sleep consultation with Marsha Podd, R.N., C.L.E., who will create a personalized plan to help your baby sleep. When children arrive on the planet, they have no concept of day or night. It is the parents' job to teach a child the cycles of awake time and sleep time. Ideally, this starts when the baby is just a few days old. Creating a rhythm of sleeping, feeding and activity from the very beginning can lay the ground work for good sleep patterns lifelong.

Depending on the temperament of the child and parents, sometimes this is an easy job, other times more challenging.

When a baby reaches over 12 pounds in weight and 2-3 months old, they become physically capable of sleeping longer stretches at night without a feeding. With the guidance of its parents, it learns to sleep 6-8 hours at a time (hopefully at night!). By 3-6 months of age a baby learns to sleep through the night (8-12 hours).

As a baby grows and reaches about 4 months old, the average number of hours spent sleeping during the day is about 3-4, and at night about 10-12 (uninterrupted). As the baby grows mentally and physically, parents may encounter challenges as baby’s sleep can sometimes become quite fitful.

The older a child is, the more set in their ways they become and thus sleep training becomes more and more challenging. Parents must sometimes deal with temper tantrums and breath holding, vomiting, etc. Kids will do almost anything to stay up and interact with mom and dad.

Experts say that good sleeping skills are learned in infancy and early childhood. Obtaining good guidance in infancy helps parents establish good sleep patterns for their child. You can avoid problems later when children transition from sleeping in a crib, to sleeping in their own beds.

If you need guidance and support with your child's sleeping, please contact me for more information on my personalized consultations with parents. Email me at marshapod@aol.com or call me at (415) 883-4442.