Holistic Babies London

23. Jan, 2021

Baby Sleep: off to the best start

"After a baby is born, new synapses may be formed at the rate of more than 1 million connection per second!"

After the initial 3 weeks when your baby seems to sleep and eat, you start noticing a slight change in her behaviour.

Your baby now spends a little more time awake, seems to want to interact with you more and maybe harder to settle for naps or bedtime with long periods of inconsolable crying.

Why?

Your baby's neurological system remains very immature and sensitive to the world around him. Imagine living your life in HD, where every texture on your skin feels new, every noise sounds louder, new smells and colours overwhelm you: this is how your baby experiences life.

And all those new discoveries can be a little too much. 

Additionally, babies (and us) wake up thanks to a rise in cortisol levels (the stress hormone), but in babies, those levels keep going up as the baby doesn't know how to regulate them and bring them down, the baby relies on you to do so.

By cuddling, feeding, and singing to your baby, you will lower cortisol levels by inducing endorphins.

Your young baby is also clueless about what to do when tired and relies on you to put him to sleep. Often, a window of opportunity for sleep might be missed, leading to the baby remaining awake for longer than he should (and cortisol creeping up). After a few hours, the cortisol levels are so high that the baby can become very distressed, upset, crying inconsolably. This is overtiredness with symptoms that can be misread as pain!

What to do?

• Note the time your baby has woken up from nap/ night sleep and watch signs of tiredness. It can be 60 to 90 mins of awake time in the early months, but those numbers are not set in stone. Watch your baby rather than the clock!
• By 60 mins or the time you see your baby's first signs of tiredness (often in young babies, they stare into space), start quiet time, switch off the TV/ bright lights/ any screen / loud noise and cuddle your baby.
• Once drowsy, put the baby to bed, sling, pram, your arms (yes, contact naps count! And sometimes this is the only way your baby will sleep!). 
• Babies need 12h of daylight + 12h of darkness to ensure good development of their circadian rhythm.
• Breastfeed your baby in the evening: babies don't secrete melatonin until 12-16 weeks, but they can get yours from your breastmilk.
• If you pump, write the time your milk was expressed and offer expressed milk to the baby pumped in the evening if you are doing a bottle feed before bed.
• Reduce the number of visitors in one go: it can overwhelm your baby to be passed from person to person: new touch, new smell, new voices can all be a little too much.

Bedtime Routine:

Implementing a bedtime routine from about 2-3 weeks of age brings wonderful benefits to all families.

Babies learn by repetition: the more you do something, the quicker they learn what to expect next.

The bedtime routine for a baby doesn't have to be long! 30-45 mins is plenty.

• By the evening (6 pm is a good time in the UK), dim the lights, switch off screens and play soothing music, you can also put a little lavender essential oil in a diffuser (from 8 weeks old), appealing to all senses to trigger relaxation for the whole family!
• Bring your baby to a quiet, dim room and start the process of bath time.
• With older babies, splashing is fun, but they can get a little too excited. Save splashing for a morning bath, rather, gently blow bubbles, sing bedtime songs and melodies that are soft.
• Let your baby wiggle naked after the bath! Many parents worry about the baby being cold, rush to dress the baby and wrap him up in blankets. Bath time increases body temperature, but adults, children and babies need their core temperature to drop by 1 degree Celsius to fall asleep. A hot baby will struggle to sleep. You can let your baby lie down on a fluffy, warm towel, naked for a few minutes! You can offer a massage but note that some babies find that a little too stimulating before bed.
• Dress and feed the baby; you can also incorporate a bedtime story at this point.
• Play white noise if your baby struggles to fall asleep.

If your baby wakes in the early period, settle her in the room, he is sleeping rather than bringing him back to the noisy living area. This will feel as if the day was starting all over again! 

• Be persistent. Repetition is key: same time, same order wherever you are.

Naps:

Until the age of 6 to 9 months, young babies hardly ever sleep more than 30 to 45 mins at a time. Those are called catnap. A few babies are the exception, sleeping longer chunks, but overall, the baby's brain is not ready for more than multiple catnaps per day.

Rather than forcing your baby is sleeping for 2h and battling, let her sleep short bouts but often. The typical day of a young baby is a succession of waking for 60-90 mins, catnapping for 30-45 mins, waking and starting all over again. 

Going for a long walk or carrying the baby in a sling may stretch those catnaps (REM sleep) to longer naps (deep sleep as motion acts differently on the brain and creates a different kind of brain wave). 

A baby who misses out on naps or has a long time awakening between naps will have a restless, agitated night sleep.

Please note: if your baby is happy, sleeping well at night, thriving, do not force naps! You may drive yourself and your baby mad by forcing naps when she doesn't want to sleep and is perfectly happy!

Unconsolable crying; what can you do?

You know your baby has been fed; he is not hungry, his nappy has been changed the crying yet doesn't stop.

Here is a checklist for you and tips you can try:

• Is she too hot? This is a common culprit; the baby was bathed, dressed, swaddled, is now held against your body. That's a lot of heat for a baby who is crying (generating more heat) ­> remove all the clothing and let baby cool off in a vest on a flat surface or do skin to skin.
• Is there something bothering her: nappy too tight? An itchy label in the baby grow, pyjama is too small and restrictive, check toes for threads that can be wrapped around toes and cut blood flow (always put socks over the baby grow at night)
• Is your baby overtired? Let your baby breastfeed, suck on a dummy or a clean finger briefly to calm down. You may even have to let her suck on your finger then the breast, as often, a distressed baby will refuse to breastfeed. 
• Swaddle, hold her in front of you and talk to her in a low voice, making eye contact: this can be very reassuring for your baby.
• Go to the bathroom and turn on the water: the water's sound with a dimmed lit bathroom can also be soothing.
• Take a bath with your baby: calm, skin to skin in a dimmed bathroom room, the sound of the clapping water will soothe the baby.
• Rub the "third eye": in both baby massage and yoga, rubbing the third chakra stimulates the pineal gland (plays a role in the "body clock") and is very relaxing for the baby.
• If the baby continues to cry despite all of this, check for symptoms such as a rash, temperature, distended tummy (any of those!) fast breathing that is not calming down, grunting, chest recession etc. and call NHS 111 for further advice.
• If you are worried: call a GP/ 111? Go to A&E: trust your instincts!

In most cases, one or a few of those tips will help. You may have to try a few to see which one your baby responds to best. 

Could it be a growth spurt?

Babies have regular growth spurts; they do not read calendars so often, parents miss those spurts as they do not always match what books or websites say! 

It is not unusual to see a growth spurt at 8-10 days post-birth, and weekly after that until 6 weeks old. 

The 6 weeks Wonder Week is a big milestone for the infant with many changes occurring neurologically. The eyesight sharpens, the baby starts to smile; the baby becomes more interested in her surroundings; all of this leads to a neuron's myelinisation. In a nutshell, a lot of brain growth is happening! 

All this incredible work, the baby's brain is doing is costing a LOT of energy, and the 2 main resources the baby needs are glucose and oxygen. 

Hence the feeding frenzy! 

During this incredible stage of brain development, your baby requires more calories to prepare for non-stop feeding. 

In breastfeeding mothers, to make things harder and make you doubt your capacities (when you thought you had figured it out!), the supply steadies, and the breasts become less engorged (regulate). 

There might be a moment of panic where you may think you are not producing enough milk to meet your baby's needs, reassurance is needed, the milk is there, and the body is very clever at meeting the baby's needs. 

Another event that can send you into worry is that your baby often stops passing stools regularly from 6 weeks onwards (so you may feel it is due once more to a decreased supply). It is not! 

From 6 weeks, and to meet the baby's developmental needs, the ratio whey: casein of breastmilk changes which explains the lessen stool output. 

Because of being still neurologically immature, the baby now has to work a little harder to open her bowls which may be interpreted as constipation.

To be able to open her bowels, the baby has to coordinate her diaphragm, abdominal muscles, and the 2 anal sphincters (2 rings above one another that also need to coordinate) and often, to ger things going; the baby needs to cry (to apply pressure onto the diaphragm). This phenomenon has a medical term: dyschezia. 

Constipation is rare in the breastfed baby, but all of the above often misled parents (and doctors unfamiliar with breastfeeding's physiology) into thinking the baby is constipated. 

Overall, parents often do not recognise their baby when a growth spurt occurs! They cry (the baby, and often the parents too!), they cannot be put down, they fuss, they can be inconsolable, they want to eat all the time as if they had never been fed, they cry and fuss some more! 

What can you do?

All of the above advice will help you cope with growth spurts. 

- Prepare yourself psychologically: it will be intense, from 24h in the early days' growth spurts to about 1 week during the Wonder week.

- Get help: it takes a village to raise a child, and this statement could not be truer during a growth spurt, get help: someone to cook for you, bring you food, do the washing etc. 

- Feed feed feed, cuddle, cuddle, cuddle!

- Remember; it is temporary! 

Conclusion:

Babies rely on us to guide them into healthy habits, and the sooner those are implemented, the less work there will be as the baby grows and start fighting/ challenging sleep. 

Sleeping is essential to an infant's neurodevelopment, but babies do not suffer the way we do with what we assume to be sleep deprivation. 

Tune in with your baby, get to know his sleeping cues and soon, evenings will be a time of the day to look forward to.

Stephanie is a Gentle Sleep Coach who has worked with new parents for the past 12 years in promoting good sleep habits in babies and children while protecting breastfeeding. Her approach is always respectful of the baby/ child, promoting a secure attachment between child and parents. She is currently studying for her Masters in Psychology and Neuroscience with a specific interest in baby's neurodevelopment and the impact on parenting on the developing brain.

For more information or to book a consultation, please contact admin@holisticbabies.co.uk