Is Sleep As Important As Diet?

Have you ever heard anyone say things like:

                “Not sleeping is totally normal for a baby”

                “Babies sleep when they want to, don’t force it”

                “Just follow your baby’s lead, they know how much sleep they need”

I cringe a little bit when I hear statements like this. Not sleeping IS NOT NORMAL for a baby. I look back at pictures of my second before we sleep trained and in every picture he has huge bags under his eyes…at 4 months old. That’s not normal (I guess that’s what sleeping for 45 minutes at a time will do to a person - good thing there aren’t any pictures of me from that time).

Babies 0-3 months need between 16-18 hours of sleep a day. A DAY. Yes, that means they are awake for only 6-8 hours in a 24-hour period. Babies 4-9 months need between 13-15 hours of sleep and 9+ months is between 12-14. Does that prove to you that it’s not normal for a baby to not sleep? And that they actually don’t know how much sleep they need and when they need it (remember my 4-month-old with the bags under his eyes)?

Can you imagine this same language regarding a baby’s diet?

                “Eating chocolate is totally normal for a baby”

                “Kids will eat when they want to, don’t schedule mealtimes”

                “Babies know what’s healthy to eat, just follow their lead”

If you said any of these things someone might peg you as a lunatic…yet it’s totally acceptable to let babies do “what they want” when it comes to sleep.

In my mind sleep and diet are around the same level of importance; they are also quite related.

A 2015 study in the Canadian Journal of Public Health found that longer sleep duration was associated with decreased risk for obesity, better diet quality, and higher levels of physical activity. Another study found similar results: sleep duration and diet quality is necessary for childhood obesity prevention. This 2018 study found insufficient sleep duration is associated with an unhealthy lifestyle profile. Finally, this study, used controlled measures and linked acute sleep deprivation and an increase in caloric intake in both children and adults. Let me break that down for you:

Sleep Deprivation = Higher Caloric Intake, Increased Chance of Obesity

Have I convinced you how important sleep is? I urge you to take your child’s sleep (and your own sleep) just as seriously as you take their (and your own) diet. Rarely does sleep ever “get better on its own”; rather, issues usually persist and begin to manifest themselves differently.

Giving your children the gift of sleep is one of the best things you can do for them.

Until next time,

Kirsten

Can I Breastfeed and Sleep Train?

When I was expecting my first babe I was (like most brand new parents?) pretty clueless about most things baby. Things I remember people asking me:

“are you going to use cloth or disposable diapers?”;

“are you going to co-sleep or put babe in their crib right away?”;

“will you have a bassinet by your bed?”;

“are you going to sleep train?”

“are you going to formula or breastfeed?”.

I’m not joking when I say that I had ZERO opinion on any of these things because that’s how clueless I was. Once people were asking me these questions I figured I better get doing some research because apparently these were all things I needed to know.

Like most things you look up on the internet, there were so many different opinions from so many different experts – once I got past the overwhelm of it all I was able to sift through the information, use my common sense, and figure out what was best for us. Once my babe was born and I realized that yes, I did need to sleep train, something I was still unsure about was sleep training while I was still breastfeeding.

As far as I could tell the basic argument against sleep training and breastfeeding is that breast milk is digested more quickly than formula; therefore, babies who are breastfed will wake more often in the night to feed. I didn’t want to stop nursing, but I sure did want to get more sleep. What was I to do?

We made the decision to give sleep training a try while I was still breastfeeding – if it wasn’t working in a week, we would re-evaluate and make a new plan. It turned out really well for us – by 3 months our babe was sleeping peacefully through the night AND I was able to continue breastfeeding.

Now, like most things in parenting there’s less of a “right and wrong” and more of a “right for your child”. Not all kiddos can be expected to sleep independently through the night at 3 months, but we were lucky enough that with teaching him some sleep skills he was able to. No matter your babe’s age, there are a few facts that you should be aware of if you’re breastfeeding and trying to decide whether or not you want to sleep train. After all, what’s the point of sleep training if your baby’s nutrition needs prevent them from sleeping through the night?

Fact #1: Nobody sleeps through night

I’ve talked lots about this but just to give you a refresher – we all go through sleep cycles which take us from light to deep sleep and back again. Typically, we will go through 4 or 5 of these cycles a night and at the end of each cycle we are in a very light stage where we come to the surface of awake/asleep and often even wake up. Generally we don’t remember these short wakings because we just head back into the next cycle of sleep – this is because we have independent sleep skills.

Baby’s sleep cycles are shorter than adults so they are in those lighter stages of sleep (where they are at the surface of awake/asleep) more often. When parents say their baby “sleeps through the night” they are actually still waking but able to get themselves back to sleep without intervention from mom or dad. So, in terms of babies, when we talk about sleeping through the night, what we are really saying is that they are able to get to sleep on their own (independent sleep skills). SO: it doesn’t matter if a baby is breastfed, formula fed, or eating a steak and lobster dinner, they are going to be waking several times a night for the rest of their lives, no matter what.

Fact #2: Breast milk does digest faster than formula…

But not to the degree that a lot of people describe. Newborns can typically go 2 ½ - 3 hours between feeds if they are breastfed; if they are formula fed, that number is closer to 4 hours. Formula isn’t some kind of magical solution that is going to keep your baby full for 11 hours therefore allowing them and you 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Their stomachs are small and they are going to digest liquid relatively quickly, no matter where it comes from. The fact of the matter is that, generally speaking, until your baby is 4-6 months and a healthy weight with no other medical complications, you will be getting up to feed them in the night.

What this doesn’t mean though, is that you put your and your baby’s sleep on the back burner until they hit that 6-month mark. It is NEVER too early to start teaching your baby independent sleep skills – I’m not saying you are going to get a full night’s sleep when your baby is 6 weeks old but what I’m saying is that it isn’t all dependent on whether they are formula or breastfed.

Fact #3: After six months (ish) your babe should be able to start sleeping through the night without a feed…

And yes, this includes breastfed babes.

This can be sometimes where the debate heats up a bit.

Let’s say you breastfeed on demand, which is a popular approach and one that I support if that’s what you’ve chosen for you and your babe. Where some families run into trouble is if their babe is waking 4 times a night for a feed, which would require mom to get up 4 times to feed, right? If baby is 6 months of age, gaining weight at a normal rate, and able to eat the recommended calories in a day, then chances are good that that baby is not waking for food.

The most common reason for night wakings past 6-months is because feeding is a part of their strategy for falling asleep.

We all have strategies for getting to sleep – brushing our teeth, washing our face, putting our pj’s on, having water on our nightstand, get into a specific sleep position etc. Whatever it is, most of us have a ritual that acts as a strategy which signals our brains and body’s that the time for sleep is nearing. Babies’ rituals are generally less sophisticated but still act as a signal to their body that it’s time for sleep.

So what happens when feeding is a part of that ritual? To them it’s not about the food it’s the sucking motion, being close to mom, being rocked – it’s the familiarity of the situation that helps them get back to sleep and oftentimes they become very dependent on it.

Fact #4 Every baby is different…

And some may actually still be hungry enough in the night for a feed. Here are a few indicators that can help you determine if those nighttime wake ups are a result of hunger or a lack of independent sleep skills.

-          Do they only take a small amount when they feed in the night?

-          Do they fall asleep within 5 minutes of starting their feed?

-          Do they eventually fall back asleep if they don’t get fed?

-          Do they only sleep for about 45 minutes to an hour after a night time feed?

If you answered yes to most or all of those questions, then chances are good that your babe is using feeding as a sleep strategy and could benefit from learning some sleep skills. This doesn’t mean that you can’t nurse on demand, you will just have to figure out when exactly they are demanding food and when they are looking for help to get to sleep.

SO the answer to the question: “Can I Breastfeed and Sleep Train?” my answer is, unequivocally, YES. Breastfeeding can be a wonderful experience and has many benefits for both mom and baby – I am telling you that you DO NOT have to choose between breastfeeding and sleeping. You can have both!

As always, if you need some help guiding you through the process of teaching your babe independent sleep skills, I’ve got you covered!

Daylight Savings Time

When Can I Night Wean?

This is one of the most common questions I get, and I have 2 answers.

First, the clinical answer: if your babe is 6 months or older, gaining weight as expected, and your Dr gives you the okay to end nighttime feeds, then go ahead.

That doesn’t really answer your question though, does it? You can easily find that information on the internet and if that was all the information you needed, then there you have it! Even though you have this information, though, it doesn’t mean that your baby is going to all of a sudden drop night feeds.

I think what the real question is “if my baby is ready to drop night feeds, why don’t they?”

If you decided to pull night feeds and your baby just kept happily sleeping through the night you probably wouldn’t be reading this. You would also probably wonder what all this “sleep training” fuss is about. My guess is, though, that your babe is still waking in the night to eat if you are reading this.

Okay so why does your baby wake up through the night, even though I’m telling you there’s a good chance they don’t actually need the food?  The answer is very simple: they BELIEVE they need to nurse/bottle feed to get themselves to sleep.

Nursing/bottle feeding to sleep is the most common prop I see as a sleep consultant. Remember, that a sleep prop is anything external that a baby cannot control and that they rely on to fall asleep. Often, people don’t think of nursing/bottle feeding as a prop because babies need to eat! However, they don’t NEED to eat right before every single time they need to sleep.

If you are feeding your baby to sleep throughout the day and at night-time, this is where you’ll need to make changes.

There are also other, more rare cases where parents are putting their babes down awake and the babe is falling asleep on their own, without any props. In these cases, parents are doing everything right at bedtime, but when their babe wakes up throughout the night, they are feeding them back to sleep. These babies are not waking because they need the calories, they are waking out of habit.

In either case, baby believes they need to be fed in the middle of the night in order to go back to sleep. And in both scenarios, you need to break the association between feeding and sleeping.

Okay so now you know the reason WHY they are waking, but WHAT is the strategy?

Stop. Feeding. Them. At. Night.

It won’t be fun for a few days while your babe gets it figured out but think about how nice it will be for them to get 12 consecutive hours of sleep and for you to get 12 consecutive hours to yourself (hopefully at least 8 of those hours will be for sleep).  

If your baby is 6 months or older, a healthy weight, with no medical concerns, there should be no reason why they cannot go through the night without eating. Trust me.

More uninterrupted sleep means your baby’s mind and body get more of those restorative effects that take place during the night, making for a happier, healthier tomorrow!

Do You Need To Remove Yourself From Your Child's Sleep Routine?

Don’t get “sleep routine” confused with “bedtime routine”. The bedtime routine is the 30 minutes prior to your kiddo falling asleep (bath, lotion, books etc.) and the sleep routine is how your child actually falls asleep.

Parents that have kiddos who don’t sleep through the night make a common mistake (also a mistake I made with not one but TWO kiddos). Can you guess what it is?

Staying with your child until they fall asleep.

It might have started out innocently enough (anyone else out there put your child to bed and wake up in their bed an hour later?) but it can become an issue.

You may have inadvertently become a prop for your child. Remember HERE when I explained props? If your child relies on something to fall asleep at bedtime, there is a very good chance that they will come to rely on that every other time they need to fall asleep. If their prop is something they have control over (thumb sucking, snuggling a stuffy, rubbing a blanket on their face) rather than something they don’t have control over (a bottle, rocking, mom or dads touch) chances are better that they aren’t going to call out for mom or dad when they wake up throughout the night. Remember HERE when I talked about sleep cycles? We all come to the surface of awake/asleep at the end of each sleep cycle – as adults we are generally pretty good at not even noticing and just going right back to sleep. Lots of kids can also do this, but those kiddos that don’t sleep through the night are generally the ones that rely on something external to fall back asleep. Here’s an example:

You’ve gone through the bedtime routine relatively peacefully and now it’s time for bed. Your 3-year-old asks you to lay down with them. You don’t want to rock the boat, so you say “yes, only for 2 minutes”. Then when 2 (ish) minutes is up, you go to leave and your child protests; again, you don’t want to rock the boat, so you lay down again for “another 2 minutes”. Generally, what ends up happening is you just stay until your child falls asleep because that’s easier than listening to them whine/cry when you try to leave. Once they are finally asleep you hold your breath and get out of their bed, do an army crawl to the door, close the door as quietly as you can and pray that they don’t hear you leave. Then in about an hour and a half or 3 hours or 4.5 hours they wake up looking for you and you’re back to square one.

Sound familiar to anyone?  

Let me just say that there is NOTHING wrong with laying down with your kiddos at bedtime; it’s actually my favourite time of the day with my 7-year-old because that’s the only time he tells me stuff. The issue is, however, when your child comes to rely on you being in their bed/room to fall asleep (this can also happen with a child in a crib. In that situation the parents are in the room at the crib rather than lying in the bed with them). If your child relies on you to be in their room/bed to fall asleep, when they come to the surface of awake/asleep at the end of their sleep cycle and realize you are not in their room anymore, chances are very good that they are going to call out for you or pay a visit to your bedroom to find you (and maybe even get to hop into bed with you because at that point it’s survival mode for everyone). They have been conditioned to believe that they cannot fall asleep without you.  

Okay so this sounds familiar but what do you do about it? The most important thing is to teach your child independent sleep skills that they can call on anytime they wake up, in order to get back to sleep on their own. Again, it’s okay for them to have “props”, as long as they can control them (thumb/finger sucking, blanket, stuffy) – in fact, I recommend that parents introduce something like this as it can bring great comfort to kids, especially when they are making the transition into sleep. It might sound like a daunting task to remove these external props (including yourself) but it usually isn’t as bad as parents make it out to be – our kids are so much more resilient than we give them credit for. I promise if you teach them some independent sleep skills your whole household will get more sleep!

Give your children the gift of sleep is one of the best things you can do for them

Until next time,

Kirsten

Does Teething Affect My Baby's Sleep?

Have you ever heard of Catherine O’Leary’s cow?

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire killed nearly 300 people and destroyed over 17,000 buildings. The supposed cause of that fire? One of Catherine O’Leary’s cows knocking over a lantern. For over 100 years a cow (and by association poor Catherine O’Leary) was blamed for the devastating fire. In 1997 it was discovered by an insurance investigator that it was actually a discarded match from one of Catherine O’Leary’s pipe smoking neighbours that sparked the fire.

So what does this cow have to do with teething? Not much other than the fact that they are both scapegoats!

Teething gets blamed for almost every imaginable issue when it comes to babies. Runny nose? Must be getting some teeth. Fever? It’s got to be those teeth coming in. Runny poop? I’ve heard teething can cause diarrhea. Babe is crying more than normal? Must be cutting some teeth.

Yes, all of these things are potentially caused by one or more teeth making their way out of the gums, but most parents are very quick to fault teething for any deviation from their baby’s regular behaviour. This is especially true when it comes to sleep.

As parents, we want to find reasons for our children’s complaints and then we want to solve it for them. So, our natural reaction when our baby cries in the middle of the night is to rush in, find out what’s the matter, and then do whatever we can to fix it. Unfortunately, for many parents (my hubs and I included), our “fix” ends up making them prop dependent (cue the rocking, bouncing, feeding, soothers etc.) in order to fall back asleep.

Let me paint you a picture. You’ve been sleep training for a few weeks, everything has been going really well (baby is sleeping through the night, having good naps – YES this can happen!!), but then all of a sudden you notice a regression and your baby is waking up crying 3 times a night. You are going to search for a reason why they are slipping back into their old habits and teething is a quick and easy answer.

Like most parents, if you truly believe your baby is in pain and not just wanting you to feed them back to sleep (or rock, or replace their soother etc.), you are not going to leave them in their crib to cry; instead you decide to put sleep training on the back burner until they are done teething.

Cue to a year later and baby is still being rocked to sleep several times a night because those teeth have to be coming anytime now!!

I don’t know about you but this mama needs her sleep so blaming bad sleep on teeth just doesn’t sit well with me.

So, here are 2 things to keep in mind before you throw your sleep training routine out the window (or say you will wait until after your child is done teething).

1.       Teething symptoms last about 8 days so if you’re on week 2 of your babe waking up several times a night and crying, it’s either due to some other ailment OR they have once again realized that when they cry, one of their favourite people enters their room and helps them get back to sleep. Get back to your routine (or call me and we’ll get started) and sleep should sort itself out in a few days.

2.       When we hear words like “cutting” or “breaking” associated with teething, of course some not-so-nice imagery comes to mind. However, studies have shown that teething symptoms aren’t nearly as painful as we make them out to be. Check out ­this article if you’d like to get science-y. To make a long story short, according to many experts, teething does not cause a significant amount of pain and especially not for nearly as long as we think it does.

I’m definitely not saying to ignore any of the symptoms mentioned above (diarrhea, runny nose, irritability, loss of appetite, fever etc.) – I’m actually saying the opposite – DO NOT ignore these symptoms because it’s likely there could be something going on with your babe. What I’m saying is that teething should no longer be blamed for all of these things, including poor sleep! Also remember that if your baby is getting a full night’s sleep, there is a much better chance they will be happier through the process of teething (oh, by the way – so will you!)

"Is there anything I can do about a light sleeper?"

Is your baby a light sleeper? Does it seem like she wakes up every time you open the fridge? Does he go from sleeping to wide awake when you put him down in his crib?

One of the most frustrating things is when your baby wakes up shortly after they have fallen asleep. Often parents work very hard to get their kiddos to sleep so when they put that time in and then their baby wakes up at the slightest noise or being put down, it feels daunting to have to start back at square one again.

Having a baby who is a light sleeper is a common complaint I hear from parents – they say their baby wakes so easily and then is really difficult to get back to sleep.  

Side note: Do you see the problem with that? PARENTS are working hard to get their baby to sleep. What needs to happen instead is the BABY working hard to get themselves to sleep.

Anyways, I’m here to dispel a myth today. Everyone - babies, toddlers, children, adults – are light sleepers. We are all also heavy sleepers. We all move in and out of light and deep sleep throughout the night (you can check out this blog post for more information on that). Some people spend more time in the light stages of sleep before slipping into deeper sleep and some go from light to deep sleep quite quickly. Either way, every time we sleep we go through these cycles – and babies are no different!

The really good restorative sleep that we need happens in the middle of the cycle, this is called NREM sleep. Some people get more NREM sleep than others (i.e spend more time in NREM sleep that is restorative); these are the people that can function on less sleep than others who spend more time in the light stages of sleep.

Okay so what does this have to do with your baby? When people tell me that their baby is a light sleeper, what it actually means is that they likely spend more time in the light sleep stages rather than deep, because the light stages are the easiest to wake up from. Light sleep is where we do our dreaming and are aware of our surroundings – this is when a noise could easily bring us to the surface and be awake.

Another fun fact is that babies have shorter sleep cycles than adults, therefore, they spend almost twice as long in light sleep as adults do. If you are finding that your baby is waking up a lot, it could just be inconvenient timing – there was something external (a noise, being put down, light from outside) that brought them to the surface.

Okay so the question is: what can you do about it?

Well you can’t teach your baby to spend more time in deep sleep but you CAN teach your baby how to independently fall back asleep when they wake up. It really is the best gift you can give both them and your entire family and it’s something that benefits everyone for years to come.

There can be a lot to teaching your baby to sleep independently but the most important element is eliminating sleep props, which is anything external that your baby relies on to fall asleep. Some examples of sleep props are: soothers, rocking motion, feeding to sleep. If a baby is fed to sleep, they come to believe that this is the only way they can fall asleep. Once they wake at the end of the next sleep cycle, they will cry out, which wakes them up further, until you provide that external prop for them (feeding, rocking, soother). As you can imagine, this is a vicious cycle that a lot of families (ours included) can get themselves into.

The babies that people refer to as “good sleepers” have the same sleep cycles as those who wake up crying, they just have the skills to put themselves back to sleep independently. Rather than relying on something external, they wake up, squirm a bit, maybe babble a bit then peacefully put themselves back to sleep.

So, even though you can’t stop your kiddo from waking up at night, you can definitely teach them how to get back to sleep on their own. Once you do this, you can both look forward to full nights of deep, restorative sleep!

Why you need to get your partner involved (after all, it took 2 to make the baby, right?)

FYI: I’m going to speak in generalizations here today.

Another FYI: I believe SO strongly that (when possible) parenting responsibilities need to be shared as close to 50/50 as parents can manage.   

Photo credit: Ali Lauren Photography

In my experience, in a female/male relationship, it is USUALLY moms handling the night-time responsibilities (yes I said USUALLY so there are of course always exceptions to this). Before you start hating on me for stereotyping or being sexist this is, again, in my experience as a sleep consultant; and there are usually reasons for moms handling the night-time responsibilities.

I don’t get calls from people who share the responsibilities 50/50, have children that do not rely on a sleep prop, and where everyone is sleeping peacefully through the night. No, I get calls from people who are generally at their wits end and just want to help their baby sleep through the night independently (so that they can also get a good sleep). There’s one thing all of these babies (or children) have in common, can you guess what it is?

They all rely on an external prop to go to sleep.

Want to know what the #1 sleeping prop is? Nursing.  

Guess who is basically useless in the nursing scenario? The parent that doesn’t, y’know, have the boobs. While mom is getting out of bed 6 times a night to nurse the baby back to sleep, dad can’t offer much so he stays in bed. If the baby relies solely on mom to fall asleep in all situations, dad might feel like he has nothing to offer. While this baby doesn’t actually need to eat 6 times a night, he/she believes they need mom to feed them in order to go back to sleep. Once you break that nursing/sleep association, dad can enter the scene and take over some of the responsibilities (by the way, one of the best and most effective ways to break that nursing/sleep association is to have dad take over).

Even if the sleeping prop isn’t nursing, it’s generally moms that are waking up with baby – USUALLY it is mom that is staying home with the babe while dad is going to work; USUALLY it is mom who feels more comfortable with the parenting responsibilities because she spends more time with the baby; USUALLY it is mom who dictates the schedule and how things should be done regarding the baby.

These scenarios can lead to some resentment or hostility from a sleep deprived mom who might feel like she’s doing more than her share, and some defensiveness from dad who feels like he has little control over the situation.

The good news? When you decide to sleep train, I get BOTH parents involved and let parents know that it actually can go better if dad takes the lead.

I giggle when there is silence on the other end of the phone when I say to parents “yep, now dad is going to be putting baby to bed” or “yep, now dad is going to be getting up with baby through the night”. The moms usually laugh and the dads don’t quite know what to say and likely wonder what they’ve gotten themselves into.

There are a few reasons why I believe it can sometimes go more smoothly when dads take the lead but the number one reason is because babies USUALLY don’t associate dad with falling asleep. In a nursing scenario, a baby knows that there is no option to get milk from dad so learning independent sleep skills generally happens more quickly. Even in a non-nursing scenario, mom is USUALLY the prop (bottle fed, rocking, bouncing, co-sleeping) so, again, baby tends to learn more quickly, when mom isn’t in the room, that they need to develop their own sleep skills. In my mind this is a win-win all around – mom gets a bit of a break and dad gets some quality time with babe, enabling him to feel more comfortable with parenting in general. Also, think about how nice it will be when your babe is sleeping by 7:30 and you have the rest of the evening to yourselves!