Supporting Your Child Through Night Wakings: Tips for Tired Parents
Night wakings can be a common challenge for many parents, often leading to exhaustion and frustration. As a baby and toddler sleep coach as well as a mother, I understand how disruptive these wake-ups can be and how they can affect your family’s overall well-being. In this guide, I’ll provide a few helpful tips and practical ideas on how to handle night wakings both reactively and proactively whilst helping your child get better sleep.
Understanding Why Your Little One is Waking Up at Night
Before talking about solutions, it’s crucial to understand why your little one is waking up at night. Night wakings can stem from various causes, the most common of which are listed below.
Common Causes of Night Wakings
Developmental Changes: Milestones such as teething, learning to crawl, or changes in sleep patterns can disrupt your child’s sleep as their brains are coming to terms with these new cognitive and physical changes or abilities.
Sleep Associations: If your child relies on certain conditions to fall asleep (like being rocked or fed), they may wake up during the night searching for the same comfort and then finding themselves unable to soothe themselves back to sleep.
Environmental Factors: Noises, temperature changes, light or uncomfortable sleep environments can contribute to night wakings as well.
Inadequate daytime sleep schedule: Getting both daytime sleep and awake times right will help your child to sleep better at night. Too much or too little daytime sleep can cause both night wakings and early morning wake-ups. Without active and stimulating awake time your child’s sleep can also be disturbed.
Hunger due to Low Daytime Calorie Intake: A child has a daily required calorie intake - if these calories are not consumed during the day, they will wake up hungry in the night or early morning desperately needing a parent to help them.
“The real trick to handling a little one waking up at night is to avoid always being in reacting mode and, instead, moving to proactive mode where you address any causes before they even have a chance to occur.”
Strategies for Handling Night Wakings
Most Importantly, Stay Calm and Assess the Situation
When your child wakes up during the night, it’s important to try to stay calm and assess the situation before reacting. Determine whether they can self-soothe or whether you need to step in to provide some much-needed love and support. Your response will vary based on their age, the cause of the waking and your chosen method of supporting your child’s sleep. Think through the reasons we just covered, for example, and be proactive throughout the coming days as well.
The real trick to handling a little one waking up at night is to avoid always being in reacting mode and, instead, moving to proactive mode where you address any causes before they even have a chance to occur.
Establish a Consistent Response Plan
Create a consistent plan for handling night wakings, so you feel equipped when woken up and your child knows what to expect. This might include:
Offering Reassurance: Provide verbal comfort or a gentle touch to reassure your child without picking them up, if appropriate.
Minimizing Stimulation: Keep interactions brief and low-key to avoid stimulating your child further. Use dim lighting and avoid engaging in play.
Implement Gradual Sleep Training Techniques
If night wakings are persistent and you’ve addressed all causes like nutrition or an inadequate daytime sleep schedule, consider using one of the many sleep training techniques to help your child learn how to fall back asleep independently. Some methods include:
Ferber Method: This involves giving your little one the opportunity to self-soothe for progressively longer intervals over several days before offering comfort. It helps them learn how to self-soothe independently and fall asleep on their own. This is a less supported method but yields faster results and often better the older your child gets.
Fully Supported Method: This approach involves gently comforting your child without allowing them to self-soothe completely independently, gradually reducing your level of involvement over time. This method is allows you to not leave your child’s bedside however it can take many weeks to see progress and is less successful with older children.
Address Sleep Associations
If your child has strong sleep associations, work on gradually reducing their reliance on these associations over time if these are causing problems. A sleep association is typically something a child needs in order to fall asleep, like being rocked, being held only by one person, or needing to be fed. A practical example for rocking would be: if they need to be rocked to sleep, slowly decrease the amount of rocking over the span of several days, allowing them to fall asleep with less and less assistance up to the point where they do not need it at all. Time yourself and create a small plan for decreasing this time over the span of a week or two.
Tips for Preventing Night Wakings
Like I mentioned previously, this is where the magic needs to happen as it is most likely that your little one’s midnight struggles can be drastically reduced if not fully prevented in quite a simple way. After all, we’ve all heard the saying “prevention is better than cure” and when it comes to a baby or toddler’s sleep, this saying rings too true.
Maintain a Consistent Sleep Routine
A consistent sleep routine helps signal to your child that it’s time to sleep and can reduce the likelihood of night wakings. Following the same routine every time your child goes to bed, night time or nap time, will help establish a predictable sleep pattern for them which is clear and understandable. I’ve written a helpful guide on all the in’s and out’s of a sleep routine here.
Create a Comfortable Sleep Environment
Ensure your child’s sleep environment is conducive to rest. Use a white noise machine to mask external noises, keep your child’s temperature comfortable by using good sleeping clothes and adequate heating or cooling, and use blackout curtains to make the room completely dark.
Assess Naps and Daytime Sleep Schedule
Ensure that daytime naps are appropriately timed by using age-appropriate awake windows. Be sure to monitor maximum total day sleep as overly long naps or too much daytime sleep can interfere with nighttime sleep and contribute to night wakings.
Focus on Daytime Calorie Intake
Pay attention to your child’s eating habits and help them to have full feeds as opposed to snacking. Getting as many calories as possible in through the day will reduce the amount needed through the night.
When to Seek Professional Help
Persistent or Severe Night Wakings
If you’ve tried all the prevention tips in this guide and the night wakings are persistent, severe, or causing distress for your family, it may be time to seek professional help. A sleep coach can assess your child’s sleep patterns and the symptoms you describe to provide quick feedback on how to handle the situation. If you find yourself in this boat, please do not hesitate to reach out. I have a free Quick Consult Call exactly for this purpose.
Underlying Health Concerns
If you suspect that night wakings are related to health issues, such as allergies, ear troubles or reflux, consult with your pediatrician or doctor to rule out any underlying medical conditions.
Key Takeaways
Handling night wakings effectively involves staying calm, establishing a consistent response plan, but most importantly, preventing them as much as possible before they occur. By implementing these strategies, having a good grasp on daytime scheduling and maintaining a supportive sleep environment, you can help your child get better rest and reduce the frequency of these unfortunate occurrences.
Still unsure?
Still struggling with night wakings or unsure where to start? Contact me for a personalized sleep consultation to discover effective strategies for handling night wakings and improving your baby or toddler’s sleep. Ideally suited to this could be one of my Ask-Me-Anything calls or a free Quick Consult Call.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I do if my child wakes up multiple times a night?
Assess the cause of the night wakings and implement a consistent response plan. Work through the causes listed in this guide, do as much as possible to address them, and then consider gradual sleep training techniques if necessary.
How can I help my child learn how to self-soothe and fall back asleep by themselves?
Address any possible causes proactively so that you know that they are not hungry, too cold, or too warm, for example. The most likely causes are listed in this guide. Then, encourage self-soothing by gradually reducing your involvement in helping them fall asleep over time. For this you can use gentle techniques and create a predictable bedtime routine to support their self-soothing skills.
