How many of you feel like you got onto some form of a routine the moment you had your baby, whether you wanted to or not? How many of you feel it may have actually helped keep feeds and sleep in some order?
Babies do not come with instructions, but we can always improve our ways in which we help them thrive. One of the ways I help families is by having a candid conversation around sleep habits, even before sleep training.
A great rule of thumb in building healthy sleep habits really do come down to these:
1 Schedule
2 Routine
3 Approach
Schedule – allows you to keep your baby on a good nap schedule, so to prevent them from becoming overtired. This, in return, allows your baby to go down more peacefully and sleep a longer stretch at nights.
Routine – builds predictability in your process, and helps your child know what comes next. Sometimes this may come with tears as they don’t want to go to bed yet, but turn this into a consistent habit, and you are also building on your child’s confidence altogether.
Approach – last but definitely NOT least. If anything, this is THEE most important piece to the pie. HOW you have your child fall asleep can set the tone of what they will expect from sleep. In other words, the expectations will either come from you, or themselves, in order to fall asleep. One of the KEY reasons why I work with families is for this particular factor.
If you want to build healthy sleep habits, I promise you, you will need all three to work cohesively. One off, and sleep will continue to be a conversation at your home.
If you want more tips, grab my FREE tips guide and let me know what you think!
Sleep well! Xo
