Durban - Good sleeping habits start in the first few months and years of life, says Kloof-based psychologist Michelle Baker.
“If a child is still sleeping in the same room with you, you need to think about where your child is going to sleep in the long term.”
Baker suggested that if you plan to move your baby out of your room and into its own, it would be advisable to do this before six months of age.
“If your baby has been sleeping in a Moses basket or a cot beside your bed, it would be best to move this into the new room for their sleep during the day. It’s much easier for a child to adjust to this kind of process in the daytime.”
Baker said when babies were born they had no sense of night and day.
“They learn this from the behaviour of humans around them. But parents shouldn’t stress. It is quite normal at the beginning of life to have a chaotic sleep pattern.
“Babies do not know how to fall asleep at will. Sleep is simply something which happens to them and over which they have little control.
“The ability to fall asleep at will develops gradually over the first few weeks of life. This is a process and takes time.”
Baker said: “If your child screams when you try to leave the room and refuses to settle without you there are three methods of dealing with this.
“ The first method simply involves ignoring your child’s screams and not returning. It works rapidly – usually within two to three days.
“However, it involves a lot of distress and screaming as the child learns that you will not respond since (you think) it is time for them to go to sleep. Most parents I see in the sleep clinic do not use this method because they find it too traumatic. If they did use it, they wouldn’t be coming to see me.”
She said she would not suggest anyone use this method with a child under 14 months.
“ The second method is to go back and check. The idea is that you leave your baby after you have put them down to settle to sleep and if they cry, you wait five minutes before you go back to them. Then you leave the room when they are settled again. If they start to cry again you repeat the process with slightly longer gaps.
“ The last method is that you remain in the room with your child and you stay with them until they fall asleep.
“This method,” said Baker, “depends on you sitting beside the bed/cot while your child falls asleep. This will reinforce the idea that daytime is for playing and doing things and having conversations and night-time is a rather boring, uninteresting time when people lie still and do very little and have their eyes closed.
“Try not to end up lying down with your child to get them to go to sleep.”
Another question parents ask is: ‘Won’t loud noise disturb my child?’
“Parents often feel that you have to be absolutely silent or tiptoe around a baby but this is not necessary,” said Baker.
“Babies seem to be able to sleep remarkably well when there are vacuum cleaners on and other loud repetitive noises or radios and all manner of things.
“If you tiptoe around them, you teach them to be much more sensitive to any noise, and they almost wake up at the drop of a pin.”
What is more likely to wake them, she said, is unfamiliar loud, startling noises and these should be avoided if possible.
“If you have a baby who appears to have become extremely sensitive to noise, you can put a radio on near them when they are asleep and turn it up so that it becomes slightly louder.
“Then you can begin to turn the volume down slightly so that they can sleep through pretty much anything.”
Baker completed a fellowship in insomnia at Penn University, Philadelphia, and is on the executive committee of the South African Society of Sleep Medicine.
She works with numerous sleep laboratories and is a member of the World Association of Sleep Medicine.
Sunday Tribune