How to make baby have longer day sleep

[caption id="attachment_2402" align="alignleft" width="150"] How to help baby sleep longer[/caption]

I am asked regularly how to make a baby have longer day sleep. Today I am going to discuss this a bit more.

 

I often trip over myself working out where to start with this question. There are a number of things to consider. These include age of the baby, developmental level of the baby, any habits that are in place, what is working , what isn’t working, is the baby overtired, is the baby getting adequate sleep overall, what is happening at night, is the baby well, is the parent well, what is happening in the environment.

 

I want to know as much background information as I can so that I can put it all together and get a really good idea of what is happening not only for sleep but also feeding, family habits, beliefs and values. Sleep and feeding go hand in hand so I would want to know about feeding too.

 

Sometimes  a short day sleep is perfectly normal.

 

The times when we think that  a baby probably would do better with a longer day sleep the things I would look at is refining the sleep cues. This just means  looking at whether the cues that this particular baby have for sleep, are easy for the baby to reproduce or is the baby completely dependent on outside sources for sleep. Remember we all have sleep cycles and when we come into light sleep if what was happening for sleep is no longer happening, your baby may wake .  I also like to reiterate early sleep cues so that your baby is not completely over tired when you want your baby to go to sleep.

 

The main things I would look at are early tired signs and helpful sleep cues.  How we start would depend on whether your baby is really overtired or not. If really overtired  then we may work on building sleep first then addressing the habits.

 

Sometimes what the family wants to do is not compatible with where the baby is at developmentally.   And that is a different kettle of fish.

 

The next time you or someone you know  asks  how to make their  baby have longer day sleep, how we approach it depends largely on what is happening and then tailoring the response  to that.