My baby is waking throughout the night!

1st February 2024

In my last blog i addressed one of the most common and most difficult infant sleep issues; early morning risers. I’m sticking with this theme by picking another SUPER common sleep complaint that parents have.  The frequent night wakings nightmare!

We all know that when our babies arrive, we’ll be waking through the night to tend to their little newborn needs.  But once we get to around 6 months, our enthusiasm and stamina for multiple night wakings can begin to dwindle…  And its around this age that you start to hear that babies are able to ‘sleep through’; “so why isn’t MY baby sleeping?”

Well, i’m going to let you in on a little secret. Not all night wakings are equal. (and neither are all babies by the way - dont compare and don’t beat yourself up!) But if you understand more about the waking, you understand more about why its happening and how to fix it!  Woohoo! So read on to learn more about your baby’s night wakings and what’s going on…

FREQUENT WAKINGS; 

When your baby is up every 1 to 2 hours overnight… This is the toughie. Its the one where there are 3 main culprits;

• Discomfort:  Pain will always wake your baby often overnight. Thats teething, illness, reflux, allergies, even hunger.  So you need to address that and make your baby as comfortable as possible.

• Habit (mainly milk): If its habitual, you’ve gotta break the habit!  “Easy for you to say Caroline!”  Yep i know and i’m sorry.  It IS easy for me to say and its one of the main reasons people employ me to help them.  If your baby is fed, rocked, patted to sleep or comes in with you in the night, they’ll carry on doing that til you change something up.

• Self settling; kinda hand in hand with habit as above.  If your baby isn’t settling to sleep by themselves, they'll need your help to resettle when they wake.  And as sleep cycles overnight are roughly every 1 to 2 hours, that's how often they'll need resettling.  Once your little one reaches toddlerhood and over, this changes somewhat.  Whilst self settling plays a part, the issues are a little more psychological so need a different approach.

This area is a big one to dissect.  If you’re struggling with these frequent night wakes, tackle it in this order; rule out discomfort, next make sure your baby is getting enough sleep during the day, and THEN look at removing habit / teaching self settling.  These two go hand in because normally if they are settled to sleep with help, this is what they will wake and keep seeking.  However, little ones who love feeds overnight can continue beyond nutritional ‘need’.  That means if you want to stop the wakings you need to encourage them to give up those feeds.  This is entirely your choice and about what’s sustainable for you to continue with.

FALSE STARTS

Overtiredness come bedtime means an upset, dysregulated baby and this can cause wake ups within an hour after being put to bed.  If you're able to calm them and they're able to self settle, this is your best shot at avoiding those wake ups in this scenario.

Undertiredness can play a part too; if their last nap was too close to bedtime or they had too much day sleep then they simply won't have the 'sleep pressure' (driven by the hormone Adenosine) built up to keep them asleep for long.

In short, get their day sleep fine tuned and this issue will disappear!

SPLIT NIGHTS

When your baby is up and awake in the early hours for a looong time. They may be playful, they may try their best to resettle but just cant, or they might just be really annoyed and upset with you for trying to get them back to sleep.  Basically they’re getting too much day sleep and they can’t stay asleep the whole night through.

This means you need to stretch their day; wake them earlier for the day, or cut the nap / rebalance the timing, and/or push bedtime later.  Get them sleeping back through the night happily again!!

Are you questionning what's causing all those wake ups overnight?  Are you stuck in a cycle of false starts or split nights?  I hope this blog helped shed some light for you on what may be happening - I'd love to know!  Send me a message at caroline@thesleepremedy.co.uk and tell me!

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