- Frequent night wakes
- Stop night wakes
- How your day is affecting your night
- Simple things you didn’t realize were creating night wakes
- 5 common causes for night wakes
What does it all mean?
When a baby frequently wakes up throughout the night, it can have a rollercoaster effect, felt throughout the day and for weeks or months on end.
Simply knowing the cause for the frequent night wakes can help you to put an end to the cycle and start getting better sleep. There are a number of cause it can be, starting with the most common, below are 5 causes, that you need to rule out one by one.
1. Day Time Routine
The day time routine has an effect on your baby’s night time activities and vice versa. If something is amiss during the day, you will probably feel the effects at night. Check the correct amount of time your baby needs to be awake (depending on their age) between naps and before bed time as well as the amount of sleep they are meant to be having throughout the day. You can find these in the Sleep Baby Yeah Baby book.
2. Age Based Sleep Issues
Age based sleep issues occur usually around 3-4 months old, 7-8 months old and around 12 months old. These three age groups have the commonly referred to sleep issue of ‘sleep regression’. Essentially, your baby becomes very irritable, hard to settle to sleep, wakes up earlier from their naps and wakes up frequently overnight. Read the Sleep Regressions Blog for more information.
3. How your baby fell asleep
If you rock your baby to sleep, feed to sleep, pat to sleep, or in other words, if you put your baby to sleep and they are older than 3 months, the sleep issue is how your baby fell asleep. It’s time to stop putting them to sleep and start teaching them how to fall asleep by themselves. By doing this, you will stop the night wakes, as they no longer need you to put them to sleep. This is natural, every human needs to learn how to fall asleep and stay asleep by themselves. For more information, check out the Sleep Baby Yeah Baby book on the 6 key steps and self-settling techniques.
4. Hunger
Whether your baby is breast fed, bottle fed, starting solids or a mixture of the three, ensuring your baby is adequately full before bed time is important. Nutritionists recommend a set number of calories for the ‘average’ baby, depending on their age. This is a good place to start to check that you have achieved the recommended intake. Understandably, breast feeding has always been hard to gauge how much your baby is taking in or whether your supply is slowing down/reducing. A good tip for this is to cluster feed (small meals close together) in the afternoon, using expressed breast milk, formula or increasing the solid foods. Read more about hunger reducing tips in the Sleep Baby Yeah Baby book.
5. Habit wakes
These are usually felt after a sleep regression or when there have been night wakes for a long time. Habit wakes are incredibly hard to stop but not impossible. If you have ruled out the above 4 reasons then you may need to consider the frequent night wakes as being a habit wake. I have written a specific blog, given the amount of tips and tricks to try, called the Habit Wakes Blog.
This list isn’t an exhaustive list by any means. But, starting with the above areas can help enormously for frequent night wakes.
Your baby could be waking simply because they are too hot, too cold, dirty nappy or so on. It is important to ensure that your baby is set up for sleep success. To do this, check out the 6 key steps to improving your sleep discussed in the Sleep Baby Yeah Baby book.
Should you need any assistance with sleep issues, I offer a consultation service and more than happy to spend the time to help you achieve your baby’s sleep success.
