Once Upon A Bedtime

"When it comes to fighting the common cold and flu, sleep is your internal body armor that helps you fight some viruses and disease."

At the same time, if you're currently struggling to sleep well, remind yourself that sleep is involuntary. Anxiety, even about sleep itself, keeps your mind alert. Instead of focusing on the valid feelings of distress you might be experiencing over situations beyond your control, maybe look around today for things of beauty that are also beyond your control. There's always joy to be found when we look for it.

A Full Night of Sleep Could Be Your Best Defense Against COVID-19 COVID-19: Best Defense? It could be a full night of sleep.

Anyone else ever had trouble with a kiddo who just couldn't stay dry at night, long past potty training? 🖐

I have one child who has gone from soaking his pull-up every night on a regular basis to being completely dry at night for the last 7 months after following the advice of pediatric urologist Dr. Steve Hodges.

He explains here why the majority of the advice you'll hear about treating bedwetting and constipation doesn't really solve the problem, and how to really help your child. If you already know that your child is constipated and your doctor is telling you to just keep giving your child Miralax, check out this post as well as his one on "What to Expect From M.O.P."

Treat Bedwetting at Age 4, Not Age 7 At what age should bedwetting be treated?The medical community’s boilerplate answer — around age 7 — is profoundly misguided, unsupported by science,

"My one-year-old has never slept through the night. People are telling me that this is normal, and that some kids just don't sleep through the night until they're older--like 3 or 4 years old. But I can't take this anymore! We've tried everything."

No, this is not normal.
No, melatonin will not help--it is not a treatment for night waking.

The biology that regulates sleep and wakefulness develops between 3-6 months of age. Yes, it is entirely reasonable to anticipate that your baby can sleep a full 10-12 hours through the night by 6 months.

(If you've been told that "sleeping through the night" means 5 hours, it's because the foundational research on this topic, published in 1957, needed a definition of when "night" occurred. They decided on midnight to 5am.)

However, 20-30% of little ones continue to have difficulty falling and/or staying asleep beyond 6 months of age.

Aside from cases of serious neurological issues, there is no reason why these little ones cannot learn healthy habits to get a full night's rest. Yes, even a 4-year-old who has never slept through the night is capable of doing so: as long as her doctor finds no physical problems (snoring and restless legs being the most common), there is nothing inherently wrong with her. And given how essential sleep is for proper brain development, it's critical that families get the help they need in order to address sleep problems.

The issue these families are seeing is called behavioral insomnia of childhood (BIC). There are two types of BIC--sleep onset association type, and limit setting type. Infants are more likely to have frequent waking due to sleep onset associations; toddlers and older children may have either or both types.

In sleep onset association BIC, little ones fall asleep with someone or something present that is then removed once the child is asleep. This could mean:
🔹Falling asleep while eating from the breast or from a bottle
🔹Falling asleep on a living room couch then being placed in bed while sound asleep
🔹Having a parent close by while drifting off

or any number of other cues that the child strongly seems to need in order to fall asleep. These cues are not something children are born with--they are learned. Because they are learned, they can be changed.

Waking during the night is a natural phenomenon. Everyone wakes 2-6 times during the night. So the problem is not the waking--it's what your little one expects in order to return to sleep. Typically they'll want whatever they had in order to fall asleep in the first place.

In limit setting BIC, parents are unwilling or unable to set predictable limits for their child. One family I worked with had a million excuses for indulging their child's behavior. "He was too excited at dinner time to finish eating, so of course when he woke at 2am he was super hungry." "It was a dreary day today, and he didn't get to do all the running around he usually does. That's why he woke at midnight and took two hours before he went back to sleep." From the child's point of view, nothing is ever predictable. Mom thinks she's setting limits and the child is just unpredictable, but this isn't the case. Mom can always imagine a scenario that requires her to be actively involved in her child's sleep, rather than maintaining the limit that night time is for sleep--period.

Here's what it boils down to:

👉The key issue in every case of BIC is the myth that you have to "get" your child to sleep.👈

Sleep is involuntary. No one controls when they fall asleep themselves, let alone when or how someone else falls asleep. You don't "get" your child to sleep. You simply make it more or less likely that sleep can happen.

❤️When we create bedtime routines that make sleep an automatic next step, sleep becomes more likely.

❤️When we understand the body's internal rhythms, and how appropriate timing and darkness at night make it easier for the body to prepare to sleep, sleep becomes more likely.

❤️When we keep the bedroom cool, quiet, dark, and free from distractions, sleep becomes more likely.

❤️When children younger than 3 have a regular nap schedule, that avoids naps late in the afternoon, sleep becomes more likely.

The converse to each of these is also true.

Good sleep is essential. You are able to set the stage for it to happen for your child.