ASK THE EXPERT:David Coleman answers your questions
Q OUR TWO-YEAR and nine-month-old little boy, who has always been a good sleeper and has a regular routine, has in the past month started waking during the night, maybe once or twice a week.
He usually calls for me (his mum) and my approach has been to go in and calm him, tuck him in and return to bed. He is generally quite happy to be left, but if he asks that I stay for a little while, I do, leaving when he is calmer. However, I am concerned that I might be encouraging an otherwise very good sleeper to develop poor habits.
Is this normal and will it sort itself out in due course? I wonder also whether it is triggered by our routine being disrupted in the past month or so as we have been on holiday, and he had his first overnight stay with family without his parents there (which was a great success, it seems).
His creche is undergoing some structural changes, so there has been a change to his routine there also (with a different room and so on).
AYes, what you describe is very normal. I think your son's slightly more disrupted sleep is because of the changes in his routine.
Any change to a routine is likely to lead to an element of anxiety for a child. Routines, by their very nature, tend to be repetitive and predictable. This predictability is very reassuring for all children, but especially small children.
As soon as the predictability is lost by changes to a routine, a child won’t know what to expect, and this is likely to make them anxious to a greater or lesser extent. It is very common for anxieties to show up in disrupted sleep. We need to feel very relaxed, safe and secure in order to fall asleep and to stay asleep, and even mild anxiety can disturb this.
So, I think your son will very easily fall back into a solid sleep pattern as soon as he adjusts to the changes in his creche and when he realises that his nights at home are the same as they always were.
By offering yourself as reassurance for him when he wakes, you are meeting his emotional needs and I believe that as he settles into his new surroundings, he will need less reassurance and so will call on you less.
At that point you can all have a better night’s sleep!
Q My baby girl is nine months old, is breastfed and does not take a bottle. From the moment she came home from the hospital she was the dream baby when it came to sleep and slept through the night, to every other mother’s envy!
However, at three months all that changed and she began waking. I fed her back to sleep every time she woke up as I presumed it was a growth spurt. A month on, she was still waking several times a night. Now at nine months she still wakes anything from three to seven times a night and feeds every time.
We are co-sleeping, so life is a little easier and I don’t have to get up every time, she just crawls over and latches on.
I have been told by so many people to use controlled crying, put her in her own room, give her water instead of a feed, and the one that seems to be everyone’s favourite is give her a bottle!
I am not into controlled crying at all, I feel she is still too young to understand, and she will feel like I am abandoning her. Am I being a drama queen and spoiling her, as a lot of other people have been remarking?
Will I just go with the flow and hope she grows out of it?
I hope to continue breastfeeding until she is two, as recommended by the World Health Organisation. Could this continue as long as I am breastfeeding, or is it just the natural way, and society has made us feel all babies should sleep through the night?
A It strikes me that what you are doing is one element of attachment parenting. By responding to your baby’s need for comfort and sustenance at night, you offer her great security. You are not spoiling her.
She can rely on you to respond to her and meet all of her emotional needs, and this is part of what helps children to develop secure attachment.
As many people will know, I am a believer in co-sleeping. I do think it is natural for children and their parents to share rooms and beds. However, I also think that each family needs to decide what works best for them. Some parents really value their own space at night.
If you believe in what you are doing, then stick with it. Yes, it may lead to your baby continuing to feed sporadically through each night but as long as you, your baby and your husband feel okay with this situation, then by all means, “go with the flow”.
David Coleman is a clinical psychologist and broadcaster with RTÉ television
Readers’ queries are welcome and will be answered through the column, but David regrets he cannot enter into individual correspondence. Questions should be e-mailed to healthsupplement @irishtimes.com