❌Sleep breeds sleep❌
This phrase used to haunt me when my boys were little. The fact I ‘needed’ them to sleep for hours and hours in the day so they would sleep through the night kept me on edge and an anxious mess every day!
‘They’ve woken after 30 minutes!’ – meant I was sitting in dark rooms trying to feed them back to sleep.
‘They won’t go back to sleep’ – meant I was getting the pram out and walking for hours (usually whilst they were screaming 😭) to try and get them back to sleep.
Why? Why was I doing that?
Because ‘sleep breeds sleep’ and if my baby didn’t sleep during the day they wouldn’t sleep at all overnight. It was all I heard from well-meaning Facebook and WhatsApp groups.
Well since having my boys and also training as a sleep consultant, I have learnt that that phrase feels like a scaremongering tactic and should be banned 😅
Yes, napping during the day helps overnight sleep and this is why we look at the whole day to get better sleep overall. However getting a baby to nap loads during the day can actually have a NEGATIVE effect on their sleep. If they sleep too much in the day, they may wake more overnight and have an early wake up. It’s all about how much sleep they need in 24 hours (more about this in the next post).
Trust your baby to sleep as much as they want to sleep. Please don’t do a ‘me’ and try and force them to sleep. It does no good for anyone 😭❤️
