Lucy Wolfe - All About The Baby Sleep Solution: Your Questions Answered

Contents

Introduction

Hello, its so lovely to meet you. I always consider it an honour and a privilege when families invite me into their lives to help improve their sleep. So first, let me say thank you for trusting in me and allowing me to be part of your journey.

After I wrote The Baby Sleep Solution, I didnt think I would ever write another book I found it very hard to work and parent full-time and write. I was also apprehensive about what disclosing my work and methods in this way might do to my private practice.

I need not have worried. The way that parents have been helped, supported and reassured by The Baby Sleep Solution has meant so much to me my private practice became even busier, my platform larger and my voice, much needed among the conflicting and sometimes inappropriate sleep advice out there for parents to pick through, heard.

Following a break from the pressures of writing, I felt there was scope to tackle issues parents were reporting surrounding their efforts, and that taking sleep in sections and replying to the common queries that arise would further help families keen to encourage their child to sleep better. My approach hasnt changed, but what youve told me has informed adjustments I have made and how I describe certain sleep elements.

I know that immediate results are desirable and, as a tired parent, having to read a whole book may not suit. So in this book, although you may still need to read quite a bit, you can select your problem area and link the chapters back and forth as you go.

Seventeen years ago, when I became a parent for the first time, there were no readily available internet or social media platforms. The existing approaches to helping children sleep better did not sit well with me, and I began a journey to become a support and advocate for a gentle parent-accompanied method that bridged the gap between cry-intensive approaches or never sleeping again.

As a mum of four children, I know first hand how different each child can be and how challenging parenting can be too. I hope this book helps to provide solutions, reassurance, confidence and empowerment for those of you looking for answers and seeking a holistic approach that prioritises your parenting philosophies and your childs emotional and developmental well-being, as well as establishing positive sleep practices that can last for all time.

Lucy Wolfe

Chapter 1

Your Babys Sleep

Understanding sleep

E xperiencing sleep challenges with your infant or child can have an extremely debilitating effect on the entire family unit. Everybodys situation and every child is different, thus not every suggestion or adjustment will work for you. But most changes suggested here will help move you further towards better sleep.

I dont expect children to sleep through the night at an early age. This term is overused and not entirely understood. Typically, when it is age appropriate from six months onwards you can try to enable your child to sleep longer and deeper. This means more consolidated stretches of sleep with minimised parental input, ranging from necessary night feeds to comfort and reassurance. Basically, you try to establish the optimum level of sleep for your child (and you) at that moment in time and then continue to enhance, improve and future-proof this.

Not all sleep challenges require intervention very often what you may be experiencing are typical childhood sleep patterns, especially in the first six months of life, together with routine disturbances for older children.

When your baby is born, they are immature in every sense including their nervous system, their digestive system and, of course, their sleeping patterns. Young babies are designed to wake and feed frequently. While this can be draining and frustrating, it may be easier if we reframe our expectations and stop thinking that babies should and must be doing certain things by specific points in time.

Lucy Says

Having expectations set by outside influences only undermines our parenting experience and lowers our self-esteem and confidence in our treatment of our child and ourselves. I firmly believe that in the first six months of your childs life you should have low expectations yes, it is hard, it is challenging and you may be more tired than you have ever been, but you can slowly begin to work behind the scenes to nudge your childs sleep into a more improved sleep space always in the context of first ensuring that they feel loved, safe, responded to and secure.

Q So what is a sleep problem, then?

For me, a sleep problem that requires or would benefit from intervention is only applicable once your child is at least six months of age. Before then, although it can feel like a problem, changes you make may not have much effect. It is worth applying my early months sleep-shaping suggestions (see ), but it is not until six months and beyond, developmentally, that I feel a more intense approach is appropriate. And, at that, we will never try to impose better sleep at the emotional expense of your baby (or the rest of the family) everything that we do needs to be meaningful, emotionally connected and entirely ring-fenced by loving responses.

I encourage parents to view their childs sleep in two parts: under six months, where we undertake sleep shaping; and six months and beyond, where we implement sleep learning as needed. The reasoning behind this partition is sleep maturation and ensuring that your baby is ready, developmentally and emotionally, for some of the adjustments that you may need to make to help them sleep better.

As a practitioner, I work directly with families with children from six months to six years of age. This is for several reasons:

Before this age range there is a lot of variability, and although there are changes that you can make, its not until at least six months and later for others that a sleep-learning exercise can have a positive impact.

Although the tiredness that you experience can be debilitating and frustrating, as your child gets older, you can very much help them to become more robust sleepers it is not just the way they are.

Although I encourage you to wait and see what needs to be addressed, sometimes issues may not go away with time, solid food, movement or age, and it will be necessary to undertake some element of sleep work to reach your sleep goals for your family unit.

It is never too late to begin a sleep improvement exercise, whatever your childs age. Each age range has its own set of challenges, and each temperament has its own trials, but you have never missed the opportunity: you can begin today.

I cap my one-to-one work at six years of age because I work directly with the parents rather than the child. Although many of my treatments can be successfully applied to children older than six, they may benefit from working directly with a mentor or therapist too, as the emotional landscape shifts with age and many social elements come into play that might be best addressed with that child being accompanied by a professional.

Q What common sleep challenges do parents report?

Common sleep challenges are often represented by some of the following tendencies:

You find it difficult to get your child to go to sleep at bedtime.

Your child finds it hard to maintain their sleep overnight they may wake frequently, anything from every 45 minutes to every 24 hours.

They stay awake for long period of time overnight from 1 to 35 hours.