Rachel Waddilove - Sleep Solutions: Quiet nights for you and your baby

Text copyright 2013 Rachel Waddilove

This edition copyright 2013 Lion Hudson

The right of Rachel Waddilove to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Lion Books
an imprint of
Lion Hudson plc
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,
Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com/lion

ISBN 978 0 7459 5573 5
e-ISBN 978 0 7459 5760 9

First edition 2013

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover image: Adam Gault/Alamy

I dedicate this book to my darling children and grandchildren. You all mean so much to me and without you I would not have been able to write this book. To my son Ben and his wife Helen, their children Hannah and Jessica; my daughter Sarah, her husband Reuben, their children Zack, Bethany and Joshua; my daughter Jayne and her fianc Peter: thank you for your encouragement to press on and keep writing. I hope that this will be a practical and timeless guide which you can offer to friends and families to help with all-important sleep in the years to come.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Stuart Logan, Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at Exeter University Medical School, for his time and expertise in reading the book and for writing such a warm Foreword. I would also like to say a huge thank you to my dear friends Stuart and Sue Mountford who provided their lovely home in Cornwall as an oasis where I could go to plan and write this book. Sue, being with you again took me back to our college days and all the fun we had together. Thank you so much for feeding me, continually bringing me cups of tea and coffee and a gin and tonic at the end of the writing day. I couldnt have done it without you!

To my dear friend Naomi Gilbert, who once again has stood beside me and guided me as I have written, thank you so much. Nay, its been great to work together again.

I want to say a huge thank you to the mums who have taken time to write case studies for me. This has helped to bring warmth and reality to each chapter. I so appreciate you being willing to share your unique stories of sleep problems and solutions.

Thank you to each and every family who has invited me into their home or called me for advice on their childrens sleep. I couldnt have written this book without you. You have given me such a breadth of experience in the problems and challenges we can all face with our childrens sleep. It has been a privilege to work with such lovely families right across the country and overseas.

Thank you to Ali Hull and Rhoda Hardie at Lion Hudson for all your encouragement.

Last but not least, to my dear husband John thank you for your support and for keeping the home fires burning while I disappeared to Cornwall to write. Thank you for your encouragement to write another book.

Foreword

Being a parent is the most enjoyable thing I have ever done but it is also the most difficult. It sometimes seems strange that being a parent can be so challenging when it is such a normal part of life for every generation. When I was a young paediatrician talking to families about sleep problems, I often found it difficult to understand why they found it so hard to follow my advice. Once I had children of my own I suddenly understood.

Every child is different and all childhood behaviours are the result of a complex dance between parents and children to which all parties contribute. Children are very sensitive to their parents emotions and parents to those of their children. It can be very easy to get stuck in unhelpful patterns of interaction, although driven by the best of intentions especially when you are exhausted from lack of sleep.

In our modern society, most of us come to parenting with very little experience. Even fifty years ago families were much larger and most people lived closer to their extended families. This led to children growing up with much more first-hand experience of babies and small children than the parents of today. Its a staggering thought to realize that, for the first time in history, over fifty per cent of children in our society are firstborns. Geographical dispersion of families also means that many parents have less access to advice and, more importantly, less access to people who can provide emotional and practical support when things are difficult.

All of this means that as parents we need different ways of getting help. Rachel Waddilove brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her writing. She is both a parent, a grandparent, and a professional working with young children. This enables her to speak with an understanding of both the science and the reality of parenting. This book builds on her excellent previous books about babies and toddlers to concentrate on dealing with sleeping, perhaps the most overwhelming challenge for parents of young children. It offers useful answers to the questions that often plague parents, such as how much sleep is normal at different ages. Most importantly, though, it offers practical ways of preventing and dealing with difficulties. The arrangement into chapters based on age seems to me a sensible way of ensuring that the advice is specific enough to be really helpful.

Combining warmth and practicality, this is a book I am happy to recommend to parents.

Professor Stuart Logan

Cerebra Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology

University of Exeter Medical School

Introduction

How many times do we hear the comment, when telling people that we are having a baby, Thats the last time youll have a good nights sleep for a very long time! Somehow it seems to be expected that having a baby or bringing up young children includes sleepless nights as part of the package. Of course we know that to a certain point this is true, as new babies need to be fed regularly through the night. However, in my experience, as long as baby is fit and healthy and having enough milk, he or she can and will sleep through the night from quite a young age.

I am the eldest of six children. There are ten years between me and my youngest sibling so I cannot remember a time when there wasnt a baby in the home. I went off to college to train as a nursery nurse at the age of seventeen and went on to work with families until I married. After raising three children, I went back to working with families some years ago. I now have five grandchildren who are all growing up and at school, and they are a real delight to be with and such fun.

I am writing this book as, after years of experience with families, I know so well how vital it is for babies and children to sleep. I feel desperately sad for parents whose children dont sleep well. Many parents who call me for advice on sleep problems are at the end of their tether and dont know what to do next. This is a horrid position to be in, but so often you just need help and encouragement to get you through this stage.

But before I go into detail about babies and children sleeping, lets look a little at the whole subject of sleep.

Sleep is important for everyone, at any age. It can also be an issue at any time of life. Sleep is essential for growth of the body and mind, and for ones general well-being. We all know that if we are sleep deprived we dont function as well as we do when we have slept well. However, it is amazing how little sleep we can survive on as new mums and dads. Often mums will say to me they dont know how they are managing to function with so little sleep, but they do.