If your baby is older than six months, don’t worry, McGinn says: “It’s never too late to develop good sleep habits.” Dickinson says he finds nine months to be a bit of a sweet spot for parents in terms of getting babies to sleep through the night. Some parents choose to wait until things settle down before embarking on a sleep-training method, but you don’t have to, says McGinn. Other babies’ slumber derails around this time because they are working on new skills, like moving around and rolling. “It’s a great time to work on independent sleep skills,” says McGinn. Around four months of age, some babies go through a sleep regression because their sleep cycles change and there are longer periods of lighter sleep per cycle. At this stage, most babies are also developmentally ready to learn the skill of falling asleep on their own, explains Jennifer Garden, an occupational therapist who runs Sleepdreams in Vancouver.
Most sleep coaches say the ideal time to start sleep training (or promote independent sleep, not necessarily using the cry-it-out method) is based on your baby’s development, but is usually somewhere between four and six months, when your baby hasn’t had much time to get used to nursing or rocking to sleep. If you sleep-train at a time that’s developmentally appropriate for your baby and with the basic ingredients of healthy sleep in place, you can minimize the amount of crying your baby (and, let’s face it, you) will do. But good sleep habits never hurt, and being able to fall asleep on one’s own is a necessary life skill. There’s also no need to institute a regimented cry-it-out plan if what you’re currently doing is working for your family. “For most of us, letting your baby cry is five to 10 minutes.” “I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest that it’s psychologically damaging to let your baby cry, but I think people need to be reasonable,” he says. Paediatrician Michael Dickinson, president of the Canadian Paediatric Society, advises parents to trust their instincts. This provides some reassurance that a little bit of crying-if it leads to better sleep-likely won’t do your baby any harm. Recent research has shown that, at least in babies older than six months, sleep training with controlled crying and bedtime fading (both described below) improved babies’ sleep and didn’t lead to increased levels of cortisol. You’ll find experts on both sides of the issue: Breastfeeding advocates say it’s normal for babies of all ages to wake up multiple times to nurse, and even the sleep coaches interviewed for this article disagree with how much crying and distress are acceptable. Yes, this can feel unloving and even downright cruel. You want your baby to be able to nod off on their own-ideally without nursing, rocking or using a pacifier-because whatever tools they use to fall asleep at bedtime are the same things they’re going to wake up looking for during the night. “It’s more about being able to teach your baby that they are capable of falling asleep independently,” she says. Sleep training is a loaded phrase, and one that is often used synonymously with letting your baby self-soothe, or “ cry it out,” but that’s not the whole picture, says Alanna McGinn, a certified sleep consultant and the founder of Good Night Sleep Site. When Greyson was four months old, the first-time parents contacted a sleep consultant, who clued them into a few things that were getting in the way of Greyson sleeping well: All the rocking and pacifying were now ingrained in him as sleep associations-or crutches he needed to fall asleep and stay asleep. “I didn’t know you couldn’t just rock them to sleep and then put them down.” “I didn’t know anything about sleep,” says Welk. “I would rock him until he fell asleep and put him down, and then he would wake up 30 minutes later and I would do it all over again.” Desperate for some rest, Welk brought Greyson into bed with her, but then she ended up just lying still, holding a pacifier in his mouth all night long. “I would feed him, but he wouldn’t be asleep at the end of the feed,” recalls Welk.
He would wake up only once a night for a feed, and that would last him until morning.īut when he was about three-and-a-half months old, the routine fell apart. He had regular naps during the day, and all it took was a calming bottle in the evenings and he would be fast asleep. For the first few months of his life, Laura Welk’s baby, Greyson, was a dream sleeper.
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