How to get your baby to sleep tight

NEW research from Swansea University has found that more than three- quarters of babies aged between six and 12 months still regularly wake at least once in the night, with six out of 10 of them having one or more night-time milk feeds.

But it doesn’t have to be that way, insists Alison Scott-Wright, dubbed the Magic Sleep Fairy by her clients.

The former maternity nurse, author of The Sensational Baby Sleep Plan (Bantam Press), insists all babies can sleep 12 hours through the night – 7pm to 7am – from the age of 12 weeks, and explains that when they don’t, tackling the root cause will solve the problem.

“It’s become the accepted norm that babies don’t sleep, and you get these studies saying it’s natural for babies to wake up once or twice a night. But I really don’t know on what basis they can state that, because babies are designed to sleep,” she says.

“Babies pretty much should be sleeping 12 hours through the night by three months – not by leaving them to scream or putting them at the end of the garden, but by understanding their natural patterns.”

Scott-Wright points out that most modern parents try too many methods to get their baby to drop off, using dummies, rocking cradles, and even short car journeys in a desperate bid to win some precious shut-eye.

“People do too much to try and get their baby to sleep, and when the baby’s a bit older, it’s about removing those negative sleep crutches and replacing them with sleep training and teaching them the art of independent sleep,” she explains.

A baby’s natural pattern is to feed more frequently during the day, and less at night, she says.

So if babies are crying for feeds at night after about four months of age, parents need to look for the reason — although Scott-Wright points out that removing night-time feeds should only be considered if babies are older, healthy and putting on weight.

“There are very few babies of four months and older that genuinely need food through the night. They might look for it, but you have to ask why.”

It could be because they’re not eating properly during the day – Scott-Wright says that from three months plus, she would expect a baby to only have four daytime feeds and be sleeping through the night.

“If they’re having five or six daytime feeds, the digestive system is in overdrive, so it doesn’t switch off properly throughout the night,” she explains.

If a baby seems to be getting the right amount of food during the day, but is still waking at night, it may have colic, or acid reflux and look for food to wash away the pain.

“But they’re not hungry, and are looking for a feed for the wrong reason,” says Scott-Wright.

Another reason for night-time waking could be that baby isn’t sleeping properly or enough during the day.

“This will negatively impact their night-time sleep and cause them to wake, and they don’t know what else to do but to look for food, and mum doesn’t know what else to do except feed them,” she says.

A baby may also wake during the night because it wants its dummy. If everything else is OK, the dummy should be removed to improve sleep, says Scott-Wright.

For more on Alison Scott-Wright’s sleep techniques, visit www.alisonscott-wright.com