Episode 27- Creating Your Ideal Day

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

Welcome to the kids sleep show, where we help tired parents from around the world to get their children to fall asleep independently, sleep through the night and build healthy sleep habits for life. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz. Now let’s sleep together. Perfect.
Hey, everybody,
I see a bunch of you out there. Thank you for tuning in day two of the save your sanity sleep workshop. My name is Courtney Zentz. If this is your first day joining us welcome. And I’m excited for those of you that are coming back. from yesterday’s session, today, we’re going to be diving into a whole lot of information. So say
hi,
let me know who is out there and tell me the biggest takeaway that you had. Right now. From day one, I want to know a little bit more about what you’re getting out of this. It’s a lot of information. As you’ll see, I share over the course of five days, these are meant to be building blocks, we’re meant to do it piece by piece. And I am excited to jump in today to be talking to you about creating your ideal day. So regardless of your baby’s four weeks old, four months old, or four years old, we’re going to take you through creating that ideal day, and show you exactly how to do it. If this is your first time joining the boot camp, I do ask for any comments that you have just drop them in there. It could be as comments specific to a topic I’m talking about where I asked for feedback, right in the live stream. It could also be just a question that you have around something I’m discussing. And I’ll be happy to get to that at the end of the session today. Once I cover all the information because I may answer your question with what I’m talking
about.
So just as a recap, from yesterday, we talked about setting foundations. And so in my work as a pediatric sleep specialist, again, Courtney Zentz, the founder of tiny transitions. I have worked with a lot of children that have a lot of different needs a lot of different habits, a lot of different challenges, right? No two children are the same. And yesterday, we talked about the foundation, right? what we’re aiming to do today is basically level the house and rebuild that house on a solid concrete foundation. It’s sturdy, it can withstand winds, it can withstand rain, there’s no toppling or shakiness. And you’re going to build a great sleeper for life. So yesterday, we talked about creating the ideal day. And in the workbook that I did share yesterday in the comments or that you got via email. Depending on where you registered for this, you are going to see that the ideal sleep needs for your little one and the awake windows were the single most important thing I talked about. Right. So monitoring to the awake windows versus like the total number of naps, or the exact time that your babies on like they must go to bed at 7pm. Those are two things that you know, we kind of myth busted a little bit yesterday, and you saw that my biggest thing was around the ideal awake windows, okay, when you’re building a child to be a good sleeper, that’s going to be the important part. Now you’ve got to figure out how to structure the day. So a couple things that I shared in the comments, and that are out in my slumber Made Simple Facebook group. So if you’re not in the group, and you’re watching this on one of the other channels, jump out to my slumber Made Simple Facebook group will let you in, it’s my free sleep group. And all of these great pieces of content are available out there for download. So if you missed it, I’m just going to go over what they are so that you can see what we’re going to kind of work through today, as you sit here with me building your ideal day for your little one. So the first thing that you’re seeing here is the recommended wait times. So this is going to tell you exactly how many naps, how long your little one should be awake, what the duration is going to typically be based on the age of your child. Okay, so that’s the first thing you want to make sure you download. The next thing is going to be this handy little sleep log. Now if you prefer to have this in Excel, I can share it with you. That’s actually how I manage with my private clients. I use Google Sheets and that way I have a real time look at what’s happening in their day. This is a paper based version, frankly, the overwhelm that comes with a child. Sometimes this is just easier to tape up on the fridge and write in when they’re sleeping. The purpose of this particular log and you can see it’s two pages when you print it is to really start mapping out what the day looks like. Right? You want to understand what time they woke. So for example, if you have a seven month old, and they will get seven o’clock this morning for the first waking of the day, their first snack should be about 10 o’clock in the morning. Okay, so you’re going to track that and you’re going to see how long they sleep and then let’s say tomorrow, they wake at 630 and they go down about 930 Okay, or 945 maybe they get a little over that three hours because you were busy doing something you maybe you went to the doctor or something and you find that their nap actually is much better, right from a three hour and 15 minute week window versus three hours from what you saw, you know today versus tomorrow. That’s gonna help Have you to isolate what the ideal awake window is for your little one, the ranges that I share with you are just that their ranges, even a 10 minute difference can mean a much better nap. Okay? So you may find that, like, if you put your little one down an hour and a half, they sleep for 25 minutes or 40 minutes, right, they get one cycle, okay. But if you put them down at like an hour and 40 minutes, right a little bit longer than an hour and a half, so an hour and 40 minutes, and they sleep for like two hours, their ideal awake window is an hour and 40 minutes, you know, you want to use that in your tracking. Because during the day, the awake windows may fluctuate, you may find in the morning, there’s a specific a week window, they do well, within the afternoon, perhaps a little shorter, because they’ve had really long busy days, maybe their naps have struggled a little bit. That’s where this tracker is going to help you to isolate patterns. And frankly, again, this is what I do with my private clients and trying to understand exactly what’s happening. And how we can tweak each day to make sure that they’re seeing forward progress every day. I actually just got off the phone with one of my clients who I worked with, with their daughter who’s now a little bit into their their threes. And they just had a baby, the baby’s eight weeks old. And so we kind of did one of my newborn sessions where you know, we have a console, we share through some different things, I provide a guide, and then we talk through and have some follow up calls. So it’s one of my newborn packages. And so we just literally got off the phone 10 minutes ago. And she was like, you know, this
has been amazing, because the little one is now eight weeks old, had a really long stretch of sleep last night, they’re starting to feel like they’re in a groove. She’s like, I got a good schedule going, compared to what their first one where they kind of just waited till the shit hit the fan and then reached out, right, there’s gonna be situations for both where they’re appropriate. So that sleep log can really help. She’s like, it’s been amazing to track and kind of see where she likes where she doesn’t work she does best. So that’s definitely going to be an important one. And the final one was actually something that’s a little more appropriate for toddlers, right? So I got in and I apologize my hair. I actually did my hair today. So I didn’t look quite so gym worthy. There’s no gym today, I was just rocking it with doing my hair. So I look a little more put together. We talked yesterday about reward charts, right? And so when you start to get into working with toddlers, somewhere around three, they start to drop the nap. Sometimes you get into overtired at bedtime. Sometimes it’s also behavior changes, right? Like my girlfriend Aaron, after the live stream has been a good friend of mine for many years now probably far too many like 20 ish. said, Hey, you know, I need to use this on my little girl Farah. This is a reward chart on the page two of this, which I didn’t print, there’s actually little icons that you can kind of cut out and then put over here so that you have, you know, things like a bottle before Bed, Bath before bed, right? And you want to have some easy wins here, right. So if you’re dealing with a toddler who’s struggling to settle for naptime or bedtime, you create this sort of customized chart that then affords them some easy wins, you brush your teeth, you get a sticker, great, every kid’s brushing their teeth, they get a sticker, they feel that reward, right? Maybe they go potty, they get a sticker, they again they earn that reward. And they start to grasp like, oh, if I do X, I get y and there’s a reward with y. So all of a sudden now before bed, they’ve got a couple wins. And then in the morning, the only when they have to get through is staying in bed till your clock comes on or not calling for mommy in the middle of the night, right? Things like that, that are causing those disturbances. The reward chart around toddler behavior modification can be super helpful, right? kids do things based on what we allow them to do if you allow them to ask for seven books and you read seven books that you’re took us that every night, they’re asking for seven bucks, right? So those are three samples of different things that you’re going to use as support tools in building the ideal day for your little one. Okay, when we talk about building the ideal day, how does that look? Okay, the first thing you’re going to want to look at is in the workbook, you’re going to see the ideal awake windows. And then every day is going to be different, they wake at 615. Today, they wake at 630. Tomorrow, they wake at 715 The next day, right? with babies and their wake windows every day is going to vary a little bit, which is why I’m not super strict about a schedule, I care more that they’re getting the right amount of sleep at the right time, throughout the day.
So I want to take a pause
for a second and kind of ask if it would be helpful for me to spitball a few different sample days and what it’s going to look like based on the various ages for children, because it is going to vary each day. But you can start to get some level of consistency once you get into like that five or six month range, whereby the day starts to build some structure and have some consistency. So let me know about that. And also I want to mention out on my website, tiny transitions.com forward slash tools are all my downloadables including a sample schedule generator. So if you’re watching this now Your little ones four months old, make sure you go out and generate the sample schedules for the various different ages of
your little one
that’s going to walk you through what each of the days should break out in and what it should look like. Okay, so when we talk about and let me just see the comments that are coming in to make sure I’m addressing your needs. Alright, Miss Jana. Hey, Amina. Hi, Jen. Okay, perfect. Okay. You are awesome in watching the recording. Thank you so much, Jenna. Okay, so we’re going to take a look at some of those questions coming in, keep them coming. Because what I will do is I want to be consistent in the content today. And then I’m gonna jump back in and answer all the questions at the end. So keep the questions coming in. And I will get back to all of them. So what we’re going to talk about today is building your ideal day, people say, Well, what is an ideal day look like, right? The ideal day for me as a sleep professional in what I write for you in these samples is almost always seven to seven. And the reason that I do that is because a seven to seven days the most, I would say commonly requested by families I work with, okay, now I work with a teacher who has to be out of the door 630 their day is going to look much different. I work with somebody who’s more of a night owl and prefer their little one sleeps like eight to eight crate, you can take everything that I’m teaching you and apply it you just adjust things either out an hour back a half hour, right? Because the structure of the day isn’t going to change.
Okay.
So what you want to look at is first and foremost, figure out what the ideal awake time is for your little one.
Okay,
sometimes it’s self guided right now. We’re all in quarantine. We’re supposed to go to green in Philly here on Friday, but who knows. And so right now, our day is the same every day, we wake up, we breakfast, and now my kids are going to summer camp, which is great. But, you know, typically we’re home. And so that schedule is pretty routine, and they can wake up on their own. If it was a school year. I’m like, Alright, we got to get up. We got to get dressed, brush our teeth, get on the bus, right? Do all that stuff. So things in the summer tend to be a little bit loosey goosey. That’s okay.
What you want to do is structure the day based on when they wake. Okay. The only guideline I would say is if you’re trying to keep some sort of a body clock, you want to make sure that you wake them up for sure by 8am. Okay, the body’s natural circadian rhythm is going to have kids waking up typically somewhere between six and 8am. Okay, when wakings are happening earlier in the day, which we’re going to talk about later this week, those early morning wakings because they’re pesky. And a lot of people struggle with them. So stay tuned for that coming later this week. When you have early morning, wakings. Right, it can throw the rest of your day off. So now you’re conforming your naps to meet the early morning waking, which means that by the end of the day, they’re overtired, because the naps don’t align now you’re waiting for bedtime, mommy and daddy are coming home from work, they don’t get to see it because they’re tired, right? You got all these different things going on. That cause sort of the steamroll of the day being a bit messed up. Okay, so the first thing you want to do is look at your ideal awake time, and focus the nap structure based on the ideal awake time, right. So if your ideal for getting up every day is 7am. And your baby’s five months old, you want that first nap of the day to be roughly around 9am. And you want to keep it as close to 9am as you can, even if you have an early waking of like 630 because what you don’t want to do is start to conform the schedule to the early waking otherwise, you’re going to put yourself into a pickle where you’re sort of subjecting yourself to creating the ideal awake window at 5am.
Right and nobody wants to get up at 5am I’m up at 5am because I go to bed at nine o’clock like a lunatic every single night. But most people in the world are not up at 5am I am Brighton chirpy, I’ve been a morning person since I was a kid. So 5am to me is like heaven, I get up have coffee, I get some work done, you’re probably seeing emails getting fired out at 5am. They are actually mean not automated, I’m awake. But But you know, for most people, that kind of seven o’clock is good. The next thing you want to do is start to tracking that sleep log what your day looks like, right? So every day is going to be different. It’s not going to be that it’s six months, it’s this perfect day at eight months, it’s a perfect day for months, it’s a perfect day at two years, it’s perfect day, right? You may have a child that has gas, didn’t feel like eating. That was a little hot. That took a 10 minute nap on the way to target that, frankly, didn’t go down really well for the nap. Or maybe the doorbell rang and woke them up and disturb it. So now your whole day’s thrown off, right? The biggest thing you want to watch for those a week windows to craft an ideal day that’s based on their needs, if their ideal awake window for five months old, for example is two hours, okay? But they take a 10 minute nap on the way to target. There’s no way they’re making two hours, but there’s also no way they’re going to go home and go to sleep. Because that 10 minute nap is going to derail the body and their mind, right? They’re gonna think in their mind that they napped but in their body, they’re saying like, holy crap, I’m still really tired. Right? So that’s the part where there is going to be a bit of balance with this. As far as how you’re structuring the day, it’s obviously much more complex when you’re dealing with the baby before six months of age because their sleep needs sleep windows and the number of maps really adjust and that’s where I would Again, tiny transitions comm forward slash tools, that’s going to give you a full day of feeding structured around sleep, and building that seven to seven type of day. That’s going to be a great place to start.
Okay,
so from there, once you’re looking at your ideal week, when did you want to balance food?
Okay,
people say to me, like, what is the most important do I wake them to eat? Do I let them take the long nap in the day? You know, when should I be structuring feedings the feeding seem to correspond with a nap? How does that work? Okay, couple things. I’m going to talk a little bit more about intake, and when a child should sleep through the night later this week, okay, cuz that’s a very kind of interesting area that I want to make sure I allot enough time to so make sure you stay tuned for that.
Full feedings
every three hours throughout the day I have found to help you build the most ideal day and also the most ideal overnight, okay? babies, whether they’re nursing, bottle fed, breast fed, you know, pump fed doesn’t matter. They’re fed, right, like I’m gonna say babies that are fed, every three hours, typically take full feedings, they typically are ready, willing and able to eat because you’re trying to structure after they’ve woken from a nap so they’re rested. Okay. And by taking full feedings throughout the day, your total ounces, by the time you get going into bedtime, are actually setting them up for really good success. Okay, when a baby should sleep through the night is completely I don’t want to say subjective but it’s something that we definitely have to dive into in another session this week. Because it’s variable, I have a three month old right now that is Rockstar sleeping 12 hours a night. I have a six month old that has just started but is still taking two feeds and both based on their unique situation are completely appropriate. Right, that’s where this is not a one size fits all thing, right? for babies nursing and you have no idea how much their intake is and mom struggling a little bit with supply. I can’t definitively say that the little ones not hungry. The same with that three months old. You know, I have a mom right now that’s exclusively pumping, and is getting like 34 ounces in the daytime hours a little one sleeping 12 hours every night, right? There’s a lot that has to do with habits as well as intake. But if you can maximize the intake in the day, you lessen the frequency of needs for feedings in the overnight,
right.
You also create a bit of that structure to the day, so that you can start to understand again, what that ideal day is going to look like if baby wakes at seven in the morning. Okay, and they are five months old, for example, they’re going to need a nap around nine o’clock, but they’re also going to need to eat about 10 o’clock, right. So the first nap of the day is probably going to be about an hour, they’re going to eat around 10. So if they wake in eat at 10 the next nap needs to be around 11 well guess what they don’t need to eat again till one. Now they can take a nice long nap from 11 to one that can be a nap or you go for a walk. And you help force their circadian rhythms to kind of build it into a two hour nap. And now you’re balancing full feedings 10 and one with two nice long naps, nine to 10 and then 11 to one you see. And then if they’re waking up at one and they’re eating, the next nap is going to be about three and guess what they’re gonna eat around four. So they’re going to take another one hour nap. But for wake up for eat. Now you’ve had four hours asleep, which is completely appropriate for a five month old, two hour a week windows, full feedings at 710. one and four, you’re going to get to chill with them for a bit after they wake up around five, they’re going to be ready for bed around seven, they’re going to take a nice full feeding at bedtime and it’s lights out and that is a sample 12 hour a day with your feedings for a five month old right? Again, not always gonna be that perfect. They may have guests, they may fart, the doorbell may ring you have to go to the doctor. Somebody comes over and wants to hold them for an hour because it’s cute and cuddly. And that’s great. That’s fine. You just balance the day based on how you kind of want things to lay out. Sometimes you will have to wake them okay. My girlfriend Courtney. I don’t know if she’s watching this live sometimes she does. She had a little guy grant, who was living long hours right? In the daytime and she’s like, when do I wake up? I’m like you kind of want to wake him for sure when there’s a feeding especially when they’re a newborn. And when they hit three hours What you don’t want is the baby taking a five hour stretch in the middle of the day because guess what that means? They’re not taking the five hour stretch in the overnight hours. Right? Now when you start to get into things like toddlers three four year old they’re dropping naps now you’ve got this manic little person at two in the afternoon who’s like I am tired but I’m not napping right? Couple of things you can do one insist on quiet time. Okay, so you are not welcome to come out of the room until your clock is green. Okay I love the okay to wait clock I use it even in my kids rooms. I don’t care if you sleep sometimes relieving them of the anxiety around sleep can be very important. Kids will hold on for dear life because they don’t want to sleep. I’m not sleeping. I’m not sleeping. I’m not sleeping She wants me to sleep. When in reality if you just say hey, you don’t have to sleep. I don’t care, but you’re not welcome to come out of the Room is sort of releases the pressure of the head.
But
at the same time, it also affords them kind of the ability to have maybe for a couple days they play with some Legos quietly they read some books, believe me, they’re going to get bored enough that they’re actually going to fall back asleep in most cases, three to five year olds that I work with will almost always even if they’ve hijacked, napping six months ago, go back to taking naps when we’re working together.
Okay?
If they don’t nap or you’re done with naps, or your like naps are fine. They’re getting up at 730 in the morning, they’re not napping, but you know, it’s long summer days. By the end of the day, they’re kind of pooped and ready to go to bed for sure asleep at seven o’clock at night. Make sure you’re setting them up for success. If you notice, they’re just super pissed, super upset, super grumpy. Putting them down for 630 is not a big deal. Blackout blinds are great, you pull those blinds, go through your whole bedtime routine, if their body’s telling them they tired and they didn’t take a nap. Let them sleep, right. Because otherwise they build up a sleep debt that can be compounded over the days and can create behavior challenges eating challenges, middle of the night. wakings and night terrors which are a common thing in toddlers. If they’re not getting the right amount of sleep a night terror and the difference between a night terrors and nightmares. Typically, they don’t even recognize they’re having a night terror. They wake up screaming, you go to them and they’re in this sort of like trance, like, they don’t even know you’re there, right? And you’re shaking them and they’re kind of looking around. But you can kind of like jar them and they’re still not really responding to you. And then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, hey, Mom, I’m here, right? That’s a night terror typically mimics like night walking like you don’t know that you’re sleepwalking. Right? nightmares are when a child wakes up and is visibly upset about something. There are monsters in my room. I am afraid of like my son had a nightmare after you watch Toy Story for the marionette dolls that they have in there. Yeah, nightmare about those. Which is the craziest thing. It’s Toy Story, right? Like you wouldn’t think so. You know how to explain like Marionette dolls don’t actually come to life. It was a movie, you know. And then we did some fun activities to try to disperse the thought around the marionette doll because I knew he would be watching Toy Story. So with that, I have them draw little Marionette dolls, okay. And then we put them on like we made little puppets out of them. And then each of us took the one that we drew and we passed it to, like I passed my husband, my son and my daughter and we pass it around the table and we drew funny faces. And we use like glitter markers and stuff on the marionette dolls. And then we made these Marionette dolls fun.
We turned on Kidz Bop on Sirius and then we had a dance party with the marionette dolls and made them fun. So all of a sudden it kind of dispelled the fear around the marionettes all that he would have kept in his head as a nightmare because he legitly was freaked out by these little like weird dolls that
come to life.
Okay, so those are a couple things that you can do with toddlers, again, using the okay to weight chart using the reward charts and to help set boundaries, right, we’re not reading nine books, we’re not going to do eight tokens, we’re not going to do a high five Pinkie swear and then tuck it right like we’re going to bed This is the boundary either choose this course right, which is the expectation as you go to sleep or suffer the consequences. The consequences, the part where most parents, frankly, with toddlers fail. Life is not a bowl of cherries, it’s not a bowl of rewards, okay? You have to make sure that you’re setting a boundary and then you’re sticking to it. And there’s consequences associated with the choice. But the consequences have to be a value, right? My daughter could care less about going to timeout on the stairs, I go to timeout, Mommy, I don’t care. And then she’s for a little attitude sits on the stairs doesn’t care, right. But if I pick her up, and take her upstairs and put her in a room close the door, that timeout takes a whole different level of consequence for all of a sudden I give her a minute or two in there. I’m not crazy. And I opened the door. And I’m like, are you ready to come down and eat dinner now? And she says yes, Mommy, and she comes down needs dinner. Right? But sometimes that like that consequence that took it to the next level was enough for her to change her behavior. Her sitting on the stairs staring out the window, the American flag, she didn’t care what’s pretty there’s birds out there, like Well, that’s not a consequence. Like, if you don’t care, it’s not a consequence, right?
You always have to look at consequences
to make sure that again, like I start working with consequences in children as far as like behavior, somewhere between like 12 and 18 months, they start understanding consequences. Usually mom is enough of a consequence, mom leaving the situation, right? is enough of a consequence at that age. But you’d be surprised even at 12 months, like they start to grasp consequences to choices. And again, there’s boundaries with that not thinking but a 12 month old and timeout. That’s not what I mean, but like they understand cause and effect even at that age. Okay, so that was a whole lot on building the ideal day and what that should look like right? Children at, for example, toddler age still need like 10 to 13 hours of sleep in a given 24 hour period to be operating at their best that’s kind of between three and five. Okay 11 to 14 between sort of the age of two and a three right like getting in there. And then you know prior to that, it’s typically around 12 to 16 hours of sleep for babies under that like so kind of those those still be He’s not quite toddlers age. That’s where you want to have that 12 to 16 hours, some kids still need 16. My girlfriend Vanessa’s child could literally sleep for like 16 hours a day and was a rock star, like through the age of two, right? And then there’s other babies, I work with that, you know, 13 hours that a year are like that, that’s good for them. And they are at their best, right? Every baby’s going to be different. You got to figure out the needs. Okay. So I’m going to dive on over now as I talk about crafting the ideal day to the question. So if you have questions on the ideal day, go ahead and post them in the comments. If you’re watching this on the replay, or in one of the other channels and posting it, post it in the comments, and I will get back to you, wherever you are tuning in from and answer your questions. So let me jump on over here. Right, um, right. Ah, is it Kerris? I love that Is it carrus or Kerris but I love your name. It’s beautiful. Took the tip of putting our 11 month old down at 6:30pm and had an early wake up again. But she went back to sleep and and an hour and a half nap at daycare winning that is great. So yeah, the early morning wakings actually, we’re gonna get into that that’s like a whole session in of itself, because it’s the biggest problem people have. So I am so glad. I’m glad that this is helpful for you tell your friends I love teaching is one thing where I’m reading a book right now called the big leap and it says, do what you love. And for me it’s teaching and I love teaching in this capacity like being on camera, like being able to interact live. webinars are great. Some people do well with those I’m more of like a live in our person that’s going to be my new term live in ours, where I teach you and you get to see me you know sometimes looking my best sometimes looking like I just came out of the gym like yesterday, but all our real world. So today you got to done up, Courtney. All right. elvina,
five month old, what
is the best way for them to not sleep on the breast? Okay, so I’ll be if it’s happening at bedtime. Couple things you can do first. Anytime you’re nursing for bedtime, right? Whether the timing falls, that it’s for a nap, or whether the timing falls that it’s time to put down nursing, just a diaper. And the reason I say that is because they don’t get all cozy comfy in their pajamas and their sack and the breasts and they’re warm right there in their diaper. They’re like, Oh, it’s cold, right? Like I want to eat. But I’m also still a little chilly. So they tend to actually nurse much better and they’re less likely to fall asleep on the breast. If they are falling asleep as a pacifier. They’re not eating but they’re using you as a pacifier when that suckling starts to change, right, you can see here, their jaw like they’re either going to be swallowing and you’re able to see it so you know, they’re taking it or you’re just noticing the jaw moving from a sucking standpoint, that’s going to be when it’s time to pop them off, you need to create the expectation that your breast is for feeding, not for comfort. Okay, so with those two things, you want to start to do essentially create the habits that say like, No, I’m not a cow that’s going to be used as a pacifier right? You can eat but I think the best success I’ve had with clients is to feed in a diaper. So do it for naps. And then after the data the nap The other cool thing is it assures they’re awake when they’re going down. So you feed in the diaper, burb, put in pajamas, burp again, and then lay down awake, and you have much more success with building independently. Hi, Katie. Hello, guess what Lincoln finally sleeping 12 hour stretches. Thanks to your tips. I just wanted to let you know. Thank you. I love this. You guys are so cool, and so kind. And I totally appreciate the feedback, because that’s what I’m here to do. You’re welcome alvina. So give that a try. Alright, Tiffany and Ken 12 hours asleep be enough for eight month old he will not sleep longer than 10 to 10 and a half hours overnight with a maximum, no middle of the night wakings and two to three hours of naps. Two naps? Do I continue to play with your teams to get a 12 hour stretch overnight? Are we thinking you’re doing okay? You’re doing better than you think. Okay, so for this particular age, I’m eight months old. So kids between four and 12 months need 12 to 16 hours in total daytime sleep for optimal health. Okay. So essentially, as long as they’re getting within that range by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of sleep medicine standards, it is normal. What I will say is that sometimes you’re just going to have ebbs and flows in sleep. Okay, depending on what time they’re waking in the morning, some of it may be due to for example, early morning wakings. I’m not sure what time Tiffany they’re getting
up.
But you want to see like with early morning waking sometimes you can create habits where they’ve slept enough and it’s 10 hours and it checks the box and they’re feeling good enough to get up for the day. But in theory could probably sleep a little bit more maybe another cycle or so. Sometimes it’s situational based on that. So definitely Tune into the early morning waking session because I’m going to talk about that. Because sometimes it’s like they feel good enough to be like at 90%, but not 100%. Right? Sometimes they are just a okay with that much sleep. So it’s one of those where you have to kind of see their mood, their temperament, their eating, and make sure if their behavior, their personalities, they’re settling independently. If all that stuff’s good in the environment is setting them up for success. They may as well, they may, I guess, sometimes they like they may be just okay with the 10 to 12 hours. That’s, you know, that’s the American Academy of Pediatrics kind of recommendations. or excuse me, 12 to 12 to 16 for this age. So Excuse me, I didn’t want to miss mistake that 12 to 16 hours for babies from four to 12 months. Okay. So that is no, it’s 14. Give me Give me a minute here, and I’m screwing up all the numbers. So children between the ages of four and 12 months need go by the American Academy of sleep medicine, yeah, no 12 to 16 hours. I’m totally right, I start second guessing myself when I have all these numbers. So it’s 12 to 16 hours. So they may just be that they are again, like totally sorted and happy. So definitely play by your but do tune in to the to the early morning waking one, because that’s usually where I see a lot of people have some issues around
the total sleep.
So hopefully that’s helpful. Okay,
What other questions do we have? Hello, Miss Genevieve I tried the blanket on the floor. And he’ll only sleep after being bottle fed and woke up after five minutes. Okay. So that the reason right now at four months, there’s a couple things happening, right. So first and foremost, if you’d like you got to give it
a little bit of time
because they’re used to motion sleep, right. So whether you’re in the car being held, even if you’re still being held, you still have your chest going in and out, you still have your arms going back and forth, right, and the car’s motion. So basically, you’re creating this motion habit per se, that they are now used to another thing you can try for four months of age is laying on, like laying on the blanket and offering a little bit of swizzle, okay, so it may be that your hand is on the chest, and you’re rocking a little bit right, rocking back and forth. And then the next day you rock a little less. And then the next day you rock a little less. And then the next day, you’re still but your hand is still there. So again, you’re weaning off of this, this can take like a week, right? It’s not meant to be that the first time you do it, it’s
going to happen.
Ultimately, the preference is that they’re moving, right. So you have to get them used to the stillness of sleep. without creating the bad habits around for months, you also have to watch those awake windows, they’re changing from stages to cycles of sleep, as we talked about. Sometimes it may be that you have to do things more direct and get them right into the crib. It’s a calm, safe space, they’re fed, they’re changed, they’re clean the awake windows, right, and you got to get them into there, and get them working through that as far as how they fall asleep. So it may be a little bit of a heavier hand as far as like more abrupt in, you know, putting them in the crib versus having them you know, on the floor, every baby is going to be a little bit different when I work with clients privately. That’s kind of how I get into like, I say like the little more of the details of like exactly what’s going on exactly our steps to fix it know exactly what it looks like. So generalized, I would say start there. And it may be something we’re perhaps give the crib a try to see if that’s a bit better. But they’re just getting accustomed to movement, and you’re slowly trying to wean them but at the same time, teach them a skill. Every baby has the ability to sleep without you. They just have to learn that they can’t right. And sometimes we got to dig a little deeper to get them to recognize they actually possess the skill in order for them to have the confidence and the practice in that repetition that they actually can do it.
Okay.
Yeah, you absolutely can swaddle for an app if you’re swaddling. You can swallow for naps you can swallow for bedtime. swaddles depends on the age, right? I typically get rid of the traditional arms in swaddle around eight weeks, because I find that one from a safety standpoint, babies can actually start to roll at eight weeks. And if their hands are in and they roll, you want to make sure because their neck is not super strong, but they have their hands to be able to lift them up. The next thing that you want to look at with swaddles is the startle reflex, boom, boom, boom, my baby jerks and wakes up every 20 minutes because they’re startling, that startle is going to be with them till sometimes up to six months. So things like the magic Merlin is one of my favorites. That is a great swaddle transition product, because it still affords them freedom of mobility, they can scoot around the crib, they can still stuck on their fingers, they can still be comforted with that startle reflex. So the suit is going to kind of protect them from doing that. And they still have the ability to kick their legs, kick their arms and ultimately keeps them on their back, which we know is back as best until such time as they can roll. When they start rolling in something like the Merlin is typically around six, seven months, then you can transition to something like a wearable blanket or just straight pajamas. By then the startle reflex is gone. The sleeps skill set is built really strong. If you’ve been watching with me for these past couple months and kind of working together with me here, and then
you will be, you’ll be good.
And then you’ll have a great sleeper but ever. A lot of people say and some sleep consultants, frankly like some of my girlfriends will even tell you like get rid of that swaddle right away, we don’t use it, we don’t need it, we’re gonna go right to without it. Frankly, they’re helpful, like a swaddle is not a prop. It’s a support for natural kind of adjustments and such. So I’m a huge believer in swaddles and there’s a lot of different kinds, if your baby was in the, in the womb like this, they’re gonna hate having their arms swaddled, but basically, like, if they’re sleeping like this, you’re gonna find that they probably want something like the love to dream where their hands are up, right, if they spent the whole time down, you’re gonna find they like their hands down. I would come into my son every morning have his fingers like this poking out of that Velcro swaddle and I used to laugh because it probably took them 10 minutes every day to get those arms up to get in there just to get access to his fingers. Soon as I moved them to the Merlin, he was able to access his fingers but the startle didn’t bother him and he slept much, you know much better and this was before I got into becoming a sleep coach. He was the reason that I did. So okay, um, daycare moves one year olds to one nap. bonus tips here are right, so Kara’s daycare is moving the one year old to one nap tips, okay, so let them do it. Okay, they are professionals, they do it all the time, they do it all the time with my kids, they did it, it is the most beautiful thing that you can have happen at 12 months of age, or when they transition them to the one year old room. They’re going to do it over the course of a week. And what it’s going to look like is every day, they’re going to push that map out further and further. Right, they may start at like 11 o’clock until 1130, the end goal is going to be a 1230 to 1245 nap. When you move to one nap a day at daycare stay with one nap a day at home. I know it is super easy to be like no, they’re showing signs at 10 o’clock, I’m gonna put them down, you just confused Baby, you got to force him to get to one nap a day and then stay there. And in a matter of about a week, I’ll give you two weeks just so you know, there’s some fluctuation, right? They’re going to get into that routine. And they’ll start to then consolidate at 1230 to about three o’clock nap. So just be consistent with it. If you have a day where they go down at 1230. And they’re up at two and you’re like, well now what do I do? Just put them down for early for bed that night, right? If you go for a walk at like 430, and they fall asleep for a half hour in the carriage, that’s fine too, not the end of the world or they fall asleep on the drive home from daycare, also not the end of the world. Just wake them up when you get home, that power nap will be enough to take the edge off and then you can still put them to bed around seven o’clock for kind of that reasonable put down, you know, just from an overall standpoint. So hopefully that’s helpful. Charisse right, is it common for a five month old to be waking up much more frequently at night, she was a good sleeper and went through the four month sleep regression. And since then has gotten worse, she’s waking up every half hour to one hour at night. So there’s a couple things you’re going to want to do. Well, we know the first is you’re going to want to stay tuned to the rest of the week, because we’re going to dive into this a little bit more around overnight sleep the rest of the week, the other is going to be Stay tuned to understand some of the different things where you know from working together standpoint, there’s some awesome new things I’m going to be announcing later this week around a new kind of program. And some different things that I’m doing that may be of interest to all of you watching out here who are looking for help. Typically at four months, let me just explain what happens because the form of sleep regression is super common, right? At four months, what happens, maybe goes from two stages of sleep 100% of their sleep is broken into 50%, deep 50% light sleep. That is the first three months of life. Somewhere between three and four months, they’re going to change into stages of sleep, their circadian rhythm develops, their body starts preparing melatonin around eight weeks, they start to create what we refer to as the body
clock.
Okay. At that time, they’re also more acutely aware of how they’ve been put down. And what happens. So the four month sleep regression is kind of this perfect storm of biological things changing, right? And the habits that we’ve built those first few weeks, whereas like nursing to sleep wasn’t a big deal. Rocking to sleep wasn’t a big deal, you could ninja transfer them down and they would stay asleep for four hours. They are now going to be more aware that you are a ninja transferring their position shifts and they pop up Hey, I’m still weak where right and then you pick them up, rock them again do the same thing try to ninja transfer. That is typically because there’s a habit associated in their elvina that they’re struggling with, right? nursing, rocking, bouncing, you’re doing something with the word to sleep in it that they’re looking for, and every sign they’re waking in those cycles through the night. They’re looking for that from a support standpoint to get back down. Okay, so definitely stay tuned because we’re going to dive into that much more this week. All right, I think I got all the questions. I’m not sure how many people are still out there live. Tell me what you think. Tell me what you’re loving. Let me check here. What else do we have coming up this week? Because there’s lots of good stuff tomorrow is early morning. wakings. I am most excited. I’m so Tomorrow’s early morning wakings we’re gonna chat about that because it is a struggle that many people have. So make sure you tune into day three of the save your sanity sleep workshop here. I look forward to it. I hope you’re enjoying these sessions. They’re meant to be informative. Again, my name is Courtney Zentz. I found a tiny transitions. That six years ago, I’ve worked with 1000s of families all over the world, and I love helping you. So I’m so appreciative that you are here today.
Hopefully, this
has been helpful. Go enjoy some sunshine, please let me know if you have any questions. If you’re watching this on the replay. do post your questions in the comments. And I’m gonna be doing a bonus q&a session this week, to make sure that I get all of those questions answered after we’re done. And anything I didn’t get to today. I will answer later this week. Thanks so much. Have a great afternoon, everybody. Bye for now. Hold on. One more thing before you go. As a valued listener of the kids sleep show. I want to help you build a great sleeper not just in the times you’re listening to the show. But all day every day. Every week of the year. I have a new Facebook group called slumber Made Simple. It’s a place to gather with other parents looking for sleep support, laughs and the latest in sleep research, to build a family that is rested and at their best day in and day out. If you want to be part of the community where you can get free sleep support, weekly training sessions, unbelievable content and so much more. Head on over to tiny transitions.com forward slash community that’s tiny transitions.com forward slash community or head over to Facebook and search slumber Made Simple. drop me a note and let me know when you join. I can’t wait to see you there.