The Baby Sleep Book: How to help your baby to sleep and have a restful night - Martha Sears

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a bed hog

       Our thirteen-month-old has been sharing our bed, and up until now it has been great. Lately he has started moving around while he sleeps. It’s like he thinks he owns the bed. My partner and I are starting to feel the effects of a third person in our bed. Help!

      Funny – and not so funny – things happen when baby shares your bed. Three familiar, though sometimes annoying, sleep positions that family-bed babies seem to enjoy are the heat-seeking missile, the starfish, and the H-sleeper.

      The “heat-seeking missile” snuggles comfortably into a parental armpit or a breast and refuses to back off. Like a mother hen, you instinctively put your wing (your arm) over the top of your baby’s head. He may want to stay in touch with, or actually attached to, your warm body all night long. Baby sleeps great, but you may not. No worries, though, about this baby falling out of bed.

      With the “starfish”, baby sprawls his arms and legs out as far as they can go, sometimes stretching out so much they seem to force you right off the bed. Starfish sometimes become thrashers.

      The H-sleeper enjoys physical contact with both parents. He falls asleep between the parents, parallel with their bodies, and then strategically rotates himself until he is perpendicular to the parents, resting his head on one parent and his feet on the other. Isn’t that nice? He loves you both! Again, baby sleeps comfortably that way all night – but you may not, especially if you’re the one getting kicked in the ribs.

      Baby’s head in mother’s armpit.

      Usually when an infant or toddler starts taking over the bed in these positions, dads announce, “It’s time for a big boy bed!” Is Dad right?

      Here are your options. If everybody is sleeping reasonably well, you may be able to laugh this off and hope it’s passing phase. Yet if baby’s nighttime frolicking means baby is the only one who is sleeping well, you need to take some action:

       “Draw the line.” Put a line of pillows between you and your toddler. He gets one-third of the bed space; Mum and Dad get the rest.

       Try Dr Jim Sears’ trick he calls “staying in your own lane”: Jonathon sprawled across the bed with arms stretched out forming the letter H with the three of us. When he was around two years old, I was watching a swimming competition and I was paying attention to the lane dividers that kept the swimmers from swimming on top of each other and it gave me an idea. What if I could keep Jonathon in his own lane in the bed? We had tried pillows but they just took up a lot of room and it was hard to have an entire pillow between him and us. Even though we had a king-size bed they just didn’t seem to do the trick. When I saw these lane dividers in the swimming pool I thought, “hmm, something like that might work” so I went downstairs into our garage and noticed that we had some of those water woggles, long thin cylinders made of firm foam. Using ones that had hollow centres, I slid broom handles in to add some rigidity. After Jonathon fell asleep I placed one on each side of him, each one running the length of the bed, and this worked beautifully. If he started to roll over or rotate sideways the foam was firm enough to keep him from going over it. These were perfectly safe because they were rigid enough so that he didn’t become entangled and light enough that he wouldn’t be hurt if he somehow slipped under. They were also easy to store under the bed when not in use. One point: I don’t suggest using old woggles that have been sitting in the pool in the sun for months because the foam tends to break down and be quite flaky and makes a mess. Go out and get some new ones.

       To give everyone more space, put a twin bed next to your queen- or king-size bed.

       Take bed sprawling as a sign that it’s time to start transitioning baby to his own bed. Dad may be right! (See chapter 7, “Moving Out!”)

       Fear of monsters

       Our three-year-old wakes up yelling about the “monsters” in his room. I try to tell him there really aren’t any monsters and that Daddy has chased the monsters away. Is this the best way to deal with this? I don’t want him to believe that there really are monsters in his room.

      Children’s dreams distort reality, and young children have difficulty knowing what’s real and what’s pretend. Therefore, if they see a monster in their dream, they may believe that the monster is real. There are two schools of thought on monsters and other imaginary creatures. The usual suggestion is to play along and just get rid of the monsters. Or, try to teach your child that monsters are fun and friendly. When your child wakes up frightened about them, you search the bedroom and say things like “no monsters anymore”, “monsters went bye-bye”, “Daddy scared the monsters away”. If he worries at bedtime, you can make a show of ordering the monsters out of the bedroom and reassure your child that they’re not coming back. While we are sceptical of this approach, for some children it does work. The problem is, it’s not true. When you chase monsters away, you’re reinforcing the child’s concern about monsters, and since you say those monsters are indeed real, they can come back.

      Here’s a better alternative: tell your child the truth. Monsters don’t exist. They are pretend. If your child is going through a “seeing-monsters-in-his-sleep” stage, avoid scary TV or cartoons that could be distorted into monsters in his dreams. Your child trusts you. If you say there are no monsters, he will believe you. You might also talk about other things besides monsters that are only pretend, to help your child learn to tell the difference between what’s real (a family pet, elephants at the zoo) and what’s not (characters in cartoons, such as Monsters Inc., animals in story books who talk).

       Nighttime anxiety

       Our three-year-old had been sleeping well on his own for a few months, but now he’s waking up and coming into our room at night. He seems really upset. How can I help him get back to sleeping through the night in his own room?

      Realize your child has a need. He is growing and developing, and new fears and worries are going to come along. Sometimes they will disturb his sleep, and you are right in thinking that he needs your help to cope with his nighttime anxiety.

      Why is your child suddenly feeling insecure about nighttime? There are many possible reasons. Here are just a few:

       Imagination. As kids get older they develop the mental ability to imagine that there is a monster in the closet, a giant hand under the bed (that was Dr Bob’s fear as a child), or something looming in the darkness outside. They don’t necessarily have to see these things first on TV or hear about them in stories. Kids can create these fears all on their own.

       Separation anxiety. This occurs not only around nine months of age, it can also show up again between age 2 and 3. Your happy sleeper becomes anxious because you are not there. Your child needs your physical presence as reassurance that he is safe because you aren’t going anywhere.

       Life changes. Changes in a child’s life, such as starting preschool nursery or childcare, moving, or having a younger sibling can trigger some temporary nighttime anxiety. Changes in the family’s life, such as in a parent’s work schedule, can also affect how well a child sleeps.

      Here are some ideas you can try to help your child learn to sleep through the night again:

      what’s on your child’s mind?

      Do you think that your awake-at-night child is purposefully trying to manipulate you? Do you think he is lying in bed thinking, “Hmmm. I know Mum and Dad are having a relaxing evening. How can I disrupt them? I know, I’ll get up and go ask for a drink of water. I know they hate that!” If your child is really thinking like that at the age of three, then good luck. But we really don’t think kids are that devious (well, not until they are older).

      When your child gets out

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