Blog Written By: Heidi Skudder one of the UK’s leading early years parent coaches.
At Glow Dreaming and at Positively Parenthood, we are massively aligned on the idea that routines help build structure for our little ones, which in turn helps them to understand sleep is on its way. This has a positive knock-on impact to sleep, and even research tells us that bedtime routines are an effective way of boosting sleep. This may look something like a sleepy feed, a few stories, some songs and then switching on their pink noise and night light, perhaps even with some aromatherapy thrown in. The Glow dreaming products are a perfect bedtime routine accompaniment.
Enhancing Baby's Sleep: The Benefits of Pink Noise with Glow Sleep Easy
As well as their environment, pink noise can be a brilliant tool in helping your little one sleep for longer, by masking out other sounds in their surrounding environment. Perhaps your heating clicks on at 5am, or the noise of the traffic starts to pick up. Whether you are at home, or away from home (and perhaps often even more crucially away from home with new sounds to tune in to), the Glow Sleep Easy (and travel version), play pink noise that will help your baby to settle and sleep without interruptions. As a sleep coach, the introduction of pink noise to a baby’s environment can make a positive difference to their sleep!
Balancing Baby's Nighttime Needs: The Role of Light and Feeding with Glow Sleep Easy
Whilst we are always wanting to improve on sleep and get longer night-time stretches, we also want to balance that out with the fact that babies do still need to feed in the night time and depending on their age, regularly too. The light a baby is exposed to can also impact their sleep during the night, and we know from research that red light is the best kind of light to have as a feeding light (red light is linked to higher levels of melatonin production – our sleepy hormone), or to help you see in the night when looking after your baby. Try replacing phone lights, or white bulbs with a red glow, such as the Glow Sleep Easy. Not only will it help baby, but not having your phone light on to see will also help you fall back to sleep more easily too!
Unlocking Better Nights: Harnessing Optimal Awake Windows for Your Baby's Sleep
During the day time, a baby who has optimum naps and awake windows (how long baby stays awake from their last wake up, to then going down again), can make a huge difference to their night times. For this reason, we recommend that parents have a look into awake windows and have a go at practicing them with baby. This sometimes means putting baby down for a sleep before you think they are ready, but we find that awake windows are a brilliant way of helping improve sleep for so many of our clients. Click here for a free guide to awake windows.
Nurturing Healthy Sleep Patterns: Understanding Your Baby's Circadian Rhythm
Your baby is born with no real sense of time or night and day, and this can take time to develop. Our circadian rhythm is our body’s internal clock that starts to show us when it is time to get up, eat, and function throughout the daytime and this starts to develop in the early months of their life. Once the circadian rhythm is fully developed, your baby will find it much easier to differentiate between day and night, as well as to sleep more soundly too. When our body has patterns and knows when we usually do things, it can really help aid sleep! Getting out and about in the fresh air is a brilliant way of helping shape your baby’s internal rhythm. Natural exposure to light is crucial and a walk in the morning or later afternoon can not only be great for your mental health as a parent, but also help with your little ones sleeping too!
With my extensive experience and hands on experience working with parents, I know full well how difficult it can be when you have a baby who is not sleeping. Sleep really does impact your ability to function as a parent, as well as your mental health and overall enjoyment of parenting too.
Rest assured that sleep is possible for every baby, and if you are struggling to work out the root cause of your little ones broken sleep and difficult nights, try some of these to see if they help move things in the right direction.
