Do you have a young
child or infant with erratic sleep patterns that keeps
you awake at night? If so, your family will benefit from
a sleep consultation with Marsha Podd, R.N., C.L.E., who
will create a personalized sleep plan for your child.
When children arrive on the planet, they
have no concept of day or night. It is the parents job
to teach a child the cycles of awake time and sleep time.
Ideally, this starts when the baby is just a few days
old. Creating a rhythm of sleeping, feeding and activity
from the very beginning can lay the ground work for good
sleep patterns life long.
Depending on the temperament of the child
and parents, sometimes this is an easy job, other times
more challenging.
When a baby reaches over 12 pounds in
weight and 2-3 months old, they become physically capable
of sleeping longer stretches at night without a feeding.
With the guidance of its parents, it learns to sleep 6-8
hours at a time (hopefully at night!). By 3-6 months of
age a baby learns to sleep through the night (8-12 hours).
As a baby grows and reaches about 4 months
old, the average number of hours spent sleeping during
the day is about 3-4, and at night about 10-12 (uninterrupted).
As the baby grows mentally and physically, parents may
encounter challenges as baby’s sleep can sometimes
become quite fitful.
The older a child is, the more set in
their ways they become and thus sleep training becomes
more and more challenging. Parents must sometimes deal
with temper tantrums and breath holding, vomiting, etc.
Kids will do almost anything to stay up and interact with
mom and dad.
Experts say that good sleeping skills
are learned in infancy and early childhood. Obtaining
good guidance in infancy helps parents establish good
sleep patterns for their child. You can avoid problems
later when children transition from sleeping in a crib,
to sleeping in their own beds.
If you need guidance and support with your child's sleeping,
please contact me for more information on my personalized
consultations with parents. Email me at Marshapodd@aol.com
or call me at (415) 883-4442.
