Tresillian tips for sleep and settling

Sleep deprivation and parenting all too often go hand in hand but one expert believes parents are being set up to fail with false promises of baby sleep training and misguided beliefs that magic routines will see their infants sleeping through the night.

Registered nurse, midwife and author of The Tresillian Sleep Book Fran Chavasse says too many people mistakenly believe that children can learn to sleep at any age.

“Children don’t learn to sleep. Sleep is a developmental process like walking and talking and it happens over time,” Fran says.

“Because it’s a development process for example, you wouldn’t expect a four month old baby to just get up and walk, you’d expect certain things to occur before they walk, like they’d roll, and they’d pull themselves up on their hands and knees and they’d rock around a bit. Then they’d go step by step. Sleep is a bit the same.”

Fran says parents are bombarded by information and false promises, but that she finds the most helpful thing is explaining sleep as a developmental process.

“There isn’t one size fits all. They do develop in their own time,” Fran says.

“It’s actually a team effort. It’s not just the baby, it is both the baby and parents that have to work this out together.

“Unfortunately parents often start out with expectations too high because of the plethora of information.”

Evaluate your sources of information

Fran encourages parents to look carefully at the source of the information being provided or the evidence behind the service being offered.

She says that sometimes information and evidence may be outdated.

“Things like controlled crying - that evidence is from a really long time ago when they said that you can condition children to do certain things. That is quite true. You can.

“You can condition children to learn to do stuff. You can condition them to stop crying.

“These methods are not about conditioning them to sleep. We are conditioning them to stop crying.

“So what they are doing is called an extinguishing method. They are behavioural methods. They are evidence-based but they are old evidence.

“What Tresillian does is use current evidence. From early brain development and attachment theory what we understand now from new and emerging evidence is that it is better to respond to your baby’s crying and do something about it because crying is a baby’s way of saying ‘I need your help’.

“It’s better to help your baby and do something about it. In sleep research it also suggests it’s good for babies to do a little bit of settling themselves, so it’s a fine balance. That’s what the book is about – bringing together the latest sleep research, attachment research and early brain development.”

Tresillian is Australia’s oldest parenting support group and has a team of nurse-specialists. It offers families guidance in the early years of their child’s life with practical advice on sleep, feeding, toddler behaviour and parents’ emotional wellbeing.

The Tresillian Sleep Book covers sleep and settling from birth to preschool, sharing simple ways to help babies establish sleep cycles and support changing sleep needs as they grow.

Responsive settling

The Tresillian Sleep Book is built on a foundation of ‘responsive settling’. Responsive settling is a way to sensitively respond and support each stage of a child’s sleep development, using a range of age-appropriate techniques.

Fran says the responsive technique is meeting the child’s evolutionary need for comfort and safety when they ask for help from a parent.

“We are very much focused on helping parents understand things form the baby’s point of view, but we also need to think about how we can best help parents get their needs met when we know they are so tired. We try to balance everybody’s needs.”

Twins and higher order multiples

Dealing with twins or higher multiples brings further complications to the same challenges for parents.

Fran suggests attempting to synchronise their routines for sleeping and feeding.

“Of course if you have one unsettled twin you are going to have to manage the unsettled twin, but parents of twins report that the settled twin is usually able to get used to the unsettled twin and often doesn’t wake,” Fran says.

“If you have two unsettled twins it can be so difficult for parents, but hopefully you have someone who can help you. The first 12 months are quite tricky.”

Siblings

Fran says siblings present another sleep challenge for which parents need to prepare.

Toddlers need to be emotionally prepared for the arrival of a new baby.

“When you bring a new baby home it will be fairly exciting for a little bit, but after a while they’ll be ready to send the baby back.  And fair enough, they didn’t ask for the baby to be there.

“They might feel left out and rejected, so it’s important to make them feel included and also be able to begin to think as a mother about ‘the three of us’. It’s quite a skill to begin to keep two children in your mind at one time.

“If you’ve got room it’s probably good to transition the older one to their own bed and room. This is best done during the pregnancy - the celebration of their own room and own big bed.

“Those recognitions and celebrations of ‘big girl’ and ‘big boy’ things are important activities that need to occur so the baby can be in the parents’ room in their cot if possible.

“The latest Red Nose SUDI guidelines say the baby should sleep in the parent’s room for the first six to 12 months.”

Colic and reflux

Fran says many parents are troubled in the early weeks of their baby’s life by colic and reflux.

“Colic and reflux occur and start about the three week mark. It just so happens that that is the same week that baby’s start to cry,” Fran says.

“At about three to four weeks we have what is called the normal development crying curve. Baby’s start to cry and it increases gradually until about eight weeks when it reaches a peak and tapers off at three to four months.

“Coincidentally we get a lot of colic and reflux during this time. That crying is when everybody gets diagnosed with colic and gets colic or reflux remedies.

“So there’s a lot of debate around how effective these remedies are. The remedies appear to work because they seem to be effective just as the crying tapers off anyway.

“In the book I talk about the normal developmental crying and ways to soothe a baby that’s crying and what is and isn’t effective.”