Middle of the Night Crying

⏳ Do you go to your child in the middle of the night as soon as you hear them cry? 😭

⏳ If not, how ⏰ long do you wait before you go in and how do you know you need to go in?

⏳ If so, have you ever waited several minutes before going to them?

⏳ All of us wake up at night in between sleep cycles, however briefly, and we usually don't remember it. But sometimes we actually wake up, look at the time, roll over and go back to bed. 🛌

⏳ Our kids do the same thing and while they're learning how to put themselves back to sleep in between sleep cycles they might cry out for a second or cry for up to 10 minutes.

⏳ I didn't fully put this into action until my third child was 5 months old. I thought to myself, "what if I just wait a few minutes?" I was so tired, he was nursing 🤱🏼all night since I had returned to work and I had just put him in his own room in hopes of getting more sleep. One day it just occured to me that I could wait and see. And I did. And he put himself back to sleep in less than 5 minutes.

⏳ Now I help parents coach their kids how to develop healthy sleep habits and this is one of the biggest pieces of parenting advice I give them. Anytime after 4 months you can really wait 5-10 minutes to see if your child will go back to sleep. If you are nursing and you have already fed 1-2 times then give this a shot because it can often, not always, work. And as your kids gets older you can keep trying this strategy because as they learn to connect sleep cycles they get better at it, so even if it doesn't work at first, go back to it every couple weeks to just see if they have matured enough to do it.