Teaching expectant parents about routines is another important part of antenatal and early parenting education and preparation. It may not be so much about actually teaching your expectant parents about routines but rather helping them explore normal newborn development. Helping them to get their expectations in order.
New parents are often asked by friends and family as well as strangers “Is he a good baby?”, “Does she sleep through the night?” or “Are your twins in a routine?”… All these questions and wrong expectations may have your clients worried that their baby should be behaving differently and may put additional pressure on the parents.
It is important to remember that sleep is a developmental process, just like learning to walk, eat or talk, and that sleep needs will change throughout our lifetimes.
So how can we teach expectant or new parents about newborn sleep development?
While, newborn babies may sleep for 18 ish hours a day, they often sleep for only 2-3 hours at a time. During the first year of their life, overall sleep duration falls to around 15 hours, while the majority of sleep becomes concentrated during night-time as the circadian rhythms develop.
I use this graphic which can be found on https://www.basisonline.org.uk/normal-sleep-development/ to help expectant parents explore normal infant sleep development.
I use this along with my 24 hours with a newborn activity to help expectant parents to explore normal infant sleep, see how it may be unpredictable at first and then move on to solutions and management for themselves, rather than managing baby’s behaviour. Each group gets some information material from BASIS, The Lullaby Trust & NHS to act as guidance/supporting materials.
As solutions, I encourage them to introduce a bedtime routine early where they do certain things every evening at “bedtime”. It’s about the process of putting their baby to sleep rather than the time of day and the duration of the sleep at that time. It is about teaching their baby to recognise the difference between day and night.
Parents could try to introduce some of these things for every night-time sleep:
- brushing their teeth
- dressing them in their pyjamas or sleepsuit
- giving your baby a massage
- giving them a bath
- reading or telling a short story
- singing them a lullaby
- saying “night night” after placing their baby into their bed
Eventually, these things will help their baby to recognise that this is the time for the “long sleep”. I do emphasis that night waking is normal and very important during the early months. Babies wake most frequently at night during the first 12 weeks of their life when then the time between feeds will start to increase to more adult-friendly times…
Other resources and images I use during my classes:
and these images to demonstrate that order is not always the best way 😉
More images like this are available here: https://azhari.typepad.com/just_another_serendipity/2013/05/rearranging-the-world-chaos-vs-order.html
In summary, help expectant parents to have more realistic expectations and explore coping mechanisms for sleep deprivation!
Sources and further reading:
- BASIS: https://www.basisonline.org.uk/
- Lullaby Trust: https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk/
- NHS: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/caring-for-a-newborn/helping-your-baby-to-sleep/
- Raising Children: https://raisingchildren.net.au/newborns/sleep/settling-routines/newborn-sleep-routines
- Sarah Ockwell-Smith: https://sarahockwell-smith.com/tag/baby-sleep/