Crying Going to Sleep?

In the initial weeks most babies will feed and sleep and cuddle off in your arms. You will see them grow quickly from this stage and notice they become more alert for longer stretches, start focusing on your face and expressions and begin to smile.

When they are very tiny and newborn, they tend to respond to gentle rocking, the rhythm of a gentle pat, or the gentle pressure of one firm hand on the top of their head and the other on their tummy or clasping over the bottom of their feet.

As she grows older, some parents look to practices of teaching their baby sleep routines and the art of falling asleep by themselves without a cuddle or a feed.
Differently, we help you to work with your baby's biology.

Whatever your baby's natural predisposition is to the amount of sleep she takes; it is important to remember that the day sleep needs of babies vary widely - and that this is perfectly normal. If your little one is crying and wailing against efforts designed to get her to self-settle in her cot, she will be in a terribly worked up state that isn't at all conducive to falling into contented sleep.

The Possums approach to supporting sleep is grounded in biology and science. It invites parents to take off the lens that 'sleep training' is something they need to do with their children and replace it with an appreciation of the role that sensory nourishment and an infant's circadian rhythm has with how much day and night sleep she is wanting and taking.

Parents often turn to sleep schooling for their own sanity and can find themselves influenced by social media to think that there is something wrong with their child if she can't self-settle and sleep for longer than a catnap during the day. The suggestion that a parent should use various forms of controlled crying with an aim to produce sleep, fails to appreciate how sleep is best achieved in babies and leaves many parents feeling like failures.

We understand that self-care is vitally important for a parent, and we do not underestimate a parents need for this. It is often what is behind the drive to look at sleep training as an option - hoping to finally build in some 'me- time' into the day while baby sleeps. But we encourage you differently to build a village around you to support you in this, rather than look to re-engineering your baby's sleep habits to try to make them work for you. It can be a recipe for tormented heartache for you both and leave you both dialed up and out of sorts.

Instead, we invite you to work with your baby's biology from the start. From as soon as you feel well enough after the birth.

Plan to spend time building sensory enrichment for your baby into every day. Stimulation of the fast-developing brain and nervous system is enormously satisfying to a baby and part of daytime sleep, which they eventually learn is different to nighttime sleep. The days will be far more manageable and easier for you, if you go about doing things that interest you, such as socialising, exercising and shopping. Trust that sleep will happen for your baby at various points through the day when her sleep pressure is high enough.

We are not suggesting that your baby can't have a luxurious day sleep in their cot at home - of course she can - if that is what suits your day and comes naturally for her to do. The difference arises when managing for this becomes the Holy Grail of each day, absorbing a parent's energy.

Just know that sensory nourishment outside the four walls of the house, combined with light falling on the retina of the eye during the day (and through closed eyelids when asleep), along with frequent flexible feeding as your baby naps and wakes, are key elements to contentment and achieving good stretches of sleep at night.