Sleep-Train your baby in just 7 days, “What is Sleep Training!”
Sleep training is a process of developing a healthy sleep routine for infants, mainly during six to eighteen months of age. Sleep training can be a stressful experience for both babies and parents. The challenging part is for the parents to accept that sleep training is essential for the baby and not emotionally damaging. BabyWink focuses on proven techniques that help you discover your baby’s body clock and combine that with techniques to sleep train your baby in just 7 days.
There are two basic sleep training techniques, namely graduated extinction and bedtime fading. Both of these techniques can be implemented simultaneously or in different phases.
Graduated extinction (Babywink’s Easy Dream Technique) is a technique in which you have to allow your baby to cry for a short interval of time. Parents often feel the urge to rush to their child as soon as they hear them cry. By doing this they make their child dependent on them and their baby never learns how to self-soothe.
Bedtime Fading (‘Babywink’s Push Sleep Technique) is a more “gentle” no tears, no stress program that allows you to gradually instill a nightly sleep schedule in just one week. After several nights, you move your baby’s bedtime 15 minutes earlier and continue that until your child falls asleep at the desired time.
Doctors suggest parents take up sleep training “ the earlier the better”. If the child is taught to self-soothe and is sleep trained at an early age it will have no effect on the attachment with it’s parents.
Easy Dream (Graduated Extinction)
According to a study by Dr. Michael Gradisar, graduated extinction is a very useful technique. It is helpful in child development. Contrary to popular belief, it has positive effects on the health of the baby. Sleep deprivation and sleep issues can become a hindrance in the development of your child.
If you are concerned about the right way of using this technique, Dr. Michael Gradisar explains that when your baby wakes up at night and begins crying, let your child cry for a while before you go check on it. While you do go to your child, rather than picking it up just put your hand over your baby and make calming sounds. After that leave your baby again for a while. Similarly, repeat this process every time your baby wakes up while adding some time to the initial checking time. If you follow this process for a week, by the end of it, your baby will be trained to self-soothe and cry back to sleep. These techniques do not promote letting your baby cry for a long time or leaving your child alone if it needs you. It only asks you to leave your baby alone for a few minutes.
Research has shown that this technique doesn’t have any effect on the emotional health of your baby and doesn’t play any role in detaching it from it’s parents. Effective sleep training ensures mental and physical well-being for the baby as well as peaceful nights for the parents. This technique promotes the health of the whole family which is why it is recommended by doctors.
Dr. Michael Gradisar while commenting on results of his clinical trial says, “there was no evidence that “crying it out” was stressful for babies, instead it gave peace of mind surrounding bedtime”.
If you’re not comfortable using sleep training methods that involve Controlled Crying but also don’t want your baby to wake up 5 to 6 times each night, then Babywink’s Bedtime Fading Technique — Push Sleep, is the right fit for you and your baby. According to Dr. Gradisar, “Bedtime Fading is the more preferred technique parents choose when provided both options. It’s a gentle technique that works quickly.”
Push Sleep (Bedtime Fading)
Baby sleep problems are one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences of parenthood. According to Sleep-night Survey 2010, parents lose an average of 6th months of sleep in the baby’s first 2 years.
In line with this, a recent study led by Dr. Michael Gradisar and clinical psychologists at Flinders University in Australia, have found that gentle sleep training methods like Bedtime Fading are among the most effective behavioural therapies in treating bedtime struggles and night wakings in babies.
Our Push Sleep method helps you improve your baby’s sleep cycle by gently delaying his/her current bedtime. Babywink Sleep Diary enables you to log your baby’s current sleep patterns. These patterns allow Babywink to capture your child’s individual Body Clock and to create a personalized sleep schedule. Try out our Free Sleep Analyzer and start recording your baby’s own sleeping patterns.
Babywink’s Sleep training methods suggest that children consistently exposed to predictable and pleasant bedtime routines are easier to settle and fall asleep quicker.
Promoting calmness
Babywink also offers bedtime activities that promote calmness and can help your baby prepare for sleep. Engaging your baby in these bedtime activities about 20 minutes before their individual bedtime teaches them to associate these activities as cues for sleep. These activities are also a means to speed up the homeostatic process in babies that are responsible for building sleep pressure.
An increase in the homeostatic pressure pushes the baby harder toward sleep the longer they stay awake. As a result, your baby sleeps deeply and for a longer period with fewer night wakings.
Sleep homeostasis is naturally fast in babies, therefore it is easier to build sleep pressure by indulging them in a consistent bedtime routine. As soon as your baby starts to relate the bedtime rituals with falling asleep, you can gradually shift their bedtime to your desired time.
Whatever technique you choose to go with, the Babywink App will be able to help you through a schedule that works best for your little one. For more information on Michael’s sleep techniques please visit the Babywink website or read our article which explains the app in more detail here.
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