CASE STUDY: Short naps, late bedtime, frequent night waking easily improved!

Florence's sleep story...

Mum Karen was really struggling to get Florence in to any sort of nap routine. They were spending hours trying to get Florence to sleep as soon as she yawned so had gone back to just letting her nap as and when she wanted to. Unfortunately this wasn't very often, so Florence ended up a very grumpy baby by the evening!

Karen would try to get Florence down for the night around 8pm but it took some serious battling and she often wouldn't fall asleep until around midnight. As if Karen wasn't exhausted enough, Florence was then waking 3-4 times most nights.

We were exhausted. We dreaded bedtimes and wondered when we were ever going to eat a meal together again or have our evenings back! I wasn’t really enjoying motherhood at that point so was looking for something to help.

In the middle of the night, during one of Florence's many hours awake, Karen was feeling very bleak, but saw an advert for Little Ones on Facebook which gave her some hope. She decided to go "all in" and purchased all of our Sleep Programs from 0-3 years.

After reading through our Newborn Program, Karen learned that babies change very, very quickly in the first few months of their lives and their sleep needs also change this quickly. Little Florence was being put to bed for her naps before she was totally ready, which is why she was so difficult to settle to sleep. She also hadn't had enough awake time to allow her to then nap for a decent amount of time.

This is a really common situation that many new parents find themselves in because the generic advice out there recommends awake times that are far too short and don't account for the rapid growth in babies this age. Karen had no idea that Florence's unsettled evenings and frequent night waking were due to her awake times and nap structure during the day.

Once Karen was able to stretch out her baby's awake times as per our Sleep Program, Florence started napping much better straight away and it positively impacted her night-time sleep too. This change happened in a matter of days and without any sort of harsh or regimented "sleep training".

It was amazing! Within 2 days Florence went to sleep at 7 PM, I did a dream feed and then she only woke once in the night. We had our evenings back! She would go down for naps without a battle and then during her awake periods, was a much happier baby. She struggled with the awake times in the Program initially and was a bit grumpy when it was getting close to nap times, but that quickly improved.

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Florence is now 5 months old and is sleeping through the night from 7 PM - 7AM with a late dream feed. Because Florence was being offered sleep at the right times and in the right conditions, this made it easy for her to learn to fall asleep independently when she was ready, which meant she sailed through the 4 month sleep regression. She now has the sleep skills she needs to see her through years and years of good sleeping!

I can put her in her sleeping bag, dark room, white noise on, put her down and walk out and 9 times out of 10 she’ll just go to sleep! She’s a very contented baby now. What's more we have our evenings back and life is so much better now we are all getting a good night sleep! I also find the days much easier with some structure in them, and so does Florence. My favourite thing about the Program is how comprehensive it is, so if things don’t go to plan you know what to do instead. We’ve recommended it to all our friends!

If you'd like to achieve great sleep for your baby now, and into the future, download our Little Ones App to get instant access to our trusted Sleep Programs that have helped over 300,000 families worldwide. Within our Sleep Programs you'll find evolving, age-appropriate sleep and feed schedules, detailed troubleshooting notes for when things don't go to plan, gentle settling methods and more, that will help to make sleep a positive experience in your household.