Why Some Babies Need More Help to Sleep Than Others
Why Some Babies Need More Help to Sleep Than Others
You know that baby in your mothers’ group who gets put into the cot, rolls over and goes to sleep?
And yours needs a feed, three laps of the hallway, a cuddle and possibly a small negotiation before even considering it?
It’s very easy to assume you’ve done something differently.
Did I feed to sleep too often? Should I have put them down awake from the beginning? Did all those contact naps create this?
Probably not.
Babies differ enormously in temperament, sensitivity, sleep needs and how much support they need to regulate and settle. Some babies seem naturally able to move between sleep cycles without calling for a parent very often. Others are much more likely to let you know they’re awake and want some help getting back to sleep.
Neither baby is doing sleep “better”.
They’re just different babies.
Some babies wake quietly. Others make sure you know about it.
All babies wake during the night.
What differs is what happens next.
Some babies briefly wake, move around, suck their fingers, roll their head or make a few noises and then drift back to sleep without their parents ever knowing they were awake.
Others wake and immediately signal for help.
Researchers have sometimes described these patterns as self-soothing versus signalling, although in real life babies don’t necessarily fall neatly into one category or the other. Their behaviour can also change with age, development, illness, teething and what else is going on in their world.
So if your friend tells you her baby “sleeps through”, it doesn’t necessarily mean her baby never wakes. They may simply be very good at getting themselves back to sleep without announcing it.
Your baby needing you isn’t evidence you’ve created a bad habit
Feeding, rocking, cuddling or holding your baby to sleep doesn’t automatically create a sleep problem.
Young babies commonly need parent help to settle, and feeding and cuddling are normal ways of helping babies become calm enough to sleep.
If your baby’s always needed a lot of help settling, it may be less that you caused the need by rocking or feeding them, and more that you discovered these were the things that worked for the baby you had.
It’s a distinction that matters.
Because instead of thinking, I’ve ruined their sleep, you can start thinking, Okay, this is a baby who currently needs quite a lot of support. How do we make that manageable?
Temperament affects how much help babies need to settle
Babies differ enormously in temperament, and that can influence how easily they settle and how much help they need from you.
Some babies are naturally more easy-going. They can lie in their cot, wriggle around for a while and gradually drift off. Others are more sensitive, become distressed quickly and need much more support to feel calm enough to sleep.
Neither is better at sleep. They’re just different babies.
As babies get older, their capacity for self-regulation develops and they may become able to settle in new ways. Parents can also gradually introduce different settling strategies if what they’re currently doing is no longer working for the family. For some babies, reducing help slowly while still responding when they need comfort works well. For others, a more structured behavioural approach may suit the baby and family better.
But the same strategy won’t work equally well for every baby. A highly sensitive baby who becomes upset quickly may respond very differently to a change in settling than a baby who is happy to spend twenty minutes chatting to themselves in the cot.
So if your baby currently needs a lot of help to fall asleep, the answer doesn’t automatically have to be teach them to do it independently. Sometimes a more useful question is:
How can we make sleep easier for everyone while giving this baby the level of support they currently need?
That might mean continuing to feed, rock or cuddle to sleep because it’s quick and works well, or gradually changing the way you settle if the current approach has become exhausting. The aim is to find something that works with your baby’s temperament and is sustainable for you.
Here are a few places to start.
Use whatever settling method works - provided it’s safe
Feed them. Rock them. Cuddle them. Pat them. Use a dummy. Walk around with them.
There’s no prize for using the most complicated settling method.
If feeding your baby takes ten minutes and pacing beside the cot takes forty-five, it’s reasonable to ask whether the ten-minute option is currently working better for your family.
You can always change how you settle later if it stops working.
Responsive sleep doesn’t mean you have to do the same thing forever.
Find ways to protect your sleep too
If your baby wakes frequently, improving their sleep is only one part of the equation.
The other is finding ways for you to get more sleep.
That might mean going to bed ridiculously early for a while. Sharing night wakes with your partner. Having someone else take the baby after the first morning feed while you sleep. Getting help during the day so you can nap. Or abandoning everything non-essential after a particularly awful night.
None of these are glamorous.
They can, however, be much more useful than spending every spare moment googling how to make your baby stop waking.
Let contact naps work for you
Some babies sleep beautifully in a cot.
Some behave as though their cot has personally offended them.
If your baby sleeps well in a carrier, pram or on you, those can be useful tools rather than habits you necessarily need to eliminate.
A carrier can let your baby sleep while you go for a walk or get a few things done. And if you’re happy having a contact nap while you watch television or answer emails, it doesn’t need to be a problem simply because somebody on Instagram said naps “should” happen independently.
Safe sleep still matters, of course, and babies should always be positioned and supervised appropriately for the sleep environment being used. Established safe-sleep guidance recommends a firm, flat, separate infant sleep surface for unsupervised sleep.
Be careful with comparisons
Few things make a 3am wake-up feel worse than hearing that someone else’s baby has been sleeping twelve hours straight since they were ten weeks old.
Babies vary.
Sleep needs vary.
Temperaments vary.
And the amount of parental support babies need to settle varies too.
Your friend’s baby sleeping differently doesn’t prove they found the secret and you missed it.
And if something isn’t working, you’re allowed to change it
Responsive sleep isn’t about resigning yourself to exhaustion.
If feeding to sleep is working beautifully, you can keep doing it.
If feeding to sleep suddenly means you’re waking every 40 minutes and you can’t cope anymore, you can try something different.
If contact naps are your favourite part of the day, keep them.
If you desperately need an hour without another human touching you, it’s okay to explore other options.
The aim isn’t to follow a particular sleep philosophy perfectly.
It’s to find an approach that takes into account your baby’s temperament and development, their need for support, and your own wellbeing too.
Your baby won’t always need you this much
Perhaps the hardest thing about having a baby who needs lots of help with sleep is that it can feel endless when you’re in it.
It isn’t.
Babies grow. Their nervous systems mature. Their sleep changes. The way they need you changes too.
Right now, your baby may need a lot of help getting back to sleep.
That doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong.
It just means that, for now, this is the baby you have - and the goal is to find the easiest, least stressful way for all of you to get through this stage.
If any of this feels familiar, we’re here to help. Contact us to find out more about how we can support you.
