#50 - It Works! Helping Babies Sleep Better during COVID
“We are absolutely thrilled with his progress this week!”
“He responded so well to the controlled crying.”
“In just 5 nights he’s basically sleeping through with only one brief wake during the night (we just leave him) and minimal crying when we put him down for his nap and bed.”
It Had Been A Long Hard Road for the Past 11 Months …
This mum had tried a number of things to help her son sleep, including:
Seeing various Doctors
Ear-Nose-Throat surgeons (to assess potential sleep apnea)
Pediatricians
Sleep Consultants
Online Baby Sleep Programs
Controlled Crying (so what did we do that was different..?)
Cry-It-Out
Driving her son around in a car
The only thing that was working was rocking her son in her arms.
But one night, this took 3 hours of rocking.
That’s when a friend recommended she see us.
And she was willing to do what we recommended.
Are Babies Sleeping Worse Because of COVID?
When the world radically changed their lives by self-isolating in March 2020, it was clear that the unpredictability was stressful.
Many experts - including ourselves - speculated that COVID would cause sleep problems.
Not just due to increased stress and possibly anxiety, but also the removal of the structure of one’s day.
What do we mean by that?
When the alarm goes off, people get up out of bed, they shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, and head out the door - these are all strong signals to our mind and body that it is time to wake up and start our day.
We spoke about this in more detail back in April in our video - COVID + Insomnia Part One.
At the same time, we begun working with the team from Nanit in the USA to study the effects of COVID on Americans.
But not just Americans - little Americans.
Nanit’s cameras are designed to be placed above infants’ cots and record when they’re awake and when they’re asleep.
They also record how many times a parent comes in to visit their baby during the night.
And the cameras were recording continuously whilst the world went through a radical change.
And despite the virus emanating from Wuhuan Province in China, the USA soon became the epicentre of the outbreak.
The majority of Americans became quarantined within their own homes.
But not all of them.
Essential workers continued to have their alarm go off, get up out of bed, shower, get dressed, eat breakfast - and go out the door.
Our latest study that will be published in the journal Sleep Health recorded the sleep of babies in families where - to some extent - life continued on as normal.
As well as the sleep of babies from families that quarantined.
In total, over 500 babies were followed from late March to early May 2020.
What did we find?
Well let’s just say I loved what we found.
It reminds me of an earlier study where we (purposely) exposed university students to a traumatic video in the evening - so we could see whether insomnia could be produced.
In that study by Dr Cele Richardson - yes - we saw the beginning of insomnia.
But then sleep returned to it’s good old healthy self a few days later.
And so in this latest study we found that in late March that babies in the USA slept differently.
But it was mainly those babies that were in families who were quarantined.
When we followed up the ‘quarantined’ babies in mid-April, their sleep was no different to the babies from families where there was an essential worker.
And this continued on until early May.
The 2 Take Home Points?
This study shows the sensitivity of sleep to stressors.
But it also shows that good sleep can be robust and return to normal levels.
But this is for the majority of human beings.
There are some humans - big and small - that just need to be shown how to sleep.
Fortunately, they are few and far between.
But they are not alone.
And we know how to help.
Prof Michael Gradisar
Our 3-STEP-PLAN we use with families in our clinic is now available to YOU!
1 IN 5 PARENTS SAY THEIR BABY HAS A SLEEP PROBLEM.
Whether a baby takes a long time to fall asleep at the start of the night, wakes up alot of the time during the night, and/or requires their parents to be nearby in order to sleep, this education package can help.
Sleeplessness doesn’t have to be a ‘right of passage’ when rearing a baby.
And parents needn’t feel guilty for helping the whole family get a good night’s sleep.
Whether you’re a parent, or a health professional that wants to learn how to help parents, then INFANT WINK can teach you the techniques that work.
Includes:
The measure used to identify an infant sleep problem
What questions to ask a parent (or yourself!)
The diagnosis that experts have developed for an infant sleep problem
What are the main reasons a baby can have a sleep problem.
The interventions that (science shows) help improve’s a baby’s sleep health
A list of further readings and references.
7 pages of appendices including easy-to-use measures and schedules
Health professionals pay a lot of money (including travel, parking, and missed income) to come to Professional Development Courses to learn how we treat infant sleep problems. We’ve gathered the best bits for busy health professionals.
Over the last decade there’s been countless families (at their wits end) that have come to seek our help. And we’ve taught them what to do. Not everyone can come to see us - so we’ve packaged the best bits and bring them to you.
Price is in US dollars