At its most basic, a floor bed is a mattress on the floor. This can be done with a crib mattress or an adult sized mattress. You can bedshare or cosleep on a floor bed or you can have your baby or toddler sleep independently on a floor bed.
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There’s a lot of opinions on baby sleep. Scroll through Instagram; spend some time on google; talk to your pediatrician; ask a friend or family member….everyone has ideas about how your baby should sleep. The problem is that many of our deeply held beliefs about baby sleep are more cultural belief than biological fact.
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The four month sleep regression is tough! And, if you're first time parents, it can hit even harder. Here's some encouragement and advice for you. You are not alone! Suddenly your baby is fussier, fighting sleep, waking more, and needing more support to go back to sleep. You may be wondering if you did something wrong, or if there’s anything you should be doing to get sleep back on track.
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“I know I shouldn’t compare, but I can’t help comparing my baby (or toddler) to how other babies are sleeping.”
I hear this sentiment a lot. Gather any group of parents together and they generally start sharing what their baby or toddler is doing. Hearing how other littles are sleeping and developing can really draw you in to the comparison trap, even if you know it’s not helpful. When you have a more wakeful, intense, or sensitive little one, these comparisons can really start to take a toll on your mental health and confidence.
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All parents are capable of nurturing babies and toddlers at bedtime! However, many families find themselves in a place where only one parent is doing bedtime. Whether this is a pattern formed from habit or your baby has strong preferences, you can gently shift the pattern so that both parents are involved in bedtime.
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Preparing for a new baby and still struggling with sleep? Whether you are thinking about another baby or already pregnant, it’s normal to have a lot of worries about how you’ll manage sleep with a newborn and your older child. If your child is still a challenging sleeper, it can add additional stress. In my work with parents, I hear a lot of the same questions and concerns.
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There’s nothing worse than a little one awake for hours in the middle of the night! You want to sleep, and they are ready to party. While this is normal for babies in the first months before they develop a circadian rhythm, it can also be a common struggle for some older babies and toddlers. Long awake periods in the middle of the night are often referred to as split nights.
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We live in a sleep training culture.
Its effects on parenting around sleep are powerful, and parents feel that pressure. When you dig into the research on sleep training, however, you find that it isn’t as soundly supported as many parents and professionals believe. In this post, I’m highlighting 10 facts about sleep training research that everyone should know to make informed decisions about how you support sleep for your children.
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What does an intentional end to bedsharing look like? How do you set yourself up for success moving forward? It can be challenging transitioning away from bedsharing without a clear idea of what the journey might look like. Generally you just hear a lot of worst case scenarios and bedsharing blame.
There isn’t one right way or time to stop bedsharing
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This article features an outline of realistic expectations for your child’s sleep in the first 5 years, updated for 2022. It can be hard to know what healthy sleep patterns even are at each age. This article will cover healthy and developmentally appropriate sleep expectations for infants and toddlers by age. Download this as a PDF for an easy reference.
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Sleep hygiene is our sleep environment, behaviors, and daily patterns that promote good quality sleep. It’s not just what happens in the evening, however. Your whole 24 hours contributes to how well you and your little one sleep at night.
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Your baby’s sleep is not a reflection of your parenting. Sleep is involuntary and not in anyone’s conscious control. A parent’s role isn’t to force or micro-manage a child’s sleep, but to set up conditions that support sleep. The goal is to create an environment where your child is tired, relaxed, and feels safe and secure in order to sleep well. And well for a baby includes some amount of waking.
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For many parents I talk to, this first month of 2022 has felt like a whole year of stress and overwhelm all on its own. To be truthful, we’ve been feeling that way in our house as well. When life is hard, when sleep is hard, when our children’s behavior is hard, the most important thing we can do is focus on self-regulation. That’s you, the parent, regulating your own emotions so you can show up in a calm, well-regulated state to support your baby or toddler.
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Naps. Something all parents want and some babies fight! Naps are an area that confuse and frustrate so many parents I talk with. There’s so much misinformation out there, some of which really undermines finding a nap rhythm that works for your family. Below are some of the most common questions I get from parents in my sleep classes and coaching support.
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Bedsharing is a wonderful, biologically normal way to care for your baby at night. It’s also a big controversy in safe sleep. Since many pediatricians only focus on a “just don’t” attitude towards bedsharing, parents are stuck trying to navigate safe sleep messages and the reality of nighttime parenting. In this guide, I’ll answer some of the many questions I hear from parents about sleeping with their baby, cosleeping safety, bedsharing, and many questions that I also asked as a new parent.
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One of the most common questions I get this time of year is how do I support sleep during the holidays? Whether it’s travel, hosting family, or just a lot of different events, there is a lot to navigate. You want to enjoy the time without undermining your littles sleep too much, and there can be a lot to consider. Below are some of the most common questions and areas of struggle I hear from parents struggling with what to do about infant and toddler sleeping arrangements during travel.
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You may have heard, or identified with a lot of different parenting labels: Attachment parenting, positive parenting, gentle parenting, respectful parenting, conscious parenting, peaceful parenting, intuitive parenting, responsive parenting….Likely I’ve missed a few . All of these various labels are variations of each other. They may differ in how the core elements are presented, but they share a lot in common. Sleep is part of parenting, and how we parent around sleep is part of how we parent over-all. In fact, some of your sleep parenting decisions are the first big ones you make that either emphasize connection or separation, emotional availability or emotional distance. Responsive parenting includes night time parenting. Those decisions and approaches are connected.
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