The most common question that I get asked is: “why my baby keeps waking up so often?!”
Usually, parents tend to try out a myriad of techniques in order to put their babies to sleep: swinging, rocking, shushing, singing, bouncing on a yoga ball, breastfeeding and other soothing ways. They spend hours on doing that. Once the baby falls asleep, parents even wait for a while to make sure that the little one is in a deep – sleep mode and can be finally placed in his crib.
After quietly leveling down “the sleeping beauty” into the crib, moms and dads tend to believe that the biggest job was just done. However, they get quickly disappointed as just in 30 minutes “that sleeping beauty” turns into “angry and awake baby”.
Why?! How is this possible that baby who was so tired is awake, crying again and has so much trouble to go back to sleep?!
The answer is very simple…
Try to imagine yourself going to bed in a hotel room and waking up in the street on the next day. How would that feel? Would you be afraid, angry and annoyed? Would you like to be back to your bed or would you like to continue sleeping on that street?
These are exactly the same feelings that babies are experiencing. They fall asleep while being rocked in parents’ hands and wake up in their crib – the strange and scary place without any movement. They can’t understand what happened, so they cry and want their parents back. So, what happens after that?
The same story goes on and on during days and nights until mothers and fathers become so frustrated and sleep deprived themselves.
It does not have to be in that way…
What I would like to stress is: babies are same as us. They need to be aware of their sleeping environment in order to continue to sleep.
During the night, while shifting through different sleep cycles, we become partially awake to check our environment. If all seems to look the same, we continue through the sleep journey. However, if we notice something strange, we will force ourselves to wake up.
Just think about yourself… How many times have you experienced that? You were asleep and suddenly woke up after hearing a strange sound or smelling different smell?
So, babies need to be aware of their environment just the same as we do. They should learn that baby bed is the right location for falling asleep and not alarming place causing wakeups!
