As of October 2022, I have completed a new certification called the Integrative Feeding Specialist Course. This means that I am now a Certified Integrative Feeding Specialist, on top of being a Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant! This comprehensive educational program is designed especially for sleep consultants to expand their breastfeeding knowledge. It is the first program of its kind to combine breastfeeding knowledge & sleep dynamics! As a Certified Integrative Feeding Specialist and Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant:
Not ready to wean? You don't have to! We can find the right solutions for your baby, whatever your goals may be. Many parents believe that getting a good night's sleep simply isn’t possible for them until their baby is weaned. As a Certified Integrative Feeding Specialist and Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant, I can assure you that it is entirely possible for the two to coexist. Let's find your perfect solution today!I can’t remember where I saw it, but I distinctly recall Matthew McConaughey talking about the simplicity of raising a baby, saying, “They eat, they crap, they sleep, and if they're crying, they need to do one of the three, and they're having trouble doing it. Real simple” While I agree with him to an extent on the first part, I vehemently disagree with the second one. Any of those three elements can be caused by many factors, either on their own or in combination with others. Identifying the problem may be simple, but determining the cause is a much trickier ordeal. When it comes to sleep, so many factors might impede your little one’s ability just to lay their head down and go to sleep when they’re tired. Hormone levels may be out of balance, they may be in some kind of physical discomfort, too hot or too cold, they may be overtired or not tired enough; the possibilities can seem endless. However, as a child sleep expert, I can tell you that light is one of the most prominent causes of fractured sleep in our little ones. Exposure to blue light has been shown to decrease baby’s feelings of drowsiness, increase the time it takes them to fall asleep, reduce deep sleep, and affect their ability to stay asleep.
Over time, our bodies began secreting hormones to help us sleep when it started to get dark (melatonin) and to provide stimulation when it got light (cortisol). This all worked pretty beautifully right up until a technological breakthrough that, quite literally, changed everything. In 1879, the world was introduced to the electric lightbulb, and before long, we had access to light at all hours and in every room of the house. “Wait,” you may be thinking, “What about candles? People didn’t live in the dark until the lightbulb was invented!" And you’re absolutely right, but the big difference between fire light and the light from electric lightbulbs is the wavelength.
So, as the lightbulb became more accessible, and as the filaments evolved, we started swapping out the long wavelength red or yellow light from candles for the short wavelength blue light from electric bulbs. Why does that matter? Well, to take it back to our ancestors again, the light we get from the sun during the day comes directly down through the atmosphere, which means it’s not being refracted, which results in short-wavelength or “blue” light. So when your little one asks you why the sky is blue, that’s a big part of the answer. When the sun starts to set, it refracts off the atmosphere, which stretches out the wavelength, creating red light. So, again, a big part of the reason the sky turns red during sunset. So our bodies and brains evolved to recognize these cues from the sun and started secreting those hormones at the appropriate time of day to either help us wake up and get going or to settle down and go to sleep. But once we brought blue light into the house, you can see how our brains started to get confused. Our eyes started picking up “daytime” light well into the night, our brains kept secreting cortisol to keep us alert, started blocking the release of melatonin, and sleep suddenly found itself fighting an uphill battle. Fast forward about a hundred years, and we see the invention of the television, which emits a ton of blue light. Not long afterwards, computer monitors, LEDs, smartphones, and tablets became a favourite pastime for our little ones, which can have a massive impact on their sleep.
Still, others have shown that exposure to red light, while much less inhibitive to sleep than blue light, resulted in similar or slightly less melatonin production than if baby just slept in the dark. A red light in the nursery isn’t likely to help improve your little one’s sleep, assuming they’re already sleeping in a dark room. However, suppose you need a light in the nursery for diaper changes or nighttime feedings. In that case, the red light is absolutely, positively the way to go. Some other light management tips that will help your baby sleep better at night include:
Let me just say, in closing, I love technology! I love the convenience that my phone provides, I watch what I consider a reasonable amount of TV, and I think that adequately managed tablets offer a great source of free entertainment and educational opportunities for children. I’m not trying to suggest that you should throw every blue light-emitting device in the trash and go back to candlelight in the house. However, as long as you know the facts about how the light from these devices can affect your baby’s sleep. Then, it should prove relatively easy to make a few modifications and create rules around their usage so they have almost zero impact on a long night of sweet, restorative sleep for your whole family. Want more tips for getting your little one to sleep through the night? Then, head over to the home page and grab your Free Download to my 7-Tips To Get Your Little One to Sleep Through The Night. Happy Sleeping Erin AuthorErin Neri - Pediatric Sleep Consultant and Owner of To The Moon and Back Sleep Consulting since 2016. Let’s be real here. When we get right down to the heart of the matter, this is the question you really need an answer to, am I right? Your baby is regularly waking up sometime during the night, and when they do, they start to fuss, they need you to soothe them back to sleep somehow, and the disruptions to everyone’s sleep are leaving the entire family exhausted, baby included. Now, I’m not going to tell you there’s a simple “one-size-fits-all” solution to this problem because, after all, I’d have to find a new line of work if there were. But I am going to tell you that there’s almost always a single cause for a baby or toddler not being able to sleep through the night, and it’s the same reason in about 90% of the cases I deal with. Before we get to that, though, let’s rule a couple of things out.
And that, I’m happy to tell you, pretty much sums it up. If your baby’s comfortable and fed, there’s really only one major reason why they can’t sleep through the night. Are you ready for it? It’s because they don’t know how. Now I know we’ve all heard the sound bites and talking points on social media. “Babies will sleep when they’re ready!” “Sleep is developmental!” “Just ride it out. It won’t last forever.” and so on. I have to admit to a little low-key rage whenever I read comments like that because… a) It doesn’t help and b) It tells people to avoid fixing an issue that absolutely can and should be fixed! If someone asked how to get a sliver out of their little one’s foot, would anyone respond with, “Just be patient. It’ll work its way out eventually. Hang in there mama! You’re doing great!” I certainly hope not, although given some of the comments I’ve seen on social media, I wouldn’t say it’s out of the realm of possibility. (OK, that’s the end of my rant. Back to the good stuff!) So what do I mean when I say that babies wake up because they don’t know how to sleep through the night? All of us, babies and adults alike, sleep in cycles. When we get to the end of a cycle, we’re no longer in a “deep” sleep. We’re hovering right around the point of waking up, and a lot of the time, we do wake up. Us adults have so much experience falling asleep, we can usually just look at the clock, realize we’ve still got a few more delicious hours before our alarm goes off, and we close our eyes, maybe roll over onto our other side, and go right back to sleep. Babies haven’t had nearly as much practice, and very often, I mean VERY often, they get a bunch of help when it’s time for a snooze. They get bounced, shushed, cuddled, rocked, serenaded, taken for car rides, rolled around in their stroller, or fed to sleep. So when they wake up after a sleep cycle, which again, is going to happen regularly for their entire lives, they can’t get back to sleep again without that extra help, so mom or dad needs to get up and repeat whatever process baby’s accustomed to. That’s the issue, and like I say, it’s the issue with about 90% of the babies I work with. How do you address that issue? Well, that’s where things get tricky because the solution varies tremendously depending on the baby and their parent’s compatibility with various approaches to resolving the problem, but the cause is almost always a dependency on some form of sleep assistance from a caregiver. So when you hear someone saying that babies don’t sleep through the night, or that it’s natural for them to wake up several times, that’s absolutely correct. When they tell you that all you can do is wait it out, that’s absurd. You can absolutely teach your little one the skills they need to sleep through the night, and I’d be delighted to show you how. AuthorErin Neri - Pediatric Sleep Consultant and Owner of To The Moon and Back Sleep Consulting since 2016. Before discussing attachment theory and its influence, it is vitally important to define it. There has been significant confusion about the meaning of the term since the introduction of the “attachment parenting” philosophy, but they’re two completely different things. “Attachment parenting,” a term coined by Drs. William and Martha Sears which refers to a specific parenting approach advocating, among other things, baby-wearing, bed-sharing, and breastfeeding on demand. The popularity of Dr. Sears’ book has caused some confusion about the differences between this parenting style and the scientific notion of attachment theory1, and because of Sears’ adherence to co-sleeping, nursing on demand, and responding immediately to a baby when they’re fussing, it’s easy to see how some parents arrived at the conclusion that disregarding these tenets by helping their babies learn to sleep independently could damage the “attachment” between a baby and their caregiver. But again, attachment theory and attachment parenting are in no way related to each other in anything other than name. Alan Sroufe, a developmental psychologist at the Institute for Child Development at the University of Minnesota, defines attachment as “...a relationship in the service of a baby’s emotion regulations and exploration. It is the deep, abiding confidence a baby has in the availability and responsiveness of the caregiver.”2 At its origin, attachment theory was developed by British psychologist John Bowlby, and greatly expanded upon and tested by American psychologist Mary Ainsworth. In its current understanding, it states that there are four categories of attachment between a baby and their caregivers: secure, insecure-avoidant, insecure- resistant, and insecure-disorganized. Children with a secure attachment to their primary caregiver feel safe expressing distress or discomfort, and will explore unfamiliar areas around them confidently so long as the caregiver is nearby. They tend to become distressed when their caregiver leaves the vicinity, but respond positively when they return. Children with insecure attachments avoid their caregiver when distressed and minimize displays of negative emotion in their presence, presumably because the caregiver has responded to previous displays of distress and negative emotion in negative ways, such as ignoring, ridiculing, or becoming annoyed with the child. The infant learns quickly that displays of distress provoke negative emotions from the caregiver and therefore avoids exhibiting them. Studies from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation over a 35-year period found that infants who fit the “secure attachment” criteria were more independent later in life, had higher self-esteem, better relationships with their parents and siblings, and displayed greater coping skills, social skills, and leadership qualities than infants in the other three categories.3 That’s not to say that attachment is the single most important factor influencing the parent-child relationship, but it’s certainly important. Allan Schore, a developmental neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine defines attachment theory as, “essentially a theory of regulation.” “Insecure attachments aren’t created just by a caregiver’s inattention or missteps,” he says. “They also come from a failure to repair ruptures. Maybe the caregiver is coming in too fast and needs to back off, or maybe the caregiver hasn’t responded and needs to show the baby that she’s there. Either way, repair is possible, and it works. Stress is a part of life, and what we’re trying to do here is to set up a system by which the baby can learn how to cope with stress.” From this perspective, one could easily argue that the Sears method of responding immediately to a baby’s cries and keeping them nearby at all times could actually be detrimental to their development. Again, if attachment parenting is the approach parents feel most comfortable with, it’s absolutely their right to do so, but like any other parenting style, it has its potential disadvantages if adhered to too stringently without taking the individual baby’s needs and personality into account. On the other hand, given all of this information, it’s easy to see how parents could look at a traditional cry-it-out approach to sleep and see it as potentially damaging to the attachment their baby shares with them. However, I want to reassure you that I will never ask you to leave your baby for prolonged periods of time without offering support and comfort. If I was advocating leaving your child to cry regardless of the length of time or the severity of their crying, it would hardly be a service worth paying for. I greatly understand and respect your concern for your baby’s well-being, and I want to assure you that the approach we’ll be taking with your little one will allow to you stay close to them, offer comfort, reassure them of your presence, and respond to their needs while they gradually learn to fall asleep independently. I absolutely encourage you to remain present and responsive throughout the process, and will never ask you to do anything that could damage your relationship with your baby. That’s not to say that there won’t be any crying involved. There most likely will be, and I understand how difficult it can be to allow your baby to cry, even for short periods of time, and even if you’re nearby and offering comfort and support. When our babies cry, our natural instinct as parents is to prevent it as quickly and effectively as we’re able. This impulse to stop a baby’s crying can prompt parents to utilize whatever method of distraction or soothing has proven most effective, such as nursing, rocking, or offering a pacifier, and while that might stop baby from crying, it likely hasn’t addressed the issue that caused baby to start crying in the first place. As Magda Gerber, noted child expert and founder of Resources for Infant Educarers [sic] said, “An anxious and irritated parent will most likely do what brings the fastest relief – give the breast or bottle. The baby almost always accepts it, calms down and often falls asleep. Of course, this is the right solution if the baby is hungry. However, if the baby has other needs (for instance being tired or having pain), she will learn to expect food in response to these other needs, and grasp the breast or bottle even though she is not hungry.” So if and when baby cries, I wholeheartedly encourage you to respond. Check to make sure they’re fed and warm, and that all of their basic needs are met. Watch them to see if you can discern any other source of discomfort or a pressing need. If you feel confident that baby’s only reason for crying is that they’re having trouble getting to sleep, then you’re well on your way to solving this issue by helping them to learn how to fall asleep independently. Your baby’s attachment to you doesn’t rely on being next to them at all times, or rushing to their side every time they feel frustrated or challenged. It is a product of consistent, reliable parenting, loving reassurance, and confidence that you will keep them safe, secure, and protected. Opportunities to assure , comfort, and encourage your baby will present themselves several times every day, I guarantee you, and when everyone in the family is well-rested, we’re more patient, more engaged, and better able to provide the love and support that are the true foundation of a secure attachment with our children. I have studied the science behind my approach extensively, and if there was any evidence whatsoever that the coaching you’ll be providing your baby would, in any way, damage your relationship with your child, I would never recommend it. As Mary Ainsworth herself said in her 2004 study, “It is acceptable, from an attachment perspective, to use the Ferber method or another sleep method.” 4 In short, the only change you’ll see is how well your baby sleeps. What Does Secure Attachment Look Like?
0-3 months: ● In their quiet, alert state, the baby is interested in the faces and voices around them. 4-8 months: ● Attempts to soothe the baby usually work. (Caveat: An inability to soothe might indicate either insecurity or any of a host of other possible issues.) ● The baby and primary caregiver have pleasant back-and-forth interactions. ● The baby has calm periods of curiosity and explores and experiments as they are physically able. ● The baby begins to discriminate among people and show preferences. 9 months: ● The baby shows a clear preference for a primary caregiver and some wariness toward strangers. ● The baby is easily upset when separated from their primary caregiver. ● The baby is easily soothed after a separation and can resume exploration or play. 9 months–3 years: ● The child shows a clear emotional bond with a primary person. ● The child stays in close proximity to that person but forms close relationships with other people, too. One of the first things I ask my clients is if their little ones rooms are dark; and I mean is it 3 AM on a camping trip in the middle of nowhere dark? Is it as dark at 2 PM and 4 AM (in the summer months) as it is at Midnight in your child(ren)'s room? If not, that is one of my first recommendations, you need to make your little ones rooms black dark for all sleep situations, all year long. Having your child(ren)'s room dark has many benefits when it comes to sleep. Darkness can help prevent early morning wake ups, help prolong naps, as well as help to maintain much needed early bedtimes when the seasons change (and it's still daylight at 9pm); just to name a few. But it is clear that sleeping in darkness plays a much bigger role when it comes to our health. How? .... According to Richard G. "Bugs" Stevens (Professor, School of Medicine, University of Connecticut); "Today most people do not get enough sleep. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has called insufficient sleep an epidemic. While we are finally paying attention to the importance of sleep, the need for dark is still mostly ignored. Being exposed to regular patterns of light and dark regulates our circadian rhythm. Disruption of this rhythm may increase the risk of developing some health conditions including obesity, diabetes and breast cancer." In addition Stevens points out that; "light regulates our sleep and wake patterns. The physiological processes that control the daily cycle of sleep and wake, hunger, activity levels, body temperature, melatonin level in the blood, and many other physiological traits are called the endogenous circadian rhythm." Why is this so important? Stevens goes on to explain that; "during the night, in the dark, body temperature drops, metabolism slows, and the hormone melatonin rises dramatically. When the Sun comes up in the morning, melatonin has already started falling, and you wake up. This natural physiological transition into and out of night is of ancient origin, and melatonin is crucial for the process to proceed as it should." Read Stevens full article here. So what do we do? BLACKOUT those windows!! Of course there are many ways to do this. Usually regular old blinds aren't enough. On a scale of 1-10; 10 being the darkest; your rooms should be a 10/10; this goes for your rooms as well Mom and Dad! For the longest time in my boys rooms I used to have regular blinds as well as blackout curtains with towels across the top of the curtain rods to stop the light from coming in along the ceiling and tinfoil along the outsides of the window pane to stop the sliver of light coming through from the blinds and curtains. Not the easiest of options, nor the most eye catching, lol, but it worked. They now have a great product on their windows that gives their rooms a 10/10 on the darkness scale all year round. My bedroom windows however, are lacking such status, they are pretty awful to be honest. I use a sleep mask to make it dark enough for sleep but that is getting tiresome. That is why I am so excited to try SleepOut Portable BlackOut Curtains. The reviews for this product are amazing, plus they are Canadian made! I cannot wait to get mine! Here's a little bit more about SleepOut Portable BlackOut Curtains from their website: "The patented, portable blackout curtain that completely darkens a room and installs anywhere for better sleep. Greenguard® and OEKO-TEX® certified free from harmful chemicals and substances." "The Sleepout Curtain’s fabric has the benefit of being thermal insulating. In the winter, reduce your heating cost and keep out the cold by having the Sleepout Curtain on your windows. On hot summer days, Sleepout’s white flocking backing will soak up the heat, letting you sleep in the proper cool, dark environment." Click the link below to get yours! Erin Neri About the AuthorI am the mother of two amazing little boys who did not come pre-programmed with the skills to sleep well independently. I knows how hard it is to function on little to no sleep, I understands how this impacts your ability to be the best version of the mom that you want to be. This is what led me to become a Certified Sleep Consultant and the founder of To The Moon and Back Sleep Consulting. I am also a member of the International Association of Professional Sleep Consultants. I have a background in Psychology and have worked with families and young children in many different settings for over 27 years. One of the best parts of my job is seeing the impact that TEACHING their little moon bugs healthy/independent sleep skills has on the momma's!! So you’re on the fence about this whole, “Teaching your baby to sleep,” thing. On the one hand, you know that sleep is essential for everyone in your family. You’ve read all the literature and have come to agree with the consensus of the pediatric community that sleep is vital to your baby’s development and well-being. You’re 100 percent positive that your little one needs some help learning how to sleep well, and you’re dedicated to helping them overcome this obstacle. And on the other hand, you’re nervous as hell about it. Almost every parent I’ve worked with has started off absolutely riddled with anxiety. They know there’s a problem that needs fixing and they’re committed to that solution, but even with all of the research and evidence that this is a safe, effective process, they’re still on pins and needles.
So, what’s happening here? Is this your maternal instinct kicking in? Are you subconsciously aware of an underlying threat to your baby? Is mother nature trying to tell you not to teach your baby to sleep? Well, sorry to be ambiguous, but the truth is, it’s complicated. Sleep deprivation stimulates activity in the amygdala, which is a part of the brain that controls several of your immediate emotional reactions. According to a 2007 joint study between Harvard Medical School and U of C Berkeley, “...a lack of sleep inappropriately modulates the human emotional brain response to negative aversive stimuli.” Or, in layman’s terms, you’re likely to overreact when things go bad. So when, say, your baby starts to cry, you’re less inclined to think, “I wonder what she needs,” and much more likely to think things like, “I’m a complete failure as a mother.” This is what happens after one night of sleep deprivation, so you can imagine what chronic lack of sleep over the course of weeks, or even months, can lead to. You may even be experiencing it right now. It leaves you feeling helpless, inadequate, and riddled with anxiety. Alright, that’s the sleep deprivation part. Let’s look at the other major reason that this process can be so difficult, and the real elephant in the room when it comes to this whole endeavour. - Crying. Will your child cry when you’re teaching them this skill? Here’s the straight answer. It is extremely likely, bordering on an absolute certainty that, yes, your baby’s going to cry when you implement these new rules around bedtime. Is your baby also going to cry when they get dropped off on their first day of school? Again, we’re looking at about a 95 out of 100 probability. Will you baby throw a fit when you turn off their favorite cartoons, or when they get their first taste of asparagus, or when they’re told not to eat dirt? You betcha. And even though you know they’re not in any danger or genuine distress in those situations, you’re still going to feel your heart explode when you hear your baby crying. But again, if we look at this objectively, we can see that there’s an actual reason why the sound of a crying baby causes us such distress, and it’s not because of the actual level of urgency. Dr. David Poeppel, Professor Of Psychology & Neural Science at NYU, found that a crying baby differs from other environmental noises in something called the “amplitude modulation rate,” meaning how often the loudness of a sound changes. Crying babies, along with car alarms and police sirens, have a modulation rate of about 100 times per second, compared to a regular speaking voice, which hovers somewhere between 4 or 5. Experiments with an MRI to monitor the brains of people while listening to a variety of sounds, Poeppel found that baby screams have a unique ability to trigger activity in… you guessed it, our old friend, the amygdala. Where I think I can be of the biggest help here is by getting you to realize that your brain, despite having some really noble intentions, is playing tricks on you. It’s making you feel negligent. It’s making you think that your baby is in desperate need of something they’re not. It’s attempting to get you to address an immediate situation because it’s incapable of appreciating the long-term solution that you’re working towards. As with most instinctual habits, this one is more easily dealt with when we can appreciate not just what we’re feeling, but the science behind why we feel what we feel, so I wanted to provide you with that vital tool before you take on the challenge of helping your baby sleep through the night. Now that you know; it's time to take that leap of faith and take the next steps in the journey to helping your little one learn to sleep well independently. We can do this together! Erin AuthorErin Neri - Pediatric Sleep Consultant and Owner of To The Moon and Back Sleep Consulting since 2016. Let me just throw a little disclaimer out in front of this post by saying that I’m neither a doctor nor a professional research scientist. I’m a sleep specialist with a fascination for all things sleep-related, and I follow the latest research and studies in the field. Typically when I write these posts, I like to rely on peer-reviewed studies that have been evaluated, replicated, and borne out conclusive evidence to support them, but today I’m focusing on something that’s a little on the speculative side, since it’s a relatively new theory, and it’s a super interesting one for anyone with a seemingly “restless” baby. Now, when a parent tells me they have a restless baby, I have a series of questions I tend to ask in order to determine whether it’s due to a “sleep prop.” That’s industry terminology for something that Baby’s grown dependent on in order to get to sleep. Breastfeeding to sleep, rocking to sleep, sucking on a pacifier, stroller rides, are all examples of these “sleep props.” And most of the time I find that, yes, that’s absolutely the problem, and we address it and things get significantly better in a few nights. I first heard mention of an interesting theory during the 2019 World Sleep Conference and was really interested to hear more about it, but didn’t want to write about it until a little more string had been played out in the research department. And even though it’s still too early to state anything unequivocally, I thought the time might be right to at least share what I’ve learned so far, so here goes... So we’re all familiar with iron, right? Everybody knows about iron, the essential mineral that helps red blood cells carry oxygen around the body. That function right there makes iron a downright essential component of our circulatory system and therefore our overall health. Iron deficiency, commonly known as anemia, also happens to be the single most common nutritional deficiency worldwide. The vast majority of those cases are in developing countries, but the numbers in North America and Europe are still alarmingly high. In the US alone, there are around 2.8 million visits to physicians annually where anemia is the primary diagnosis. So, in short, a LOT of people aren’t getting enough iron. Now, if you follow health news at all, you’ve also probably heard a lot about something called Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) lately. If you’re not familiar, RLS, also known as Willis-Ekbom Disease, is exactly what it sounds like; a condition that makes your legs feel restless. People with RLS describe the sensation as an irresistible urge to move accompanied by uncomfortable sensations in their lower limbs. Standing up and moving their legs typically remedies the feeling almost instantly, but only temporarily. Symptoms occur more frequently when individuals are sleeping or lying down. RLS is also a bit of a mystery when it comes to its cause. According to the National Institute of Health, “In most cases, the cause of RLS is unknown. However, RLS has a genetic component and can be found in families where the onset of symptoms is before age 40. Specific gene variants have been associated with RLS. Evidence indicates that low levels of iron in the brain also may be responsible for RLS.” So now comes the big question… could those restless babies that I was talking about earlier possibly be suffering from some variety of Restless Leg Syndrome due to an iron deficiency? In a 2008 joint study from the Southern Illinois University and Carle Clinic Association, 1.9% and 2% of children and adolescents respectively were shown to have Restless Leg Syndrome. A 2020 study from the BC Children's Hospital Research Institute entitled Iron deficiency and sleep - A scoping review, found that iron supplementation was tremendously effective in treating a number of sleep disorders, including RLS. Sample sizes were small and the data collection process leaves a little to be desired, but it’s still a good indication that iron plays a big role in the quality of sleep. Unfortunately, diagnosing RLS isn’t an exact science. There are no markers or proteins to test for. It’s done by a doctor’s evaluation of the patient’s description of their symptoms, and for that reason, the only people who have been diagnosed are individuals who are capable of explaining what they’re experiencing. And guess who that leaves out… You guessed it; Babies, toddlers, and as theorized in a 2005 study, a significant number of children.
So back we go to the 2019 World Sleep Conference where one of the speakers put forth the theory that either RLS, or a variant of it, might be responsible for some babies being overly restless. Restless Sleep Disorder, as researchers have described it, hasn’t been thoroughly researched yet, but evidence suggests that it could be an early variant of restless leg syndrome which in some cases could be caused by insufficient iron levels. Or, as they more eloquently put it in their conclusion, “We have characterized clinically and polysomnographically children with RSD and attempted a new diagnostic category. We also have identified an association between RDS and iron deficiency. Future larger studies are needed to confirm these findings and evaluate the natural progression of restless sleepers.” So again, I’m not trying to offer medical advice here. I just thought this whole line of research and discovery was fascinating and wanted to share it with all of you. If your little one is one of those overly animated sleepers, it might be worth asking your pediatrician to check their iron levels. Even if it’s not the cause of their sleepless nights, anemia is something you’ll want to remedy. And remember, if your baby fits into the other category, the much more prominent category who have trouble falling asleep because of their dependency on a “prop,” I’m here to help you solve that problem. It may not be as simple as taking an iron supplement, but I can say unreservedly that it’s worth the effort to get your baby sleeping through the night. AuthorErin Neri - Pediatric Sleep Consultant and Owner of To The Moon and Back Sleep Consulting since 2016. As a mother myself, and a sleep consultant, I've come to the inescapable conclusion that babies, as a rule, are complicated creatures. Matthew McConaughey’s quote on newborns always gives me a chuckle, "They eat, they crap, they sleep, and if they're crying, they need to do one of the three, and they're having trouble doing it. Real simple." In a way, he's right. A baby's vital needs essentially break down into sleeping, eating, and pooping. Their only real form of communicating any issue is through crying. Identifying the fact that there is a problem with our babies is far easier than solving the problem, and as parents, isn't that all we want?
As a pediatric sleep consultant, there are a few questions I’ve grown accustomed to hearing. People are understandably curious about whether or not their child is going to cry, and if so, for how long. They want to know how long it’s going to take before baby starts sleeping through the night, and when they’ll be able to do the same.
And even though they never come right out and say it in so many words, they want to know if there’s some kind of magical solution that will solve the problem instantaneously without any effort, crying, or protest. |
To The Moon and Back Sleep ConsultingProviding families the tools & support they need to get their little ones sleeping through the night and napping like champs! Everyone has more fun when they are well rested! Visit Wollino - Discount Code: TOTHEMOONANDBACK10
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