Essential Tips for Baby and Child Sleep

Yoto is now the official sponsor of the award-winning podcast The Sleep Mums—hosted by parenting journalist Cat Cubie and baby sleep expert Sarah Carpenter—providing you with practical advice (advice you can actually use) to improve your family’s bedtime routines.

Many parents use Yoto Player’s night light feature and Yoto Cards such as Sounds for Sleep and Puffin Sleepy Tales to help their new-borns and babies nod off, so we’re proud to be partnering with sleep experts to provide you with the tools and confidence you need to help your baby sleep better.

 

 

"Raising small humans is hard. Raising small humans when you are exhausted can be even harder. We’re often asked through our award-winning top 10 parenting podcast, The Sleep Mums, what our essential tips for baby and child sleep are, because if there’s one thing we’d all like more of, it’s sleep!

 

About the only thing you can really expect with baby and toddler sleep is that it is always changing. That can sound scary, especially if you’ve just nailed getting some Z’s, but it’s why having a toolkit of solutions is so important. Knowing what to do, when is what our podcast and book, Sleep Better Baby, are all about; empowering you with the confidence to make it through all those changes. We know parents want simple and easy to follow support when it comes to sleep.

 

Having a consistent start and end time to your day really helps give you time and focus to meet your baby or child's needs.

 

Establishing healthy sleep or making changes requires everyone to be on board. It's much easier for everyone to be on board if you can see what you want to achieve.

 

It would be easier if all children’s needs were the same but that would be boring, right? Try and tune out the unhelpful comparisons and think about your own child and family set up before you make a plan.

 

Keeping things as consistent as possible helps your little one move more seamlessly through their sleep cycles. Think about temperature (between 16 and 21C), light and noise. This is where Yoto comes in super handy, sleep sounds like white, pink or brown noise help to cover loud or disruptive sounds outside.

 

Having a schedule makes meeting your child’s needs easier. It helps give you the confidence to know that they have eaten, played and rested well enough during the day to get the solid restorative sleep they need overnight.

 

A consistent bedtime routine can work wonders. What that looks like is up to you, it doesn’t need to be overly complicated and take hours, what’s more important is it covers everyone’s needs, including yours.

 

It can be hard to stop, breathe and really listen to what your baby or toddler is trying to tell you, however, it’s something we really recommend. Observing helps you to get to know their needs and how best to meet them, because none of us speak fluent baby to start with!

 

There is no such thing as the ‘right’ way to parent, most of it is trial and error (even for the most experienced). We’re all different so different things will work for different children. If you want to make a change, go for it; if it doesn’t work you can always go back or try something else but do make sure to give each one enough time to bed in, we advise at least 3 to 5 days.

 

Never feel like you are failing by asking for help, whether that’s from a partner, a friend or an expert. We know it feels like a cliché to say it takes a village, but it does, find yours and lean in.

 

Feeling comfortable with flexibility is important because our babies are not robots. Having the confidence to go with the flow (sometimes) can feel daunting but knowing you have the skills and tools to come back from big changes or bad days is the key to success.

 

Getting your baby or toddler to sleep better can be a challenge but with a little patience, perseverance and the right support you will get there.

 

There’s over 70 episodes of our award-winning podcast available covering a huge range of topics from Parent Guilt to Contact Naps, Settling to Feeding, our listeners regularly tell us it has changed their lives, helped their little ones sleep and allowed them to take back their nights."

 

 

Got a question about sleep? Chat to us on social media!