The Core Night Method

The first few months of a baby’s life are full of joy for the proud new parents – and full of extreme challenges, thanks to lack of sleep, irregular meals, and total exhaustion. It’s not surprising that high up on many a new parent’s list of goals is helping their new baby sleep through the night as soon as is feasibly possible.

Gentle Nudging

It is not, however, a good idea to push your baby towards sleeping through too soon. Only when a baby is ready should she be gently nudged in the right direction. Tricks like keeping her awake for longer in the day will be counter-productive in encouraging healthy sleep practices in your baby. By all means, monitor her sleep, and try not to let her sleep too near to her ‘bedtime’, which would usually be around 7.00pm.

One of the reasons the Core Night Method is so popular is that it recognises the baby’s own role in determining when she is ready, and then builds on this in a gentle, healthy way. This method works on the principle that once a baby has slept through for a certain length of time without waking for four consecutive nights, she is capable and ready to do this again. Read on to find out exactly how the Core Night Method works in practice...

Keep A Diary

Begin to keep a diary which logs what time your baby woke in the early hours looking for food. To be consistent, it is a good idea to try and keep her last feed at the same time every day – for example, 11.00pm. If on four consecutive nights your baby sleeps until 4.30am or later, she is now ready to sleep until 4.30am every day. Your diary may look like this:

Sunday: Fed at 11.10pm; Woke at 3.45am
Monday: Fed at 11.00pm; Woke at 4.45am
Tuesday: Fed at 10.50pm; Woke at 5.00am
Wednesday: Fed at 11.05pm; Woke at 4.30am
Thursday: Fed at 10.45pm; Woke at 4.40am

From looking at this diary, we can see that the baby in question has started to sleep later in the morning, and for 4 days in a row she has slept later than 4.30am. From now on, it can be assumed that this baby is capable of sleeping (i.e. going without food) until at least 4.30 in the morning.

Try Water

Once you have established your core night, the next time your baby wakes before this time, try to settle her by shhing, or by giving her a little cooled-boiled water. The water should settle her back to sleep until at least the time she has slept until previously – in the case above this would be 4.30am. This method can be used to gently, but effectively, help your baby sleep for longer and longer periods at night – but only at the rate with which she is comfortable.

NB: If your baby is genuinely hungry you must always feed her! This process can sometimes seem to be two steps forward and one step back, but you will be heading in the right direction.

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