Babies are considered a bundle of joy when they are born and brought home, and parents will find themselves with a lot of new responsibilities for a very young life. This includes mundane care such as feeding, diaper changing, and getting the baby to sleep, along with taking the baby to a pediatrician for checkups and proper vaccines (very important to do). However, babies are very needy little people, and their schedule for eating and sleep may be very different from that of their parents. Many new parents find themselves woken up over and over each night for the baby’s needs, and parents (especially mothers) are neurologically wired to hear their baby’s cries. The problem is that the baby’s constant wake-up times are inconvenient for the parents, who may want uninterrupted sleep. A baby can’t be simply told to stay asleep for eight hours, though, so baby sleep training is necessary. The good news is that across the United States, new parents can hire sleep consultants to aid them in training a baby to sleep.
Baby Schedules
Babies and toddlers have different timing for their needs than their parents or anyone older than a toddler. Babies often need to eat, and they may wake up more than once in the night and demand feeding (as in, cry). And while babies are well-known to sleep for many hours in the day, this is not a solid block of sleep. Rather, babies really get their sleep in a chain of two to three-hour naps, and they wake up for feeding or if their diaper is full. Parents will not like being woken up during the night, since for an adult, the best sleep is achieved during deep sleep in the REM cycle. Having this interrupted disrupts the parents’ sleep and affects their energy levels and concentration, but they can’t simply tell their baby to stay asleep, so sleep consultants and sleep trainers will coach the baby to sleep in a schedule more consistent with their parents’. Hiring a baby sleep consultant is a fine choice for parents who want a good night’s rest.
Hiring a Baby Sleep Consultant
A number of baby sleep coach agencies can be found across the United States, and they have names that make it clear what services they offer. It may be noted that these agencies are not actually federally regulated, so clients may want to research any baby sleep consultant firm that they find and consult the staff there before hiring them. This is just to be sure that the clients are hiring someone professional and trustworthy. Assuming that a quality firm is found, the parents may expect the sleep trainer (most likely a woman) to arrive at their residence and have the parents fill out forms with basic information on their household, from the baby’s name and date of birth to the parents’ lifestyle and work or sleep schedule. The sleep trainer may also interview the parents to get a complete idea of what the household is like.
From that point on, baby sleep trainers will smoothly and gradually adjust the clients’ baby’s sleep and eating schedule, and move it toward a pattern that the parents will like. This may be done over a week’s time or so, but in the case of toddlers, it may take a few weeks to finish. Either way, though, the baby or toddler will be allowed to get used to the new eating and sleep schedule without having to be told anything (not that babies fully understand spoken words), and parents may soon find that their baby sleeps for several hours on end without waking up. Babies taht weigh 14 or more pounds may go longer without feeding than younger ones, and some statistics show that babies aged three to five months are prime candidates for a sleep consultant’s work. And if parents didn’t ever do this for their baby, they can still hire sleep consultants for their toddler child, though they’ll have to be more patient for this. Toddlers take longer to get on a new sleep and eating schedule, but it can still be done.