Sleep is of course universal, and human beings of different ages need different amounts of sleep. The elderly need the least sleep, and adolescents need around eight to nine hours of it every night. Toddlers and babies, meanwhile, need the most sleep since their bodies, brains, and minds are still rapidly growing. When parents bring their new baby home, it may sleep for over 15 hours per day, although parents may note that this sleep is not all at once. Babies and some toddlers will have a fragmented sleep schedule; that is, their sleep consists of many naps interrupted by the need for eating, a diaper change, or anything else. Parents may not like this, since babies will often wake them up during the night for these needs. So, a baby sleep coach can be hired, and training your baby to sleep is a very real industry today. Baby sleep trainers can be hired from any number of agencies to visit the household and adjust the client’s child’s sleep schedule. How might this work?
Sleep for Parents and Babies
Sleep is a major part of any person’s health, so naturally, many studies are conducted to study it. These studies track how often Americans of particular age groups get sleep vs how much they need, and the effects of a full night’s rest against too little sleep. How do babies and toddler sleep? Erratically, when compared to their parents. In a baby’s first two months of life, they can’t even tell the difference between night and day, with their circadian rhythms still developing. By ages six to 12 months, a baby will nap twice per day on average, with naps lasting one or two hours, along with deeper sleep in other times. Toddlers, meanwhile, need almost as much; they need 12-14 hours of sleep within a given 24 hour period.
But as mentioned above, babies and many toddlers fragment their sleep, and newborns need to be fed every two to three hours. As one might expect, this means a baby will wake right up, at any time of day, and cry out for feeding. This is natural for a baby, but the parents probably won’t like being woken up repeatedly, and at odd times of night, for this and other care. Human beings have a full REM cycle of their sleep, and the baby’s parents, for example, need deep sleep. Getting shallow sleep means only partial rest, and this sleep debt can add up fast. A crying baby will wake up its parents even during their deep sleep, and that can be an issue. And what is more, parents have their brains re-wired to more easily hear their baby crying, especially new mothers. It is very unlikely that parents will simply sleep through their baby crying for food or a diaper change in the middle of the night. So, a baby sleep trainer can help.
Hire a Baby Sleep Coach
Baby sleep training is possible when parents look for baby sleep agencies nearby, and consult the staff who work there. It may be noted that these agencies are not federally regulated, so potential clients are recommended to carefully evaluate them and consult the staff before hiring a sleep coach. If a reliable and reputable sleep training agency is found, a sleep coach (most likely a woman) will be sent to the clients’ household for interviews, and the parents may also fill out forms. All of this data gives the sleep coach an accurate idea of what the household is like, for the child and parents alike.
The sleep coach will now help train the baby or toddler to sleep more hours at a time without waking up. Although exact methods will vary, a sleep coach can, over the course of a week or two, get the baby or young toddler on a sleep schedule that closely resembles their parents’. This process may take somewhat longer with toddlers, but it can be done, and it will result in parents getting a good night’s sleep, uninterrupted. That, and learning to sleep like this is good for the baby or toddler, who will need that sort of schedule anyway once they’re older and going to school and other schedule-based activities.