A Real Life Example of Gentle Sleep Shaping

Being loving and attentive to our babies also means that we can sometimes offer them space to figure out sleep on their own. This is part of gentle sleep shaping techniques. These techniques give babies the opportunity to slowly learn to fall asleep on their own and put themselves back to sleep. If they are unable to do so, we then give them assistance. It’s simple, but done overtime with consistency, it can make a huge difference in how babies sleep.

Here is a specific example from last night:

I was working with a family with a 6 week old baby. It was bedtime and the baby had just been fed but was struggling to settle into sleep. He was on the verge of fussiness for about 30 minutes as I tried to do what the parents usually do to get him to fall asleep (swaddling, rocking, shushing, bouncing, walking around). The room was dark and the sound machine was on. At a certain point I really felt that the baby didn’t want all the movement. I put him down in his crib and just stood next to him. If he had cried, I would have picked him up and gone back to the rocking, etc. I was close and attentive and yet, I was offering him some space.

He never cried but stayed in his crib awake for at least 20 minutes. Slowly his eyes began to show signs of sleepiness and gently he fell asleep completely on his own. Several times in the middle of the night he woke (well before I knew he would be hungry), moved around a bit and then put himself back to sleep. When he did wake to eat, he cried and I fed him. After his feed I put him back down awake and each time and he put himself back to sleep without any crying.