4MOMS GoodNight User Manual - page 6
Chapter 2: The GoodNight Sleep Method
2.1
Teaching your baby to sleep
There are dozens of references available on teaching your child to sleep through the
night. Fortunately, instead of reading them all, you can follow three simple steps:
(1 ) Decide what you want your child to associate with sleep.
(2) Follow the GoodNight Sleep Method: teach your child to fall asleep
with the new sleep associations by balancing their need for
reassurance with their need for independent learning and growth.
(3) Track your progress over time.
2.2
Nobody sleeps through the night.
Even before you had a baby, you woke up about every 90 minutes during the night.
The most likely reason you don’t remember this is that, after a quick check on our
surroundings, we fall right back to sleep. (The second most likely reason you don’t
remember is that it’s been that long since you actually had a good night of sleep).
Adults, children, and babies all wake up several times per night. There are five
levels of sleep, all of which are required for our body and brain to function properly.
We cycle between the four stages of deep sleep and a light rapid eye movement
(REM) sleep. At the end of the REM portion of our sleep cycle, we naturally wake up
briefly.
Around 3 months, most babies no longer need to eat during the night, though they
may still enjoy a midnight (or 3am) snack. Once your pediatrician has advised you
that these feedings are no longer necessary, you can start the GoodNight Sleep
Method.
2.3
Going to sleep is a learned behavior.
It’s a commonly held misconception that sleeping is like breathing, something we
are born knowing how to do. As a new parent, nobody needs to tell you that’s not
true, or at least, not the whole truth. While babies instinctively know how to sleep,
they need to learn to fall asleep.
Just as your child must learn to master skills like crawling or walking, they also need
to learn to sleep. In fact, the amount of effort involved in learning to “fall” asleep is
one of the ironies of the English language.
2.4
Sleep associations are how we learn to sleep
There is some good news here. While there’s not much you can do to teach your
baby to crawl or walk, you can teach your child to fall asleep. In fact, each and every
time your child goes to sleep, you are giving a lesson in what is necessary for falling
asleep. Sleep associations are all the things your child associates with falling asleep.