Sleep comes dropping slow - especially when you have a nine-month-old. Or a two-year-old. Or even a four-year-old. Welcome to motherhood - where you won't get a good night's sleep for at least the next five years.
We've got your back.
None of us can deny the fact that navigating those choppy waters of parenthood can be tricky, and certainly not for the fainthearted.
So we came up with a GENIUS masterplan...or better yet, a masterCLASS!
We've designed a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind parenting course to tackle all the tricky issues (from babyhood to school days) that will help you perfect your role as parent, mentor, cook, coach, nurse, driver, LEGO engineer, cheerleader, translator, champion cuddler, referee.....well, you get the picture.
As well as our host of experts, we'll lay on a delicious lunch, practical workshops and a whole lot of Q&A. It is on Saturday the 21st October and we hope you can join us.
Have you been meaning to do a First Aid course? Are you having trouble disciplining your child? Do you need some advice on getting your baby to sleep?
Well, our carefully chosen panel of amazing experts will focus on everything from feeding to First Aid, screen-time, emotional development, behaviour, bullying, nutrition and much, much more.
Dr Elizabeth Kilbey, the Child Psychologist best known for her work on the Channel 4 show, 'The Secret Life of 4, 5 & 6-year-olds', and the esteemed Paediatric Sleep Specialist, Lucy Wolfe, are part of our super-impressive line-up.
We KNOW how hard it is to know if we are doing it right. Sometimes hearing some advice from the best in the business is what we all need. Use our discount code, Family, now for a MummyPages reader discount - click here to check it out.
With all this GLORIOUS information, we wanted to give you a little sneak preview of the type of stuff we'll be discussing.
Without further adieu, here are Lucy Wolfe's 10 tips to achieve the PERFECT bed time routine:
1. Quieten the house an hour before bedtime. Dim the lights, turn off the television and spend some one to one time with your child.
2. Ideally, finish any feeds downstairs/in the living room so that you don’t ingrain a feeding and sleeping association.
3. Consider including a soothing bath to round off the day. In the absence of the bath, do a quick face wash and teeth brushing and then go to your child’s bedroom for the rest of the bedtime sequence.
4. In the bedroom dim the lights, pull the curtains and consider using white noise on in the back ground, at the volume of a shower to help regulate the heart-beat and relax your tot. Turn this off before they are asleep.
5. Consider some baby massage or some relaxing exercises for an older child.
6. Get your child ready for bed: change the nappy, put on the pyjamas and into their sleeping bag if you use one. Sleeping bags are a great sleep aid-they help to avoid your child being too hot or too cold if they are inclined to kick off the blankets and they are also a great sleep cue “this is my costume for sleep”. I would also use these for naps.
7. Whilst getting your baby ready for bed, sing a particular song and say the same words over and over so that they can learn the words that you say before lights out “sleep time now Harry, it’s night night….”
8. Do some quiet reading or story-time with your child, encourage them to look at the pictures, modulate your voice so that they are less inclined to want to eat the book…it’s not the words, but sometimes the melodic way that you say them. This quiet non-stimulating time, with plenty of contact, can switch them from alert to sleepy.
9. In the early days, your routine may be quite short 10-15 minutes in duration, but within the second half of the first year, you may need to provide 20-30minutes of a wind-down. Build a process that you can add to as your child grows up.
10. Have an end to your routine, a certain phrase that you use or turning off of the lights or an “I love you” ritual that signals the end of the routine and the start of your child needing to go off to sleep
Check out some more life-changing tips and tricks from the best parenting experts in the business. Sign up for your tickets here now as places are limited.
