My name is Seema. I’m a baby and sleeping consultant working with families for about 17 years now, anxiety, stress, depression, overwhelm, mental health issues.

I’m just here to talk a little bit about how sleep training works around Managing Days Out and Social Activities. One of the questions that I often get is, do I need to be stuck indoors to sleep train? ‘I don’t want a strict schedule’, ‘I would like to have some flexibility’, ‘I don’t have the time to commit to sleep training’, or ‘I don’t want to clock watch’.

So if I just tell you a little bit about sleep training, so I offer 2 to 4 weeks sleep training. When you sign up to work with me, I will send you a sleep assessment, and once I’ve got that back, I’ll put together a sleep plan. In your sleep plan, you will have everything included in there that you need to cover a 24 hour day. So things like daytime routine for naps, for feeding solids, the right advice around food, advice around quantity of milk you’ve got awake windows. What time bedtime should be, how to address all night, waking wake ups, what sleep training method to use, how your bedroom environment should look, what you need, all the equipment, things like blackout blinds or white noise machine, or if you’re safe, for example, going from a swaddle to a sleeping bag and things like that.

When you receive your sleep plan, we would start sleep training, and the requirement to actually sleep train is only one week of clearing your diary of social activities.

Often people are confused, or they have this belief in their mind that you have to be on a strict routine, or you have to be stuck indoors to sleep train which is completely incorrect.

So the way that it basically works is that when you sleep train, for the first week, I would require you to basically carry on with your normal day-to-day, things like work, nursery, childcare, appointments, whatever it is that you need to do. The only thing that I would ask is for that first week of sleep training that you clear your diary of evening activities and social days out and baby classes. The reason for that is so you can focus on implementing a nap routine, nip any over tightness in your bud, look at finding personal awake windows for your child, and then nap train. Focus on bedtime settling and implement your sleep training method.

In the second week of Sleep Training I help parents to start venturing out, gain confidence, get clarity on how to manage sleep when you’re going out, navigate awake windows, buggy and car naps and bedtime timings. So, how to go about your normal day-to-day activities without compromising any of your social life.

In my sleep training packages, you will receive 50 page sleep bible that I wrote myself. And in there one of the handouts is called Managing Days Out and Social Activities. This bible will show you how to keep sleep on track when you’re out about. So things like managing short naps or skipping naps, navigating late bedtimes, car seat transitions, bedtime settling on these days and night expectations. If your baby is Sleep Trained you would just get back on track on a home day. It’s about having confidence, and it’s about knowing that you don’t have to be stuck indoors. That’s not how life works, especially if you’ve got multiple children or even if you’re just outdoor people. I encourage people to go out, and I think it’s really important for people to enjoy their time as families and kids get older really, really quickly.

Here are some tips:

▸ Aim for a rough rhythm when outdoors for naps
▸ Keep a relaxed and calm mindset around short naps and late bedtime
▸ Try for an earlier bedtime if naps are short
▸ Know from the outset you may have a few night wakings due to overtiredness – AND THATS OK!
▸ Add an extra night feed in if needed
▸ Be more hands on with settling techniques at bedtime or night wakings
▸ Use a Snooze Shade
▸ Rest your baby at home before heading out and offer a longer morning nap

It breaks my heart to think that there are people out there that don’t approach sleep training, because they think that they have to be stuck on clock watching!

If you are ready to sleep training pop me a message for a FREE No Pressure chat here at hey@seemabarua.com or 07581410015

To find out more about my Sleep Training Programmes Learn More here

If you are ready to sign up you can book here

 

Seema x