Pediatric Sleep Specialist

Attention Span & Activities-

To calculate the approximative attention span of your child you must take their age (years) and multiply that number by 2. If you have a 4year old, their attention span should be a minimum of 8minutes. The maximum that can be expect is found by calculating this last number by 2 (8x2=16). So a 4 year old can sit and focus on a given task for 8 to 16 minutes. Any extra is a bonus!

If my calculations are correct, that’s 4-8 activities per hour! 🤣

Here is ONE 👇🏽- FROZEN PEAS and TOOTHPICKS!

*remember, cognitive stimulation is just as important as physical activity for a good night sleep! 🛏 😴 💤

Mornings don’t have to be like this. Sleep is essential for you too!

If this is how you feel most mornings, you owe it to yourself. Consider sleep training, with a professional by your side to coach you every step of the way.

Ok officer, I may or may not have had a top off bottle before leaving the house 🥴
But I promise I’m not MilkDrunk 😁

Give the gift of SLEEP for Mother's Day. Book a 30 minute consultation on link below and get personalized advice on your child's current sleep problems.
https://pediatricsleepspecialist.com/…/www.pediatri…/contact

Standing in crib-
Your Baby was a good sleeper. Then the day came where she learned how to stand up on her own and can’t figure out how to sit back down 🤦‍♀️. Result: Baby manages to fall asleep at bedtime then you hear her screaming at 2am, you rush in and you find her standing, holding onto the bars, sobbing and distraught. It is now time to help her learn how to sit back down on her own. This is a lesson to be taught during the daytime and through games. Be creative! Teach her Ring-Around-The-Rosey (or create a song that finishes with everyone sitting down), teach her how to sit in her own chair when you sit in yours, etc. Once she is confident and independent in standing up AND sitting down, she may wakeup, stand up, look around, get bored, sit back down, and go right back to sleep without you having to intervene. Yep, it’s that easy :)

Weaning Night feeds
Night feeds become part of the daily routine from day one. A newborn needs to be fed around the clock, every 2-4 hours. We think we see the light at the end of the tunnel that first night when baby goes 5 hours without needing a feed. We think that that stretch will just get longer and longer until one day, baby will go 12 hours without a feed, right? And then what happens? We get stuck there- no progress. How do we get longer stretches? WE WEAN FEEDS!!!

Some babies may be ready at 5 months, others need to wait until 6 months before they can go the entire night without a feed. There are different methods to weaning. I’ve seen the most success with reducing nursing time by a few minutes every few days or decreasing bottle size by 1 ounce every few days.

Sleeping through the night- What does this actually mean?
It DOES NOT mean that your LO is sleeping 11-12 hours without waking up. It means that they are going the entire night without needing your assistance to fall asleep, stay asleep and put themselves back to sleep. When a child or baby is put down to bed at 7:30pm for example and doesn’t call out for you until 6:30am the next morning does not mean that they did not wake up during the night. They just managed to put themselves back to sleep on their own. So how do we get there? We teach them how to do so! This skill can be taught on most 6 month olds and some 5 month olds.