For New Parents – Establish Good Sleep Habits Early On

I can’t tell you how many parents I speak with that still have one or more toddlers or children sleeping in their beds or their rooms. Did you know that infants start to develop a working memory for routines at 6 months old? I can’t stress enough the important of establishing good bedtime routines early on. Routines such as dimming the lights, reading a story, playing soft music and/or rocking to sleep; and most importantly having babies sleep in their own cribs starting at 6 months old. If an infant gets use to sleeping in your bed, it is usually a tough routine to change. As someone once said “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

Having said that, this can be difficult if you’re a parent of an infant with reflux or reoccurring ear infections. You are parents who are more likely to be sleep-deprived since your infants don’t sleep well. Elevating the head of the crib can be helpful in getting a good nights rest for all! For infants with reflux, keeping them upright can help reduce the number of reflux episodes. Infants with ear infections need to be upright to help relieve the pressure that causes pain. For more information see the previous blogs and resources on this page and follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Nighttime Parenting - Parenting Tips from Dr. Sears

The Baby Stay Asleep was designed to allow parents to settle their baby to sleep and then place them in an elevated crib without additional straps. What's so nice about this is that the baby will not wake up due to the noise or jostling from additional fasteners and straps. And more importantly it allows you to rock, soothe or cuddle your baby to sleep. Expecting babies to fall asleep on their own too early may be unrealistic. Read on for some tips from Dr. Sears:

"How babies enter sleep. You're rocking, walking, or nursing your baby and her eyelids droop as she begins to nod off in your arms. Her eyes close completely, but her eyelids continue to flutter and her breathing is still irregular. Her hands and limbs are flexed, and she may startle, twitch, and show fleeting smiles, called "sleep grins." She may even continue a flutter-like sucking. Just as you bend over to deposit your "sleeping" baby in her crib so you can creep quietly away, she awakens and cries. That's because she wasn't fully asleep. She was still in the state of light sleep when you put her down. Now try your proven bedtime ritual again, but continue this ritual longer (about twenty more minutes). You will notice that baby's grimaces and twitches stop; her breathing becomes more regular and shallow, her muscles completely relax. Her fisted hands unfold and her arms and limbs dangle weightlessly. Martha and I call this "limp-limb" sign of deep sleep. Baby is now in a deeper sleep, allowing you to put her down and sneak away, breathing a satisfying sigh of relief that baby is finally resting comfortably."

NIGHTTIME PARENTING LESSON #1:

"Babies need to be parented to sleep, not just put to sleep. Some babies can be put down while drowsy yet still awake and drift while others need parental help by being rocked or nursed to sleep. The reason is that while adults can usually go directly into the state of deep sleep, infants in the early months enter sleep through an initial period of light sleep. After twenty minutes or more they gradually enter deep sleep, from which they are not so easily aroused. As you probably know from experience, if you try to rush your baby to bed while she is still in the initial light sleep period, she will usually awaken. Many parents tell me: "My baby has to be fully asleep before I can put her down." In later months, some babies can enter deep sleep more quickly, bypassing the lengthy light sleep stage. Learn to recognize your baby's sleep stages. Wait until your baby is in a deep sleep stage before transitioning her from one sleeping place to another, such as from your bed to a crib or from carseat to bed or crib."

Read more parenting tips from Dr. Sears here.

8 Infant Sleep Facts

Glad to get feedback!

This week I received an email from a customer in Quincy, Massachusetts. It is always a good feeling to hear that in some small way you are making life better for someone else. Here's what Katie T. had to say: "

When the doctor told us to raise one side of the crib mattress the first question my husband and I had was how do you keep the baby from sliding down.  Luckily, through word of mouth we found out about The Baby Stay Asleep and we had a safe way to put our baby to sleep at the angle the doctors recommended.  However, there was more to it than that.  After hours of rocking and consoling our daughter to sleep, the last thing we wanted to do was play around with straps and velcro that might wake her up.  With The Baby Stay Asleep all we needed to do was lie her down.  As any parent of a child with severe reflux can tell you, anything great or small that makes your days and nights easier is a God send.  The first time you place your sleeping baby down, you will agree that this is an answer to a prayer.  I would recommend it to anyone."

Thanks Katie for sharing your story!

Reaching out to parents of infants in a high tech world

Today I attend a seminar at the Women’s Business Center in Portsmouth. The topic was ‘Fast Track Your Website Using Search Engine Optimization’. There was 20 of us “newbie” women at this seminar and one woman who thought it was her own private session. She was stuck on the concept of having sites link into your site. While I will admit this was tough to wrap my head around, after the speaker explaining a dozen different ways – it’s time to move on!

What I learned is that is important to build an on-line community to share my experiences with other parents and professionals. Having a Facebook page, Twitter account and a blog on my website is definitely going to positively effect how I reach out to parents and how parents find me. I am feeling slightly more comfortable with terms such as social media, SEO and web 2.0.  So if I can do, anyone can do it!

Cotting School – Getting the job done!

Just back from Cotting School, where Baby Stay Asleep has engaged the students there to do the fulfillment of our orders. Cotting is a unique day school for children with a broad spectrum of learning and communication disabilities, physical challenges, and complex medical conditions. One of the things they do is to provide adolescents a way to acquire vocational skills. This is something I can really get behind because I support any opportunity that allows the students to acquire “real skills” by working on “real jobs”.

These students are like all of us, they want meaningful ways to contribute.

They also have their own successful used bookstore on Amazon.com. You can find them at

http://www.amazon.com/shops/cottingschool.