Sleep Associations/ Sleep Crutches/ Sleep Aids – What’s the Big Deal?

Is your little one waking up multiple times a night? And needing that particular thing to help put them back to sleep? It could be needing to rock them back to sleep/ feeding them back to sleep/ needing to place the dummy back in etc. You may find that for older babies, the wakeups are 2-4hourly (once a sleep cycle ends), your little one calls out for you to provide XYZ sleep association in order to help them back to sleep.

These are called sleep associations. Some are dependent on you and some are independent. Did you know even adults have sleep associations without even realising too! It may be the darkness of the room, reading a book to fall asleep, air con on etc the list goes on.

See below examples of sleep associations that are dependent on your help and some which aern’t:

• Rocking back to sleep
• Feeding back to sleep
• Being held to sleep
• Use of a dummy (from ages 7 months onwards, they can be taught to put it in themselves, however if younger than this age, it can cause sleep disturbances between sleep cycles)

• White noise
• Dark room
• Sleeping bag
• a baby comforter

At the end of the day, if the sleep associations your little one depends on are not a problem for you, then stick to whatever is! However, if you are finding the wakeups are too often and causing too many sleep disturbances this is where I can come in to help!

The Baby Comforter xx