You’ve spent all evening trying to get your little one to fall asleep, and they finally do…only to wake 45 minutes later. Or perhaps your little one regularly drops off to sleep while taking her bedtime feed, only to wake half an hour after you’ve put her into her crib and left the room? When a little one wakes up after a single sleep cycle at bedtime it is known as a false start – and it can be the most discouraging thing for a tired parent who needs some time to unwind in the evening!
So let’s take a look at some of the causes of false starts – and what you can do to resolve them.
1. The wake window into bed is too long, or too short.
As throughout the day and before each nap, babies need to build sufficient sleep pressure before bedtime in order to fall asleep and then to stay asleep. If a little one’s wake window is too short before bed, they won’t have sufficient sleep pressure to stay asleep, so they will treat bedtime like a nap. An overly long wake window however can also cause a false start due to overtiredness and a build-up of cortisol in a little one’s system.
How can I resolve this?
The first thing to do is to check your little one’s wake windows, which you can do here. Are they age-appropriate? Are they roughly the same (or slightly shorter) just before bed as in the rest of the day? If the answer to either of these questions is no, there’s probably some adjustments to make. You may also need to introduce or persevere with a power nap before bed. A power nap is a short nap that will help preserve an optimal wake window before bedtime. For example, if the wake window going into bedtime will be longer than ideal, but there is not sufficient time to fit in a long nap, a quick power nap (normally around 30-45 minutes) is your perfect solution. If your little one is prone to battle their power nap as many are, it should be achieved in the easiest (safe!) way possible – in the pram, on the go or as a contact nap for example.
2. Your little one is getting insufficient sleep during the day
Naps are often far more difficult to work on than night-time sleep; at night, biology is on our side. During the day however, levels of melatonin (the human sleep hormone) are low, it’s difficult to get a room completely dark and there’s often lots of other things around that your little one (or you!) would rather do. As a result, lots of families struggle with getting enough naps in – or naps are short and so the little one misses out on the deep, restorative sleep of a longer nap. The problem with insufficient daytime sleep is that it leads to overtiredness – a build up of cortisol (the human wake hormone) in a little one’s system. And an overtired baby (with lots of wake-up hormone in their system) will battle bedtime, and then wake frequently throughout the night.
How can I resolve this?
The first thing to check here is, funnily enough, wake windows. Use the ones here as a starting point, making sure that you adjust them as shown after a short nap. Once your wake windows are in place, you should at least be getting the frequency (& number) of naps more or less correct. Once wake windows are optimal, short naps may naturally extend, providing the environment is conducive to sleep and your little one is able to self-settle at the beginning of the nap. But if they don’t, you may need to start helping your little one to extend their naps so that their little bodies get used to those longer stretches of daytime sleep. If overtiredness is the culprit behind your little one’s false starts, they should resolve once daytime sleep is consistently sufficient.
3. Your little one is getting too much daytime sleep
If the nap struggles of the previous point resonated with you, you might be tempted to skip over this point, but don’t go anywhere yet – it is possible that your little one has short naps and yet is still getting too much sleep in the day. In fact, short naps can be a sign of a little one being undertired (and they’ll usually wake up from their catnap happy and seemingly refreshed). However short his naps, if your little one is sleeping more than 12 hours at night there’s a chance that his night sleep is in fact spilling over into his daytime sleep, and he is not able to build sufficient sleep pressure in time for bed.
How can I resolve this?
If your little one is consistently sleeping more than 12 hours at night, start capping their night-time sleep at 12 hours. Most little ones need 11-12 hours of solid night-time sleep (and so 12-13 hours of daytime before they’re ready for bed again), so you may find that 12 hours is still too much. Keep the morning wake-up time as consistent as possible and only reduce sleep very gradually over several days. When we make changes to sleep it can take a few days to start to see the effects, so don’t be tempted to go cutting your little one’s sleep too much too fast. And if night-time sleep isn’t where your little one’s getting their extra zzz’s, have a look at capping their daytime sleep. This is a common cure for a toddler who after having a lunchtime nap struggles at bedtime (whether with false starts or simply pushing bedtime later and later). Before you ditch the nap completely, try capping it gradually, all the way down to 45 minutes.
4. Your baby is not going into their crib awake
Feeding is a lovely cosy activity and many babies will drop off quite easily whilst feeding. However, falling asleep on a feed could be falling asleep prematurely i.e. your little one is not yet ready to be asleep for the night.
There’s other instances when your little one may not be going into their crib awake – normally due to an inability to self-settle, and so you rock or cuddle them to sleep. This may result in them waking after one sleep cycle looking for that same assistance to get back to sleep.
How can I resolve this?
If your little one is falling asleep on a feed, try offering them a split feed. This involves giving them a big feed after their final nap, when they’ve got lots of energy to take a really good feed, and then offering a top up towards the end of their bedtime routine. This method allows you to maximise the amount of milk your little one is taking before bed, as well as ensuring they have sufficient energy to take a good feed. If your little one is still dropping off on that final feed, it may be that your wake window is too long, and you need to move that feed earlier. Or simply take them off the feed and try to rouse them before offering the rest of the feed, or putting them into their crib awake.
If you’re rocking or cuddling your little one to sleep, and they’re struggling with false starts and frequent night wakes, it may be time to teach your little one how to drop off independently. Self-settling is a baby superpower that you can teach your little one – and once your baby has it, their sleep is likely to improve in significant ways.
Drop me a message here, or book a free discovery call if you’d like to find out more about how I can help your little one achieve that in gentle, supportive ways.
