Keeping Your Toddler's Sleep On Track When a New Baby Arrives
/Congratulations! You’ve either just welcomed a new baby into the house, or you’re about to soon. So exciting!
For many parents, the excitement of welcoming a new baby can be mixed with some concern that their new arrival might upend all the hard work they put into establishing their older child’s sleep skills.
Having been through this myself and supporting many clients through this transition, I can tell you bringing a new baby into the house is likely to impact your older child’s sleep habits in one way or another, and there are two main reasons why.
1. Your newborn is going to wake up numerous times a night and make some noise, which is likely to wake up your toddler.
2. Your toddler may be jealous of the new baby.
Let’s look at number one first. Noise is going to be a factor when your newborn wakes up crying for nighttime feeds. Unfortunately, there’s very little that can be done to prevent crying. Newborns cry, especially when they are hungry.
Toddler hugs her mom’s belly
Your best bet is to keep your newborn in your room and have your toddler in a crib, preferably down the hall away from your newborn’s sleeping area. I specified “in a crib” because you’re likely going to have an easier time of this if your toddler is still in a crib as opposed to a big kid bed. Regardless of whether there’s a new baby in the picture, I recommend keeping kids in the crib as long as possible if it’s safe to do so. If you do need to transition your toddler to a big kid bed for safety reasons, I would suggest doing it well before the new baby arrives, so they have a chance to adjust before their little world changes.
A white noise machine can also help to drown out the noise. Just make sure to keep the volume level under 60 decibels and keep the machine away from your little one’s crib or bed (by the door is ideal). The obvious goal being to keep your toddler from being woken up by the sound of the baby stirring in the night.
Depending on their age, it’s also a great idea to just have a conversation with your toddler about the fact that their baby sibling is going to wake up crying in the night sometimes and let them know it’s nothing to worry about. Let them know that if they hear their baby brother or sister fussing in the night, that you will always be responding to them, and they don’t need to worry.
As for the second reason, there’s a good chance that your toddler is going to get jealous of their sibling – at least to some extent. After all, newborns require a lot of attention, attention which was all directed at your toddler up until their brother or sister came along.
Jealousy can cause regressions, prompting your toddler to crave the comforts they enjoyed when they were younger. They may…
• Requests more cuddles
• Ask to go back into the crib if they’re in a big kid bed
• Want to sleep in your bed or in your room
• Be more needy or clingy during the bedtime routine
Sometimes sleep is impacted because one or both parents start to feel guilty about the fact that they don’t have the time and energy to dedicate to both children, so they try to compensate by making concessions, and those concessions frequently show up around bedtime. Extra stories, longer cuddles, getting into bed with them, and so on.
And let me just say that I totally get that! Parental guilt is a powerful motivator, and we’ll do almost anything to ensure our kids know that they’re loved, cherished, and secure. If a couple of extra stories at bedtime will help ensure our babies that they’re still #1 in our hearts, why wouldn’t we accommodate them?
Here’s a great quote about toddlers.
“Toddlers are like little night watchmen. They go around checking all the doors, but don’t really want to find any of them open.”
Our little ones’ job is test boundaries, but they don’t test them in the hopes that they’ve moved, they test them to ensure that they’re still in place. It gives them a sense of security to know that the rules and expectations surrounding them are constant and predictable.
I know it doesn’t feel that way sometimes, but I can assure you that the more you give in to those demands, the more they test. It often gets to the point where your toddler feels like they’re running the show, and that can be very upsetting for them. They feel much more secure and relaxed with the confidence that their parents are in control.
So, if this situation comes up, I recommend that you keep everything around bedtime exactly as it was before the new baby showed up. Same bedtime, same bedtime routine, same number of stories, same sleep environment. If you start shifting boundaries, it’s only going to reinforce your toddler’s suspicion that things have changed, and that’s likely to bring on more insecurity. I would also suggest, if possible, alternating who does bedtime so that your toddler doesn’t feel like one parent is always “busy” now that there’s a new sibling in the house.
I would also highly suggest carving out a chunk of time reserved just for your toddler. It doesn’t have to be long, even 10-15 minutes is great, but make sure that your attention is focused solely on them. Let them decide what they want to do with the time, and feel free to just smother them with love and attention. This “you-and-me” time works wonders in reassuring your older child that they’re still at the center of your universe, even if they’re sometimes sharing the space with someone else.
If you find guilt starting to creep in, remember that you’re not being a bad parent by sticking to your boundaries. You’re doing what’s best for them and staying firm and consistent with routines and boundaries is the secret to a happy, secure, well attached child, even if your gut tells you otherwise in the moment. Making those tough calls for the good of your kids is what being an awesome parent is all about.
