Whether your child is 3 months or 3 years old, one thing that comes up time and time again, is how to maintain good sleep once you have it.
A lot of parents prior to committing to sleep training, worry about putting the time in and to endure some tears, to have the sleep regress or fall apart at a later date.
The kinds of issues parents worry about sleep maintenance through are: illness, teething, sleep regressions & travelling (to name a few).
Once a child knows how to fall to sleep, they don't forget how to do it, but certainly some circumstances will change, and this could resort in you changing how you deal with them. In turn, this will then change what they expect from you.
I say it time and time again, but when you work on a little ones' sleep, you are not teaching them to sleep through the night without waking up, you are teaching them how to fall to sleep and go back to sleep without expecting something from you. So the actual pattern is the same, as it was before, you are just not aware of all the wakings.
The key to good sleep all starts at bedtime and how a child FIRST falls to sleep, so if you had a previously good sleeper, who would fall to sleep no problem and sleep through the night, who then got sick, then you can expect to see some issues seep in again over night. So, how do you get around this, or how do you avoid this?
I'll use illness as an example here:
Your baby has a cold and can not fall to sleep as easily as they did when they were healthy - so you decide to rock them or feed them or do something to help them fall to sleep.
They still know how to do it, BUT they are struggling because they have a blocked nose, and maybe a low grade fever (example).
They key is to not offer props to help them fall to sleep, but to offer something that will allow them to feel better, so sleep is easier.
As an adult if you are sick and have the flu (fever, body aches, headache), you still know how to fall to sleep, you go to bed and get in and wait... but if you have some of these symptoms, getting to sleep can be more challenging, so you would likely take something for it, to help with the body pains.
Conclusion: if your child is sick, you are treating the illness. This is not a sleep issue, sleep is secondary and can come off track due to a primary cause (the illness).
If you had a child that was sleeping and your sleep has come off track and you need some help to get back on track, I'm here for you. The Quick Fix option is the best package for those whose child was sleep trained but whose sleep has gotten off track.
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