On Parenting

Things To Help Kids Sleep

Here's at least a decent but possibly partial list of things we have used to hekp our kids sleep:

-Baby-Vites liquid b-coplex  by World Organics
-Calm by Standard Vitamins
-Taking walks before bed
-Chamomile tea
-Making sure they are fed well becore bed (not just milk if they are in a growth spurt)
-Letting 'em cry for a bit if we know they don't have empty tummies or soiled diapies
-Nerve Assists (Our kids love these.  They are very calming and simple to do.)
-Having a heart to heart about the rest of family needing sleep too.  This had evem worked on babies.
-Monitoring temp of room a bit better.
-Keeping air and room clean

Maybe I will think of more, but this is a pretty good start!

(sent from Treo 700 phone)

More On Sleeping Through The Night

Our newest son, Aren, had been sleeping through the night as of about 8 weeks of age and then recently experience a bit of a sleep hiccup here during these last three weeks where he started waking up every hour.  His bedroom adjoins ours so Christine is able to respond very rapidly whenever this would happen.

A couple of thoughts come rushing to mind when I consider these last three weeks.

Colic and Breastfeeding - Colic Help

A lot of times new parents aren't aware of the connection between what Mom eats and how Baby feels.  There's a very direct link here.  If my wife eats some garlic or something, there's a great chance we're going to spend the night/day wondering why our usually calm baby is so upset all the time (until we remember yesterday's meal anyway).

If you Google "food colic baby" or something like that, you'll pull up a lot more sights like this one which lists some of the most common no-no foods if you want to have avoid the world of colicy discomfort for your baby.

Link: Colic and Breastfeeding - Colic Help.

Many times, colic in a breastfed baby can be traced to something in the mothers's diet.

The worst dietary offender is cow's milk.

Sleep and Teething

If our babies are having trouble sleeping, we'll often check these "symptoms", assuming all other basics are covered (food, diapies):

Runny nose?
Body warm (but not quite feverish)?
Does the baby seem to be irritable/inconsolable?

If these are occurring, we'll usually suspect teething, particularly if the baby is 6-18 months.

Aidan is going through this right now. 

We'll usually take the following steps to help him get through it:

1. Extra holding and cradling as needed to assist him getting to sleep, including extra barley formula
2. Hyland makes great teething homeopathic products.  We like the little tabs that dissolve in his mouth, but we have the gel on hand for him as well.
3. We'll put a little calcium citrate on our finger and rub it on his gums a bit. After all, he's making teeth!

If he's used to sleeping through the night, and our kids are thanks to our application of Babywise, he'll usually be fine once he gets fully to sleep.  But getting there might involve a few fits and starts where one of us has to cradle him, feed a bit more and maybe even sing him to sleep--all things we love to do anyway!

Nerves and Nightmares

Sometimes our kids would have trouble sleeping or would show signs of "nerves"--little donkies on the edge, if you will.

With Aidan, our youngest, this would show up as restlessness.  He'd be very obviously tired (rubbing his eyes) but when put down for a nap would refuse to shutdown and rest. 

With the girls, this would present more as bad dreams or crankiness, whining over the slightest thing.  Ruling out recent sugar intake, our next step would be to give the kids some children's b-complex.

Nerves are a funny thing.  In the absence of B vitamins (B-6, B-1 in partcular) they start acting up.  In fact, prolonged use of alcohol will deplete one's B-1 so greatly as to cause delerium tremens.

While our kids certainly aren't imbibing any alchohol, other things can deplete B vitamins, such as 'stress'.  What I would call stress for kids would be things that are extra exhausting to the body, such as traveling, lack of sleep from a day of back-to-back birthday parties, etc.   We just came back from a six day trip to CA and back to visit family.  By the time we returned home, we were all physically drained.  The kids were off their sleep schedules and were crankier than usual.  Stress.

So it's times like these when we make sure we're getting at least a teaspoon of our favorite kid's b-complex into each child as soon as possible.  For our baby, it goes into his milk.  For the girls we have marketed this product as "no dream juice".  (One night they were voicing their concerns to me about having bad dreams, so I seized the moment and offered "no dream juice" as the solution.  That was months ago.  They ask for it by this name every night before going to bed now.)

I suspect that the B-6 in this is particularly helpful since I have long used that vitamin to help me get a restful night's sleep.  But I would never recommend giving a child anything other than a complete, balanced source of b-complex as giving only one vitamin at a time can cause deficiencies in other vitamins.

In any case, in times of "stress" or where sleep is becoming troublesome, we check to make sure the kids have been getting their b vitamins.  World Organics's Baby Vite is a great source for that and a staple in our little donkies' medicine chest.

Small Print: I'm not a doctor, nor a nutritionist.  Just a guy who has experienced a lot of trial and error and has read a lot about nutrition for my own use and to help my family.  You should consult a nutritionist or a someone trained in nutrition if you have any questions or doubts about what to do.  Meanwhile, if you don't like what I'm writing or disagree that's just fine with me.  Stop reading.  But don't try and pin all your troubles on me. Do your own research and make your own decisions based on your personal evaluation of the information.