Holidays are a break from our daily routine— work, school, or business, sometimes unwillingly even from the baby’s sleep schedule routine.
During the holiday season, we put aside our daily routine to relax and enjoy ourselves with friends and families.
Holidays with our family feel wonderful until the holidays are approaching their end, then we realize how far we’ve fallen out of our routine and how difficult it might be to get back on track.
Sleep regression is common in babies after celebrating the holidays. Babies are easily adaptable —They conform to change once the dynamics are adjusted.
As the holiday period ends, you might be worried about how to get your baby’s sleep routine back on track.
In this article, you will learn what causes sleep patterns to change in babies, and I will also share with you three ways to get your baby’s sleep back on track after the holidays.
3 VITAL WAYS TO GET YOUR BABY’S SLEEP SCHEDULE BACK TO NORMAL
IDENTIFY THE FACTORS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR BABY’S SLEEP REGRESSION AFTER THE HOLIDAYS.
The most vital step in fixing sleep regression in babies is to find the causes. There is a higher chance that during holidays, your routine will be different from usual.
During holidays, you develop habits of doing things differently, relaxing more, and letting go of most of your drills.
You may also initiate new sleep associations with your baby, including helping your baby to fall asleep by driving around, rocking, cuddling, co-sleeping, and music.
Maybe you even traveled to a different timezone and had to adapt to different bedtime. These activities are what we call sleep associations.
Sleep associations during the holidays may lead to difficulties with babies falling asleep once the holidays are over.
Your first step in getting back on track is to make a list of probable sleep associations adopted during the holidays.
MANAGE YOUR BABY’S SLEEP ASSOCIATIONS.
You can manage your baby’s sleep associations by practicing Positive Compounding. I got this idea from a book written by James Clear titled Atomic Habit.
In this book, he states that “ Small changes often appear to make no difference until you cross a critical threshold.”
To shape your baby’s sleep routine back on track after a holiday, you need to gradually drop sleep associations developed during holidays while re-introducing the usual sleep routine.
Don’t rush him, and don’t expect change overnight. Be patient and intentional.
For example, During the holidays, your baby slept later than usual, say at 10 pm instead of 7 pm. After the holidays, start to put him to bed at 9:45 pm instead of insisting on 7 pm, and gradually shorten bedtime to 7 pm.
Doing this will make it easy to adapt and get back on track. Remember, little habit changes are building blocks to remarkable results.
BE CONSISTENT
Once you start eliminating sleep associations developed during the holidays, pay much attention to consistency. Habit change is not easy, and frequently falling out on routine will only make matters worse.
Yes, tread slowly, but never backward. Consistency is key—The more you practice activity, the more your brain structure gets efficient and automatic at it, and it’s no different from babies.
You may be tempted to go soft on your baby; to keep them happy, but research has proven that sleep training your child does not harm attachment, on the contrary, it improves emotions, linguistics, memory, and learning skills.
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