Baby's Sleeping Routine

A desperate mother finally gets some sleep!

By Sandra Kumskov, Dip HSc (Holistic Counselling), CEC, NLP, EFT Adv

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I recently worked with a little girl who was a really restless sleeper. Mum and baby had agreed to see me, encouraged by grandma whom I’d recently helped eliminate shingles pain. Mum was not convinced that “that tapping thing” would really help but she was desperately tired and willing to try anything.

At 18 months old the baby had never slept for longer than two hours. Her mum was exhausted and not coping with other issues in her life including, not surprisingly, great tension in her marriage and with step-children. Baby had been checked out by a GP and was pronounced very healthy.

While the real issue was probably the mum’s constant high level of anxiety (always at an intensity of 5 with higher peaks, a lifelong pattern) being reflected by the baby, which mum was not willing to deal with until she felt she had more energy, I agreed to tap on the baby.

Well baby wasn’t having any of it. She intercepted my hand every time I approached her. She was sitting on mum’s lap so I had mum try tapping - same result. So we switched to surrogate tapping, mum tapping for the baby. I’m working through all the DVDs and have only seen reference to ‘surrogate’, so was winging it! We started very generally:

I am (baby's name).

Even though I never sleep for more than two hours at a time, I’m still a great kid.

Even though me not sleeping is wearing out my mum, I know my mum loves me.

At this point the baby started to doze off which “she sometimes does, for about 20 minutes”, Mum still a bit skeptical. We kept going:

I am (baby's name).

Even though I only sometimes have short naps, I’m still a great kid.

Even though I only ever nap for 20 minutes, my mum loves me.

By now the baby was sleeping soundly, and we kept going. I asked mum what sleeping pattern she’d like to get for the most rest for herself and what she thought would be optimal for baby. Baby never went to sleep before 10.30 at night and was awake at 5am, with at least three half-hour wake-ups during the night. Mum wanted her in bed by 7pm, and to wake up at 7am, with a 1.5 – 2 hour nap in the middle of the day – this seemed reasonable to me.

So we tapped on all aspects of the routine mum wanted to establish, to work for her and baby:

Even though I hardly ever nap during the day….

Even though I wake up often during the night….

Even though I’m hard to settle during the night…

Even though I never go to sleep before 10.30….

Even though I wake up at 5am when daddy gets up…

I now choose to go to sleep at 7pm every night….

I now choose to sleep soundly all night….

I now choose to wake up at 7am every morning….

Grandma visited at that point (letting herself in so baby wasn’t disturbed) and was amazed to see baby asleep during the day, something she’d never seen. Baby slept on, and the session seemed at a natural end. I told mum she might need to do some tapping around some of the issues we’d tapped for. Mum carefully moved baby onto the couch and covered her with a rug, expecting baby to wake – she slept on.

That evening at about 8.30 Grandma phoned – baby had slept for 1.5 hours, and had happily gone to bed just after 8.00pm (uncle visited them and played with baby :) ) Three days later Grandma phoned again – for the third day in a row, baby was sleeping for 1.5 hours during the day, going to sleep at 7pm, waking not at 6:59, not at 7:01 but at 7:00 am. All, including hubby, are delighted.

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Author's Bio:

Sandy Kumskov helps women find move from anxiety to freedom, in all parts of their lives.

2 Comments

Dave
Posted May 03, 2010 02:19 PM

Wow. Your "winging it" was fabulous. Surrogate / proxy tapping never ceases to amaze me - (wish I could remember to use it more often!) I've even had excellent results tapping for Rufus (my pound dog) while 500+ miles away.

Thank you for taking time to write your article - share that experience.

Lidija
Posted May 17, 2012 02:47 PM

Excellent! our suggestions worked for me too. Thank you so much for publishig this!

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