Get your child to sleep like a BETTER THAN a baby…

With a 5 week old in the house, I’m not ready to establish a strict routine for Baby Sophie, but there are definite aspects of the suggested strategies below that I’m now implementing. I find that nursing in a quiet zone with a mug of hot chamomile tea helps both of us relax. 

EXPERT GUEST: For this post, I asked Chris Church to write about her experience and research in establishing sleep routines for children. Her entire post can be found here, where she outlines some reasons why you shouldn’t try these strategies, along with some of the research to back up what she learned about the sleep cycles of babies and children. But for brevity in this email, I’ll head straight to the strategies and recipes. Here’s Chris:

New moms, moms of newborns, parents of small children… all become obsessed with sleep. Whether they’re crowing online that their x month old slept through the night or they’re pondering why their child wakes every 45 minutes, parents focus on it.

During their first year, infants function on a 90 minute clock. They tend to want to sleep when 90 minutes are reached. As they grow closer to a year, they stretch out those times by doubling or tripling the 90 minute periods. Their sleep is also in 90 minute intervals with a move towards lighter sleep at the 45 minute marks. (source)

As toddlers, they may start to move away from this structured sleep.

What happens when even a loose structure doesn’t work for infants, toddlers or kids? Make sure you rule out teething, developmental or physical leaps, hunger, illness or allergies. These things mess with sleep no matter the age. I personally complained for my first year that I got a broken baby who didn’t nap and rarely slept. Amazingly, no one mentioned the whole allergies aspect to me until my son was 13 months old and I had started unpacking the idea. Don’t look to sleep training until you have ruled out the above issues.

Now with older kids, stress or even excitement can inhibit sleep. Do you remember the monster in your closet or that anticipated visit to someone special or a special place? Did you sleep? In situations like these, sit down with the child and really listen. With fears or stress points, treat them as real and help them work through them. Excitement at times can’t be downplayed but you can help by using calming methods.

How to establish a sleep routine

Remember that no matter the age, a bedtime routine helps prepare kids (and adults) for bed. Those routines don’t have to be locked into a rigid time schedule but could instead be a routine starts with one activity that flows to the others. How that works for your family is up to you. Below, I have 6 things you can add into your routine to help trigger scent memory. Not everything will work with everyone.

1. Sit down with a mug of chamomile tea and a read aloud book (parent reading or using audiobooks). You can add a bit of honey or juice to the tea since many kids are more open to a sweeter flavor.
2. Bath with infused Bath Salts. There are 3 essential oils (EO) that can be used singly or as a blend in Epsom salts: Chamomile, Lavender, or Geranium EOs. Mix 1 cup of Epsom salt, 1 cup of sea salts, and 1-2 wafers of cocoa butter grated with 8 drops of a single EO or blend of EOs. Then use 3 tablespoons in a full bath of warm water. The water helps relax muscles which trigger the brain to calm down while the EO enhances this by calming, relaxing and balancing via topical application and inhalation. Do not place EOs in water alone or mucus membranes can be burned (or overly sensitized).
3. Massage. Many kids (and adults) of all ages enjoy touch from those they love. Read up or watch YouTube videos on infant or child massage before jumping in since small bodies are highly receptive to touch. Create a massage oil with a single EO or blend. Take 1 oz of your favorite carrier oil (coconut oil, almond, grapeseed, etc) and add 2-4 total drops of EOs (use the EOs mentioned in step 2 or look at the end of the article for a simple custom blend) for a 0.5% dilution which is safe for all kids over 3 months of age. Another idea is to take the Whipped Body Body in Renee’s ebooks (the summer edition or the gift giving edition) and add the same amount of EOs per oz of liquid.
4. At times, you ponder if you can get crafty in a non-body product method: A special sleep pillow filled with herbs will release scent as the head moves. Hops are a great herb to create as your base. Nope, the room won’t smell of beer, but they are soporific. Peter Rabbit knew well that soporific things lead to sleep. Hops make a nice cushy filling when dried. They do compact with time. You could mix them with buckwheat hulls so they don’t compress so quickly. Other herbs to mix with the hops are chamomile flower buds and catnip (don’t worry only cats get hyped on this plant – humans find it has sedative qualities).
5. Reducing the light while going through the bedtime routine also helps trigger the brain that sleep is coming. In addition, diffusing EOs for the last 30 minute before bedtime will help promote restfulness. I love Geranium EO in my kid’s room. It covers that smell of boy and is just relaxing. Lavender and Chamomile EOs are other good choices. Turn off the diffuser when it’s time to sleep. Our bodies need to process the oils so that they can get to work.
6. If you are traveling or experiencing a time zone shift like Daylight Saving Time, melatonin is a short term solution. Kids only need about a ¼ of a pill to be effective*. Remember melatonin is a hormone and if we constantly dose ourselves or our kids, then our body gets lazy and produces less of this important hormone.

*dosage: proper dose for a 150lb adult is 0.25mg to 0.5mg of melatonin. So for a 30lb kid you need to divide that amount by 1/5 or a 50lb kid by 1/3. Start with the smaller dose and work up.

Essential oil blends to use in the recipes mentioned above:

Simple Sleep Blend
4 drops Chamomile
4 drops Lavender

Sweet Sleep Blend
8 drops Sweet Orange
4 drops Geranium
3 drops Chamomile

Old-Fashion Sleep Blend
(Wait 2 hours before sun exposure)
8 drops Mandarin
4 drops Geranium
3 drops Lavender

Whipped Shea Butter

12 oz shea butter (buy 3 packs here)
3 oz coconut oil (buy 1 pack here)
Melt shea butter and coconut oil in a double boiler. Stir.
Refrigerate until just hardened, about 2-3 hours.
Whip using a stand up or hand held mixer, scraping down the sides.
Once you reach the desired feel, whip in essential oil(s).
Scoop into jars.

Recipe taken from MadeOn’s My Buttered Life: Summer Edition

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Chris Church had chronic health problems during her teen and young adult years. It wasn’t til almost 30 that God revealed the source of the issues. Allergies forced her to look at natural health. In 2015, she began pursuing education in evidence based natural health (herbs, EOs and nutrition) via Vintage Remedies and eventually Franklin Institute of Wellness.