How to balance the three pressure points as you reset your baby's body clock

What are the three pressure points?

If your baby is a couple of months old or more, and has disrupted sleep patterns with excessive waking at night, you can reset your baby’s body clock to make sleep more manageable. This takes one or two weeks. There are three pressure points we work with to reset your baby's body clock.

Here, I give an overview of how to balance these pressure points. For detailed information, click on the links.

• Pressure point #1. Have your baby start the day earlier.

• Pressure point #2. Change what you've been doing with daytime naps.

• Pressure point #3. Gradually push your baby's evening bedtime back later.

Do you have a newborn or young baby in the first eight weeks of life who is waking excessively at nights (and you know it's not due to feeding problems)? Please read here. If your newborn or young baby has disrupted sleep and feeding problems, please read here.

Which pressure points are likely to help in your situation?

Some families like to work with the three pressure points all at once, making gradual changes in each. Often this is the most effective approach. But there may be good reasons why it doesn't suit your family to do this. You might decide to work with just one or two pressure points, only.

For example, your baby might already start each day very early, or at the earliest possible time you can do it, so there is no room for change of this potential pressure point. Or you may be a woman who cherishes your opportunity for a break when your baby takes a daytime nap – it helps get you through the day. You don’t want to change daytime naps for that reason, but you have help in the evenings and don’t mind the baby going to bed a lot later.

How do you start a reset when you're already exhausted and don't have energy to make changes?

It would be normal to feel your heart sink when I suggest working with the three pressures points on your baby’s body clock. You’re already so incredibly exhausted! The idea of less daytime naps, later evening bedtimes, and earlier starts to the day sounds downright depressing.

But often by the time parents are looking for help, the sleep deprivation and exhaustion are intense. Although the feeling that you can’t bear to make these changes or the voice in your head which says this can’t possibly work out are quite normal, your current situation might also be unworkable and unsustainable. A great deal of self-compassion is called for. It's also time to call in all the support you can find, as you take courageous steps towards changing your days (and nights), in a way that aligns with your values.

If you don’t experiment with changing at least one of these three pressure points, it’s likely that baby’s fragmented sleep pattern will persist. It's often best to experiment with applying pressure to two or even the whole three pressure points for the best and quickest results – but that will depend on your family’s unique situation. Could you work out what changes are doable and experiment with something new for two weeks, then review and see how you are going? You could make a decision then about whether or not to continue.

When you're doing a reset by working with the three pressure points, it’s also helpful to

• Check out the four great night-time disruptors and experiment with not doing them, if this is relevant

• Bring in just as much rich sensory motor nourishment as you possibly can during the day and in the evenings. This keeps your baby dialled down while you are making changes over these couple of weeks, repeatedly nudging the sleep pressure that bit higher

• Practice self-compassion, day and night

• Make the changes slowly, over a couple of weeks. Otherwise, the day times and evenings might become too difficult to manage.

I mostly find that by the end of two weeks, parents who’ve been enduring their baby’s excessive night waking can’t believe the transformation to their quality of life. Studies evaluating The Possums Sleep Program show this to be the case, too.

Selected references

Ball H, Douglas PS, Whittingham K, Kulasinghe K, Hill PS. The Possums Infant Sleep Program: parents' perspectives on a novel parent-infant sleep intervention in Australia. Sleep Health. 2018;4(6):519-526.

Ball H, Taylor CE, Thomas V, Douglas PS, Sleep Baby and You Working Group. Development and evaluation of ‘Sleep, Baby & You’ - an approach to supporting parental well-being and responsive infant caregiving. Plos One. 2020;15(8): e0237240.

Crawford E, Waldby L, Crook E. New perspectives on responsive infant care: a qualitative study of the ways in which Neuroprotective Developmental Care (NDC) shapes mother-infant co-occupations. Journal of Occupational Science. 2023: https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.14422023.12236117.

Crawford E, Whittingham K, Pallett E, Douglas PS, Creedy DK. An evaluation of Neuroprotective Developmental Care (NDC/Possums Programs) in the first 12 months of life. Maternal and Child Health Journal. 2022;26(1):110-123.

Douglas PS. The Possums Sleep Program: supporting easy, healthy parent-infant sleep. International Journal of Birth and Parent Education. 2018;6(1):13-16.

Douglas PS. The need to acknowledge similarities between the 2022 D'Souza and Cassels and the 2014 Whittingham and Douglas contextual models of infant sleep. Sleep Health. 2023:in press.

Ozturk M, Boran P, Ersu R, Peker Y. Possums-based parental education for infant sleep: cued care resulting in sustained breastfeeding. European Journal of Pediatrics. 2021;180:1769-1776.

Whittingham K, Douglas PS. "Possums": building contextual behavioural science into an innovative evidence-based approach to parenting support in early life. In: Kirkaldy B, editor. Psychotherapy in parenthood and beyond. Turin, Italy: Edizioni Minerva Medica; 2016. p. 43-56.

Whittingham K, Palmer C, Douglas PS, Creedy DK, Sheffield J. Evaluating the 'Possums' health professional training in parent-infant sleep. Infant Mental Health Journal. 2020;41(5):603-613.

Whittingham K, Douglas PS. Optimising parent-infant sleep from birth to 6 months: a new paradigm. Infant Mental Health Journal. 2014;35:614-623.