When you don't have help with your baby's sleep in the night

It could be that you are an autonomous parent. Or it could be that your partner is away regularly for paid work. Or you might be a parent or carer who finds yourself alone with your baby most nights. Regardless, if you are doing nights with a baby on your own I'd like to suggest that you first look at the page on managing evenings with your baby when you don't have help here.

Here are other ideas for managing nights when it's just you and your baby. Our plan is to make the nights just as easy as possible, which means keeping your baby as dialled down as possible. This will mean breastfeeding or feeding your baby back to sleep and keeping his sleep regulators (his body clock and sleep pressure) in sync with yours.

• Consider bringing baby into your bed. The research shows that parents find the nights are easier when they bring their baby into the bed. You can find out when it's too risky to bedshare here. You can find out about bedsharing as safely as possible

  • Here if you're breastfeeding

  • Here if you're bottle feeding.

• Consider getting rid of the Four Great Disruptors of night-time sleep! You can find out about these here.

• Anyone who is caring for a small child alone at nights needs to become a self-compassion ninja! You can find out about this here.

• Knowing how to manage difficult thoughts and feelings helps build your resilience when you are exhausted and yet don't have back-up or support in the night.

• Caring for your baby is about workability, not perfection. Compromise around a whole lot of things may become necessary, so that you get through. Caring for yourself is caring for your baby.

• If you are in a baby sleep emergency, please go to the It's an emergency section. Also, if you are in a sleep emergency, please have a chat with your local GP.

If you and your baby have vulnerabilities which make bedsharing unsafe, then you might consider talking to your child and family health nurse about getting hold of a pepi-pod or wahakura, so that you can still have your little one inside the pepi-pod but on the mattress beside you.

Acknowledgements

The image on this page is by Beverley Latter, from the co-sleeping image archive on the Baby Sleep Information Source site basisonline.org.uk