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Tizzie's Tips

About Tizzie

The Importance of Routines
by
Tizzie Hall

Tizzies Tips
Routine
Comforters
Travelling with a baby
FAQs

The importance of a routine

I believe my routines are very important. I believe they are a big part in helping parents to interpret their baby’s cries. They teach parents to see the difference between their baby’s different cries. When following a routine, you will start to recognise your baby’s hungry, tired or bored cries. When your baby starts to cry, you will be able to look at the routine and see what is due next. If your baby is due a feed, you will start to recognise that, that cry is the hungry cry. If your baby is due to have a sleep, you will learn that, that cry is the tired cry.

At first the idea of a routine can be quite scary. You will think if you have to spend the day clock watching, how will you relax or get on with everyday jobs. What happens if you have an older child, with a school run to do each day? Don’t worry, it is possible. Not everyone’s baby or life is the same, so sometimes routines need careful adjusting to suit your circumstances. If you find this to be your case, then try to follow my basic rules and adjust the routines to suit your circumstances better.

The feedback I get from parents following my routines is that it makes their lives easier. While following my routines you are able to plan things such as doctor’s appointments more easily, because you know what your baby will be doing at each stage of the day. If you have older children, they will also gain advantages from your younger baby having a routine, as you will be able to plan activities with your older children, as all the guesswork of what your baby may be doing at what time, is taken out of your day. The best part of these routines is you know you will have time for yourself and your partner in the evening. The general feeling I get from parents who are not following a daily routine, is that this is often their hardest part of the day.

My routines also help babies to feel safe and secure. Your baby will know that his needs are being met and he has no need to cry. As a result you will end up with a very happy contented baby.

When to start a routine
My experience indicates that babies don’t start to surface between sleep cycles (the process of drifting between light and deep sleep) until they reach 6kg/13.2lbs, which is usually around 8 to 16 weeks. This is why you can aid a newborn baby to sleep and he will still sleep for a long period, however when he starts to surface between the sleep cycles, he will start to catnap during the day. Then at around 8kg17.6lbs, which is often around five to seven months, he will start to wake between night time sleep cycles.

This is why I recommend starting to establish a routine so early, because it will prevent sleep problems occurring. So by week two, it is important to be developing some sort of sleeping and feeding routine.

For years, health professionals have been debating the pros and cons of a routine, but the one factor they always agree on, is that young children and babies feel safe and secure when they know what and when things are going to happen.

You will notice I have different routines for babies who are bottle-fed and breast-fed until eight weeks. This is because the routines before eight weeks are based on the mother’s needs not the baby’s needs. A breast-feeding mother needs to feed her baby more often in the first eight weeks to build up a good supply of breast-milk.

Tip: If you are breastfeeding with one or two expressed milk feeds or formula-feeds in a bottle then you should follow the breast-feeding routines. If you are feeding all bottles of expressed-milk then you should follow the bottle-feeding routines but express at the times on the breast-feeding routines.

Growth spurts while following my routines
I can’t state strongly enough how Important it is for a breast-feeding mother to follow my advice on expressing. If you want to have your baby on my routines and breast-feed successfully, you will need to follow the expressing times I have stated in my routines. The expressed milk should be kept and given at the 6:00pm feed or stored in the deep freeze for a later date.

If you look carefully at my breast-feeding routines you will see the week before a growth spurt you express more at my expressing times than the weeks your baby may be having a growth spurt. This means there is more milk in your breasts during the week your baby is having a growth spurt because your breasts have become accustom to making more milk. Your baby will drink this extra milk during the growth spurt.

If you are bottle feeding you will not have to worry about growth spurts if you are following my routines and feeding your baby until he is full.

Tip: In my routines if I tell you to feed your baby for 25 minutes but you are sure your baby has emptied your breast sooner, then you should move your baby to the next breast sooner than the 25 minutes.

Getting out and about on a routine
It is very important that you still get out and about while following a routine. In my routine when I tell you to put your baby down for a sleep in his cot it is alright to put him in the pram or buggy instead and go out for a walk. When you are a new parent it is very important you don’t stay home all day and feel isolated.

Some of my parents make it a habit each day to put there baby in the pram at the 9am or 1pm sleep and go for a walk. They walk to a café have breakfast or lunch and then walk home again for the 11am feed. Then when their baby gets older they will walk earlier and give there baby there solids at the café.

From my experience I have seen that the more fresh air and daylight babies get the better they seem to sleep at night. I believe this may be the reason my parents put all of us down the end of the garden for all of are sleeps in the day. So please don’t feel you have to stay home because you have a Tizzie baby.

Since writing the above I have found out that Dr Yvonne Harrison led a study at the Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and found that babies sleep longer when exposed to plenty of light in the afternoon.

The Dreamfeed
To do the dreamfeed, you gently pick up your sleeping baby, place the bottle or breast on his lower lip and allow him to drink, taking care not to wake him. When finished, sit him upright for a few minutes to allow wind to escape. Babies are usually so relaxed at this feed, they don’t gulp air and so don’t have much wind.

The reason I recommend the dreamfeed, is to try to avoid you having to get up more than once in the night. When your baby is about eight weeks old, I recommend the dreamfeed at 10:30 at night. If you followed the routine but didn’t have the dreamfeed, your baby would go to sleep at 7pm and maybe wake between 11pm and 1am for the next feed. Let’s say your baby woke at 1:30am, you would get up and feed your baby. Maybe your baby would be back in bed asleep at 2:30am, but he might wake again at 5:30am for another feed. Then, by the time you have him asleep again, it would be time to get up and start the day. With the dreamfeed, your baby may sleep until let’s say 2am and then when back in bed; he is more likely to sleep until 7am. This means you have only had to get up once in the night.

The other thing we are hoping for is the 2am wake will become 2:30am then 3am then 3:30am, until your baby is getting to 7am by himself. I get a lot of clients contacting me when their baby is sleeping until 6am. I always tell them don’t make your baby wait until 7am for the feed. They have done so well over night, and should be rewarded with their feed. Feed your baby at 6am and then top him up just before you would have usually finished the 7am feed. So he is full at the usual time and can get to 11am for the next feed.

Vanessa contacted me because she wanted to use my routines with her second baby of 10 weeks but as her first child Rebecca was six, she had commitments such as the school run to do and was finding it hard to adjust the routine. So I asked her for the daily routine of Rebecca, her six year old and worked my routine around it. We adjusted the routine to the following. 6:45am she would get Emily up and feed her. The feed would finish by about 7:15am which gave Vanessa just over an hour to get Rebecca washed, dressed and fed for school. While she did all of this Emily was in her bouncy chair watching or playing under her play gym. At 8:45am they would all go in the car to school Emily had usually fallen asleep in the car for about ten minutes and would be lifted to take Rebecca to her class room. This ten minute nap was enough to get Emily by until she was put in bed at about 9:15 am. If, on the odd occasion Emily fell back to sleep in the car on the way home, Vanessa would either sit in the car and read a book, or make phone calls, or bring Emily into the house in her car seat. At 10:30 am, Emily would be woken for a feed but instead of putting Emily back to bed at 12:30pm, I suggested Emily go to bed at 12:15pm to make up some extra sleep because her morning sleep was interrupted. At 2:30pm Emily was given her next feed but often Vanessa would get Emily up and go to the school before feeding her, so she could sit and feed her in the school yard waiting for Rebecca to come out of school. Vanessa found it easier to get Emily to wait the extra ten minutes before the feed, so she could take her time feeding her, rather than feel she had to rush the feed to make it out the door in time for the school pick up.

Samantha contacted me when her baby Niamh was 12 weeks. She had followed my routines since Niamh was born and now she was 12 weeks. Niamh was sleeping twelve hours at night and would go down for all her sleeps and naps without a fuss, apart from her 1pm sleep. At this sleep Niamh would scream the house down and then just sleep for 40 minutes and get up screaming again. I talked to Samantha via email and realised that Niamh had always woken up at 10:30am from her morning sleep and just talked in her cot until she was picked up for her feed at 11am. We decided that the screaming could be due to overtiredness at 1pm, as putting Niamh down at 1pm meant she had been up for two and a half hours. So I suggested Samantha try putting Niamh down at 12:30pm for her afternoon sleep and see what happened. To our surprise, Niamh went down that day and every day without a fuss and slept until her 3pm feed. I have since tried this with a handful of other babies who were having a similar problem and found it to work.

Sleep Routine Frequently Asked Questions.

Common questions I get asked about these routines.

My baby is two weeks old. I would like to follow your routines but I don’t like expressing, so I have chosen not to ever express. How should I adjust the routines?
I do not recommend any mother who is not expressing to follow my routines in the first 8 weeks. The reason for this, is if you express, then your breasts will have enough milk during the growth spurts which happen at about three and six weeks. By reducing how often and how much you express during this time, your baby will be able to drink the extra breast-milk he needs to get him through his growth spurt. My advice to you is to use my routines only from eight weeks.

Why do you advise not to put a baby in his bed to sleep at some points in your routines?
The reason for this, is I believe in giving a baby very clear messages. If you know your baby is tired and due a sleep, then you should put him in his bed. The message your baby will start to learn is, that if you put him in his bed, he has to sleep. You should get in the habit of only getting him up when he has slept. But at other points in the routine, I say your baby may need a nap, as we are not sure if your baby will sleep. I recommend putting him down in a safe comfortable place so if he doesn’t sleep, you may get him up without giving him mixed messages.

We often go to my parents or a friend’s house for dinner, but with your 7pm bed time we are feeling quite restricted. It is alright to still have a life when following a routine?
I would suggest you go to the house where you are going to spend the evening early enough, so you can feed and settle your baby to sleep there. Put your baby down at 7pm as normal and try to leave for home, so you get home just in time to give your baby the Dreamfeed or 10pm feed. Then put your baby to bed in his own bed.

I am trying to get my 15 week old baby into your routines but he is breast-fed and wants to feed every three hours. How can I stretch his feeds out?
At first, changing a baby’s habits can be hard. But it normally only takes a day, to get a baby happily on my routines. I find only the first four hours to be a problem and then the rest of the feeds fall into place easily. If you get your baby up at 7am and give him the first feed of the day, then when he wakes up from his sleep and is asking for food, try to distract him by going for a walk or looking at different things in the house. If he is getting very upset, you could swaddle him and cuddle him, maybe even try singing to him. You might even find he falls back to sleep. Some parents use a dummy to get the baby to wait the first four hours. When 11am comes, you will find your baby will take a bigger feed and get to the 3 pm feed with little or no fuss.

What do I do at night if my baby wakes up before the dreamfeed?
If your baby wakes within half an hour of the dreamfeed you should feed him. If there is over half an hour to the dreamfeed when your baby wakes you should resettle your baby.

What is the difference between a sleep and a nap?
When I talk about a sleep and a nap the difference is a sleep is when a baby sleeps for more than one sleep cycle, so it is usually over 40 minutes. But a nap is one sleep cycle or less than a sleep cycle.

About Tizzie Hall

Tizzie Hall has been working with children for 15 years and boasts a long list of relieved parents who have been helped with customised sleep solutions for their babies.

Her program focuses on teaching parents to identify issues that are affecting their baby's sleep, to interpret their baby's cries and to deal with the inevitable sleep problems when they do arise. Consequently, it gives parents back their own sleep

Tizzie has written articles for several magazines and has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes in Australia. She is currently working on her new book which is due to be published later this year.

Tizzie has her own website: Save Our Sleep

About Tizzie

Comforters Article by Tizzie Hall

Comfort(for baby) and Joy(for parents).

Tizzies Tips
Routine
Comforters
Travelling with a baby
FAQs

Comfort (for baby) and Joy (for parents)

People often ask me what the difference is between a “comforter” and an “aid” because I recommend using a sleep comforter and I spend lots of time telling parents that sleeping aids are a definite no-no. In reality, they are both aids in essence but the way I see it, there are two types of aids. You have sleeping aids which may become a problem – such as rocking, patting, feeding or giving your baby a dummy to suck on while going to sleep – and then you have good aids which do not require parent participation.

Aids that require your attention are a problem in my opinion. However, something which provides comfort and which the baby can easily find himself when he wakes in the middle of the night or between sleep cycles can be a parent’s best friend.

Every baby finds an aid of some sort to comfort himself with just before he goes to sleep. Unless the parents have introduced the aid themselves, they are usually unaware of just what it is that is comforting their baby at sleep time. (with the exception of thumb sucking) An unintroduced comforter could be holding, rubbing or playing peek-a-boo with the sheets or blankets but sometimes it can be a little more complicated. I have seen babies play with the bars in there cots just before falling asleep. That is their comforter and this can cause a problem when you ask one of these babies to fall asleep in a travel cot or anywhere away from their beloved cot bars. If they don’t have the bars to play with, they can’t fall asleep. Another common comforter is playing with labels or tags on bedding or clothing.

The following is a case study of a baby named Luke. As I seem to be coming across more and more babies like Luke, I thought I'd use this article to share his story."

Luke’s parents contacted me when he was 10 months old. Up until this stage, he had always been a good sleeper. His parents had started Luke on my routines when he was five weeks old. At 10 weeks, he had started to sleep all night and had done so nearly every night since. But now, suddenly, at 10 months he was finding it hard to go to sleep and once asleep he was waking up crying several times throughout the night. I consulted with Luke’s parents several times over the phone but we couldn’t work out what the problem was so I decided a house visit was the only option. After putting Luke to bed I decided to sneak into his room on all fours and observe him in an effort to work out what the problem was.

At first, things looked OK. They had put Luke to bed and he was lying down looking ready for sleep. I watched him and saw a funny movement in his wrist. He was pulling his fingers up as though he was trying to scratch his wrist before he became frustrated and started to cry. It was not the cry you hear when a baby is fighting sleep. He seemed genuinely upset and had tears so I picked him up and went to talk to his parents. After a few minutes, we realised he was looking for the sleeves of his pyjamas but he couldn’t find them anywhere as he was now in short-sleeves for summer. It was now obvious to us all what Luke’s problem had been. We had spent hours on the phone trying to work out what was different about Luke’s environment and I felt very silly that we had not considered the summer pee-jays to be an issue. We put Luke back in long sleeves and he started sleeping through the night again.

This was a clear case of a baby who was comforting himself to sleep using an aid that the parents were totally unaware of. It is also a good example of why it is better for parents to choose their baby’s comforter for them so you know what it is but it can be just about anything so long as it is safe with him in his cot.

Tips about baby comforters

There are a few things you really need to be aware of when introducing a comforter to your baby;
        ·    Make sure your baby can still breathe if the comforter gets over his face (this is why I suggest cotton muslin squares),
        ·    Make sure your baby can not get it tangled around his neck (About 36cm by 36cm is best)
        ·    Soft toys are also a good option so long as the fur cannot be pulled out and accidentally inhaled (pull at the fur a little to see how easily it comes lose),
        ·    A downside to soft toys is that they can become a problem if they are too large or too small. Large toys may be used as an escape stool when the baby is bigger while small toys can get lost during the night (There are companies who specialise in comforter toys for babies and they have usually done a range of research to help work out what is best for you and your baby, eg. www.snugzeez.com.au),
        ·    I also recommend that you have a duplicate of your comforter and that it is machine washable. This means you can rotate and wash them periodically as well as ensuring you have a back-up in event of loss or damage.

Tricks of the trade

There are also a few tricks to introducing a comforter to your baby. I believe mum should put it down her top for a few hours to allow her smell to infiltrate it before putting the comforter in the cot near baby’s face so he can turn and snuggle into it. It is amazing to watch a baby take solace from their comforter.

It is my experience that babies with comforters are much happier and more secure as they progress through certain milestones in their lives. Research has shown that at about nine months babies often become very clingy to mum as they realise they are individuals and not a part of their mothers. A comforter seems to help with this transition.

Meanwhile, in Germany there has been some research published recently which states that slightly older kids feel much more secure if they have a comforter with them for the first few visits at kinder or day-care. I also support this notion but feel you should quickly wean your child off taking it once they are settled. I also firmly recommend that a comforter is only given to a baby at sleep times or on occasions when some additional comfort is required such as a visit to hospital or the doctor. In my opinion, it is not good for children or babies to be carrying their comforter around all day.

One other issue I often get called about is when suddenly, at about 10 months, the comforter starts getting thrown out of the cot. The first time it happens it could be an accident, so walk in without making eye contact or talking and very calmly return it to the cot. If this becomes a ritual, the baby is probably game-playing. I suggest parents in these situations explain to their baby that if they throw the comforter out it will stay there and they won’t have it to sleep with. If this continues, don’t go in straight away but instead wait until you feel your baby has realised their comforter might not be coming back. Then walk in without eye contact or talking and give it back. Each time wait considerably longer and the game will soon stop.