How to Help Baby get Back to Sleep: 4 Things to Avoid in the Middle of the Night

2am. Baby cries. You wait to see if it’s just a little half-awake cry and they’ll be back asleep soon. Nope. It’s real. The cries continue. You do a quick mental check as you stumble to their room: hungry? teething? poopy? nightmare? Oh wait. That’s the checklist for the toddler. (At 2am it can be hard to remember who’s crying and why that might be happening… 😴🥱). You get to baby’s room and you know right away…poop is the culprit. Pee-yew!!

For a minute you consider just popping a pacifier in and waiting until morning to change the poopy-ness but images instantly come to mind of morning diaper rash and/or poop potentially oozing out the sides of the diaper, making for an even bigger mess to clean up. Fine. You’ll change it now. “Why couldn’t it have just been pee”, you think. “That could have waited,” you mumble as you flip on the light and prep the wipes and ointment.

By now baby is calmer, having seen you and heard you rustling around. You see baby watching you with big, wide-open eyes as you pick baby up and start talking gently to them in the familiar, lyrical cadence of baby speech. “Hi sweet-pea! Did you make a mess for me to clean up? Huh? Did you? Yes, you did! Well, let’s get you clean!”

You continue gently talking to baby while taking off their jammies, wiping, and putting on a clean diaper. As you get baby back in their jammies, you look deeply into their eyes and smile. As much as you hate midnight diaper changes, you sure do love your little one!

Diaper change accomplished, you get baby settled back in their crib, turn the light off, and head back to your room. Mission accomplished. You pat yourself on your back and congratulate yourself on a job well done as you pull your covers back up and rest your head on your pillow. You sigh contentedly as you anticipate heading back into longed for sleep.

…but wait…

Not so fast. Baby isn’t sleeping. Baby is wide awake, ready to play.

You sink deeper into your covers as a wave of distress washes over you. You know what this means…sleep is gunna be a little way off yet… *sigh* Here comes the 2am baby party…

Does this strike a chord with anyone? Anyone out there shuddering in remembrance of just such a middle of the night diaper change resulting in baby wanting to party for a while afterwards? Were you thinking, while pulling your hair out, “why does my child DO this?!?”

Well, you’re not alone! But the good news is that you can minimize the frequency of these midnight parties when you follow a few simple guidelines pertaining to baby sleep and alertness triggers. Let’s review the story I painted and see what can be done differently next time.

Lights

One of the first things to occur in this story? The lights were turned on. Yes, the parent could already smell the stink and already knew a diaper change was in store, so why not?

The Lighting Research Center has stated “[a]lertness has been shown to be strongly influenced by exposure to light and the timing of the circadian clock [or our natural sleep-wake cycles found within a 24 hour window]” (Lighting Research Center). And Parenting Science has stated “[t]he timing of adult sleep is governed by circadian rhythms [many of which] are influenced by your exposure to light…the absence of light at night helps your body wind down. When darkness falls, your brain interprets this as a signal to start producing melatonin, a hormone that triggers relaxation, paving the way for sleep. You can easily disrupt this process by exposing yourself to artificial light sources in the evening.” (Dewar, 2017)

As you can see, light is one of the quickest ways to wake someone up, baby or not. Our bodies and minds are naturally programmed to respond to light by waking up (or becoming more alert). If a baby is already experiencing disrupted sleep and then the light flips on, the baby is more likely to move further along the continuum of alertness, and not towards the sleepiness end of the continuum!

“But changing a stinky diaper without the lights is a crazy idea,” you say. And I agree. Luckily for all of us, there are options beyond the overhead light to help us out!

A simple old-fashioned table side lamp will do the trick! It’s dimmer than the overhead light and won’t shine it’s light directly down on those tiny eyes that we want to remain as drowsy as possible. Many bedside lamps will have three or so dimness levels and an adjustable shade or neck that can angle the light away from baby’s eyes.

Another option, and one of my favorite recent baby purchases, is a dimmable ball light (for lack of a better way to describe it! lol) I love it for midnight diaper changes and feeds because I can control the level of light emitted to a much greater degree than a bedside lamp; I tap it to turn it on; it’s small and easily portable room to room; AND it’s made of (practically) toddler-proof material which means I don’t have to worry (as much) about breakage.

In a pinch, turn on the hall light, with the bedroom door just barely cracked. This is less than ideal because generally the hall light is going to have a brighter light than, say, a bedside lamp would but it is still a much better alternative to the overhead light! A variant of this would be to turn on a light in a room across the hallway, with baby’s door partially cracked. This is a method I often resort to when in a hotel or a relative’s house without all my baby gear with me.

Removal of Pajamas and Diaper

Okay, okay. So, yes. This one really needs to happen if you’re gunna get down there to the dirty diaper and clean it all up. Your baby will need to be physically manipulated, lifted, carried, and slightly jostled in order to get clothing and diaper off. All of which, will move baby further from sleepiness and closer to party time. However, what are some of the underlying factors here? Let’s brainstorm:

• cold hands: anyone else jolt awake when someone’s cold toes or hands touch them when they’re all cozy and warm? No? Just me? Well, take my word for it then…it’s not fun! And it wakes me right up. The same thing happens when our babies are cozy in their jammies and then here we come with cold hands. Try to take a quick minute to make sure your hands aren’t frozen. If they are cold, just rub them together quickly or blow on them to bring them up to room temperature.
• cold wipes: closely related to the above is cold wipes. Have any of you actually used a wipe on your own privates? Sometimes they can be downright frigid! Our privates are naturally extra sensitive parts of our body and cold wipes can surprise baby right out of a deep sleep. I can’t personally vouch for wipes warmers, having never purchased or used any, but if you feel like cold wipes are a root concern for waking your baby then maybe give these a whirl.
• pajama design: there are a variety of pajama styles on the market and each serves a different purpose for different ages. For example, there are pajamas with built in swaddle aids to help newborns sleep deeper and longer; there are all-in-one footie pajamas to help keep baby warm without any need for socks and without shirts pulling up making for cold tummies; there are two-piece jammies, usually for older infants; and there are sleep gowns, which extend far beyond baby’s feet, making a pocket of air to keep them cozy warm, among others. From these choices, having your baby in a sleep gown (for girls OR boys) or a two-piece pajama set, speeds up night time diaper changes and minimizes the necessary jostling that accompanies taking clothing on and off. Alternatively, there are also footie pajamas that zip from the bottom up instead of the top down. These are also intended to help with night time changes, allowing for access to just baby’s bottom half if desired.

Talking to Baby

The parent in this story started talking to their child while changing their diaper. “What’s wrong with that?”, you ask. “We’re encouraged to talk to our babies while doing diaper changes and other daily tasks!”

Valid point…but, only valid during the day. During the night, we want to be as silent and boring as possible.

Babies are born attuned to the sound of their mother’s voice. Family voices are exciting, familiar, happy things. In fact, even the unspoken bodily sounds of their parents can be recognized by babies. “Three- to seven-month-old infants showed more activation in … the brain when they heard emotionally neutral human sounds, such as coughing, sneezing, or yawning, than when they heard the familiar sounds of toys or water” (Cell Press, 2011).

Say what?! My cough while changing a midnight diaper is more stimulating to my baby’s brain than if I was shaking their rattle!? I know. Crazy stuff. Our babies are biologically set up to be hyper-fixated and attuned to traits relating to us, their caregivers.

So, while we want to be chatty Cathy’s to our little one’s during the day to help promote brain and language development, try not to even yawn while changing little one’s diaper. (I’m being a bit facetious here. Yawn away…it’s the middle of the night after all. The point is, try to be as silent as you can without over-stressing about it. A few yawns won’t bring your baby into full levels of alertness but talking to them definitely can, especially in combination with everything else we’re discussing here! Mum’s the word at midnight!)

Smiles and Eye-Contact

Finally, this parent looked deeply into their child’s eyes and smiled. And nothing tells baby it’s time to party quite like loving (smiling) eye-contact! Eye-contact to a young baby is like a jolt of caffeine. In fact, some research suggests that “[m]aking eye contact is the most powerful mode of establishing a communicative link between humans” (emphasis added). This same study found that newborns as young as two days old are able to distinguish between direct eye-contact verse averted gaze and that humans have an “exceptionally early sensitivity to mutual gaze”. (Farroni et al., 2002).

Amazing. No wonder baby just perks right up when we look at them. Their brain is super-wired for it and waiting for that visual input! From their earliest days, days when they can’t even see further than a few inches away, our babies are already seeking out our eyes and learning about us from them! Nature lined it up so that a newborn’s extremely limited visual capacity is exactly the distance from the breast to their mother’s face…and eyes.

So, as hard as it is to resist gazing into your sweet baby’s eyes, please don’t! That is, please don’t if you don’t want to party with them in the midnight hours….

Let’s Revisit the 2am Diaper Change

Now that we’ve reviewed all of that, let’s retell the story, implementing the knowledge we’ve gained about baby sleep and alertness triggers:

2am. Baby cries. You wait to see if it’s just a little half-awake cry and they’ll be back asleep soon. Nope. It’s real. The cries continue. You do a quick mental check as you stumble to their room: hungry? teething? poopy? nightmare? Oh wait. That’s the checklist for the toddler. (At 2am it can be hard to remember who’s crying and why that might be happening… 😴🥱). You get to baby’s room and you know right away…poop is the culprit. Pee-yew!!

For a minute you consider just popping a pacifier in and waiting until morning to change the poopy-ness but images instantly come to mind of morning diaper rash and/or poop potentially oozing out the sides of the diaper, making for an even bigger mess to clean up. Fine. You’ll change it now. “Why couldn’t it have just been pee”, you think. “That could have waited,” you mumble as you grab for the night light. You grow annoyed when your tapping doesn’t produce the light like it should…until you realize that in your half-asleep state you grabbed the ointment instead of the night light. Oops. In all fairness, they have a similar shape and weight….

In the now dimly lit room, you quickly and quietly rub your hands together to get the blood flowing and to get a touch more warmth to them. They’re cold tonight! You then silently lean over the crib railing to pick up your sad little one, making sure to keep your face calm and composed-neither smiling and welcoming nor serious and firm.

Your eyes are constantly on baby as you move through this familiar task but you never once look at baby in their eyes. You’re tempted to do so many times but you value your sleep more than smiles at 2am. You gently pull baby’s gown back over their legs as you finish changing their diaper, admiring their cute little toes as you do so. As much as you hate midnight diaper changes, you sure do love your little one! I mean, look at those little toes!

Diaper change accomplished, you get baby settled back in their crib, tap the light off (by tapping the correct spherical object), and head back to your room. Mission accomplished. You pat yourself on your back and congratulate yourself on a job well done as you pull your covers back up and rest your head on your pillow. You sigh contentedly as you drift peacefully back into longed for sleep.

Sweet dreams!

Notes:
1) I’ve framed this conversation around diaper changes but much of this information can transfer to any middle of the night awakening: feedings, separation anxiety, teething, hunger, upset tummy, etc. Babies will remain more subdued and in “sleep” mode when we make sure to maintain a suitable sleep environment.
2) The infant age this post most directly applies to is three to twelve months of age. However, many of these concepts will easily transfer to children both older and younger than this.

Hello! I’m Briana!

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