It's ok to wake a sleeping baby

It's perfectly ok to wake a sleeping baby. It's also best not to be quiet around babies when they are sleeping!

You can trust your baby's sleep regulators, the sleep pressure and body clock, to take the sleep your baby needs. If your baby really needs to sleep, she'll stay asleep as you lift her up out of the stroller or pram or car seat or cot, for the next activity you have planned.

If she wakes and cries, then you might offer a little feed to help dial her down. Then ... on with the day!

Here are the key things to experiment with during the day, which make your baby's sleep as easy as possible, day and night.

• Keep your little one as dialled down as you sensibly can by using your two superpowers:

  • Is it milk that my baby needs (if under six months; after six months you're thinking milk or solids).

  • Is it a change of sensory motor nourishment that my baby needs?

• Don't try to put your baby to sleep

• Don't try to keep your baby asleep.

You can simply let sleep look after itself in the midst of a day that you enjoy, spent outside your home as much as possible, since our interior environments are so low in sensory interest for babies. This makes sure that your baby's body clock is set in a way that keeps the Big Night-time Sleep as consolidated as possible.

Do you have other children in your care? Then you know how it is: school drop-off, soccer practice, play-dates, music class, kindy fundraisers - your baby has to fit in with your busy life caring for her older siblings. And she does. She takes sleep during the day without you having to try, just whenever her sleep pressure is high enough. She takes sleep on the go, in the midst of the rich and changing sensory motor nourishment that comes with being by your side, as you and her siblings enjoy the outside world.