During the early weeks of life, babies like very much to stay in one place at the cot. But during this time they will develop their physical skills and then try to learn to move, crawl and cruise around the sleeping surface.
This is a super exciting thing when you see it for the very first time. But it is very problematic for parents when their babies do it around 3:00 a.m. in the morning.
This situation becomes worse when the child starts learning new skills. So their ability to crawl or cruise is increasing so this situation is more frustrating for parents and small kids too. The most important thing is, it may take a long time to settle to sleep during naps with this issue.
But the parent should know it is natural for your small kid to crawl and cruise around their cot before falling asleep.
But if your baby is crawling or cruising around the sleeping surface for more than 30 minutes of time, it will definitely be a problem for the parents and sometimes for your baby as well.
You should have a good solution for this problem and then you can provide your baby with a productive sleep. Your baby starts playing inside the cot at nearly 8-9 months of age.
1. What type of experience that the most parents have?
parents are suddenly fighting and trying to check the baby monitor at night times. Mostly their babies disappeared in the cot at the usual place.
They try moving the camera around the cot and found the baby at the end of the bed, the wrong way around most of the time.
These babies always try to sleep parallel to the headboard on their tummies with their faces buried in a corner.
Most parents become so upset when they try to give their babies small naps. The babies are trying to turn around the cot bed at these times. It is tough for those babies to get small naps.
They start to play inside the cot most of the time. They may seem very tired but still, they do the same crawling or cruising inside the cot.
After getting overtired, the babies are screaming a lot and it doesn’t stop for hours mostly.
Most parents put several favorite toys inside the cot, but it distracts your baby more than that and some categories of kids crawl inside the bed even without the toys inside the bed.
2. If you done these types of practices more in the early years of age with your baby?
Most sleep specialists note that the baby starts to practice a lot of motor skills like crawling inside the cot, in the later months of the baby’s age, if you do the following things with your baby, it will lead your baby to increase and practice motor skills with time.
Those are as follows.
- If you swaddled them until they reach 7-8 months and after the baby is starting to move and roll around too much. This may happen inside the cot with excessive crawling.
- If your child sleeps in a sleeping bag
- if your child has a dummy at bedtime
- If the parent tucked their baby into a tight sheet while they sleep on their back in their sleep area.
- if the parents used sleep cues too much like a dummy, sleeping bag, mobile music, etc.
- If the parent waits for a sleep cue from their babies instead of practicing their sleeping as a routine thing.
3. Our recommended sleep solutions
Use a sleeping bag
You can use a baby sleeping bag as a solution for this. There, you can attach the sleeping bag to the bed sheet, that technique really help your kid to stay in one place and go to sleep. In a baby sleeper, your baby can sit or roll over.
When you use a sleeping bag or other kind of baby sleeper, the baby can not crawl or stand up.
Practice a sleep routine with your baby
A sleep routine is a very good behavioral modification for your baby. This is very applicable to older babies.
This kind of effective routine will enhance the quality of the daily life of your kid. So you can plan the day as a parent by practicing this.
This is a good way for your baby to know and get serious about a specific time of the day and his body clock will eventually learn about that.
Positive sleep associations
You need to be familiar with certain things associated with your baby’s sleep. Then as soon as they hear a clue about a familiar thing, babies know that it is time to sleep.
Sleeping bags are a wonderful thing for sleeping associations. Also, a specific comfortable blanket is another thing that we can use as a sleep association. In addition to that, moms can convert many things as sleep associates to their babies. So dear parents, think about this and start to practice those with your kid.
4. Other important sleep tactics
- Practice the rolling actions of your baby with both sides of the body. most babies can’t roll both sides of their bodies. So they start to roll over one side and then stuck with the other side.
- The parents need to encourage the rolling of the other side on the sleeping surface.
- Most babies can sit up. But they are unable to lie down. So practice both activities as a game with your baby then they can coordinate their movements inside the cot.
- Please don’t try to correct your baby’s posture on the cot. instead, you can correct your baby’s posture by asking them to correct themselves.
- In another way, it may help to enhance their motor skills a lot. Finally, the child will learn the most comfortable sleep posture for them.
- Give your baby enough time to correct their practices inside the cot.
This simple technique will your baby maintain its posture inside the cot. if you facilitate these things for your baby, they will settle inside the cot very soon.
5. Your baby might be experiencing sleep regression
Toddler sleep regression is abundantly common. This commonly occurs as the babies learn to crawl and fit themselves into a standing position. Dear parents, this is not actually a bad thing. this is a huge milestone for your baby is gross not a development.
At this phase, the babies are trying to explore the world from a different angle. Actually, at this time the babies need to sleep more and more. But their sleep time is disturbed by the newly developed gross motor skills inside the cot
Can you notice the very common sleep problems among children? Those are as follows
- Their fussiness during sleep time is increased
- The multiple times of night wakings
- Reduced naps
- Changes in appetite
What do you mean by crawling sleep regression
Between 8 and 10 months of age, most babies start to crawl more and more. So it is very natural for your baby to develop another sleep regression due to this fact. Every baby learns to crow letters at a different age so parents can experience this problem within different age limits.
This crawling sleep regression totally differs from the 4-month sleep regression that the parents have experienced within the very early stages of the baby’s life.
What is toddler sleep regression?
During the toddler period, a child is learning and growing at a remarkable rate. So gross skills are increasingly developed. So you are baby may have a lot of discoveries within their body parts’ mobility
So they experience a lot of smart skills such as stacking, sorting, crawling, pulling up and sitting down and teething.
Due to the above gross motor development, the baby is becoming resistant to their current nap and sleep schedule.
How to deal with the pre-toddler sleep regression
Make a note that this is a temporary procedure
The most important thing is to encourage your baby as much as possible to sleep. So they are getting tired easily when they try to sleep more and more. That is a very common thing. As parents, you need to make a sleep-inducing environment for your baby. Also, you need to follow strictly the bedtime and the naptime routine as closely as possible
Practice with the newfound skills of your toddler during the day
Baby growth is an extra exciting thing for parents. Most of the time the babies need to practice new skills that they have developed instead of sleeping. So they start crawling first and then try to mobile their body parts
As parents, you need to identify the sleep routes. At other times you can practice they are not skills with the babies. Make fun of their mobility and the moment.
Don’t consider it too much when your baby stands or crawls or walks around their crib.
Don’t lay your baby back down repeatedly inside the cot. They need to be at eye level with you most of the time
Try to create new procedures and creative things to make your baby sleepy during sleep time.
Now you are dealing with an overtired cranky baby. They don’t want to sleep at once. Instead, they are performing their body movements and gross more moments a lot. Be careful to deal with the newly developed sleep rooting with your baby.
Try to follow the daily routine of your baby with their own interest level. Go with the flow.
Shuffle with your flexible routine.
The pre-toddler preparation is quite long and more frustrating for new parents. Try not to get discouraged and follow the sleep tips as much as possible.
Conclusion
At the age of 8-9 months, babies experience a lot of gross motor development. they start to explore the world by using their newly developed skills
So they automatically try to reduce their sleep time and nap time to practice new skills. This may occur sleep regression and over-tiredness during sleep time.
They start to crawl, cruise, and move around the sleep surface and do various movement types inside the cot. So it is very important for parents to learn new sleep tips to deal with the baby’s newly developed habits.
Finally, I wish to say that, you need to strictly follow a sleep routine with your baby and you can use other times to practice and play with gross motor movements with your baby.
They can get maximum benefit to explore things by using gross motor movements in day-to-day life.