Hi, I’m Dana, creator of the Sleep Sense Program and I often get asked by parents, how long will it take for my child to start sleeping better?

Well, if you’ve picked up a copy of the Sleep Sense program and you’re ready to start, you probably are feeling a little bit of nervous energy. After all, you’re gonna be making some fairly significant changes to your child’s sleep habits and every human being would have resistance around that. We tend to be very habitual about our sleep environment and our sleep habits, and we don’t like a lot of changes and that’s gonna be the same for your baby. They’re used to doing it one way and tonight, we’re gonna come in and do it a different way and it’s going to take time for your baby to learn this new skill.

I 100% believe that sleeping well is a skill and just like any other skill I was trying to teach my child, I would have some patience and understand that it was gonna take a little bit of time. I can remember teaching all three of my children to read for example, and we have to practice every day. And some days, they did better than others and some days they were into it and other days they were just not. And there were times where it felt like a bit of a push.

And so I think that’s the same with any kind of skill we’re trying to master. We’re gonna have good days, some bad, but trending towards more and more good days. So I’m just gonna talk in averages here and I wanna make sure that you understand that every baby is different and we all respond to changes in different ways. And so, where your friend’s baby might learn this skill in three nights flat, it might take your baby more like a week to get the skill set down.

So go into it with a, you know, take this advice with a grain of salt and just know that this is just averages. I always tell parents to prepare for night one being the hardest because this is the first introduction to these new skills and your baby’s gonna be wondering what’s going on and how do I get to sleep without all the assistance that I usually have? We’re gonna be there through the whole process, encouraging, supporting, cheering our little one on but developing a skill is your child’s, that your child is the only one that can master that, right?

We cannot sleep for somebody else. So, it is a process. Once you get through night one, though by night two, you should be seeing some fairly significant improvements already. Maybe that stretch of sleep is getting longer or maybe she protested a little bit less tonight and had less wakes throughout the night. By night three, often people have their first night all the way through. Now that can show up on night four or five or six as well. But a lot of our customers find by night three, they have a victory. They had a night where their baby only woke up once or maybe none at all.

That is some really significant improvement in just a short amount of time. I mean, I really can’t think of other skills that develop as quickly as the skills for sleeping well. A lot of our customers find night five tends to be a bit of a tricky night again. I call it night night five regression. I think it’s just your babies kind of, you know, last, try it. Maybe going back to the old familiar way or maybe it’s just a little bit of a protest night to see if the rules are still the same as they’ve been for the last few nights.

But you can expect that night five might be a little bit tricky and then it gets better from there. And each night you should be seeing some steady improvements. Certainly in nights, you should be having some pretty solid night’s sleep by day seven. Naps can take a little bit more work. So you might find that naps take another week or so to come around, but they will as well.

So, that’s just a general overview. Again, you know, some babies learn quickly, some take a little bit more time, but every baby can develop a skill for sleeping well and every baby deserves that. And every family deserves a good quality night of sleep.

Thanks so much for watching. Sleep well.