Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.

This week’s question comes from Liz:

“My baby was sleeping great until she started to crawl. She has always been put to bed awake and can self-soothe, but now she is in her crib, crawling and crying, and it doesn’t seem to matter how tired she is. I don’t know what to do and I don’t want to ruin all our great progress!”

This is a common problem, and it can happen around any developmental milestone: rolling over, sitting up, standing up in the crib. I remember with my first son, we went through a phase where he could sit up in his crib, but then he couldn’t figure out how to lay back down again. So he’d sit up, he’d cry, we’d come in, lay him down, he’d sit up and cry, and we’d go in and lay him down. And it was frustrating, but you want to remember that it’s just a phase and it’s probably going to happen around every milestone, so don’t let it throw you too much. Just know that it’s going to pass.

When a baby is mastering a skill, it’s almost irresistible. I had one client say, “I don’t understand why he’s rolling to his tummy, because he hates it on his tummy. But he just kept doing it and doing it and doing it.” It doesn’t seem to matter whether they like the outcome or not; it’s just the skill, and the body needs to master it.

So the fact that she’s crawling around and crying and tired really shows you that it’s just irresistible to keep to practicing her skill. So all you can do in cases like that is go in, be very neutral about it, don’t talk about it, don’t give a lot of eye contact, don’t scold or praise or any of that—just walk in very calmly and fix her. So if she’s rolled to their tummy, you roll her to her back. If she’s sitting, you lay her down. The same can happen with standing. Lots of babies can get to standing, but then they can’t figure out how to get back down again. And so you’re just going to have keep going in and fixing her until she figures it out. And once she is sort of over this desire to keep practicing her crawling or she’s mastered the crawling, she’ll go back to being a good sleeper.

She might do some crying while she’s frustrated with this whole thing, and that’s just part of the process. So, you don’t need to rush in every minute you hear her crying. You might make a rule that every five minutes you’ll go in and lay her down and just keep that up until she is asleep. And it will pass. It usually takes a couple of weeks for this to work itself out. You want to be careful not to back step too much or you can quickly undo all the things you’ve accomplished.

I thank you for your question; it’s a great one. Sleep well!