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.

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This week’s question comes from Rose and she writes:

“My sister tells me all the time that I should be feeding my baby Syria before she goes to bed. Should I be doing this? Will it actually help her sleep better at night?”

That is common question, Rose and I hear it a lot from everyone: grandmothers, strangers in the mall, even Pediatricians and Doctors. They will try feeding solids before bed in hopes that it might help a baby sleep better when really nine times out of ten, it is just not going to.

The recommendation is that you do not start solids until six months because of allergies and various complications down the road, so feeding solids to a baby before they are ready, is probably going to be more problematic down the road than actually getting them to sleep better.

Even when you look the calorie content in a spoon-full of cereal, it is only about 16 calories so it is not going to add a lot a bulk to the baby’s stomach. What tends to be the issue is not so much the food, but the strategy for going to sleep. A lot of babies – even two year-olds – are waking up in the night for a bottle and going back to sleep. Many parents think their child might be hungry, especially if they drink the whole bottle.

What is really happening though is more a habit than actual food need. The first two months of life, absolutely, are very food based because they are hungry and of course you should feed them.

If you’ve got a baby who is six months old and up who is falling asleep with the breast or bottle she if likely waking up through the night for more bottles. Falling asleep with the bottle or breast in the mouth is sort of a little vehicle to sleep; that is how some babies get themselves to sleep.

Then, every time they have a night waking they expect you to come back in and give them back that bottle or put them back onto breast for their strategy of going to sleep. I would suggest that you teach your child a strategy to get to sleep, one that is independent of food.

Give her a feed before bed if you like, but make sure she stays awake through the feed and then goes into her crib awake. She will start making the associations she needs for getting herself to sleep without relying on those external things. It will not be about food, and she will have her own skills to help her sleep through the night.

Thanks for question Rose and sleep well!