– Hi, I’m Dana. Welcome to this week’s video.

I get a lot of questions from parents who have already done the The Sleep Sense Program on their toddler, he’s sleeping wonderfully, and now there’s a new baby in the house and they’re wondering what to do. The problem arises because you’ve got a toddler. The first time around you didn’t really have anything else or any other person at least to keep an eye on, so it felt easier.

So how do you sleep train your new baby when you’ve got a little person roaming the house? Well, it really depends on if you have any daytime help. So for most parents, they are alone during the day. If their partner’s out at work, then they’re solo in the house. And there’s not really anything you can do about that unless you can recruit some help for a few days, maybe call in your mom to come give you a hand or get a nanny on board for a few days. Then you could do the Stay in the Room method, which is a preferred method of a lot of our customers where you can stay and be present with your baby as they learn to sleep well.

That’s only gonna work, though, if you’ve got somebody else who can be minding your two year old or three year old while you do this, or who knows what kind of trouble they’re gonna get into if you’re in the room with the baby. So that’s one option. Again, naps can be a little of a longer process, so you’d most likely have to get that person to help out for four or five days.

If that’s not an option, then really the only choice you have is to do a Leave and Check scenario. So once you’ve got the timing right and you’ve done the routine with your child and you put the baby down in their crib or bassinet, stay for a few minutes to see if you can help comfort the child, but then now you’re going to have to leave, right? You’re gonna have to go and see what your toddler’s up to. I would say when you start the nap process, have your older child be engaged in something. Maybe it’s the 10 or 15 minute TV show. That could just give you a little bit of a breather so you can go get the baby set up and ready and then come back to the toddler.

Maybe it’s some coloring or engaged with blocks or books or some sort of play environment so that you know, okay, I’ve got at least five minutes here where I can go and put the baby down and then come back. And then just do a Leave and Check style. So spend five or 10 minutes with your toddler, go check on baby, come back, and back and forth until the baby is sleeping and everything’s on track.

And that’s really, I mean, what else can you do? Then at bedtime, here’s some good news. If at bedtime you’ve got your partner around to help out with both children, then one of you can do the Stay in the Room method with the baby for the bedtime and the nighttime piece.

Now, a lot of people think that you can’t separate the two, you’ve gotta do one method all the way through, but you don’t actually. You can very easily do a Leave and Check scenario for naptime and a Stay in the Room strategy for the bedtime and nighttime portion if that’s what you choose. You can do leave and check for the whole process if you want to. But just to give you that little piece of comfort that if you want to do the Stay in the Room and be there with the baby as they learn this process of sleeping well, you absolutely can if you’ve got somebody to help.

Thanks for watching today. Sleep well.