Independent Sleep
At its core, healthy sleep is the ability to fall asleep and stay asleep independently. At LUNA, we believe that this is the most important skill your baby can develop. Our goal is to give you the tools to teach your child how to do this effectively and more consistently. If your child has never fallen asleep on their own or has only done it a handful of times, there is nothing to worry about. We are here to guide you through every step of the way!
As mentioned in previous blog posts, there are four active ingredients within the LUNA sleep system - a proper environment, a bedtime routine, clock-based schedules, and lastly, independent sleep. We recommend that the first three ingredients are properly integrated before moving on to independent sleep.
The reason independent sleep is an important part of the LUNA sleep system is because your baby needs to learn to fall asleep on their own for them to be able to do that consistently when they wake up in the middle of the night. Your baby must be able to have their eyes open in their sleeping environment, see the darkness, hear their noise machine, feel their sleep sack, and be able to independently soothe themselves to sleep. At bedtime, when sleep drive and fatigue are high, is the best time for your child to learn how to self-soothe. If you rock or feed your child to sleep at the start of sleep, they may not fall asleep independently which would impact their ability to fall asleep on their own in the middle of the night. As a result, we recommend that your baby is completely awake at the start of their sleep to set them up for success in learning to sleep on their own.
The most motivating part of the independent sleep journey will be identifying how your baby soothes themselves to sleep throughout the night, as every baby has a different way of doing so. Some will suck their thumb, use a pacifier, use a security object, or rub their heads back and forth on their sheets. The LUNA team will suggest a variety of methods to teach self-soothing. You can choose what will work best for your child with the goals of eliminating night wakings and helping your child sleep through the night.