Lots of parents I speak to are keen to try the Wake to Sleep Method because unlike sleep training it doesn't involve any crying. We can use the Wake to Sleep Method to break a habit wake, or to teach your baby to nap longer. If you want to try the Wake to Sleep Method first ensure that your baby can self settle, or you might be causing a new problem for yourself.

What is covered in this Wake to Sleep Blog?

• What is the Wake to Sleep Method?
• Night sleep cycles and Wake to Sleep Method.
• When can you use Wake to Sleep Method?
• Wake to Sleep Method and naps.
• Habit wakes and the Wake to Sleep.
• Success of the Wake to Sleep Method.

What is the Wake to Sleep Method?

Rouse to to sleep or wake to sleep technique, is a trick that utilises knowledge of sleep cycles and understanding of natural wakes between sleep cycles to extend sleep without any formal sleep training.

You need to understand the structure of sleep, day vs night to understand how to make this technique work for you and your family.

Day sleep cycles are generally 30-45 minutes, you can see the different stages of sleep on the sleep cycle chart below.

Once your baby completes a sleep cycle, we expect them to wake up, and this is often when a baby cries out for us to help them get back to sleep.

Overnight your baby is asleep a lot longer before they wake up, and their sleep cycles are a lot more variable, with different amounts of each stage of sleep depending of the time of the night and how tired your baby is when they go to bed.

Below is a typical sleep hypnogram demonstrating the structure of night sleep. You can see the multiple natural wakes that your baby has throughout the night and the possible wakes.

You can see how easily a wake-up can become habitual when the structure of your baby's sleep becomes quite consistent.

Feeding after each of these checking wakes is the easiest way to start habit wakes, but considering newborns need a lot of feeding in the night in those early months, it is obvious why these wake ups become quite habitual in the later months!

We know a wake up is more of a habit than anything else when the wake up is at the same time each night, ie 5am, or after the same amount of sleep each night, ie 3 hours.

Once you workout that a wake up is a habit wake, it's a good sign we can try the wake to sleep method.

When to use the Wake to Sleep Method?

If you're looking for an easy approach to try to break a habit wake, whether its at night, early morning, or after a nap sleep cycle, and you know your baby can self settle, then you can try this approach.

It is important that your baby can self settle before going down the path of wake to sleep, because you will wake your baby, if they rely on you to get them to sleep, then you could create a bigger issue than your current habitual wake up. 

Naps and the Wake to Sleep Method...

Looking at the sleep cycle graph above you can see that after 30-45 minutes your baby is coming out of a deep sleep and will fully wake up before trying to go back to sleep to take a longer nap.

As long as your baby can put themselves to sleep at the start of the nap, and they aren't dependent on you to put them to sleep, then the wake to sleep approach is a good one to try to achieve a longer nap.

The only thing you risk is 5-10 minutes of sleep if they don't go back to sleep.

A small risk for a possible big reward of a 1 hour + nap! 

Make sure you have a good grasp on your baby's naps before you try this, you want to be sure every single nap is 30 minute or 45 minutes. If sometimes it's 30 minutes and sometimes 60 minutes, then chances are your baby is starting to consolidate their nap naturally and you don't have a habit to break.

Ready to break the short nap habit?

Go into your baby's sleep space once they have been asleep for 20-25 minutes; look at the sleep cycle above; you want to catch them in the heavy or deep sleep phase of the cycle.

You will wake them slightly, either give them a little jiggle, or remove and replace their dummy, or do some small movement that makes them 'stir', you want them to wake slightly and drift back to sleep.

The goal here is that they go back to the start of their sleep cycle and complete another sleep cycle! 25 minutes + 45 minutes, over a 1 hour nap!

You are teaching them to take a nap for over an hour, which means their awake window will lengthen, supporting another longer nap, and reinforcing the no more cat naps habit!

Often once a baby gets into that second sleep cycle they sleep until we wake them! It seems the hardest transition is from sleep cycle 1-2, from there they sleep beautifully, so you could be in for a looong nap!

Habit wakes and the wake-to-sleep method

Now that you understand how to use the wake-to-sleep method for naps, you might see how this could work for a nighttime or early morning habit wake, too.

If, for example, you think your baby wakes habitually every night at 11 p.m. and is old enough not to be hungry at this point, you could try a wake-to-sleep method at 10.40pm and see if you can break that habit with a quick little jiggle.

If you have a 5am wake every day, firstly, make sure that you are not reinforcing this with a long early nap. If you are the wake to sleep will not work.

If you're naps are age-appropriate and structured to support night sleep (see my nap routines inside my online program) then you could set your alarm for 4.45am and go and try a wake-to-sleep approach,

You might need to play around with timing, varying when you go in at night between 20-40 minutes before the habitual wake.

If it does work and your baby goes back to sleep and sleeps past their usual habitual wake up time, give the wake to sleep 3-5 nights to become a new habit then you can stop waking them and just enjoy the extra sleep!

If they only sleep an extra 30-45 minutes, you can the next night do another wake-to-sleep to push the wake up even later, you would give this new wake to sleep another 3-5 nights before you stop it. You can do this edging your early wake closer and closer to 7am for a few weeks and avoid any sleep training to tackle an habitual early wake up. 

 

What is the success rate of the wake-to-sleep method?

 In my experience the biggest hurdle is convincing parents to wake a sleeping baby who already wakes early or takes short naps...

But once they're on board to try it, I see around a 50-60% success rate.

That's not the highest rate in the world, but considering it means zero sleep training, no crying, no cry it out, its definitly worth a shot!

 

Sometimes parents must give it a full 3-5 nights/days to see that success. If your baby is still waking early or taking a short nap in that time, try a more vigorous wake movement as you might not be stirring them enough that they go back to the light phase of sleep.

 

Emma Purdue

Emma is the owner and founder of Baby Sleep Consultant, she is a certified infant and child sleep consultant, Happiest Baby on the block educator, has a Bachelor of Science, and Diploma in Education.

Emma is a mother to 3 children, and loves writing when she isn't working with tired clients and cheering on her team helping thousands of mums just like you.

References

Lenehan SM, Fogarty L, O'Connor C, Mathieson S, Boylan GB. The Architecture of Early Childhood Sleep Over the First Two Years. Matern Child Health J. 2023 Feb;27(2):226-250. doi: 10.1007/s10995-022-03545-9. Epub 2022 Dec 31. PMID: 36586054; PMCID: PMC9925493.

Grigg-Damberger M, Gozal D, Marcus CL, Quan SF, Rosen CL, Chervin RD, Wise M, Picchietti DL, Sheldon SH, Iber C. The visual scoring of sleep and arousal in infants and children. J Clin Sleep Med. 2007 Mar 15;3(2):201-40. PMID: 17557427.

 

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