We've talked a lot about sleep setbacks (or regressions) in terms of sensitive developmental stages and how those stages can throw to high-hell all previously hard-won sleeping skills. But I left off Part I of this series suggesting that another common cause of sleep setbacks can be a change in the context of going to sleep—often a change that we’re unaware of, or that we don’t see as important, and sometimes a change that we can’t control. Changes in context come in all varieties. Some are obvious: like a change in location. Sleep habits have a tendency to go out the window when you’re on vacation (I know a lot of us are anxious about this now), or sleeping in a hotel room or relative’s guest room. Which is one reason why “vacations” may not be so restful during the early years. (Suffice it to say that our last week's family cottage "vacation" could better be described as one large slumber party badly in need of Super Nanny intervention). Other obvious changes in context are alterations in who is taking care of the child and who is putting him or her to sleep. If mom is always present when baby goes to sleep, then her absence can have a formidable impact on sleeping habits, and dad may be at an utter loss while mom is finally out for her first Margarita with her girlfriends since the baby was born. But these changes are usually temporary and/or avoidable (not that I'm saying that the night out with the girlfriends SHOULD be avoided… not at all).

Other changes in context are not so easy to avoid. When winter turns to spring and spring to summer, your baby may have to get used to going to sleep with light pouring through the curtains. And even the smallest sliver of light may be enough to change her fundamental sense that it’s not bedtime yet. When a new baby comes along, a new sibling, this can also cause a major upheaval to your previously perfect sleeper. Now you’re different in so many ways. You don’t read as many books at bedtime. You’re tired, you’re less patient, you smell funny (fresh spit-up on your t-shirt has such a… specific odour) and so forth. And there are different noises in the house. Things aren’t as quiet as they used to be. These sorts of changes in context are rather hard or impossible to avoid or even dampen, but they may have drastic effects on your child’s sleeping habits regardless. Champion sleepers may suddenly lie awake, chanting, or whining, or rattling the bars of their cribs like little criminals. All because the context of going to sleep has changed in some pivotal way.

One way to think of the solution for sleep setbacks caused by changes in context may sound simplistic: change the context back to whatever worked best or whatever context has been in place until now. If you can. Of course, if the change in context is a change in season, from winter to spring, you won’t have much luck changing it back for another half year or so. But you can, instead, install heavy curtains to block out the light coming through the window. And that’s often the best you can do: approximate the context that’s been in place up until now. If the noise level in the house is the problem, put a white noise generator, or simply a fan, next to the baby’s crib. Sometimes a CD of lullabies does the trick. The key to finding the right solution is pin-pointing what’s different. What’s changed? Often some detective work is required. Whatever has changed in the lighting, atmosphere, sound level, or you may not be the least bit obvious, even though that change is sufficiently potent to make a big difference to your child’s sleep. Babies and toddlers are exquisitely sensitive little beings, and their nervous systems are tuned to many perceptual aspects of their environment that completely escape your attention. And they like familiarity. So, if a sleep setback seems to have no other reason behind it, and a change in context is the likely culprit, try to put yourself in that crib, tune your eyes, ears, nose, and skin to the world around you as sensitively as you can, and you’ll probably figure out the problem in no time. Along these same lines, if you're going on vacation, try to mimic the exact sleep context
you have at home: the same dark room, the same teddy, blanket, soother,
the same stories, the same music, and so on.

Finally, some changes in context are unavoidable and no approximation on your part will bring back what the baby was previously used to (for example, babies grow out of swaddles — even the most "miraculous" of them all — and you're not going to be rolling a 12-month old into a tight blanket; toddlers leap out of cribs and the inevitable move to the "big boy/girl bed" can't be put off until adolescence — despite MY best efforts). When these unavoidable changes in sleep contexts occur, the only thing we can do is rest-assured that children are miraculously adaptive little organisms and they DO learn new sleep habits with our help. 

Part III will cover how PHYSICAL milestones can be considered a fundamental change in the child's context and, of course, why this might spell trouble for already-established healthy sleep habits.

Anyone going through one of these unavoidable changes in sleep contexts? How are you coping?