I sleep through the night: 7 easy steps to sleep for children and parents

By Dellisanti Gabriella

Sleeping through the night is possible.
Mums and dads: well done! You’re demonstrating your willingness for things to change, just by showing interest for this book and, let me tell you, this is a very good first step. You will only need 7 more steps, the ReSleeping® method ones, to help your baby naturally sleep through the night. This is a method that I have come up with after years of experience as a sleeping consultant for children and nursery educator, specific to help all the mums and dads whose children have problems sleeping and wake up throughout the night.
Do you worry about leaving your crying baby alone in their room? It won’t be like this. The ReSleeping® method is based on cuddles and the emotional tuning you have with your baby, as well as communication. You will never have to leave them to cry, but you will need to understand their real needs and satisfy them by finding out their natura falling asleep path. You will only be able to help your baby relax and to have a satisfactory sleep once you have understood their own personal habits. as soon as you have learned to understand them and to communicate with them in their own language, everything will change, and they will start naturally sleeping.
The ReSleeping® method is a path that all the family should take together with their baby; finding a good balance during the night will draw you closer and will make you happier. It will also give you back that harmony that sometimes the lack of sleep takes away from you, and it will help the baby grow well and become a strong and healthy adult.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gabriella Dellisanti
• Release date: Aug 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220840903

Book preview

I SLEEP

THROUGH THE NIGHT

7 EASY STEPS TO SLEEP FOR CHILDREN AND PARENTS

Gabriella Dellisanti

Copyright © 2021 Gabriella Dellisanti

I sleep through the night

7 easy steps to sleep for children and parents

Original edition © 2020 Gabriella Dellisanti

Io dormo tutta la notte

7 semplici passi per far dormire bambini e genitori

Translation by Flavia Catavitello

Layout by Giorgia Ragona

www.resleeping.com

Any names and places from the testimony have been changed in order to protect the privacy of the families.

Any similarities with people, dead or alive, places or real life are purely coincidental.

INDEX

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CHAPTER 1

No more doubts

Sleeping approaches

The basics of the method

1. The ReSleeping® method is based on cuddles and communication

2. Parent leads, baby follows

3. Babies understand from the moment they are born

4. The fulfilment of needs

5. Falling asleep is an autonomous task

6. Playing doesn’t excite, it relaxes

7. The ReSleeping® method is flexible and involves variables

Why do children not sleep?

Why can’t my baby fall asleep?

CHAPTER 2

Survival mode

What parents do to get some sleep

Involuntary behaviours that cause habits

From dependency to independence

CHAPTER 3

How to become the parent you have always wanted to be?

The fundament of good communication

Behaviours that could influence them

Love should be unconditional

Let them grow freely

CHAPTER 4

Not all children are the same

Different types of children: don’t label them, rather recognise and understand

The acceptance: every mum and dad have their own baby

How parents’ emotions influence the baby’s mood

CHAPTER 5

The relationship with the baby

The story

Tuning

Communication

Reconciliation

CHAPTER 6

Preparing yourself to work with the method

Things to ask yourself

Why should my baby learn how to fall asleep autonomously?

Preparing the baby’s surroundings to sleep

Organising the baby’s day

Fulfilment of needs

CHAPTER 7

The 7 steps to implement change with the ReSleeping® method

Before starting the steps for the method

Step 1: communication before anything else

Step 2: the bye-bye step

Step 3: playing in the cot

Step 4: the start

Step 5: the relaxation

Step 6: cuddles

Step 7: the three phases of falling asleep (separation, control, trust)

CHAPTER 8

What happens if my baby doesn’t want to sleep?

The baby’s requests

My baby cries as soon as I place them in their cot

My baby falls asleep in my arms but then wakes up

My baby only falls asleep in the pram

My baby takes two hours to fall asleep

My baby only goes down for mini-naps (20/40 minutes) during the whole day

My baby sleeps a lot in the morning

My baby only sleeps whilst breastfeeding or with a bottle

CHAPTER 9

Parallel strategies

What are they?

How do we recognise them?

How to eliminate them

CHAPTER 10

What do I do if they wake up at night?

Waking up is physiological

Types of night awakenings

What to do if the baby wakes up too early

CONCLUSION

MY STORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This book is dedicated to all the mums

who I have met during this journey.

To all the mums that even although being tired,

have always been incredible and never gave up.

To all the mums that although they needed to scream, they did it alone,in the dark,

still working hard for their family.

To all the mums I have comforted,

hugged and sometimes even cried with.

To all the mums that always do the most

for their little ones

and sometimes even forget about themselves.

To all the mums that spend sleepless nights

trying to get their babies to sleep.

To all the mums that feel wrong

and never know whether they’re doing the right thing.

To all the mums that see beyond judgment

and listen to their hearts to restart with the right strength and love that only your children give you.

Last but not least, this is to all the mums that have tearfully asked meif they were good enough…

and to whom I have always replied that over being good mums, they have given us the chance

to live in a wonderful world that also thanks to them

is full of love.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I wrote this book in order to send a message to all the confused and lost parents who struggle getting their children to sleep. I want them to know how to help their little ones, and that is why I have jotted it all down on paper and eventually made it into an actual book. This is to help them create a map that would guide them through the natural course of the sleep of their children.

Based on my competences firstly as a Newborn Care Specialist (NCS), then as a nursery educator, and through my ten-year experience in the field with families, I was able to outline a sequence of steps that will eventually lead to the change in the sleep of the child. This is exactly why I wanted to call it a method – although there is not one scientific proven method that puts a child to sleep and therefore making them independent in doing so. I have also worked hard towards making it clear how these steps are flexible to any children and the family who leans towards the approach and, of course, still being provided with the same results.

After studying for a long time to understand the sleep of children, a few years back I created my very first functional method. Working closely together with the families who decided to take this approach, I realised that the scheme was too strict. It was working very well, but it would interfere with any days out or activities that the family would organise around their normal routine just to put their child to sleep. I therefore resorted to developing the current method: ReSleeping® - based on the autonomous falling asleep [NSI12] in order to eliminate night awakenings of children aged 0 to 3.

This new method has been valued and appreciated by families with which I have been working, as it puts family harmony as its first principle. Moreover, it is a more flexible method than the previous one and it calls for a closer bond between mum and dad making them more relaxed, as well as having fun with their child. And, of course, rewards them with a full night’s sleep.

The fundament to all this is communication, a tool that parents do not often use, albeit it being most powerful and effective. This is simply because they do not seem to think children can understand them. However, children can. This is because communication isn’t only made up of words. It also involves emotions, moods, gestures and looks. Non-verbal communication is well developed in children, as it is their only way to communicate – above crying, obviously.

The two parts of communication – verbal and emotional – must go alongside each other when parents try to convey a message to their children, so acting according to what they think or say, otherwise communication does not work. It is exactly when a parent goes back to communicating to their child that everything changes, and they start sleeping peacefully.

I have lots of proof of the effectiveness of this method in many years of advice I have given to parents who have been able to re-establish a balanced life. Most of these are to be found on Google or on the private – Italian speaking – Facebook group ReSleeping® MOMs, a place that never stops learning and experimenting. The group works as a school for parents, as there always are videos in which I explain the method and every week I host a live video to talk about anything parents would like to ask me or have any doubts about. It can also be a safe space in which mums support each other and rejoice together when their little ones make any progress. Sometimes it is the mums themselves who post videos of their experience and how they organised the falling asleep of their children. There is also a fair share of dad videos on there too!

At the end of each chapter in this book you will find a testimony that summarises these wholesome years. It will be the parents themselves talking about the ReSleeping® method in their own words. I highly recommend anyone who speaks Italian to enter the group. It will be of great help to clarify any doubts you have in terms of sleeping and more. There are a lot of experts on the group who can help with psychology, paediatrics and much more.

In my many years of experience I have understood and seen with my own eyes that if a child has a good quality of sleep then they will grow to be a balanced and calm adult who is ready to face life. This is why fixing any sleep-related problems is more important than you would think.

Happy reading!

Gabriella Dellisanti

CHAPTER 1

No more doubts

Sleeping is like speaking another language.

It is entering a new world

Which awaits to be translated every single night.

- Fabrizio Caramagna

SLEEPING APPROACHES

There are two different methods when it comes to children falling asleep: the first one is called NAP (Night-time Attachment Parenting) and the other one is CIO (Cry it Out). The first one is based on the contact between the parent and the child, whereas the other one is solely focused on the ability of the child to have a controlled cry until they fall asleep. This method is also referred to as Estivill, from the name of the Spanish paediatrician who invented it and talked about it in his renowned book Sleep, Child.

I don’t personally agree with the CIO method as based on my experience, children’s necessities are always to be followed and understood. I therefore tend to use the NAP method which follows their needs.

There are many schools of thoughts but in order to come up with the ReSleeping® method, instead of following the theories by the book, I preferred to put into practice my 20 years’ experience with families and their children.

It is important for me to say that I am not against any school of thought when it comes to sleeping as the only thing that matters is that they get a peaceful sleep. I thought it was worth mentioning because many mums ask me: ‘Is it okay to put my baby in our bed?’ and I always answer: ‘why not?’. I say this, because there is nothing wrong about doing it so long as it benefits both the child and the parents. Basically, making the whole family happy.

I know of many mums who let their child fall asleep in their arms and then when they have another child they panic because the same method didn’t work for both. This is because every child is different and there isn’t one method suitable for all, so it is important to find the right one for them.

The most important thing is for the parent to know what path to go down and follow it without fearing to be judged.

Feel free to choose the most suited method to your personality but be mindful that ReSleeping® is based on NAP, so on a psychophysical approach [NSI13] in response to crying.

THE BASICS OF THE METHOD

Thanks to my experience with the families, I was able to set out some basics for the best outcome for the ReSleeping® method.

The ReSleeping® method is based on cuddles and communication

According to the NAP, which is based on the care of the child, every time the child cries the parent should be there to comfort them. Some mums are wary of doing so as they fear that their child might then want to be held 24/7. But the real aim of the method is to communicate to the child that mum is there for them.

I am firmly convinced that the role of a parent is to be there for their child, so if the child cries it means they have a need and being there for them means to satisfy that need and bond.

Their crying is their mean of communication when they still are not able to verbalize. The most common mistake is to think that children have to cry and that after their cry they will sleep. When