Your Baby Doesn't Dislike Their Cot; they dislike the unpredictability of their cot.

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear from parents is that their baby "hates the cot." While that can certainly feel true when every cot settle or transfer ends in tears or your baby only seems happy sleeping on you, the cot itself is rarely the real issue.

More often than not, the challenge is a lack of predictability surrounding your little one's cot.

If you've got an unsettled baby, I can almost guarantee you've found yourself trying something different most nights just to get them to sleep, which makes sense.

Maybe one night you feed them to sleep because nothing else settles them. The next night you rock them because the feed didn't work. Another night they fall asleep on you and you carefully transfer them into the cot. Then, after a few wake ups overnight, they end up in bed with you because everyone just needs some sleep by this point.

On top of that, your bedtime routine might not look the same every night either. Some evenings you've got time for a bath, a story and cuddles. Other nights you're rushing because bedtime has been thrown off, you've been out all day, or your baby's already overtired.

Before you know it, there are three parts of sleep that are changing all the time: how your baby falls asleep, where they fall asleep, and what happens before sleep.

The thing is your baby doesn't understand why these things keep changing. They just know that every sleep feels a little different.

So, when you put them into their cot, it can look like they hate it. But often, it's not the cot they're protesting, it's the fact that they genuinely don't know what's coming next.

One of the biggest things I work on with families isn't just helping babies sleep in their cot. It's creating predictability, consitency and familiarity around sleep. When your baby knows what their bedtime routine looks like, where they're going to sleep and how you'll support them to fall asleep, those things become familiar and familiarity creates a feeling of safety.

Once your little one is feeling safe in their sleep space, not only is sleep achievable, it's actually quite simple!

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