Navigating Sleep & Illness

Disclaimer: Please note I am not a medical professional and this is not medical advice. This is just general information around navigating sleep when a child is sick. Please discuss how to navigate illness with your child’s doctor.

When your child is sick, offer the level of intervention/support in proportion to the level of illness. Give them the support they need around sleep without giving too much or too little. The EAR acronym can be helpful here to figure out what that means.

Evaluate

• Evaluate how severe the illness is.

• How sick are they? (e.g., runny nose, cough, vomiting, fever – and for how long?)

• Determine how much assistance your child needs based on how sick they are.

Accommodate

• Comfort them in their illness.

• Give them the support they need (not too little and not too much).

• General ideas for different illnesses:

  • For colds, often not much is changed around sleep. Maybe extra snuggles! Generally little ones keep to their sleep timing/schedule as much as possible.

  • For a low fever, your child may or may not need extra help to sleep, and may need less wake time and more sleep (although generally not as much extra sleep as when the fever is high).

  • For a high fever, your child may need extra help to fall and stay asleep, and may need monitoring too (so you may decide to room share – some options are to move child’s crib/pack n play into your room or bring a mattress into their room). He may need less wake time and more sleep than usual.

  • For a stomach bug, your child may need assistance around sleep and monitoring.

• You may stray away from your typical sleep routines and habits to support them – and that’s okay!

• When extra sleep is needed to get well:

  • Sleep is healing, so this is okay! Night sleep is most restorative so can still be prioritized. For example, you can do early bedtime instead of adding in a nap.

  • Waking a sick child during the day to offer fluids and food can help. A common recommendation is to aim for a breast/bottle feed at least every 3 hours.

  • Some babies, even when sick, max out on sleep in 24 hours and so still need naps capped to preserve night sleep. This will be something you can experiment with to learn about your baby.

Recover

• Once your child is well, get back into their typical timing, routines, and sustainable habits around sleep.

• If you assisted them to sleep while they were sick and they are protesting independent sleep once they're well, you can offer comfort while holding the boundary of returning to independent sleep through a responsive sleep training method.