Help Your Baby Sleep Well Without Exhausting Yourself

Sleep is growth promoting and restorative for everybody in the family.  And sleep deprivation is equally damaging.  We expect to have sleepless nights when we have babies as they need nursing at short intervals. However sometimes this goes on longer than necessary in certain families and causes unnecessary stress. Here is how you help your baby sleep well.

Let’s talk about how to get your baby sleep through the night as comfortably, easily and quickly  as possible.

Start With Good Habits For Your Baby Sleep

All babies are different. Newborns sleep two third of the day with one to three hour periods. You are likely to need to wake up at night few times.  If you start with good habits, however, the hardest times will be over after the first six months when your baby can sleep between four and six hours every night.

Good sleeping habits for grown ups are not that different.

Here are the right habits to adopt at the beginning, although it is never late to start:

1) Follow a routine for the day.

2) Establish a rough time that fits with your baby’s natural rhythm to wake up, to feed, to play and nap all through the day. Routines make them feel secure and relax.

3) Bath and change for the evening, around 7 or 8pm.

4) Play, smile, caress,  speak calmly with your baby. Tell your baby time to sleep is approaching even when you think they are too young to understand.

5) Darken the room.

6) Put your baby to their bed when they are drowsy, before they are asleep.

7) Use white noise as an association to sleep so that household noises don’t wake your baby up easily.

8) Good parenting is always about gradually helping children to be independent as they mature. The skill you want to pass to your baby as quickly as possible is to calm themselves down and sleep.  Parents often mistake crying, as the baby needing to be fed, changed or picked up to be comforted.  Over delivering is a big error parents make.

9) Help your baby calm down and go back to sleep in the comfort of their own bed. Do this by waiting few moments before going near them.  When you go first speaking to them gently without making eye contact.  Then if necessary caress their heads, faces and bodies.

10) Be aware of removing nose blocking reasons from their room such as allergic clothing, carpet or detergent. Make sure there is enough humidity in the room as well.

Remember to wean your baby from night feeds after the first six months.

Exceptions Are Expected With Baby Sleep

Babies and toddlers experience waking up in the night when they are going through major growth spurs or changes in their routines such as traveling.  When they become more mobile, for example, they get more anxious. Illness sometimes interferes with sleep. When this happens return to soothing bedtime routines and remember to be patient; it is only a phase.

And as if this isn’t enough, avoid using dummies, (pacifiers to those from the USA). They drop and wake your baby up, they also damage your baby’s teeth development as weaning from the dummy becomes an extra problem.