In the first moments, your new little one seems more like an alien than a bundle of joy, but after a bath for baby and a few deep breaths for the new parents, your little angel looks their part. Their little red face is all scrunched up, and the sounds that voice from their puckered little mouth are the most precious notes you could ever hope for. You ache any time the nurses take them for tests, and you deny offers from well meaning friends and family who offer to hold them while you get some sleep. All you want to do is be with your new baby, and you'll forego food, water and sleep to do just that! Another Sleepness Night; Rock-a-Bye Baby
Sleepless nights are one of the first things that come to mind when thinking of taking care of a newborn or infant. The sleep-deprived parents may not realize that their baby is actually sleeping 16-20 hours a day! Your baby’s sleep schedule is just very different from yours. Babies spend a longer time in light sleep, deeper sleep in true sleep and drift in and out of deep sleep and light sleep in shorter amounts of time.
The amount of sleep needed varies with each child and age of the child. Some babies are longer sleepers and others enjoy short naps throughout the day.
Here are some facts and information that will help you understand why your baby isn’t sleeping or the crazy sleep schedule they force you to fall into and some tips on how to get your baby to fall asleep.
Newborns do not know the difference between day and night, they need to sleep and eat around the clock. For the first six weeks or so your baby will need to sleep every two hours or so and will probably not sleep longer than 3 or 4 hours. You can start to teach your baby the difference between day and night by playing with it and speaking louder during the day but being more subdued at night. You can start establishing healthy sleeping habits at this age by learning when your baby is tired, if your baby is rubbing their eyes or developing faint dark circles under the eyes put your baby to sleep. If you wait too long the baby may have trouble getting some shut eye. You will soon know instinctively when your baby is ready for a nap. When your baby is about six to eight weeks old try to let him fall asleep on his own, put him to bed when he is sleepy but still awake, that way your baby will learn healthy sleep habits and will be less likely to need to be rocked every night in the future. .
Another good way to establish healthy sleeping habits is to set up a routine. Here is a good example of a bedtime routine:
- Start with a bath or just washing their hands and face, make sure that your bedtime is as consistent as possible every night.
- Change diaper and put on pajamas.
- Singing a quiet lullaby is soothing to the baby when it is a familiar voice.
- While you prepare your baby for bed, if you prefer not to sing, put in a tape/cd of baby-friendly sounds on low volume and leave it on after you leave the room.
- Cuddle and rock your baby before you lay her down to bed.
- Try to make it short and put your baby in her crib while she is still awake.
In the early months all you can do is try to go to bed early and nap when your baby naps, so you can get enough active sleep to cope with the next day. However soon your baby will not associate needing another feed with falling asleep and you won’t need to attend to them every hour.
At about 3 or 4 months your nights of getting up every three hours are probably over, by now your baby is sleeping 14-15 hours a day , 9-10 of those are spent at night and then various naps through the day. You might still be getting up once and a while for night feedings at the beginning of this stage but by six months old your child should be capable of sleeping through the night.
Whether your baby does or not depends on if he is learning good sleeping habits and patterns. If you haven’t set up a bedtime routine yet, now would be the best time to do so, babies thrive on consistency.
So while sleepless nights have been and probably will always be just one of the many joys of parenthood there are several ways to make this time easier to deal with for baby and parents. Just remember to get as much rest as you can during the first few weeks when your baby will need to be feed, changed, or played with every couple of hours, make sure to nap when your baby naps. The better you’re rested the better parent you will be able to be.
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