Getting Baby To Sleep

Most of the parents go through the difficulty of sleepless nights before that long-wished-for time come, when your baby manage to sleep through the whole night.

Getting a baby to adjust to a normal sleep schedule can be a challenge for new parents. If you want your baby to get into good sleep habits, you need to do your bit, too.

There is an old joke: “Anyone who says they slept like a baby has obviously never had one.” But, as I well recall, it’s no joke when you’re grappling with a baby who seems to think a decent sleep is 40 minutes long.

For the first 2-3 months your baby needs to wake up to eat but some babies jerk themselves and wake up before they are ready to eat. Newborns alternate between sleep and wakefulness every three to four hours, in response to hunger. As the baby grows this should shift to a diurnal pattern with longer periods of sustained sleep at night – up to eight hours.

You have to be sure that the feed has been an efficient feed, and if the baby is dozing off on the breast, take her off, start her again and make sure she’s feeding efficiently. Feeding can’t be separated from sleeping, so the aim is to ensure the baby has a good, efficient feed before they go to bed for the night.

Creating a routine by doing the same things in the same order every night (bath, cuddling, feeding) will help you to establish a pattern that your baby recognize as a pre-sleep routine. But as your baby grows, they will also understand that bedtime comes after bath time and may start to settle down comforted by this bedtime routine.