HOW TO HELP YOUR BABY SLEEP

How to Help Your Baby Sleep Better

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, too many kids don’t get enough sleep. Failure to help your baby sleep can lead to a lot of problems, not just for the child, but for you.

Additionally, a sleep-deprived child can also be a problem for caregivers, and teachers later in life. Mental alertness is vital for babies to learn and develop, and lack of sleep can negatively affect behavior.

In this article, we discuss how to help your baby sleep better. First, we break down a child’s sleep with the age. Then we include a sleep timetable for people of all ages. Finally, we give you some general tips on how to help your baby sleep.

Read: The best baby sleep training methods

Sleep and Your Baby – What’s Normal?

It can be notoriously difficult for you as a parent to help your baby sleep. But part of this difficulty may be a misunderstanding of how babies sleep and why. They are not born with adult sleep patterns in place!

So what sleep patterns do babies have? For one thing, babies go from deep to light sleep just like adults do. But during the light sleep phase, babies tend to wake. This usually happens for reasons such as hunger or cold. If the need is satisfied, they may enter into deep sleep again.

Use a time table to help your baby sleep

It’s very important to remember that every baby is different. But we have some generalized facts about baby sleep patterns according to age.

Birth to 6-8 Weeks

At birth, babies generally sleep from 16 to 18 hours per day, waking every few hours around the clock. A newborn baby has spent its whole life in the womb, and their entire environment has been disrupted.

Babies have no frame of reference, either, and don’t understand the abrupt change of things. Keeping this in mind can help sleep-deprived parents hang in there and not get too frustrated with their baby’s wakefulness.

8 Weeks to 6 Months

During this time, infants are just beginning to develop their own circadian rhythm. It’s still not fully developed, and sources point out that, even at 6 months, that rhythm may not be mature. During this age, 16 hours of sleep per 24 hours is still normal.

6 Months to 1 Year

During this stage, your baby will probably start sleeping for longer periods at a time. They may go to 4-6 hours at first, then up to 10 hours at the age of 1 year.

Sleep Time Table for All Ages

There are all sorts of sleep problems for children and adults. This article primarily covers how to help your baby sleep. However, we must add that sleep is very important for people of all ages.

We discuss sleep and sleep disorders in other articles. Here, we include a generalized time table for everyone to get enough sleep.

Read: Why you’re suffering sleep deprivation

Read: The 6 common types of sleep disorders

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Things That May Affect Baby’s Sleep

As your baby grows, multiple factors can come into play to upset the apple cart, so to speak. Parents sometimes complain that as soon as they get a good sleep routine established, it changes.

Because babies are developing rapidly, there are some things to consider that affect baby’s sleep.

Growth spurts

These can occur at various times. In the early weeks and months, growth tends to be most intense between 7 to 10 days after birth. It picks up again around 3 weeks old, then again at 3 and 4 months old.

Growth spurts may raise the need for sleep (growing babies need to conserve energy). Additionally, growing increases the need for nutrition, meaning babies will want to nurse or bottle-feed more often.

Teething

Teething can cause a lot of pain and stress for babies, making for restless sleep. Taking this into consideration, parents may worry less about their baby’s sudden inability to sleep and restless crying.

Top Tips for Helping Baby Sleep

The area of infant sleep is somewhat controversial. Some advocate letting babies “cry it out”.

Others believe in meeting the baby’s needs around the clock. Still, others support co-sleeping, while the crib camp points to the advantages of a baby having his or her own room.

The CDC recommends that the baby should be in your room for 6-12 months. That’s regardless of whether the baby is in the same bed with you or in the crib/bassinet. 

The following are some tips on how to help your baby sleep. None of these tips is intended to advocate or promote a particular parenting style or school of thought. Rather, these are applicable to all sorts of parenting approaches. Here are some ideas.

Swaddling can help your baby sleep

For young babies, especially newborns, the lights, open space, and cold (relative to the womb) temperatures can be overwhelming. Swaddling, or wrapping your baby closely in blankets, can go a long way to helping the baby feel secure enough to sleep.

If you have trouble with swaddling, or it does not seem to be working, try wrapping the baby more tightly. Remember how tight he or she was in the womb just days or weeks before!

It sometimes surprises parents that swaddling can really make a baby feel comfortable. Of course, you should never tie or fasten anything tightly around your baby.

White Noise

Fans or other white noise devices can help your baby sleep. Some parents use an air purifier, or even a radio set on static. Pretty much anything that makes a steady hum and does not pose any risk to the baby’s safety will work

Flexibility

You should plan on adjusting to your baby’s lifestyle instead of trying to get the baby to adjust to yours. There may be something small that you could do that may make a big difference.

For example:

• Baby does not have to sleep in a crib or bed right off the bat. As long as it’s safe, there’s no “wrong” place for a baby to sleep. If the baby sleeps well on a blanket on the living room floor, great! The important this is to help your baby sleep.

• To help your baby sleep, try varying how you put the baby to sleep – rocking, singing, nursing. Some experts note that this keeps the baby from expecting particular actions in order to fall asleep and fall back asleep. So it’s recommended that you vary your methods to help your baby sleep.

Closeness

To help your baby sleep at night, make sure you do a lot of cuddling, interaction, touch during the day. Also, be sure to allow a certain amount of peace and quiet. If you fail to do this, they may look to have those needs met at night.

Further reading:

How to manage your sleep disorder with diet & exercise