Helping your Little One Sleep through the Night

Many of us moms may be at the stage now where we can establish a routine with our newborn. Several weeks have passed and you both have gotten the hang of being with each other. Still there is one little problem, your newborn may still not have gotten used to sleeping through the night. It can be really tiring when your daughter or son is up most of the day and refuses to sleep during the night. If they do, their nap takes roughly twenty minutes if you’re lucky. There are a few helpful suggestions which you can experiment with to see if it aids in making your little one sleep for longer, especially at nights.

This may sound hard but you need to teach your baby the difference between night and day. How this is done is by being very active and playful with your newborn during the daytime. Feeding should take place in a bright and airy room with lots of noise and stimulation. When its night time on the other hand, keep feeds quiet and lighting to a minimum so that your baby stays relaxed and not as active as he would do had it been daytime. You should also try not to let daytime naps be in a dark room or too quiet so that your baby learns to differentiate from night time sleeps and not to be confused.

It is very important that as soon as possible to establish a bedtime routine. For me what I do is give my son a bath in the evening, after which he’s fed and we have a cuddle or I read to him abit. The lighting in the room is dim and so it serves as an indicator that its quiet time. He soon becomes really relaxed and before I know it, is sleeping peacefully in my arms and I gently place him in the crib. He also by this stage knows that his crib means its sleeping time. Again what I try to do in the days is place him in his day cot or what they call a play pen where he takes his naps and do daytime activities. If however, you have only one sleeping area for your little one its fine. Just follow the points aforementioned in your baby differentiating night from day and doing that which will serve as a cue that its nearing bedtime.

Another point I should inject here is as soon as your baby becomes fussy and irritated place him or her in the crib before they fall asleep. It will teach them that being in the crib equals sleep. This being said leads me to my next point. It is important that your newborn learns to settle himself. Although it may be challenging, try not to feed or rock your baby to sleep. Why I say this is simply because it can lead to their being dependent on going to sleep in this way, I’m guilty of this and pay the price from time to time. Once you get your baby ready for bed it is good to place them in the crib while they are still drowsy and not fully asleep. Still be there when they dose off, with time they will be able to settle themselves to sleep and with time you will be able to leave the room with them awake.

I’ve noticed many nights where my son for some reason startles himself awake and starts to cry because I reckon he feels he’s alone. Sometimes he settles down and just falls off into another phase of sleep and other times being a mom and hearing him cry makes me want to pick him up and soothe him which I end up doing. My advice is this, unless your child starts to cry uncontrollably, try not to pick them up. Easier said than done I know. What you can do is stand by the crib holding their hands and rubbing their tummy and talk soothingly to them, sing or rub their head to soothe them until you find that they relax and slowly fall back to sleep again. I can vouch for gently rubbing the head; it works like a charm. After awhile you may want to experiment by leaving abit of time to pass before going by the side of the crib as you will find babies sleep patterns are strange and they sound like they’re about to be awake and then you are shocked to find your little one fast asleep.

All this may sound easy, but it takes a lot of perseverance on both sides. It may be awhile yet till your little one can sleep straight through the night. You may even have to endure hours of crying. Once you have covered all the bases, check that they are clean, fed, not too hot or cold, you will have to do what is often referred to as ferberizing, which simply put means they cry until they are fed up with crying and just sleep or are quiet. As first time moms we are all in this together and its nothing other than trial and error with a few recommendations from people like us along the way.