Sleep

We were told that in the early days an average new born sleeps 16 hours a day. Our little baby had not read the book! We were also unaware that when people said they had to get up twice in the night that could mean a two-hour stretch each time. We innocently thought that we would get up for 10 minutes then go back to bed. Instead we spent many happy hours pacing the landing in the middle of the night. The early days are hard and you may feel like you are the only ones awake at that time. But it does get easier and suddenly you find that your baby has slept until the alarm goes off and you have to rush to check he is still alive.

The important thing to remember is that in the early days as far as your baby is concerned there is no night or day there is just you 24/7 on hand to meet his needs. He is not concerned that it is 2am if he wants to play, that is the time to play. The trick is to get him to learn that night time is for sleeping as soon as possible. He is designed to have one longer sleep every 24 hours from quite a young age. You want to make sure this happens at night. The following points are a few ideas we have picked up along the way.

You need to make sure your baby is as tanked up as full possible before going to bed last thing at night (about the time you go to bed). If you are breast feeding you will probably find that the baby wants to feed all evening anyway. If your milk supply is low you could consider expressing earlier in the day and introducing a bottle of breast milk at night. A full stomach helps induce sleep.

When the baby wakes in the night, try and keep the feed as low key as possible. Only change the nappy if it is extremely wet, has leaked or is dirty. If you have to change the baby I found it best to do this halfway through the feed. The baby is too hungry at the beginning of the feed and too sleepy at the end. Feed the baby with a low light and try not to make too much eye contact. Put the baby straight back into the crib as soon as possible after feeding. Over time this should help to ensure the baby goes back to sleep straight after a feed.

Use whatever props you need to help induce your newborn to sleep whether this is breastfeeding, rocking or a dummy. Lots of books tell you that you shouldn’t use props as the baby can become too reliant on them to help him or her sleep. The truth is the early days are about survival. Going to sleep is actually a skill and surprisingly the baby can find this hard to do without lots of screaming and crying. We used a number of different props to help our new baby sleep and the baby didn’t come too reliant on any one of them. As the baby gets older it is possible to gradually remove them.

Babies like to suck and this gives them comfort and helps them sleep. The easiest way to meet this need is to use a dummy. As soon as the baby is asleep the dummy will fall out and it can be removed. We found that our baby rejected his dummy at two months old and as he didn’t like it so we had to find other ways to help him sleep. But it worked really well in the early days. I think as long as the dummy is removed once he is asleep he won’t need it to comfort him every time he wakes up as he will be used to sleeping without it.

Rocking the baby to sleep works well. You can also take them out in the pram or the car. If dad can do this job this can help the mother to get a bit of a rest.

Some people use white noise such as a washing machine, hoover or a radio not tuned into a station. We didn’t find this helped us much but it is worth a try.

Some babies like to be swaddled as this gives them comfort. Again this is worth doing to see if your baby likes it.

If all else fails and your baby just wants to be awake whatever time of day, try going to watch TV while rocking the baby, browse the internet or do something else for a little while. If feels better to be actively awake rather than half asleep lying in bed listening to the baby cry.

Baby in room

We had our baby in with us for eight weeks until we moved him into his nursery. We got such a good nights sleep then. Babies are quite noisy when they sleep. You become aware of every snort, shuffle and movement. I think also that we kept our baby awake as he slept better too once moved. In the early days it is convenient to have them in with you for the night feeds, but don’t worry about moving them into their own room if it all becomes too much.

I got our baby used to his nursery from quite a young age. He used to have some of his day time naps in there so it wasn’t all big and strange when he was moved into his room at night. We also used black out blinds to make the room dark this helps in summer especially when it starts to get light at about 4am.

Self soothing to sleep

When our son was a couple of weeks old we did try to get him to sleep on his own especially after the middle of the night feed. If you put them down with a full tummy and they are quite relaxed and sleepy and you can endure a little crying (for about 20 minutes or so) then you may find they do go off. If they have done it once you have the confidence to try again. As the baby gets older it does become easier. We found for several months our baby could get himself to sleep at night but needed help in the day to sleep for his naps. I used to rock him off to sleep in a bouncing chair. But now at 6 months old he is starting to accept being put in his cot for day time naps.

It is also worth trying to get your baby used to sleeping through normal household noise such as the tv. Our baby slept in the lounge in the day as a newborn and for some of his naps later on. We never tried to be overly quiet so he got used to it.

If your baby is getting close to 6 months old and is still waking lots in the night for feeds or needs help getting to sleep it may be worth try a method to help her.

Routine

Finally don’t worry too much about routine to start with. You will hopefully find that the baby will feed, be awake for a while and then sleep for a while. In a breastfed baby this will repeat itself every 2-3 hours, a bottle fed baby may last longer between feeds. You will hopefully get a longer stretch of sleep which you should encourage to be at night. Our baby never used to sleep in the early evening and didn’t go to bed until 1-2am in the first few weeks. Over time the baby generally develops a sort of routine and you can adapt it to suit you such as the timing of bedtime. We found that our son’s bedtime has come forward as he gets older and he now goes to sleep at about 8.30-9pm but each baby is different. Being flexible on routine has also allowed us to go out and socialise, we have attended two weddings with our baby since he was born.

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