Sleep tips

A Newborn baby's sleep takes time to develop and most babies need some support to go to sleep in the first years of their life.

Sleeping through the night is not necessarily a 12 hour sleep. If your baby is sleeping for long throughout the night and wakes up once for a feed for example, at 6 months , and everyone goes back to sleep easily then that is considered sleep though.

Putting aside the fact that sleeping through the night can be described differently depending on who you talk to, one of the first pieces of advice you may be given is to get some solid food on the menu. Some swear by adding rice to the bottle. Some say that three square meals a day will get your baby sleeping better. It just doesn’t work like that. Sorry. Some babies are able to sleep through by the age of six months (the age that the WHO recommends you introduce solid food) but that doesn’t mean that they all will.

– Be aware of how much sleep our baby has during the day. –

Be prepared to experiment a little while their own unique sleep needs are being established.This is where understanding sleep pressure is valuable . Sometimes a baby who has become very tired but has not been able to go off to sleep and find it even more challenging to dial down enough or sleep to be easy. Too much day sleep can reduce sleep pressure so that the nights become wakeful.

– Bedtime rhythms work . –

Simple rhythms that include a wind-down time, bath, story time, and bedtime work wonders, even for very young babies. Make it easy, follow the same rhythm where possible. You are aware of this fact. Babies aren’t born knowing how to sleep.

Most newborns need to master the art of sleeping, even though they may initially sleep up to 17 hours a day. Often a newborns fall asleep while feeding and can then be transferred to their own sleep space.

There is no need to wake up your baby at the end of a feed to burp them. Most babies can burp independently.

Babies do not know the difference between day and night in the beginning. To do this, make sure that the surroundings are different during the day and night.

Let your baby nap where you are, if that is on a baby mat on the floor then so be it! The goal is to align your babies longer sleep times with your overnight sleep rhythms.

Babies don’t let you rest on your laurels. Babies are constantly changing, learning new things, developing new skills, teething, catching colds… you get the idea. Just when you think you have it sussed, babies like to mix it up a bit. Be prepared- be flexible. You’ll never know it all!

You have secret weapons. When your baby falls asleep, they do so feeling safe and loved and confident. You made them feel like that.

And when they wake, you have secret weapons to get them back to sleep. Your scent, your voice, your arms… however you comfort and soothe your baby when they need it, those are your secret weapons. And when your baby is a little older and ready to learn how to sleep independently, you pass those secret weapons on. You really are amazing!