I like many parents, especially first time parents, have had a issue with getting my child to sleep through the night. If you could do it wrong, I did it! Well I had to seek out answers to what was happening with my baby daughter and what we could do to fix it.
First, a little background in what is happening with your baby. When a baby is in the womb, they get the opposite of what the mom gets. During the daytime the sun provides chemicals in your body to help keep you awake. Your baby gets these chemicals at night. When your baby is born they still are on a schedule of the night. One of the first tips for a new baby is to get them in a sun filled room so their body starts producing these chemicals. This will help them to start to sleep longer through the night so you aren’t so beat through the day!
Now that your baby sleeps at night there is a very important thing to remember. Children like adults form associations with sleeping. For example, try to go to sleep tonight without your pillow. You may get some sleep but you will probably toss and turn all night and you will wake feeling very unrested. This is because you have created an association with sleeping and your pillow. Babies develop associations too. So if you help them to create an association with rocking them to sleep, or any other undesirable association, you may find yourself doing this for ever because they wake up and then need to be rocked to fall back to sleep. For me it became very difficult because we ended up having to break that association. In order to do this we had to put our baby to sleep and let her cry. Then after 30 seconds we went in and reassured her everything was ok and put her back down to sleep. This went on constantly until she would fall asleep. Each night we would extend the length of time until it became longer and longer. After a couple of weeks we put her down and she would fall fast asleep and sleep through the night. I guarantee this is much harder on the parents than it was on my daughter.
Now this doesn’t mean that you can never rock your child to sleep especially if they are having a rough night. But if you make a habit of doing it everytime you may find this is where you travel down a path that you wish you had not.
I have not used this myself, but I have talked with moms who have used the womb sounds to help their newborns sleep and have had good success with them. Other things that will help baby sleep include setting consistent nap routines and bedtime rituals. Make sure your child gets enough eating in during the day so they won’t be tempted to wake to eat throughout the night. Sometimes they just get so busy playing and exploring they forget to eat.
Keeping baby asleep can be done by making sure they’ve been fed, changed and are comfortable. A nice, dark, quiet room can help. Music or white noise can help mask household noises.
Not all babies are alike and nothing works everytime even for the same child. Remember to always reassure your baby that everything is ok so they feel secure.
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