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How To Get Your Baby To Sleep At Naptime

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 20:34:48 +0000

If you baby is not napping well during her first few months of life, you may want to try to cut back on the time she is awake by 15 minute increments. If she is getting overstimulated, then she will fight sleep and be difficult to get to nap. The way to prevent this is to watch her sleepy cues to make sure that you put her down when she is beginning to get sleepy.

Some parents believe that letting their child cry will harm him or her. Fifteen or twenty minutes of crying will not harm your child physically or mentally. Babies will learn to self-soothe and fall asleep by themselves, but only if you let her. It is very important that babies learn to fall asleep by themselves so that they can self-soothe if they awake in the middle of the night. Otherwise, you may have a child that will not sleep through the night for years.

Regular sleep patterns are intermeshed with regular eating patterns, so let us look at the stages of a babys life:

Newborn: Your newborn will sleep anywhere from 16 to 20 hours a day, including the naps that he takes between feedings. When your baby has been fed, let him stay awake for a short while and then put him down before he becomes overstimulated.

Two months: At two months and older, your child should be allowed to try to self-soothe during their naptimes and bedtime. Crying is normal when you put your baby down, but it is okay. If he cries for longer than 10-15 minutes, then go in and check on him. Dont get him up, but pat his bottom or lightly rub his back until he calms down.

3-6 months: At around 3-6 months, your baby will stop taking one of his naps. Usually it is the third nap or late afternoon nap that they do not need as much. He may be a little fussy and may want to take a little nap, but you need to try to keep him up if you want him to go to bed at a decent time and sleep soundly through the night.

16+ months: When your child is between 16-20 months, they usually quit taking the morning nap in favor of a longer nap in the afternoons. Babies this age usually sleep between 10-12 hours a night and take a 2-3 hour afternoon nap.

Ground Rules about Naps:

1. You decide when the nap starts and ends, not the baby.

2. When your baby is older than 4 months old, she will wake up crying if she hasnt slept enough. She might have a dirty diaper, be in a position that is not comfortable, or cold/hot. Fix the problem and encourage her to go back to sleep. Babies that have enough rest wake up happy, talking, and in a good mood!

Baby Sleep Tips – Feeding During The Day

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:55:22 +0000

Every parent of a newborn will inevitably deal with many sleepless nights. Babies, of course, have many needs, and when they awake in the night they will cry for their mothers. One of your most important tasks as a parent is to establish good sleeping habits in your child. Every baby must go through a transition where he adjusts from sleeping with his mother to sleeping on his own. This is a natural transition of course, and takes some time, but there are things you can do to expedite the process. Not only will this help your child develop better sleep habits, it will allow you to get some much needed rest.

Many baby sleep tips exist, and every parent would be well advised to research many different baby sleep tips. It is important to keep in mind, however, that no baby sleep tip should be considered hard and fast rules. As a parent, your instincts know best, and when you are in doubt in regards to baby sleep tips remind yourself of this fact. Many first time parents experience insecurity in terms of whether their decisions and strategies are correct, and while you shouldn’t be uninformed, you should always view baby sleep tips through the lens of your own parental instincts.

Now, one thing you should consider when trying to get your newborn to sleep better at night is what his feeding habits are. Oftentimes the child will be active and otherwise busy during the day, and won’t be doing a lot of feeding. The problem with this, of course, is that he will then wake you repeatedly thought the night for feedings. A good technique, then, for getting your baby to sleep better at night is to “tank up” during the day. Try feeding every three hours during the day. This will not only ensure that you child’s appetite is satisfied for the night, but will create an important association: you want your child to associate feeding with the daytime. If your child does wake up in the night for a feeding, try to get him to do one full feeding the first time he wakes up. If you don’t do this, you encourage him to “snack” throughout the night – i.e. wake you up every couple hours.

Again, it is important to understand these baby feeding tips should not be taken as hard and fast rules, but rather as guidance. In a general way, you want to create both daytime and sleep associations for your child. You want him to associate feeding and play with something that happens during the day, and lullabies and baths as something that happens at night, before bed. By doing this you ease the transition between sleep and wakefulness, which is the ultimate goal in terms of putting your child to bed easily. If, however, your child doesn’t want to feed every three hours, don’t force him. Similarly, don’t force a full feeding when you wake him at night. Rather, think of the bigger picture: by creating general habits and associations for your child, you will ensure a hasty and healthy sleep development.

Baby Sleep Tips – Developing Sleep Associations

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:33:36 +0000

Everyone who has had the experience of being a parent knows all too well the difficulties of getting your baby to sleep soundly throughout the night. The dark circles around the eyes of new parents are usually familiar to all those that have been around them. In terms of baby sleep tips, one of the most important things you must try and establish as a parent is getting your baby to learn to fall asleep on his own. The process by which your child begins to fall asleep on his own is one that involves a natural transition from falling asleep with the mother to falling asleep in an independent fashion. One of the best ways in which you can speed up this transition is to encourage your child to develop sleep associations that he or she can recreate independently.

Naturally, everyone – and babies in particular – will develop sleep associations. These are the things that you associate with bedtime, and allow you to create an environment in which it is easy to fall asleep. When your baby is at an extremely young age, he will naturally develop sleep associations involving the mother, as he will often fall asleep in her arms. As you attempt to get your baby to sleep in his own, however, it is crucial that you work to change these associations.

If you always put your child to sleep by holding him, or allowing him to use a pacifier, you create a sleep association with these things. Then, when your child wakes up in the middle of then night, he can’t go back to sleep on his own because he is unable to recreate his sleeping environment without you: he needs you to feed him or rock him in order to sleep.

As you begin to try and get your child to sleep on his own, you should introduce items into his sleeping routine that he can sleep with, such as a particular blanket or a stuffed animal. What this will do is create associations for your child with these items for sleep. Then, when he awakes in the middle of the night, he will be able to recreate a sleeping environment without your assistance by grabbing his stuffed animal, etc. It can also be beneficial to introduce “transitional items” into your baby’s bedtime routine: Allow him to have his stuffed animal or blanket with him during a final feeding and before-bedtime activities, and allow him to take these things with him to bed.

No matter what you do, your child is going to be creating his or her own sleep associations. Your job is to try and create associations with items that are under his or her control. By giving your child as much control over his sleeping environment as possible, you allow him to begin to achieve sleep independently. The most difficult transition in early parenting is the one towards independent sleep for your child, and if you introduce new items into your child’s sleeping place, you will hasten this transition, which will soon allow both you and your child to get a good night’s rest.

Baby Sleep Problems – Can Feeding Have an Effect?

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:05:58 +0000

First-time parents and even parents with several kids, regularly find that their young child isn’t sleeping as well as he or she should.

Many parents try to find the underlying cause of the problem, hoping to find a simple answer. This also leaves countless parents questioning if feeding might have something to do with the issue.

The aim of this article is to burrow deeper into the different aspects of feeding your small child and examine the effects that feeding could possibly have on a babys sleeping schedule and habits.

Initially, we should list the different feeding areas that we will be considering. These are:
Mixing Breast-feeding and Bottle Feedings
Feeding your child to sleep
What are YOU eating and will it affect your babys sleeping pattern?
Will solids help your baby sleep?

Mixing Breast-feeding and Bottle Feedings

It is believed that the mixture of bottle and breast in feedings could potentially sleeping problems. There are a number of different reasons for this when you are breast-feeding your young child. With each feeding, the breast is signaling to the brain that more milk needs to be produced for the coming feeding. When a bottle is incorporated into feedings, this process could be affected. The breast will start to produce less milk due to the less frequent breast feedings.

Furthermore, during the times when you do breast-feed your baby, he or she will not get as full with the breast-feeding because of the lessening of milk supply. This effectively means that your baby will need feeding more often, which will mean his or her sleep patterns will be interrupted by the need for feeding.

Feeding your baby to sleep

Feeding your child to sleep may be creating a problem with their sleep patterns. Your baby will soon begin to recognize that you feed him or her at bedtime. This will become something they depend on and expect. Generally, this will be the situation with each waking throughout the night as well.

There are of course, techniques you can use to avoid your baby from depending on feedings to fall asleep.

Initially, change the time or the length of time you feed your baby when nearing his or her bedtime. Doing so will gradually disconnect the association of bedtime with feeding.

Another option is feed your child earlier in the night instead of as a bedtime routine. When you do these things your child will not associate eating with bedtime. This will help your baby learn to fall asleep on his own accord.

What are YOU eating and will it affect your babys sleeping pattern?

The one word answer is yes. As a breast-feeding mom*, everything that you put into your body affects your breast milk. If you are not eating the appropriate amount of foods and calories each day, your breast milk is greatly affected. It is important that you eat the recommended three meals each day and perhaps a few snacks in between. Your milk needs to have enough calories in it in order for your baby to feel pleasantly full and satisfied. If it does not, he or she will continue to feed longer until he or she is full.

You need to eat healthier foods and try to eat them more often, as well as drinking fluids throughout the day. This will benefit your
milk supply, therefore helping your baby and his or her sleep patterns. The fuller your baby feels, the better he or she will sleep.

Will solids help your baby?

Many parents believe this will help, but numerous studies haven’t associated any change in those who were fed by the breast and / or bottle and those who are fed solids. This has not been proven to help the sleep patterns in babies at all. Doctors recommend not adding solid foods prior to six months of age.

Chris Towland

All about home safety and your baby

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:42:33 +0000

When you first have a newborn baby, you are very protective of it. You are always afraid of something happening to it. Well when you are at home you should not be afraid of anything happening to it because you are there and it should be safe. Keeping your baby safe at home is very important. First, prevent people from coming to your home that are going to smoke, or do any type of drugs, this is your first line of defense for your baby.

To be safe, when you are at home by yourself lock all the doors, this is vital if you live in a big city. Other than other people, to keep your baby from getting injured at home the best thing to do is a buy safety thing for all over the house. Prevention of problems will include the ability of the baby to walk away, or get to the swimming pool. Prevent problems in the home by locking doors, windows, cupboards and garages with locks that a baby or toddler cant open.

You probably would not want to have animals like a dog or a cat around your baby until it gets older. A pet can maul a baby, or a toddler when the pet is not accustomed to being around children all the time. Avoid having a cat near the baby, so the cat doesnt cuddle up on the face of the baby, which will then smoother the baby without your realizing what is happening.

When you put your baby to sleep at night make sure that it falls asleep on its back because of crib death. Crib death is when a baby suffocates to death. Also, keep loose blankets out of the crib. The crib is a place for the baby to sleep, not to play. The crib should have bars that are close enough, so the baby cant slip through, and the crib should have bars so that the head of the baby cant slip through and get stuck. Avoid potential problems and situations where your baby could easily be hurt.

Once your baby starts to crawl, the best thing for you to get is a walker to let it learn how to walk. If you have steps in your home, the thing to get is those child gates. They have them at most department stores if you dont know where to purchase them. This will prevent your child from falling down the steps. You could even use them in doorways to rooms that you dont want the child in without you. If you have animals, you could even use the gates to keep the animals away from the baby.

Once your child starts to walk you should keep things back away from the edge of the counters and the table. If you drink coffee, you should definitely keep that away so it is not reachable. You should not let any thing that is small laying around because if you do so this it will help so that your baby does not choke on anything. Just remember to lock all the doors when you are there by yourself. Any thing like this will help you keep your child safe at home.

5 Tips To Help New Parents Get Some Sleep

admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:39:47 +0000

The joy of a new baby is certainly special and something that all new parents experience. However, a lack of sleep is also part of having a new baby and new parents notoriously get very little sleep, if any at all. Fortunately, there are some strategies and tips to help new parents get some sleep when the new baby comes. Of course, with a baby you will never get an over abundance of sleep, but these tips will help you at least get enough sleep to keep your sanity.

Tip #1 Take Turns
When the baby starts crying both parents generally wake up, even if only one attends to the baby. However, in the first couple of months both parents might get up each time the baby cries. This will lead to a lack of sleep for both parents. The best plan is for mom and dad to make a plan of who will get up when to comfort the crying baby. Generally, taking turns is really the best option and will help everyone get just a little more sleep.

Tip #2 Nap With Baby
If you are caring for the baby and are tired and the baby goes to sleep then you should take a nap as well. This will allow you to get some much needed sleep. So, whether the baby naps in the morning, afternoon, or early evening you should also get a little rest because you never know when the baby might wake up.

Tip #3 Accept Help
Frequently when you have a new baby there are plenty of people willing to help from parents, siblings, friends, and other family members. So, when you really need to get some sleep just accept some of the help that is being offered. Having your mom care for the baby just a couple of hours will allow you to get some much needed sleep.

Tip #4 Keep Baby in Nursery
The baby should sleep in the nursery and not with the parents. Many times it is tempting to allow the baby to sleep with the parents, but this is not healthy for the child or the parents. So, put the baby to sleep in his crib in the nursery. Then, when the baby cries one parent can easily go attend to the baby without disturbing the other parent. This allows a little more sleep for new parents.

Tip #5 Feed Baby Before You Sleep
If your baby has been asleep for several hours and it is around 11 pm and you are getting ready for bed simply wake baby for a feeding. Most babies wake during the night because they are hungry, so if you feed baby late before you go to bed it is likely they will sleep until early morning or 6-7 hours. This will allow you to get some continuous sleep, even if it is not as much as you want.

Find info on your childrens health » Baby To Sleep

How To Get Your Baby To Sleep At Naptime

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