Everyone wants their baby to sleep. Newborn babies sleep a lot but probably not when you want them to!
Babies need to learn the difference between night and day. Try creating a dark, quiet room at night and a light, active room during the day.
At night, using black out blinds can be helpful and keeping the blinds/ drapes closed help create a dark room. Use soft/ dim lighting. This signals to your baby it is time to sleep. When feeding or changing her use a quieter voice, sing or hum to her.
When feeding and changing diapers in the day, keep a bright room and engage with your child by singing, talking, and playing.
It takes a while before babies have a bedtime routine. Don't worry about having a routine at first, your child will give you cues about being tired: disengagement, yawning, looking away, fussiness and then being overtired, can lead to crying, becoming rigid, arching their back. Learning to read their cues will help you fall into a routine. Of course, we all miss our babies cues at times so don’t be hard on yourself. It is all a learning process.
Trying to start a bedtime routine can be as simple as a bath, feed, story/ songs and lay her in their crib. Start at the same time each night and allow time for each part of the routine. Try and do the same things each night so your baby learns that they will be going to sleep.
Babies need to be safe when sleeping for all naps and night time sleep. Healthychildren.org is a great website for parents, written by pediatricians. See link below about safe sleep.
Know about safe sleep
There is a lot of information out there about wake windows, how long babies should nap/ sleep and regressions which we can discuss. Every baby is different and has different needs. Learning to respond to your baby’s needs, being flexible and watching your baby’s cues will help establish a routine.
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