Baby Diaries, A Guide for New Mothers: Part 6 – Establishing a Sleeping Routine for Your Newborn

There is no hard and fast rule about how new babies sleep. Depending on the personality – and they do have them even at a very young age – they will sleep as much as twelve out of twenty-four hours, and anything in between.

The important thing is to teach your baby the difference between night and day because they’re not able to differentiate between the two (discussed below). As time goes by, baby will realise that the dark time is sleepy time and the light time is wakey time (with periods of sleepy time chucked in at intervals). My first baby learned it in six weeks, at which time she started sleeping through the night. The subsequent ones took a bit longer.

This sounds odd and impossible, but it can be done because we managed to do it successfully. Having said that, babies are all little individuals, and should not be treated as such. Regulations and points of training should not rule the way you behave with your new infant. With that in mind, here are some ways that will help your new baby to eventually fall into a nice night sleep pattern. I have practiced all these that I’m about to tell you, and I can vouch for their effectiveness.

Establish a Bedtime Routine

Many people find it helpful to have a bed time routine. If you start out early enough, it will be helpful to you in the long run when baby grows into a toddler. Don’t have play time at night before baby goes to bed. Do quiet things like a bath, change into nightclothes, and a nice long feed and a cuddle. It’s a good idea to do this feed in a different room from the one you usually use. For example if daytime feeds are done on the sofa in the living room, your night time feed could be done in a bedroom with the lights turned down low. In the summer, close the curtains or have a black-out blind. Voices should be kept low and less energetic, and toys should be put away. This has to be done not once in a while, but each and every night for the routine to be properly established.

Putting Down Baby

No, this is not insulting them – no amount of insults will make a baby go to sleep. Seriously, try putting down baby before she/he falls asleep. If baby always falls asleep in your arms, he/she will naturally think that this is how humans are meant to sleep. Remember that baby is a blank canvass. He/she knows nothing but what you will teach them from this point onwards. After the bath, (and a nice rub or massage if you have time) a change, a feed and a cuddle, let baby fall asleep in her/his own bed. Infants will cry when they’re about to fall asleep. It’s an odd sensation that they have yet to get used to. Let them cry for a bit (but not for too long). If they’re becoming too agitated, pick them up, talk to them, cuddle them and when they’re fine, put them down again. This may take a few tries to work, and you will certainly have to keep it up for a period of time before baby learns that this is the routine. Keep at it, and don’t give up. Remember that it’s unkind to leave baby screaming indefinitely – we never did this. It takes care and consideration, but it also takes determination for this to effectively work.