BABY SLEEP TIPS - STICK TO A ROUTINE

Baby Sleep Tips - Stick To A Routine

There are many joys to being a new parent. Most new parents will agree, however, that one of
the less then pleasant aspects of having a newborn is in dealing with the baby's sleep habits. A
newborn baby will, of course, want to sleep a lot, which is completely natural. The difficult thing,
though, is that the child needs to learn to sleep on his or her own. Until your newborn learns to
go to sleep on his own, you will spend many sleepless nights tending to him when he wakes in
the night. Good baby sleep tips involve developing a routine with your newborn at a young age,
which helps ease the transition into more adult sleep habits.

It can be tempting, when dealing with a newborn, to succumb to the habit of allowing the baby to
dictate his or her own sleeping habits entirely. As much as is reasonable, you should try to avoid
this, and instead try and establish a routine in which your baby sleeping habits begin to mimic
those of the rest of the household.

Developing a routine for your baby's sleep should follow two different tracts: first, you should be
putting your baby to sleep in the same fashion each and every night. A typical routine would
involve a feeding and changing, combined with some time for play. You should put your child to
sleep at a point where he is tired, but still aware of what's going on. In this way, you establish
the precedent that he falls asleep on his own, without you holding him or being in the room. This
is crucial to ensuring better sleep habits for him down the road.

The second thing is to try and mold your baby's sleep habits. For example, you should
discourage extensive napping throughout the day, as that increases the chance that the baby
will be unable to sleep throughout the night. In a similar fashion, if he sleeps in too late during
the morning hours, you should rouse him.

No parent wants to interfere with their baby's sleeping habits too extensively, and it is natural to
want to avoid having to wake your baby up when he is sleeping, or to prevent him from napping
when he wishes to do so. There are, however, subtler methods with which to direct your child's
sleep patterns. For example, when your baby naps, you should make sure that he does so in a
brightly lit room - this ensures that he won't nap for long periods of time, which will affect his
nighttime sleep. There tendency amongst parents to make their baby as comfortable as
possible when napping, which is, of course, entirely natural. But keep in mind that when you
draw the curtains or turn out the light when your baby is napping, you are creating an
environment where he is likely to nap for a long time, which isn't really helpful.

In general, you should think of an overall plan to develop sleeping routines for your baby that
are in sync with those of the rest of the household. If you do this, you will find that not only your
baby, but you yourself, will be getting a good night's rest.