As a parent, you can begin to help him establish good sleep habits that will last forever. There are always a few bumps in the road, but if you are consistent with the basics, your chances of the whole family enjoying a good night's sleep improve dramatically.
Newborn to 3 months
Newborns sleep a lot -- about 17 to 18 hours a day for the first few weeks and 15 hours a day by month three. However, they almost never sleep for more than three to four hours at a time, day or night.
Some babies sleep through the night as early as eight weeks, many babies don't reach that milestone until they're five or six months old, or even later. If your aim is to get your baby to sleep through the night, you can help him get there sooner by teaching him good sleep habits from the start.
At this age, these are some of the best things you can do to help your child settle to sleep:
Learn the signs that mean baby is tired.
For the first six to eight weeks, your baby won't be able to stay up much more than two hours at a time. If you wait much longer than that to put him down, he'll be overtired and won't be able to fall asleep very easily. Watch your baby for signs that he's sleepy. Is he rubbing his eyes, pulling on his ear, or developing faint dark circles under his eyes? If you spot these or any other signs of sleepiness, try putting him down in his crib or bassinet. You'll soon develop a sixth sense about your baby's daily rhythms and patterns, and you'll know instinctively when he's ready for a nap.
Begin to teach baby the difference between day and night.
Some infants are night owls (something you may have had a hint of while you were pregnant) and will be wide awake just when you want to drift into dreamland. For the first few days, you won't be able to do much about this. But once your baby is about two weeks old, you can start teaching him to distinguish night from day. When he's alert and awake during the day, play with him as much as you can, keep the house and his room light and bright, and don't worry about keeping down ordinary daytime noises like the phone, TV, or washing machine. If he tends to sleep during a feed, wake him up. At night, try not to play with him when you go into his room for a feed. Keep the lights and noise level low, and don't spend too much time talking to him. Before too long he should begin to figure out that nighttime is for sleeping.
Give baby a chance to fall asleep on his own.
When he's six to eight weeks old, you could start giving your baby a chance to fall asleep on his own. How? "Parents who want their baby to learn how to fall asleep on his own should put him down when he's sleepy but still awake," suggests Penney Hames, author of The NCT Book of Sleep. "But if you want to stay with him, that's fine. Just be prepared to be there again every time he wakes at night."
How you settle your baby to sleep is important. "Parents think that what they do in the early days doesn't have long-lasting consequences," Hames says, "but it does. Babies are learning how to fall asleep. If you rock your child to sleep every night for the first eight weeks, he will expect the same later on. If you leave him alone to sleep, he will expect that, too." This is the reason why some experts advise against rocking or breastfeeding your baby to sleep, even at this young age. To get a predictable pattern established, you need to adopt the same strategy every night.
Newborns need to wake up at night so they can feed, but some may accidentally jerk themselves awake before they really need to be fed. Sometimes just feeling you close to him may reassure and settle him back to sleep.
To avoid sleep associations where your baby depends on something like rocking or breastfeeding to fall asleep, put your baby to bed before he falls asleep and let him drift off on his own
You gradually need to teach your baby how to sleep through the night. Experts are divided on the best way to do this and there are many conflicting philosophies. Some of the main approaches are outlined below.
There is no "right" way to encourage your child to settle and sleep through the night. You need to choose an approach that will work for you and your family. If it feels right, then don't worry about what experts say. Each baby is individual therefore they needed to be treated as such.
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