You expect a baby to wake for feeding when it is newborn. You can cope with the tiredness for a while but how long should night time waking continue? When should you expect your baby to sleep through the night and how do you encourage your baby to do so?
Developing healthy sleep habits is very important and should be started from baby’s birth. At first a baby will sleep most of the time and only wake for feeds. A newborn doesn’t have any real sense of night and day but wakes roughly every four hours and screams for Mom, aka milk and cuddles.
At about two weeks you can help your baby distinguish between night and day, and can begin to develop their sleeping schedule. Play or sing with your normal tone of voice during the daytime hours when baby is awake and alert. Don’t worry about noises during nap time; your infant will grow accustomed to the fact that during the day there are noises and activity.
When your baby wakes during the night, it’s time to reverse the routine. Minimal lighting, noise and other stimuli are necessary to teach baby that it’s quiet time during the night. When he wakes for a feed, try not talking very much or being too animated and playful. The diurnal rhythm will begin to have its effect and eventually your baby will wake less in the night and will not need the 2.00 am feed.
This happens at around 6 weeks old. Your baby is old enough by this time to sleep through the night but will need your encouragement to do so. The idea is to let your baby cry when he or she wakes for the 2.00 am feed. The first night baby might cry for 20 minutes but it will do no harm. Steel yourself and wait. The following night baby will scream for a shorter time before going back to sleep and after a third night most babies stop crying in the night.
This may seem cruel, leaving a young baby to scream on its own. But it isn’t unkind at all. No harm comes to babies who are trained in this way to sleep through the night. In fact they benefit because they cry less and sleep more once they give up this night time attention. Another benefit is that you as a parent are better able to cope during the day when you can sleep through the night. This has obvious benefits for your baby.
Babies who are not trained in this way may continue to wake and expect attention for several years. Just think how exhausted you and your partner will be if that happens. It may even cause marital stress and that can’t be good for your baby either. More
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I think the key here is the sleep routine.
Babies & children – & even adults – respond well to a routine before bed. It calms us and tells our subconscious mind that it’s time for sleep. This is more powerful than people realize and is a major factor why people don’t sleep well when they’re away from home.
Cheers
Wendy Owen
Teaching a baby to self soothe itself to sleep is vital. A few nights of crying it out for a lifetime of knowing how to get yourself to sleep is a small price to pay. I know that parents (myself included) find the crying it out method hard, but it does work.