Newborn Sleep Tips: Help Baby Sleep Longer
Getting your baby to sleep at night for longer periods is not a perfect process. The upwelling and the flow are there. It’s all about trying new stuff and finding something for the baby that fits well. The sleeping patterns of babies can be frustrating, and they can turn our lives upturned.
If it’s the newborn’s whacky, nocturnal routine, or an older baby who won’t calm down, the results are the same, a sleep-deprived parent who is desperate for relief. Here are our top tips for baby sleep, accepted by experts.
- Master the power of swaddling your baby and you could just get yourself a little extra sleep!
Babies inherently have a surprising reflex from birth to around four to five months of age, in which they feel as though they are falling. Jerking emotions are triggered by the sense of dropping, and the baby will wake up incidentally. Holding a close swaddle stops infants from startling themselves awake, allowing the newborn baby to sleep longer and healthier.
- Restrict the length of naps, during the day
I know it’s hard for a sleeping baby to wake up, but sleeping too long during the day can rob you of sleep at night. We will go ahead and wake the baby up, feed him, hold him for a while, and then lay him down for another nap if the baby sleeps past the 2-2.5 hour mark.
If you find like the baby needs longer naps, feel free to lift the limit of naps to 2.5 hours. During the day, breaking up sleep makes your newborn baby sleep well at night. It also helps you to get more food during the day, which is very beneficial.
- Follow the routine of feeding, waking, sleeping.
The baby wakes from sleep and feeds instantly. Then the baby wakes up to play for a bit. The baby goes back to sleep then. There are many purposes of this cycle. Just like encouraging the baby to eat directly after waking, it facilitates complete feedings. Immediately after waking, the baby would have the most energy, making him more likely to take a full feeding and go longer between feedings.
Often, the cycle stops the baby from associating food with sleep or using food as a sleep prop by feeding the baby after sleep rather than before sleep. Usually, by using this cycle, feeding before bedtime is only feeding before sleep.
Note: To ensure stable growth and development in the early months, newborns need regular feeding and rest. Always feed your infant as much as your baby needs to ensure a healthy increase in weight.
- Strategically change the baby’s diaper
Changing the diaper before feeding in the middle of the night stops the baby from waking up too soon after the completion of the feeding. Change the diaper and re-swaddle when the baby wakes up to ready him for sleep immediately after a night of feeding. Consequently, if you change the diaper, the baby can become too awake, making it more difficult for him to fall asleep.
If after a night of feeding, your baby is constantly stooling, then certainly, just wait to change the diaper until after the feed. You can return to changing the diaper before feeding once your baby’s gut matures and he or she stops stooling immediately after a night feed.
- Lay your child back, awake, but drowsy.
The most effective way to motivate your infant to sleep in the long run is to independently train him to fall asleep, which is actually the beginning of independent sleep teaching. Babies will naturally wake up during the night, like adults. A baby will scream out after waking regardless of real need without understanding how to get back to sleep, resulting in night waking droning on for much longer than is required.
Once a child grows older, independently falling asleep helps a child to drift back to sleep after waking at night, eventually making the child sleep better in the long run.
