Improving Your Infant's Sleep Without Crying
Recognise the situation? Everybody else's babies seem to sleep through the night in a snap, but yours...
What did they do that I don't???
Well, chances are that the lucky parents didn't do anything, if the infant is still really young.
There are actually babies that sleep through the night already at the age of 2 months without any help at all.If your baby is like that - well, congratulations! Head on to other parts of this website, or better still, immediately share your tips with all other mothers hungering for sleep.. Drop me an email and I'll post your tips right here!
(Desperately in a hurry to read the baby sleep tips? Here they are!)
For the rest of us, things do get better. 50% of all babies sleep through the night at the age of 1. Ehh, wait, 50%.. What about the rest..? Yeah, there are definitely good reasons to learn some about baby sleep patterns and how you can help your baby sleep through the night. What you do as well as where the baby sleeps might have a real impact.
There are also safety issues to think about, to decide where you baby should sleep as well as in what position.
As I'm sure you've heard, babies should sleep on their back, to reduce the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
But wait, won't they get a flat head then? Or choke? Click here for answers.
Our oldest child slept through the night at the age of 4 (years!). My second when she was one year old and my youngest at 4 months old. But then he started waking up again as many do at around 4-5 months old. A few months later he slept through the night again with no problems at all.
The big difference between how we acted with our kids is when we started helping them to sleep better. Still, I now know I started way too late with our girl (Not to mention our oldest son; no training at all!) - when she was 10 months old. In just a few days she went from waking up every second hour to twice a night. Two months later she slept the whole night.
With our youngest baby, we gently started his baby sleep training when he was two months old.
So what's the clue?
Well unfortunately there is no magic key that will solve all your baby sleep problems. The goal is though to teach the infant to fall asleep by himself and to get to used to eat only at day time.
Before listing the tips, here are a few words about baby sleep patterns. Would you want to sleep like a baby..? Probably not!
Babies, especially really young ones have much more light sleep than adults and older children. This means that they have more opportunities to wake up and when they do, many infants need help to get back to sleep.
Think about it, while in your stomach, the baby's "bed" was in constant movement, rocking him gently back to sleep. Food supply also never stopped. Quite different from a steady, roomy crib and no food for many hours..
Follow this link to learn some more about your baby's sleep pattern.
So other then biding your time, waiting for your child to get older, the key is to teach him to self-soothe and go back to sleep on his own.
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