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Helping your baby to sleep through the night is a goal for most parents. Sleep disruption is so distressing for most mothers that the sooner your baby sleeps through the night, the better. Meg Faure, co-author of Baby Sense summarises the top 10 tips to help your baby sleep through the night. The tips are in no particular order but by implementing them all you should be in for a better nights sleep within a week.
1. Safety
Put your baby on his side or back to sleep on a firm mattress without
any pillows or duvets to limit the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
/ Cot Death).
2. Sleep environment
For good sleep habits try having your baby in his own room (if possible)
by three months, as you will both have more rested sleep in your own rooms.
Make sure the room can be darkened for day sleeps and morning lie-ins
by putting block out lining on the curtains or blinds. Use soft linen
in the cot and for cool nights, warm the room up a little, without over
heating your baby. For the slightly older baby (after 4 months) use a
sleeping bag to keep your baby warm to prevent the classic 4am night waking
due to kicking all the blankets off.
3. Under three months
If your baby is very colicky in the evenings, delaying bedtime to late
due to fussing and crying, you should try to limit handling after 4pm.
Swaddle your baby to help calm them and to limit night wakings due to
uncontrolled body jerks.
4. Bedtime routine
Have a consistent time for bed with a predictable routine leading up to
bedtime. Between six and seven in the evening is an appropriate time for
babies and toddlers. Start the evening routine with a soothing warm bath
followed by a calming massage (for babies not suffering from colic –
colicky babies do better having the massage in the morning). After bath,
don’t leave your baby’s dimmed room and keep all interactions
in the room calming with less handling and stimulation.
5. Evening feed
Feed your baby as much as he will take before bedtime. If your breast
milk supply seems low in the evenings, offer your baby a supplementary
or top-up feed of expressed breast milk or formula milk before bed.
6. Put your baby to bed awake
Rouse your baby after the last feed so that he has to fall asleep without
the aid or props such as a bottle or breast. The way in which your baby
falls asleep in the evening will be what he expects in the middle of the
night, i.e. bottle, breast, dummy, rocking, etc...
7. Handling fussing at bedtime
After three months, expect a little fussing as your baby settles himself
to sleep. To manage this, without developing habits, leave your baby in
his cot but sit with him, with your hand on him and encourage him to fall
asleep after a little fussing.
8. Night feeds
Never wake your baby at night for a feed, unless your paediatrician has
instructed you to do so because your baby is ill or very under weight.
Wait for your baby to signal that he is hungry at night.
9. Calm night feeds
Keep the middle of the night feeds strictly business affairs – with
no stimulation: keep the room dark, using a passage light to see for feeds.
Don’t change your baby’s nappy at night feeds unless it is soiled
or your baby has wet through the nappy. Limit the time for burping, your
baby will settle best after a night feed if he is resettled quickly.
10. Sleep training
Only sleep train your baby after six months and then only after ruling
out all other causes for night wakings. To sleep train your baby:
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Give him the opportunity to self calm by not responding immediately when he cries at night |
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Respond once your baby is really crying or within 5 minutes |
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Do not lift your baby from the cot, rather sit with him and encourage him to self calm |
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As hard as it is, sit with your baby for as long as it takes for him to resettle. In this way your baby does not feel abandoned but gets the message that you are there but he must go to sleep. |
By Megan Faure, co-author of Baby Sense. Reproduced with permission from the Baby Sense website, www.babysense.co.za.
© Megan Faure. For more information on the Baby Sense book and other products, see www.babysense.co.za.
