Your Baby To Sleep

As your baby grows they ll need fewer night feeds and will be able to sleep for longer.

Your baby to sleep.

One of the ways a baby learns it s time to go to sleep is from cues in the environment notes deborah givan m d director of the sleep disorders center at riley hospital for children in. If your little one is at least 4 months old it may be time to start sleep training. The first step is to do all you can to establish an optimal sleep environment for your baby. Safety is the number one priority so remember that they need to be put to bed on their back on a firm.

Then you go back in at increasingly long intervals to briefly reassure your baby. By 4 months they may be spending around twice as long sleeping at night as they do during the day. Some babies will sleep for 8 hours or longer at night but not all. The goal is for your child to learn to fall asleep without your help so that when your baby inevitably wakes up in the middle of the night he or she will be able to go back to sleep on his or her own.

You say goodnight and leave the room even if your baby cries. Using breastfeeding is not a bad way to soothe a baby and to comfort them when they are having sadness or anxiety. But babies don t know the difference between day and night. Your baby may sleep from 10 to 18 hours a day sometimes for 3 to 4 hours at a time.

When your baby needs care or feeding during the night use dim lights a soft voice and calm movements. Respect your baby s preferences. If your baby is waking up in the middle of the night to feed then it is also impossible to put them back to sleep awake since they are likely nursing while they are partly asleep anyways. Does your baby need to be rocked to sleep by you or wake up in the middle of the night demanding a breast bottle or cuddle before drifting back to sleep.