Top Sleep Tips
Start a bedtime routine from day 1 .
This will help your baby recognise that it is night time .It also means that very quickly you get your evenings to yourselves! It can be simple but it is important that it is the same every night.
Bath/top ‘n’ tail – Massage – pj’s on in Nursery with lights low – feed in Nursery – swaddle – lights out.
Put your baby into a flexible feeding and sleeping routine.
Your new baby will want to feed around every 3 hours and sleep every hour, following the natural rhythms of your baby will make your baby feel secure. And you feel in control.
Babies love swaddling it makes them feel safe and snugly
It stops the natural startle reflex which wakes them .So use a light cotton sheet so they don’t overheat. Swaddle for naps and night time. This will become your baby’s sleep trigger. Swaddling has been proved to help babies sleep longer and more deeply.
Babies cry for different reasons the most likely is because they are overtired .So watch out for tired signs – Yawns – short sharp cry- staring into space. Then take them to their Nursery, close the curtains /swaddle and say ssshh. That will help them relax, and they will fall asleep quickly .
Babies can only sleep for one long sleep in 24 hours (just like us).
So make sure that long sleep coincides with yours .Settle your baby at 7pm in their Nursery .Then at 11pm –change their nappy and feed them .This way they will have their long sleep between 11pm and 7am .As they get older you can stretch the early morning feed to 7am .This is also a great time for Daddy’s to take over and bond .Using a bottle daddy’s have special time with their little one and Mummy can sleep until the next feed! Everyone’s happy!
Top Tips brought to you by:
Jo Tantum author of best selling book, Baby Secrets, is best known for her ability to get any baby sleeping 12 hours through the night, gently without babies and parents getting distressed. With 22 years experience including work as maternity nurse, Jo’s advice is tried, tested and backed up with robust research. With Jo’s compassion and honest mission to want to help sleep deprived parents its no wonder Jo is the UK’s leading sleep specialist. www.babysecretsltd.com
Veena V Says
I believe a routine is so important. As I write this my son is now 16 months old and knows when it is bedtime. He usually watches ‘In the night garden’ (personally I prefer Waybuloo!), we then go upstairs, have a bath, put on his night time clothes, read a book, drink milk then he goes to sleep straight away when I say goodnight and switch off the light! His routine was shorter when he was younger and he had a few months around his first birthday when he just wouldn’t go to sleep (it would take me anything up to 2 hours for him to fall asleep! Nightmare!) The point of all this is to show a routine really does works, be consistent and don’t give up! So many times I thought ‘is it really worth it’ but it is in the end as I now have my evenings to myself :)
