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How To Get Baby To Sleep Best Tips and Tricks
New parents face one issue that matters more than all of the others: How to get a baby to sleep.
Mastering the parenting skill of putting a baby to sleep is one of the most important, and the trickiest. Fortunately, there is plenty of parenting advice out there for how to get a baby to stop crying and fall asleep. Unfortunately, much of it is not very helpful for Moms and Dads looking for a usable answer.
Parenting Books Advice on Baby Sleep
There are literally thousands of books out there with advice for parents. Whether first time parents, or parents with previous children, there is a top parenting advice book out there waiting to be snatched off the bookstore shelf. Some of them are very authoritative sounding. They are written by doctors or they bear the names of well respected medical institutions like Children’s Hospitals or doctors groups like the American Medical Association (AMA) or the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Other books are more “friendly” sounding. The bestselling parenting books
Regardless of which of these books you choose to read, they all say pretty much the same thing. While each particular book will have its own add-on steps, or a differing rationale about why their plan is the best way to get a baby to fall asleep, the core solution is always the same: using a pattern that leads up to nighttime or naptime to make it easier for baby to fall asleep.
(I will be deliberately avoiding the use of the “R” word here for those poor souls who are looking for the information contained in this article and try to find it by excluding pages that have the R word. — If you are wondering what the R word is, you haven’t read very much about sleeping babies yet 
The idea is that by performing the same activities in order each time you put baby to sleep, the baby will grow accustomed to the pattern and then fall easily asleep in a peaceful no cry manner.
While the suggested events to execute this plan differ from book to book or parent advice column, the overall concept is the same. Dim the lights, minimize stimulation, read one book, sing two songs, and place the baby gently into the crib while they are drowsy, but still awake so that they can quickly soothe themselves off to dreamland. Once you’ve done this a few times, your baby will practically put themselves to sleep.
This is the kind of sleeping solution that only an academic or clinician could love. It is very true. This procedure does, in fact, work to help all babies fall asleep faster and easier. So, why then is this advice so utterly worthless?
Parenting Tips for Reality – Welcome to the Nursery of the Real World
What could be simpler than establishing a repeating pattern for baby’s nighttime?
Steps To Get Baby To Sleep Easy and Fast
- Give your baby a kiss.
- Change baby’s diaper and clothes.
- Sing baby a song.
- Read baby a book.
- Sing baby another song.
- Place baby gently in the crib.
- Say Goodnight to baby.
- Walk out of room.
- Baby falls asleep.
- Repeat.
Anyone see the catch?
The problem with the above system is that #9 has to happen BEFORE this plan can work. How can a reasonable solution include having the problem already solved as one of its steps? Just because a Top 10 Parenting Book says that establishing a nighttime ritual is the smartest parenting strategy for getting baby to sleep doesn’t mean that baby know it!
In the real nurseries and baby’s rooms of the world, little baby boys and little baby girls don’t know what comes after Step 8 (or any other step for that matter). Try the above procedure with a baby that has trouble sleeping and you’ll get a new Step #10 – Baby cries! Unfortunately, this plan has the same last step.
BEFORE you can establish any sort of sleeping ritual, you have to be able to make baby fall asleep. THEN establishing a repetative pattern can help make the process of putting baby to bed easier. But, until then, the above plan is worthless with a capital ‘W’.
What parents need is a real world method of Best Tips To Get Baby to Sleep and Top Tricks Parents Use For Sleeping Babies. These methods include ways to make baby sleep NOW, not after you’ve established some mythical sleep formula. When a baby is screaming in your face, the last thing a parent needs is a high-handed lecture about what will be the best long-term sleeping solution. They especially do not need to be told that the way that Mom and Dad have been putting baby to sleep before reading this enlightened version was all wrong, and frankly, is the cause of baby sleep problems they are having now.
The real world, tested in my own home with two babies, including one who has colic, strategies are coming soon in the Undefeated Daddy plan for Getting Baby to Sleep.
How To Get Breastfeeding Mom More Sleep
When they are first born, infants feed every 2 to 5 hours depending upon how big the baby is, and how much the mother’s milk has come in. Most babies eat between 6 and 10 times per day (24 hours). Unfortunately, it isn’t always very consistent. It is fairly rare for a baby to eat every three hours on the nose.
As you can imagine, this schedule can be brutal on new moms. Fortunately, once Mom and baby are comfortable breastfeeding, meaning that baby latches on and eats for a full feeding without any real trouble and without needing any real encouragement, you can start doing bottle feedings.
Many pediatricians recommend doing at least one bottle feeding per day once the infant has established good breast feeding habits. Make the most of this feeding by taking one of baby’s usual feeding times that would give mom plenty of extra sleep.
For example, if an infant normally feeds around 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM and then again at around midnight, followed by another feeding between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM, consider doing a bottle feeding for that midnight feeding. That way, when Mom is done feeding baby in the evening, she can go to bed.
If she gets to sleep at 10:00 PM, she would normally only get 2 hours of sleep before having to breastfeed again. But, by having someone else (Dad, we’re looking at you) do the midnight feeding, she could sleep straight through until the 3:00 AM feeding. On a lucky day, maybe all the way until the 4:00 AM feeding.
Now, instead of 2 hours asleep, then awake from midnight to 1:00 AM, then two more hours of sleep (adds up to 4 interrupted hours), mom could sleep from 10:00 PM until 3:00 AM, all uninterrupted. That adds up to 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. That plus a couple of hours in the morning and a nap or two here and there, and Mom can be way less sleep deprived than she would be otherwise.
The best way to make the bottle feeding work is for baby’s mother to pump breastmilk during the day and then store that breast milk in a baby bottle in the fridge for use during the night. Formula, of course, can be used as well, but check with your pediatrician first to make sure that switching back and forth between breastmilk and formula won’t be too much for baby.
If an infant will drink breast milk from a bottle with no issues, but won’t drink formula without a lot of assistance and encouragement, take that as a sign, that baby isn’t ready for formula yet.
New Baby Survival Tips Technology
Our newest edition is home with us!
As a new father, again, this time of a young son, I am remembering some of those really great tips and tricks that helped me survive having a new baby at home last time around. One of them is developing some resources that provide entertainment, distractions, or a way to work while simultaneously holding a baby that won’t sleep unless he’s in your arms.
It can be frustrating during those first few months when a new baby can’t sleep on their own all of the time. Most of us don’t mind holding our beautiful baby boys or baby girls in our arms. The issue is that we often have other things we need to be doing and with our own sleep hours dwindling, it can be hard to find enough time. One answer is to use that time when wall baby needs from mom or dad is their body heat, smell, and breathing’s rhythmic rise and fall of the chest or stomach.
The catch is that most babies don’t turn into pliant lumps of clay that can be moved around to accommodate accomplishing tasks. Instead, parents need to find ways to be able to do things without disturbing baby. Usually, this means doing it one handed.
Last time around, I made sure to have a stack of printouts laying nearby. This time around there is a better option.
The Amazon Kindle and other electronic readers like it allows you to stock up on a bunch of reading that you need to do (or want to do) and then hold it in one hand. The latest 6-inch size Kindle can be held in one hand to allow for reading while baby sleeps in your arms. Fill it up with reports, books, manuals, webpages, news feeds, or whatever you need and then keep it near your usual baby holding spot. That way, when baby falls asleep in your arms, you can get through some of your reading.
Adjusting to a new baby takes both flexibility and maximizing your time and resources. These electronic readers provide one more way to get more done while still taking great care of your newborn baby.
Most Important Baby-Proofing Step Before Bringing Home a New Infant
When it comes to baby-proofing, most first-time parents do it wrong. It isn’t that they forget some piece of foam or corner protectors. It isn’t that they don’t have the outlet plug-ins filled with little plastic covers. It isn’t even that they don’t have the curtain cords up or the stairs blocked off.
No matter how big your baby is when she is born, and no matter how smart she is, she will not move one inch without your help for several months. In that respect, baby-proofing your home is something you can do long after you bring baby home from the hospital, with one important exception.
The most important baby-proofing step in your whole house is noise prevention and reduction.
While it is true that your baby won’t roll, crawl, walk, open drawers, shut doors, pull on furniture, or play with cords for some time, they will take a nap the very first day you bring them home from the hospital. And, more importantly, they WILL wake up from that nap at the smallest of noises.
As hard as it can be for new parents, whether they be first-time parents or experienced parents, to get the new baby down for a nap, the last thing in the world you need is to wake them up accidentally with something that could have been prevented.
Don’t just think about the nursery. Sure, you want baby’s room to be as quiet as possible, but that isn’t enough. A baby falling fast asleep in Mommy’s arms will be crying at the top of his lungs seconds after the microwave beeps when Dad’s burrito is finished heating. (And Mom will be plenty angry at Dad, too.) Then there is the dryer buzzer, the doorbell, cell phones, computer (particularly laptops) beeps, and all other manner of “done” or “ready” signals.
If you still have a way to go before baby’s arrival, put “Volume Control” on the top of your must-have list for ANYTHING you buy for the next year or two. Even better is “Mute” or “Sound Off.”
Some top offenders for waking baby include the microwave (does it really have to beep with every button press?), coffee makers, computers, alarm systems (does yours beep every time a door or window opens?), car alarms (turning them on and off), and of course, alarm clocks.
Keep in mind that baby has spent the last nine months in a world where every sound is muffled by Mom. Tiny noises can be very disturbing. Even quiet noises can wake baby if they are unfamiliar, and everything is unfamiliar at first. Be especially aware of high pitched noises, which baby has never heard before. (To understand why, put on a quality pair of headphones, or ear protectors, or just hold your hands over your earns. Muffled sounds = Low-pitched sounds.)
Don’t assume distance will save you. One father earned a crying baby and the wrath of the mother who had just spent an hour trying to get little baby to sleep when it turned out the microwave popcorn popping sound in the kitchen, a floor below and off to the side of baby’s room was loudly connected to baby’s room by some metal tubes called the “heating and air conditioning system.”
Go through your house making a list of everything that beeps. Then, put that list where it is easily accessible so you can add all of the things that beep that you don’t think of as making noise. When the list is complete, figure out how to turn off or quiet every one of those objects. Download instruction manuals if you have to.
Non-essential items that can’t be turned off should be relocated (unplugged, of course) to storage. Essential items without volume control can sometimes be muffled with the help of masking tape or duct tape. If that isn’t enough, try taping some cloth – washcloths work well – over the speaker or the holes that the sound comes from. If that doesn’t work, locate the offender as far away from baby’s sleeping, feeding, and playing areas as possible.
A silent house is impossible to achieve, but if baby wakes up due to something out of your control, at least you’ll know you did everything you could.
Baby Monitors and Over-Responsive Parenting
Baby monitors are a great addition to the parenting tools arsenal. Not only do they extend the range in which a parent can operate without worrying about being unable to hear a crying baby or toddler, but they can also give wonderful insight into another corner of baby’s life. With video monitors, parents can even determine if baby seems physically comfortable or investigate unfamiliar sounds or responses from their little ones. On the other hand, monitors can lead to sleep problems caused by overactive response to baby’s signals.
Without a baby monitor, a child must make sounds which are are above a certain threshold of loudness to be heard. With a baby monitor that threshold can be much lower. This is important because in order to both sleep through the night, and take naps of an appropriate length, babies need to learn to how to wake up, notice their environment, and then drift back to sleep. Doing so requires the ability to reassure oneself that everything is fine and that returning to sleep is the proper course of action. Experts refer to this as self-soothing.
Sleep Cycles For Mom, Dad, and Baby
Sleep experts say that as adults we do the same thing. For an adult, the average sleep cycle from Stage 1 sleep through the end of Stage 4 sleep takes approximately 90 minutes. At the end of this cycle, an adult rouses for a minute or two to ascertain their environment to assure that there is no trouble at hand. It is during this time that covers are pulled up, or kicked off, and one rolls over or otherwise changes position. It is also during this time, that we notice the need to visit the restroom (which will become important to your child later as well.)
The key to this whole process however is being able to make the determination for oneself that everything is O.K.
Being inexperienced in this process, newborn babies will instinctively cry out upon waking without noticing their environment at all. This makes sense considering they are in no position to evaluate it, and they most likely need to eat anyway. However, as baby gets older, they develop self-soothing skills and, like their parents, roll over and go back to sleep instead of crying out for Mom or Dad.
Developing this skill does require some practice. That practice comes in the form of making sounds and noises and calls to Mom and Dad which are not loud enough to be heard and therefore are not responded to. But, with a baby monitor, every sound can be heard. A parent who responds to even these lower sounds will prevent baby from developing the skills needed.
To avoid this, be sure to respond to baby based upon only what you can observe WITHOUT the monitor. One useful tip is to use the baby room monitor to determine when it is time to settle into a position and activity where one can hear baby’s activities without the aid of the monitor and then turn the monitor off. Using this technique, parents can avoid swooping into baby’s room too quickly and prolonging the period of time during which baby does not sleep through the night, or wakes up at every sound without getting enough sleep during naps.
As always, while technology can make parenting easier and more satisfying, it should never take the place of unassisted parenting.
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