Parents wait all day for that blissful break from diapers, dishes and other demands. Sometimes baby’s bedtime can’t come soon enough.
The last thing you want is a child who’s not ready to unwind when you are.
While you can’t force a child to fall asleep at your command, there are things that soften the bed, so to speak.
Why rocking + lullabies really can work“Making children feel sleepy requires decreasing their level of cortisol, the hormone that keeps them revved up and ready to go,” says pediatrician Maureen Ahmann, DO. “To decrease cortisol, calm their senses.”
Rocking your baby and singing a lullaby may be the best-known calming techniques, but any type of sensory soothing can work, says Dr. Ahmann. Try:
“The key is removing stimulation and signaling the body that it’s time to rest,” says Dr. Ahmann.
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What about a ride in the car?Some parents claim that a ride in the car is a sure-fire way to induce sleep. In desperate times it may be tempting to buckle baby in the car seat and drive around the block. Just don’t do it for long, says Dr. Ahmann.
Sleeping in the car, while sometimes unavoidable, is not a good habit. Your baby is safest sleeping on a firm, flat surface, not propped up in a seat.
Every year hundreds of U.S. infants die due to unsafe sleep environments. Make sure your baby sleeps safely all the time. It’s non-negotiable, says Dr. Ahmann.
For babies, safe sleep means lying flat on the back with no blankets heavier than a hospital receiving blanket.
There should be no stuffed animals in the crib. Do not use crib bumpers, pillows or any type of cushions for propping up your baby — not even items marketed to help babies sleep better.
Tactics to make your baby drowsy only do so much. The best way to get children to sleep when they’re supposed to is to establish a wake-sleep schedule and stick to it, says Dr. Ahmann.
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“Nothing works better than keeping kids on a schedule,” she says. “It’s not always possible with so many demands on today’s parents — and life can throw curveballs — but keep nap and night sleep times consistent the best you can.”
Babies respond to consistency and structure, says Dr. Ahmann. The less you disrupt their schedule, the more likely they’ll fall asleep on time.
“If your baby regularly has a tough time falling asleep at night, you may need to adjust their nap schedule,” she says. “Gradually move morning and afternoon naps earlier.
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There are numerous ways to get your baby to settle down for slumber. But here are three things you shouldn’t try:
Remember that safe sleep is a must. “Too frequently, exhausted parents fall asleep holding their baby and wake up hours later to find the baby in a dangerous position,” says Dr. Ahmann. “If you’re tired, put your baby back in the crib. A baby will not die from crying in their crib.”Following a consistent schedule and using calming techniques should be all you need to ensure a sufficient sleepyhead. Getting baby to sleep on time is one step toward getting yourself to sleep on time too.
We asked the sleep experts to share their best tricks for newborn babies (and their parents!) to get some shut-eye.
Illustration: Olivia Mew
1. Invest in blackout curtains or make your own. You might not need them during the newborn stage, but they’ll be so worth it later on.
Illustration: Olivia Mew
2. Some parents swear by infant massage strokes and even gently swiping a tissue over baby’s face to help calm them down and make them sleep— hey, whatever works!
Illustration: Olivia Mew
3.
Muffle that maddening door click by looping a thick rubber band between both door knobs to form an X shape over the latch. Stealthy!
Illustration: Olivia Mew
4. Move baby to a crib without waking them:
—Watch their eyes. If your baby’s eyes are darting under their lids, they’re in deep sleep. Wait until their muscles are relaxed and they’re breathing deeply. Then administer the floppy-arm test: Lift up an arm and drop it. If baby doesn’t stir, you’re good to go.
—As you ever-so-gently lay them in their crib, keep one hand on their back and the other on their tummy. That continued pressure will ease the transition. If they startle, try patting their belly before you slink away.
—Try to maintain whatever position they’re in as you pick them up and put them down. Lay your baby flat (not head first) into the crib. Use a step-stool if you need the extra lift.
Alanna McGinn, Good Night Sleep Site:
5. Watch for newborns’ wakeful periods.
They’re usually only 30 to 60 minutes in the first four months of life; put them to sleep as soon as they seem tired.
6. Change your baby’s diaper before the nighttime feed to minimize arousing them. And unless your baby has pooped or soaked through their diaper, you probably don’t want to change them at all in the middle of the night, to keep them in that sleepy state—especially if they’re only waking to feed.
7. When you get up for a nighttime feed, don’t turn on the bright lights. Buy an LED push night light that operates on batteries (so you can put it wherever you need it) and turns on with a quick touch. This also helps reduce the “wake-up” signals going to the parent and baby’s brains so it’s easier to fall back to sleep after feeding.
8. Put a hot water bottle in the bassinet or crib, which will warm it up and can sometimes make the transfer from your arms to bed a little easier. (Don’t forget to remove the hot water bottle before the baby is in!)
Alexis Dubief, Precious Little Sleep:
9. Babies are born without a well-developed circadian rhythm— they’re awake in the middle of the night, and you can’t fix that, at least for the first few months. Plan for this by sleeping in shifts with your partner or support person.
10. If your baby is sleeping in your room (as per the Canadian Paediatric Society recommendation), you’ll want to be able to get yourself into bed without waking them up. Use a white noise machine, and do all your bedtime prep out of the bedroom, “so you’re just ninja-ing in.”
11. If they fall asleep in your arms during the day, don’t worry about putting them in a crib or bassinet. Put them down somewhere safe, which may even be the floor. (Not applicable if you have dogs or toddlers at home with you!) And if you’re feeling very tired, be careful you don’t fall asleep with baby on you.
12. Enjoy this period of portable naps. Sit at the coffee shop with your baby sleeping at your feet. “Enjoy your mobility while you can, because there will be three years after that when you can’t.”
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FILED UNDER: baby sleep Newborn sleep Parent hacks Parenting hack Sleep
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Image caption,Sleep deprivation torture is horrendous and many of us know it firsthand
Tired after Christmas? Would you like to sleep for at least 600 more minutes? Or maybe your kids jump out of bed every half an hour and have already completely brought you to the handle?
The beginning of January is a dark day for people suffering from lack of sleep.
Google search, a modern indicator of such problems, shows that the number of searches for the words "children do not sleep" reaches a maximum at this time of the year.
which will magically allow you to finally forget and fall asleep...
Children are constantly on edge during the New Year holidays: they stay up late staring at the screen, play computer games to the limit, deplete holiday stocks in the refrigerator, and the chances of a full-fledged children's sleep are close to zero.
Then, one fine day, they again need to go to school, and they trudge there in the morning, like zombies, staring their eyes red from fatigue into the January darkness.
Adults suffer no less than children. Early January is the peak time for searching for "sleep" and "I need to sleep."
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Image caption,Christmas and New Year's is the "perfect storm": sleep deprivation, overeating, alcohol, and a total breakdown in routine.
As the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. And parents, depressed by family insomnia, begin to invent their own coping strategies.
After reviewing online sleep apps and websites such as Moshi Twilight Sleep Stories and calm.com, we've compiled some of the more eccentric ideas.
In each case, it is claimed that the idea has already been tested somewhere. Although one can only imagine how bad things must have been.
These ideas have no chance of appearing in any of the many unbearably boring books that tell us how ideal parents raise their children right.
For example, "Man 8 o'clock", which catches children awake after eight.
Loughborough University Professor Kevin Morgan, who works in the Department of Clinical Sleep Research, says that if one were to create a situation of chronic sleep deprivation and fatigue for the experiment, she , perhaps, would strongly resemble the New Year and Christmas holidays.
According to the scientist, this is a real "perfect storm": going to bed late, overeating and unpredictable wake-up times.
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Image caption,After a hectic holiday season, it's impossible to struggle with sleep in the office
Add to that alcohol, which worsens the quality of sleep, and the subconscious stress associated with preparing for Christmas and New Year.
It's a whole cocktail of bad sleep ingredients, exacerbated, according to Professor Morgan, by the fact that late December and early January are the darkest and most depressing times of the year.
The key to good sleep is a proper, regular routine, says Kevin Morgan. But on Christmas and New Year's days, the entire family schedule is turned upside down.
"By January 2nd, you're probably out," says the professor. "Noisy kids are already getting on your nerves, and things are getting a little tense."
Image copyright, Getty Images
Image caption,New Year's Eve changes family routine
There are, however, other, not so strange ways to improve the situation. British doctors are advising parents to set a consistent time for their children to go to bed.
At the same time, putting the child to bed should turn into a well-known, familiar daily routine for him.
Experts advise taking a bath before bed and a nighttime story in a dimly lit bedroom.
Computers, mobile phones, televisions should be turned off as they prevent the child from falling asleep. British National Health System doctors recommend turning off all screens an hour before a child goes to bed.
Image copyright, Getty Images
Image caption,The screen is disturbing the baby's sleep, doctors warn
The room where the baby sleeps should be dark, tidy and quiet. Blackout curtains should block out light from the street, and the air temperature should be comfortable - neither too high nor too low.
Professor Morgan emphasizes that the effectiveness of these simple and mundane rules depends on how well the parents manage to establish a routine.
In addition, daily walks in the fresh air, instead of constantly sitting in front of the screen, can help children fall asleep.
But there are no magic recipes, Professor Morgan warns. "Children are extremely excited around Christmas and New Year's, and excited people can't sleep," he recalls.
There is no universal method for putting children to bed. And for some parents, the problem itself does not exist, because they accustom the child to independent sleep. And what if the child is tearing himself up until dawn, but he will not grow up as a sissy! Mother of many children and psychologist Katerina Dyomina talks about the dangers of this approach and how to solve the problem with a child's sleep.
In my personal rating, the client request "How to put the child to sleep?" occupies a solid first place. And sometimes we have to deal with this topic for several years in a row (not that we only talk about this, but in each therapy session five minutes are devoted to moaning “God, how tired I am of this daily battle!”).
And I understand these emotions well: we never learned to put our youngest daughter to bed until she herself grew up and freed us from an overwhelming task.
So the first thing I can say is that the methods don't work. More precisely, they work only if you find yours by brute force. But there seems to be no universal way to quickly and effortlessly put children to sleep. But I can share my understanding of the process from the point of view of psychology, physiology and common sense. Not "my personal experience", because, see above, here I failed completely. And now I understand why.
Night is a dark time. And terrible. Saber-toothed tigers and bounty hunters hide in the darkness. Therefore, we sleep in a cave, huddled close to each other, every 45 minutes or an hour we wake up slightly, check whether everyone is alive, whether everything is in place. The breathing of a fellow tribesman, the beating of his heart, the feeling that you are not alone in the vast empty space are the most important signals for the entire body of the baby, the guarantee of his survival in the first days and weeks of life.
Therefore, the only right place for a newborn and a little older baby to sleep is not far from the mother, if not in the same bed, then at least at arm's length. At least in one room.
I am categorically against the new-fangled American method of “training a child to sleep independently”, when a child is taught to fall asleep alone from the first weeks of life
Too often I observe the consequences of such training. Mothers complain that during the day the child does not come off of them, and sometimes in the literal sense: it clings to the legs, tries to climb on the head, on the shoulders, and laying down at night is accompanied by wild screams, threats and sobs. Although all that had to be done was to let the baby fall asleep, hearing your voice, your breathing, your movements around the house.
Photo: iStockphoto / HAndrii But it so happens that in modern urban culture, evening and late evening are not a time of rest and relaxation, but of the most intense activity: dad comes home from work, older children from their classes , feverish lesson checks begin, fees for tomorrow, explosions from the TV, phone calls and sudden insights: “We were told to bring black cardboard and a piece of raspberry plasticine!”.
You won't relax here, what can I say.
All a very irritated and overwhelmed mother wants is for at least one person to be off the list of worries. For example, a baby
Since up to about a year and a half, a mother and baby represent an almost inseparable whole, the tension and anxiety of the mother at the end of the day is transmitted to the baby in its purest form, in one piece. If the child is the first, then the (young) father can add fuel to the fire: he is also tired, he has been working all day, and wants that when he comes (crawls, drags a mammoth on his shoulder, overcomes all obstacles - underline as necessary) home, attention and his wife's care belonged to him by right and undivided. And the wife, who served her Lord and Master in diapers all day, wants someone to remove this burden from her and let her at least go to the toilet like a human being. Everyone is angry, the second layer is guilt, everyone wants the unpleasant situation to resolve itself and quickly if possible.
10 useful books about raising a child
Therefore, the mother performs the nightly ritual a little in a hurry, the palms moving a little faster when laying the baby down, a slightly higher and more intense tone of voice, singing a lullaby, a little more irritation in the procedure of kissing the heels and forehead. Sleep now! Well, how much can you?! You are well-fed, clean, dry, here is your favorite mobile, here is a night light, here is a bear and a blanket, what the hell else do you need?
The child only needs his mother to be with him all 100% of her time
I was not distracted by an incomprehensible second person, so that my parents would not accidentally give him competitors, and ideally, so that this music would last forever. Am I asking too much?
Photo: iStockphoto / monkeybusinessimages Many mothers are surprised to notice that when dad, for example, is on a business trip, or older children are at camp, bedtime ceases to be hard labor, but becomes a really enjoyable experience.
Or that one member of the family does it deftly and imperceptibly, while someone cannot cope with the simplest thing at all (here is a meaningful chuckle and an expressively raised eyebrow). As if the baby feels who is completely given to the process, and who is skimping and trying to get away as soon as possible.
There is also the opposite situation: the baby does not fall asleep because the mother does not want to leave him and join her husband in the matrimonial bedroom. Or there is no husband at all, and there are only sad thoughts about an unhappy fate, about how to live on and where to get money. Then the crying of the awake baby distracts the mother, gives her a legal reason not to leave the nursery, to sleep with the child, and not with her husband. If you now recognize yourself in this picture, then try to plan a trip to a psychotherapist or at least a family psychologist as soon as the situation allows.
Using a child as a buffer between spouses is the last thing
But the most important thing that all the authors of “magic” methods forget to say is that falling asleep is almost 100% dependent on the neurological status of the child. A hypotonic person, relaxed like good yeast dough, falls asleep simply because he is tired, he does not need any additional tricks, all these touching photos of children sleeping in a plate, upside down, hanging half off the sofa - this is a photo of children with low muscle tone! My eldest daughter, at the age of four, said “henna” twice, she had to be put in a sleeping bag, and at the same time her eyes were “buttoned” with a zipper, it was possible to leave the house for at least three hours - she slept. And the son and the youngest daughter were born with rather strong hypertonicity. They could scream for a long time, rolled up, they vomited like a fountain, they slept in the “poorly differentiated ball” position, my daughter generally slept only on her hands and only in an upright position for the first six months.
And only while you are walking.
5 reasons why shame-based parenting is popular normal or reduced muscle tone, you're in luck, congratulations. If there are problems with sleep, then they can be identified and corrected by behavior, mode, selection of posture or by moving back and forth the time to go to bed.
If you have a bundle of nerves in your hands, living mercury, sleeps little or it seems to you that he does not sleep at all, he began to hold his head straight from birth, he needs everything and everywhere, responds to any noise, does not cry, but sobs, does not hum, but yells - look for help, look for competent doctors, osteopaths work wonders, and the masseuse is now the main person in your life for you. Medicines practically do not help, because they do not eliminate the main cause of tension, but it must be established. Most often, these are microdislocations in the cervical spine, this is corrected manually and very quickly, the main thing is that the specialist is good.
