A few weeks ago, a new mom friend of mine put out a plea on Facebook for help to get her sweet baby girl to sleep more. After laughing hysterically and wondering if she was serious, I sat down and thought about it. What did I do when The Boy was an infant to help him sleep? And by sleep, I’m talking quality sleep. Not the quick cat naps he would sneak in while we were driving somewhere. {Rear-facing seats….ensure your infant naps when you don’t want him to!}
These are some tips to help newborns sleep and to help you adapt to new your sleep schedule:
- Try to put baby on a schedule. This doesn’t have to be a regimented “10am you must nap” schedule, but try to have baby rest, eat, and bathe around the same times each day. Think about what works best for your family’s lifestyle. If you attend church every Sunday at 9, then don’t get baby used to resting at 9 the other days. Babies are nocturnal, if that doesn’t work for you, you’ll want to keep baby awake during the day!
- If you’re concerned about a consistent sleep pattern, as all new parents are, don’t let baby fall asleep while nursing/drinking a bottle. When baby is sleeping, baby is not eating. This means baby will just wake up hungry in a few short minutes. Trying wiggling the nipple around in baby’s mouth or talking to baby “It’s time to eat now, we’ll rest soon.”
- Play with baby. Keeping baby’s mind engaged and active will exhaust her. Tummy time and talking to her while you’re doing your chores {“I’m folding daddy’s blue shirt now.”} will keep her mind going and wear her out. This may seem sneaky, but it works. Also, talking to her about what you’re doing helps her to become familiar with the world. Remember, she doesn’t know what anything is or how anything works. Part of your responsibility as a parent is to teach her all of these seemingly mundane things!
- Does baby wake up each time you lay him down to sleep? Try putting a heating pad {set to warm} in his crib or bassinet about 20 minutes before you plan to put him down. Feeling the warm sheet will help baby to sleep longer. {REMOVE the heating pad PRIOR to putting baby in the crib or bassinet!}
What did you do to help your baby sleep when he was a newborn?
This is part of series of posts titled Motherhood Mondays where I’ll be sharing my parenting experiences, tips and advice. If there is a specific topic you would like to see in the coming weeks, please email me with Motherhood Mondays in the subject line.
We’ll have to try the heating pad. My DS starts screaming as soon as we leave him alone in the bed. We’ve tried sleeping in the crib in his room, the pack ‘n play in our room, and the bouncy seat and swing in both rooms. No consistent luck yet.
I hope that it works for you, too!
I really like the heating pad suggestion. That’s a new one for me!
I love the heating pad suggestion 🙂 We used to have a horrible time keeping my son asleep as a baby. I think some babies are just lighter sleepers than others. We found that white noise was really helpful.
I just strapped Kenz onto me 🙂 I still get no sleep & she’s 2.
These are great tips! I have to remember the heating pad idea if we have a second little one. For our son, he took a pacifier when he slept. The vibrating feature on his bassinet also lulled him to sleep many times.
We found the heating pad SO helpful. One of the best things we did while parenting an infant. Our bassinet didn’t have the vibrate feature, I don’t recall anyhow, but I can see how that would have been beneficial.
Thanks for visiting!
The schedule was definitely the hardest thing for me to get down when my daughter was a baby.
Dawn
Getting a baby on a schedule is tough – they’re nocturnal, makes it hard for them to adjust living with us!
I would have never thought of a heating pad. Great list!
Kas
The heating pad was a lifesaver for us. I make sure to tell all of the moms-to-be about that one!
Thanks so much for stopping by!
I really should have tried the heating pad method with this last newborn but that was far too much advanced planning. There’s some great tips here!