Teaching Your Infant Good Sleeping Habits

In the first years of life, parents can save themselves and their children a lot of problems by starting good sleep habits from the very beginning. As soon as possible, get your newborn out of your room and into the nursery. Nothing is more obvious than a tired infant – they go from happy and smiling one minute to out-of-control crying the next. If baby is crying, has been awake for over two hours, is not wet and is not hungry, then he is tired.  When human beings sleep, they cycle from deep sleep to light sleep. Some experts say that we learned that by sleeping in the jungle. We come up from deep sleep to check that our surroundings still smell, sound and feel the same. If something is different, we wake all the way up to check it out. With that in mind, you want to put you infant to sleep in the way that you want him to stay sleeping. You can try to feed him a little, but don’t let him fall asleep on the bottle or breast. You can rock and quiet him, but don’t let him go to sleep in your arms. Always put your infant in the crib a little awake. You can have the quiet sound-machine on, but remember that if it doesn’t stay on, he might wake up when he gets into light sleep in an hour. Basically, you want things the same all night. When your baby is tired, he feels miserable. He doesn’t know why, so he might cry but crying when he gets laid down is O.K. Forget the guilt. Teaching your child to quiet himself down is a skill that will be valuable in the future. Put him down awake; let him cry if he needs to and leave the room – you don’t want to be there all night. Don’t keep walking with a crying infant; don’t go for a ride in the car to get him to sleep and don’t allow him to sleep in the car seat at home – it is dangerous. Infants wake up at least once a night to eat up to at least 6 months of age. Feed him but don’t let him fall asleep eating. Once he starts to drift off, change him (which will wake him up a little) and put him back in the crib. You and your infant both need sleep and, contrary to the common idea, being as parent does not need to mean sleepless nights.