Best Bedtime Tips To Get Baby To Sleep All Night

A mother without sleep is like a rabid animal. She is completely different from who you knew she was, hostile and foaming at the mouth! One of the most difficult challenges for new parents is not getting enough sleep. One moment you are on cloud 9, enjoying the amazing experience of being a new parent. The next moment, after only getting 1 hour of sleep the night before, you may be tempted to jump out the window.

When baby is born, the concept of bedtime and sleeping throughout the night is still foreign and will take some time getting used to. Your baby depends on you for everything, including learning how to sleep for long periods of time at night. Many parents notice that their baby sleeps through most of the day and is wide-awake at night. The reason is because babies naturally produce more hormones at night, which is critical to their grown and development, but makes them more active.

For the first few months, you can expect to wake up every few hours to feed, change baby’s diaper or trying to put baby back to sleep. Yes it may be nice to catch up on household responsibilities during the day, but it is extremely important for a parent’s mental health and happiness to get some sleep whenever possible. A good rule of thumb is when baby sleeps, YOU sleep! When you are in need of some bedtime relief, that is the best time to call on your spouse, family member or friend to relieve you for an hour or two. Trust me, just taking a nap will make the biggest difference from Happy Mommy to Madame Medusa.

Getting your new baby used to a bedtime routine can be very difficult for some parents and a piece of cake to others. From my experiences, there is no by-the-book answer to get baby to sleep. You have to get to know your baby and try different methods until you discover what works best. For me, a warm bath, full belly and playing white noise, worked wonders. Other times, playing soothing classical music and rocking baby in the nursery gliderdid the trick. The cardinal rule in establishing a bedtime routine is Consistency. Trust your parenting instincts and run through this list of bedtime techniques and see what works best for your baby:

Mommy’s Scent: It is known that baby can recognize your scent, especially since a newborn cannot see well. Rub your scent on a thin blanket or on a piece of baby’s clothes for bedtime. Baby will think mommy is near which will provide comfort and security.