How to extend your baby’s sleep time

From ArticleWorld


To extend your baby’s sleep time can help him/her wake up feeling fresh and bright, leaving you with more time for yourself. Babies have very erratic sleep patterns. Some days they might sleep for five hours at a stretch and on other days you’d be lucky if they sleep for even two. Children also have different sleep needs at different stages of their growth. Then again, sleep needs and sleep patterns vary from child to child. With all these variables it becomes a difficult task to pin down an optimum sleep time for a child. Normally a new born sleeps for 16 to 18 hours in a day and stays awake for 2 to 3 hours. Contrary to normal belief, a child does not become sluggish due to too much sleep but due to lack of sleep. Here are some pointers on how to help your baby sleep more.

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A few suggestions

  1. Once the infant and you have established a normal feeding pattern the next big step involves the baby’s sleep pattern. If you find that your baby is waking up too often, you just need to let the baby cry for a while and go back to sleep. It is heartrending to ignore a baby’s cries especially for the parent but if regular sleep patterns have to established for the future, then this needs to be done now.
  2. You need to allow the baby to cry for at least 5 minutes before going in to settle it with a few soothing words. This has to be done without picking the baby up and for not more than two minutes.
  3. Babies generally go back to sleep within 10 minutes of waking up but sometimes if they are very tired they may take up to 20 minutes to go to sleep.
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Do’s

  1. Once the baby is picking up normal weight and eating well through the day then you could start to wean the baby off the night time feed (the three o’clock one) by giving it a sip of water or a dummy so that it sleeps for an extended period of time. This will take time to become a habit as the baby might wake up and demand to be fed for the first few days before falling into a pattern.
  2. Some experts hold that the ages-old practice of swaddling still is the best way to soothe a baby's cries and extend sleep time but this is becoming increasingly debatable.
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Don’ts

  • Don’t follow the above advice if your heart tells you otherwise, follow your instincts instead.
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