Newborn baby sleep tips
Newborn Baby Sleep Tips
When you have a newborn who wakes all the time and just won’t sleep, it is SO exhausting. Here are some helpful tips to get your newborn, 1 month old or 2 month old baby sleeping more, so that you can get some rest too!
Get tips and guidelines on EVERYTHING newborn sleep – naps, awake times, night feedings, night sleep, newborn sleep training and more. Find out what to expect from your newborn baby and how to get your newborn baby sleeping well at night and for naps during the day!
Discover more on newborn sleep here:
https://www.babysleepmadesimple.com/newborn-sleep-schedule
Evening Fussiness Guide: https://www.babysleepmadesimple.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/survival-kit_Evening_Fussiness_smaller.png
How to Start a Peaceful Bedtime Routine for your Newborn Baby: https://www.babysleepmadesimple.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/PNR_newborn_smaller.png?fbclid=IwAR3YRrvzj6xnLHHFFmPaedZR7lVNpyeipeF-pK7GXXCwyfr6088JLCJYTGs
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TRANSCRIPTION:
“How can I get my newborn sleeping longer and on a good sleep routine?”
For newborns, the truth is that their sleep pretty unpredictable. But I can give you some expectations to have for your newborn’s sleep.
Awake time (day & night): Your newborn will need to sleep every 30-90 minutes during the day and the night.
Naps: Your newborn can nap anywhere – in the stroller, the sling, in her swing if you supervise here. Just know that if she starts to get fussy and it’s been about an hour since she slept, I would just prepare her opportunity to nap, It’s completely OK to have your newborn nap in different ways because they nap so often. Just focus on them sleeping often and you getting a bit of a break.
Feeds: Your little one will probably need to feed every 2-4 hours. That fluctuates throughout the day. She may want to eat every 30 minutes and then not want to eat for 4-5 hours.
Night wakings: There really isn’t a set number that we can work toward, but your baby needs to feed every 2-4 hours.
Total Sleep in 24 Hours: 14-18 hours. This sounds like so much – and it is so much! The only issue is that it’s broken, which means your sleep is broken. So you feel so exhausted.
Bedtime:
Bedtime for the newborn is naturally quite late – 10pm, 11pm, midnight. Your newborn doesn’t know the difference between night and day. So we want your baby to learn that night-time is for sleeping and that daytime is for being awake and playing and eating more.
What you want to work towards in the first 8 weeks is that period between midnight and 5am being your ‘night-time’. If you can gently and subtly get your newborn sleeping really well during that period, then as they get older we add hours in the evening and hours in the morning, to get your newborn sleeping longer at night.
Evening fussiness:
What can often happen is your newborn can get a period of evening fussiness from the afternoon through the evening, when your baby is a little bit harder to settle.
If you’re breastfeeding, they might just want to be attached to you the whole time. This is called cluster feeding. It helps to build up your milk supply. It helps your baby to tank up before the night sleep.
So if you’re breastfeeding, the best thing you can do if your baby is super fussy in the afternoon or evening is to plop down on the couch and do on-demand breastfeeding. It will really help to settle your baby and often they are just a little bit hungrier at this time.
Even with a bottle-fed baby, you can try offering small amounts of feed a little bit more often.
Check out my Guide for Evening Fussiness above.
The Best Tip for Surviving the Newborn Stage:
The best tip I ever got in regards to newborns and bedtime came from a friend of mine who had a new baby. She said what really worked well for her in those first few months was to hand baby over to her partner or to Grandma and take a nap around 7 or 8pm.
Her partner would give the baby a bottle – she would pump or she would just coordinate her feeds. She would get a good 3 hour chunk of sleep so that when she woke up around 11 o’clock, she felt pretty well-rested. She was able to tackle those next few hours between midnight and 5am.
That was the best tip I’ve had. I’ve shared it with lots of moms over the years. A lot of them came back to me and said that it was a great strategy to use in those first few months.
If any of you guys have tips on how you survived the newborn period when your baby was waking really, really often – please post them under this video so that Diana and other moms can benefit!
View original video here.