An Easy Step-by-Step Approach for Getting Baby to Sleep Through the Night

Observing baby's sleeping patterns through the day and evening will help you identify what their tired cues are and when they are ready for sleep. Knowing your child's tired signals is important. To be successful in getting your little one to sleep through the night, you will want to get them to bed before they begin to display the sleepy cues, but more on that a little later.

Identifying baby's sleeping habits will also help clue you in to if they are sleeping too much or too little during the day. Either extreme will cause baby to have an interrupted night's sleep; as will keeping baby up late into the night. The natural thought is that this will help baby sleep through the night and into the late hours of the morning, but it actually creates the opposite effect in little ones. Late to bed means EARLY to rise, and more than likely that early to rise could be 2, 3, or 4 in the morning!

A general guide for babies and naps is as follows:

3-5 months 2-3 naps totaling about 5 hours

6-12 months 1-2 naps totaling somewhere between 1.5 to 3 hours

This helps baby get ready for bed on so many levels. First of all, it allows the little one a chance to unwind from the previous activity and get some one-on-one downtime time with their favorite person, you! The ultimate goal of a bedtime routine is to relax baby, not to put them to sleep!

Here are some ideas on what a bedtime routine could consist of:

Eat dinner, take a bath, go to bed

Take a bath, read a book, go to bed

Rock while reading a book, sing a song, go to bed

Read a book, do some baby massage, go to bed

The routine can really be anything you want it to be. As long as it's consistent and low key, you really can't go wrong.

Here's an interesting fact on how our bodies and minds respond to consistent routines...

On a physiological level, an established routine can help the body itself realize what is to come next. Science has proven this theory. Let's look at this example:

If someone were to receive a massage on the same day of the week at the same time of day, they would begin to establish a physiological response within their body. Say the massage was for every Tues morning at 9. Well, Mon night the body begins to anticipate the massage and starts to go into its relaxation response in anticipation of the massage the next morning!

Same goes for baby and sleeping through the night. If the little one's body begins to anticipate that sleep is the next step in your routine's sequence, it will begin to go into that response without you having to do anything but follow the steps of your routine!

Consistency is key here. If you skip one or two nights, the baby's body will take longer in learning the routine.

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Here are some things to consider using that can help ease the transition in getting baby to sleep through the night.

Music

Language of the Gods. Music can calm the most savage of beasts and proves to work well for cranky babies too! Not only will soothing music help your little one drift to the land of nod, but it will also help build some serious brain power! They may not turn into baby geniuses overnight, but it is proven that music can stimulate a child's development. Music composed by Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky are all very popular choices.

Aromatherapy

Our sense of smell is directly linked to the memory receptors in our brains. By adding a soothing blend of aromatherapy oils to baby's bedtime routine, whether it be in baby's nighttime bath or a simple mist that is sprayed in the room, you will be activating babies memory of sleep. Be sure to choose all natural or organic oils that contain no fillers or synthetic perfumes. Lavender and Chamomile are popular choices for use with babies. I would not recommend applying the oils directly to baby's skin until they are at least 1 year or older.

Mobiles and Other Visual Aids

Having a visual toy safely secured to the side of baby's crib can add a nice calming element. These crib companions have many sleep inducing features such as slowly moving parts, rhythmic vibrations, gentle music and hypnotic glowing lights. All designed with baby's development and well-being in mind.

Mobiles hanging from above the crib are a nice option as well. The gentle, rhythmic swaying motion of these types of mobiles can help baby's body become relaxed and help them drift off to sleep.

A nightlight is also a helpful tool to have for baby. Some can be frightened when they wake up in a totally darkened room. Having a nightlight helps baby see that they are in their room surrounded by familiar toys, stuffed animals and furniture.

Noises and the Sleeping Baby

Some people keep their household as quiet as a Buddhist monastery during baby's nap and bedtimes, which if that works for you, then so be it. However, you may want to rethink this strategy. A neighbor's barking dog or any other ambient nighttime noise can easily wake up a baby that is accustomed to sleeping in a silent environment. To help break this habit, allow noises to be a part of baby's daytime naps. While they're asleep, do that vacuuming that needs to be done, leave the phone on the hook and let it ring, turn the radio or TV on etc.

This will help baby get used to sleeping through various noises and will translate to the evening hours as well.

If you find that baby is particularly sensitive to ambient noise, try running a fan in their room to provide some white noise. This works beautifully with many sound sensitive babies.

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Here is the step-by-step approach for getting baby to sleep through the night. These steps are simple, easy to understand, but most importantly effective!

Step 1 Recognize baby's sleep cues and catch them before baby becomes overly tired. Ideally when you begin the process baby will be alert, happy and just beginning to show signs of tiredness.

Step 2 Implement your bedtime routine. Again, simple is best.

Step 3 Once the routine has been followed through to completion, place baby in bed while they are relaxed yet awake. Make your goodnights sweet and short, don't linger as baby will pick up on your hesitation and begin to feel themselves unsure of what's going on.

Now, the next step is going to take confidence and strength on your part. Your baby will cry. Please know that a few minutes of crying, no matter how intense they may sound, will not hurt your baby on any level. If the crying goes on for more than 30 minutes, you may want to get baby up to see if there is a diaper issue or some other discomfort.

Step 4 Allow baby to cry for 5 minutes or so before going in to comfort them, but do not pick them up! Let them know you are still close by, but that it's time to go to sleep.

Stay in their room no more than a minute or so. If baby continues to cry after this comfort visit, which they most likely will do, wait 10 minutes this time before going in. Repeat the comforting process, again not picking baby up. Allow the time between your comfort visits to increase by 5 minute increments.

This step-by-step approach had both my babies sleeping through the night within 2 evenings! Imagine, in just a couple of night's time you yourself could be sleeping through the night!

Know When to be Flexible

There will be things in life that will put a hiccup into baby's nighttime routine, and may potentially cause them to begin waking up in the middle of the night again.

Such instances may be if baby is sick, teething, going through a growth spurt and therefore eating more, or out of town family visiting and keeping baby up past bedtime.

It's ok to be flexible when certain circumstances call for it. If you find that baby begins to wake up in the middle of the night because of these events, wait until life resumes some normalcy and start the steps over again. Baby will respond much quicker the second time around and may even be on track after just one night.

For another step-by-step approach for getting baby to sleep through the night, as well as solutions to other sleep related issues for every stage of your child's development, visit Sleepytime Secrets

Goodnight and sleep tight!