The baby’s physical, mental and emotional development directly depends on healthy sleep. Sleep is one of the most important activities for kids. In the dream, they grow up, strengthen their immunity, their body rests and restores after the daily impressions for the next day.
But very often to get a baby to sleep may be a big problem for many parents.
There can be many reasons for an infant’s sleep disorder: physical discomfort (for example, when the tummy hurts or teeth come out), some crucial moments of baby’s development (when he is about to go or speak), intracranial pressure and so on. Thus, if your baby has difficulty in sleeping, we highly recommend you to visit a pediatrician and a neurologist. If there are no serious reasons for concern, use one of our sleep tips which we are going to discuss below.
How to Help My Baby Sleep
A lot of toddlers wake up during the night even if they don’t want to eat. Because of a lack of sleep parents often feel tired and exhausted. How can I make my baby sleep all night long? This question may be given by a lot of parents who are really at a loss of what to do. To make adults’ life easier, we’ve prepared a list of simple ways how to put a baby to sleep. All of them are really worth attention but keep in mind that all kids are different and individual and not all of these sleep tricks will suit your baby.
Bedtime is a good time to strengthen the emotional side between parents and their child. You may read the book to your kid, sing a lullaby, make some massage or just speak in a quiet and calm voice.
One more thing that is very useful is to give the child a toy “for good dreams”. It can be a small plushy toy like for example a teddy-bear, bunny, kitten, etc. Tell your little one that this toy will give him only good dreams. In such a way he will feel safe and relaxed.
Swinging
One of the most popular ways to put a baby to sleep is to swing him in your arms, sling or crib. This method is perfect especially for newborns because it reminds them of a wonderful time – being in the mother’s tummy. Usually, an infant falls asleep pretty quickly, because a close person is near him, he feels the mother’s heartbeat and warmth. So, the rhythmic motions make a toddler sleep quite fast.
Sometimes it may be difficult to hold an infant in your arms for a while. So for this purpose parents may use a baby’s rocking chair. Being battery-powered it will also swing your kid and completely ease your life.
A joint sleep
It’s very useful to practice with your little one to sleep together. Feeling the familiar smell, the child calmly drifts off, and mom doesn’t need to get up several times to feed her child. Such a calm atmosphere will definitely soothe your baby and makes him take a nap quickly.
The sequence of actions
This is the most effective way to put your baby to sleep, and the key word here is a sequence. Day after day it is necessary to stick to the same actions preceding sleep. For example, it’s important to bathe, feed, and then lay the baby strictly at the same time. The child’s rest is also amenable to schedule. So you can achieve a stable result only by performing all these actions every day, without breaks and weekends.
Follow certain evening things before going to bed so that a child feels calm and knows that it’s time to go to bed for him. Repeat these procedures every night, as babies like predictability. For example, after an evening bathing, read a fairytale to your child or just listen to soothing music together. Avoid active games that only excite the child and make it complicated to fall asleep.
Keep to schedule
One of the reasons why children often cannot fall asleep is the lack of an exact daily schedule. The sequence of actions is essential for a child. There should be a certain time for baby’s sleep. The presence of such a schedule will be also helpful for parents. If they know what time the child usually sleeps, it will be easier for them to plan their daily affairs.
Taking a bath
A warm bath may be a pleasant and useful procedure for many babies before bedtime. To enhance the effect of relaxation and create the appropriate sleeping mood, you may add some herbals to the water like for example chamomile.
Soothing massage
Massage will be a good sequel after a warm bath. The most important thing is the softness of the mother’s or father’s hands. For this purpose grease your hands with baby oil or cream and start massaging your tot’s body.
Avoid baby’s stimulation at night
Minimize conversation and eye contact with your child at night. Let him know that night is time to sleep. Never play with your little one before bedtime. Use dim lighting, or it’s even better to turn off the light completely.
White noise and lullabies
Small children perfectly fall asleep to the monotonous sounds such as the hum of a vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer or a hissing radio, sounds of water and so on. Find the right sound and turn it on every time you put the baby on the bed. But the noise shouldn’t be very loud not to interrupt the baby’s sleep.
Also, lullabies and especially sounds of water have a great sleeping effect on children.
White noise is really effective for baby’s sleep. Nowadays there is a great choice of white noise machines for a toddler. Most of them provide not only white noise but many other different tunes including natural sounds, heartbeat, soothing lullabies, and so on.
Such products soothe infants, provide great comfort and thus help them fall asleep faster and have a tight sleep. So, parents don’t need to shush their tot all the time if they want to put him to sleep. Using such white noise machines absolutely makes parent’s life much easier allowing them to have more rest.
Mobiles
Baby mobile is useful not only for developing the baby’s visual and tactile senses. Also, it’s a good assistant for many parents as it soothes and helps their baby to fall asleep easily. A kid will be happy to watch the spinning toys and pleasant music, and sounds will calm him and make him drift off very quickly.
Night light
Very often toddlers are afraid of falling asleep just because of the darkness in their nursery. For this reason, it’s advisable to install baby night lights. They are quite functional and help to relieve tot’s tension that prevents from relaxing and falling asleep. The soft glow of a night lamp helps to get rid of the baby’s fears, give him warmth and comfort before bedtime creating a comfortable and cozy atmosphere.
Expert Sleep Strategies for Children
It’s really important for parents to learn how to switch on an infant’s calming reflex. So many experts point out 5 ways to imitate the womb experience for kids. They are swaddling, swinging, stomach or side position (the best position to soothe a baby especially if he is crying), shushing or in other words white noise and sucking (breastfeeding, sucking on a pacifier). All these strategies absolutely work together and help your toddler to calm down and have a tight sleep.
However, in the past 30 years in many countries, it has become fashionable not to swaddle children. But it turns out that some babies need a feeling of being swaddled, they feel calmer and much better. Try to wrap your little one but not very tightly. Use this method only for bedtime. If he likes that it will be a signal that you can keep on doing this every time to put your baby to sleep.
- Keep your baby close to your chest if you are a mom. The sound of your heartbeat will calm him. As soon as the baby falls asleep, put him in the crib.
- Make sure that the diapers aren’t tight for the baby.
- Adjust the temperature in the nursery since it doesn’t have to be too high or too low. In this case, we highly recommend you to install an air humidifier that creates optimal breathing conditions, allowing the child to sleep peacefully.
- The baby’s sleepwear has to be comfortable and a bit loose.
- Check if your kid has colicky pain. Take necessary measures if he suffers from that.
- If your child is very playful and active, play with him until he gets tired and wants to sleep.
- Remember that baby’s safety is the most thing. Toddlers should lie on their backs, bed linen should be made well. There don’t have to be scattered toys in the crib.
Conclusion
Good sleep is necessary for the baby’s physical, mental and psychological development. But we often observe cases when parents can’t put their child to sleep. To help with that, we’ve reviewed a great variety of baby sleep solutions. But not all of them will be suitable for your little one. Be very attentive, patient and always focus on the needs of your own children. We hope that our article will be useful to many parents who want their baby to sleep all night long.
