While newborns sleep often, they don’t sleep for long stretches of time. In fact, it’s not unusual for babies to wake up every few hours, making it hard for parents to get any sleep themselves. Luckily, sleep training can be helpful in returning shut-eye to your home, but for some parents, their newborns aren’t as cooperative as they’d like. Here are some newborn sleep training tips and tricks that will get you get some sleep in no time.
Don’t change the diaper every time they wake up
Sometimes your child will start crying when they wake up because they are startled. They may not necessarily need to be changed, and having them go through an entire diaper change can make them feel much more alert than they need to be. Instead, find absorbent diapers and only change them when your child has pooped. Doing so will actually go to help the child fall back asleep faster and get you back to bed in no time.
Go skin to skin
Not only will holding your child skin to skin on your chest help you grow and develop a bond with each other, but this method can help an infant feel comfortable and lull them back to sleep. There’s even some science behind how the skin to skin technique can work; your body’s heart rate and body temperature will regulate your child’s breathing into a calm, relaxing state.
Play white noise
Silence can startle a baby, especially if they are a newborn and used to the soft sounds of the womb. To help them feel cozy and comfortable, and to teach them to fall asleep by themselves, a white noise machine can work wonders. There are plenty of white noise machines for babies with different noise and volume settings that allow you to gradually introduce it to nap time. Slowly playing the white noise can help the child get used to the extra noise and feel at ease.
Embrace natural light changes
You don’t want to keep your child’s room dark all the time, as this will make their waking up process much harder and they won’t be able to learn how to differentiate between night and day. While you do want to ensure they can have some peace and quiet while asleep, do not feel that their room has to be completely dark at all hours of the day. It is okay to prop the door or open the windows a few inches to allow some natural light to flow into the room. Doing so can help the baby learn when it is day or night. In turn, their natural instinct will be to fall asleep and stay asleep longer when it is completely dark out.
Use warm linens
It is common for adults to want to fall asleep and stay asleep in a cool environment, but the opposite is true for babies. Because they are used to the warmth of being swaddled in the womb, a baby will go to sleep faster when they are warm. So a few minutes before you set them into bed, place a warm water bottle on the sheets and blankets to make the bed feel toasty. Also consider investing in a baby wipe warmer to make the diaper changes less jarring for their little bodies.
Having a newborn baby is definitely excited, but it can get exhausting, especially if the newborn doesn’t sleep much. However, by practicing these sleep-training tips, you and your baby can enjoy deep, relaxing sleep in no time at all.
