How to improve your baby's sleep?

New parents often unknowingly make several mistakes that unnecessarily complicate the process of helping their newborn fall asleep and stay asleep. These mistakes are often the result of following advice from their own parents or friends, which is rooted in myths or outdated beliefs. However, once parents become aware of these mistakes and refrain from making them, they will notice a significant improvement in their baby's sleep almost immediately.

After only a brief period of wakefulness, newborns exhibit signs of fatigue. These signs can be categorized as early or late indicators of tiredness. The tired signs primarily involve a loss of interest in both caregivers and toys, resulting in the baby gazing into the distance. Additionally, their body movements may become jerky or they may become still and quiet. They may also become fussy, yawn, rub their eyes, and potentially pull at their ears or face. Recognizing these unique tired signs in your baby is crucial, as promptly putting them to bed is essential to prevent an overtired baby at all costs.

Missing the signs of fatigue in your baby can lead to them becoming overtired. This, in turn, can result in hours of dealing with a crying and fussy baby who is resistant to falling asleep. When a baby enters the state of being overtired, their body releases stimulating hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which are typically associated with the fight or flight response. Consequently, an overtired baby becomes stressed and finds it challenging to settle down and fall asleep. Furthermore, they are more likely to wake up frequently during their sleep compared to if they were put to bed at the first signs of tiredness. Therefore, it is crucial to be observant of early signs of fatigue and promptly prepare and put your baby to bed when you notice them.

New parents often lack awareness about the appropriate duration of wakefulness for their baby, in addition to overlooking signs of tiredness. Consequently, they tend to keep their baby awake for excessively long periods, resulting in an overtired and highly irritable infant. This, in turn, makes it challenging for parents to soothe and successfully put the baby to sleep, as well as maintain uninterrupted sleep.

Now, if your baby has had a very long nap, so a few hours, they might be able to stay awake for 120 minutes. But if they've only had a short nap, so like 30, 40 minutes, then they will need to go back to sleep again after being awake for 45 minutes. Now, because we know that babies under four months of age need to sleep anywhere from 45 to 120 minutes, you can start to look out for what your baby's tired signs are around this point. And as soon as you see them, you start to put them to bed.

Parents are often told that limiting the number of daytime naps their baby has will help them sleep better at night. However, this isn't true for babies under four months old at all. By limiting their daytime naps, parents are leading to an overtired baby who is going to find it really difficult fall asleep at night and wake up more during the night. Babies under four months of age will nap on demand and may nap up to five times per day. There is no such thing as a nap/sleep schedule, but just let your baby rest as they need in the day, since that will make nighttime sleeps a lot easier.

Fourth mistake a new parents are making is they make the bedroom or the sleeping environment too distracting. They want it to be welcoming for the baby and baby can become overstimulated because of it. So it's not surprising that the baby mobiles, wall arts, the nightlights and music that's playing in the room can actually distract your baby and stop them from falling asleep. Keep the room where your baby is sleeping dark enough which will make them fell back asleep if waking up between the sleep cycles. The room needs to be quiet as well but you definitely shouldn't stay super quiet the whole time your baby is sleeping. You can use a white noise machine which will blocks out all the noise that might distract your baby from sleeping and you will be able to normally talk, watch TV, cook, etc.

And the last common sleep mistake I see is parents trying to encourage their baby to have an early bedtime. Actually, babies younger than a three months of age have a late bedtime (around 10pm-11pm). It will start to form after your baby is over 4 months old.