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Probably like most parents, my wife and I started asking the “sleep question” during the very first week after our daughter was born. You know the one…”When will she start sleeping through the night?”
Well after 6 weeks, she's still not sleeping through the night. But she is sleeping about 5 hours without waking, which is apparently pretty good according to most of our friends who are veteran parents.
Here are some things we've done to get her to sleep longer at night without waking. Then again, maybe we're lucky and she's just a good sleeper. But if you're tired and frustrated because your baby isn't sleeping at night, it won't hurt to give these suggestions a try.
First of all, studies have shown that infants (up to 8 weeks of life) will sleep randomly 16-20 hours during a 24 hour period. So it may take a few weeks for your baby to start sleeping for significant chunks of time at night. The problem is that babies don't know the difference between night and day. After all, they've been living inside the mother's womb for most of their little lives. So we have to teach them the difference.
One thing we do is to keep her environment brighter during the day and darker at night. Most first-time parents probably assume that the baby's room needs to be dark whenever she sleeps, even daytime naps. But if you're trying to teach her the difference between night and day, this just won't do.
Similarly, we try to allow a fair amount of noise during the day but keep the noise level down at night. For instance, my wife will run the vacuum or watch TV during the day when the baby is napping. But at night, we keep it quiet in her room except for some low baby music. Basically, just keep the stimulation level down at night.
Another thing we do is to feed her a substantial amount of formula at night for her last feeding. She is still on breast milk, but we make an exception for the last feeding. Formula takes longer to digest than breast milk, so she won't be waking up in the middle of the night due to hunger.
Lastly, we've realized that she'll learn to sleep on her own only if we let her learn. What do I mean by this? Well, initially I used to hold her and rock her to sleep. Then I would put her down…hoping she wouldn't wake up in the process. But what this teaches her is to fall asleep ONLY if she is held and rocked. That is not good…especially if she wakes up in the middle of the night. She needs to learn to self-soothe. So what we now do is to hold her and rock her only til she is calm enough to be put down in her crib, but not already asleep. Then I leave the room while she is still awake. This is important, because then she will learn to sleep on her own. This may take a few nights of work because at first your baby will cry and you will have to pick her up. But she'll eventually cry less and less until she learns to sleep on her own.
If you have other ideas on how to teach your baby to sleep through the night, please share them in the Comments.