Getting Your Infant To Sleep Through The Night

Newborn babies usually sleep about 16-17 hours in a 24-hour period. So why is it that you are having trouble getting your infant to sleep through the night? Well first of all, most babies will not sleep through the night until they’re at least 3 months old. There are several reasons for this. First of all, baby’s stomachs are very small and they’ll get hungry very quickly, especially if you’re breastfeeding. Breast milk is easier to digest than formula milk, so your baby will need to feed more often, especially at the start when you are setting up your feeding routine.

Babies also have far shorter sleep cycles than adults, and also have shorter dream cycles. In general, though, a newborn baby should sleep about 8 or nine hours during the day and 8 hours or so at night. These won’t be in 8-hour cycles, of course. In the beginning, those sleep times will be very short.

As the baby grows older, and reaches about 2 years old, she’ll still be sleeping 13-14 hours, but the amount of daytime naps she takes will reduce month-by-month. By age 2, your baby should be sleeping through the night with a 2-hour nap during the day. Again, this will vary by child. Your baby might need a slightly longer nap or two short naps. At this age though, try to discourage naps too late in the afternoon, as this can make it harder to get them to sleep a few hours later at bedtime.

Once you are getting your infant to sleep through the night, parents can become worried when she begins to awaken in the night again. This usually happens at about 6 months of age and is often considered to be a normal part of development called separation anxiety, when a baby does not understand that separations are only temporary. If night time waking seems to be happening more frequently, or the waking episodes are lasting longer each time, this can become habit-forming behavior. To remedy this, you can teach yourself baby sleep techniques that you can use to help baby sleep at night once again.

If you try a new bedtime routine, but still find your baby is having trouble sleeping through the night, then it's time to teach yourself baby sleep techniques that you can use on your baby.
I have tried these techniques out on my son, and found them to be very effective indeed. Infact I worked out that I had not had a complete nights sleep in over 6 months before trying these baby sleep techniques out, so when they started to work I was overjoyed!

By: Sophie Bright

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If you find your baby still wakes at night, teach yourself baby sleep techniques that worked for me on my son. Click Here! Or read more of my tips here: Sleep Routines For Babies Wishing you a good night's sleep, Sophie x