Many parents are worried about their baby’s sleep even before their child is born, and with good reason. It’s tiring having a new baby, but having the best routine for your newborn is VERY HELPFUL. I don’t recommend sleep training until your baby is between 4-6 months of age (although “Le pause” sleep training can be helpful after about two months of age). However, I do have ten rules that will help you set up the best sleep practices for your newborn. Think of these as a roadmap to successful sleep and avoiding common sleep pitfalls.
- The Best Time to Start a Bedtime Routine Is When You Bring Your Child Home from the Hospital The second-best time is today. Children thrive on routine, as do parents. Newborns benefit as well, although the advantages are more for you in the first few weeks. Things feel chaotic when you bring your child home from the hospital, and a predictable bedtime routine helps anchor your day. But right now, I would suggest keeping it simple, as I’ll explain shortly.
- If You Breast-feed, Teach Your Child to Take a Bottle Once Nursing Is Established Like most pediatricians, I’m a huge fan of breast-feeding. There are too many benefits for mother and child to list here. However, I’ve seen many families fall into the trap of Mom nursing exclusively for the first few months, with the result that the child refuses anything but the breast. This makes it difficult for the whole family, as other adults are sidelined and Mom is stuck putting the baby down every night and dealing with every nighttime feeding. It can also greatly complicate Mom’s return to work outside the home, if that is her plan. Once your milk supply is established, introduce a bottle, ideally given by your child’s other parent, or by another adult caregiver. The best time for this is likely around four to six weeks of age, when your milk supply is fully established. Likewise, don’t be shy about using a pacifier, even on day one. Despite claims to the contrary, they do not cause “nipple confusion” and keep babies from nursing. But they do help babies self-soothe and may reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.
- Make Sure That Bedtime Is Simple Enough That One Grown-up Can Do It When my first son came home from the hospital, my wife and I did bedtime every night together—which was lovely, but it was pretty elaborate in terms of the bath, lotion application, song, story, rocking, and nursing. My second son did not have such an elaborate process, because we had son #1 to deal with as well, and it still worked fine. Babies don’t need complex bedtimes. If bathtime feels overwhelming, do it at another time. Keep it simple: story, song, rocking, and put your baby down.
- Make Sure That All the Adults in the Household Participate in Bedtime I’ve heard the same story from tired parents (often the nursing mother), over and over: “My husband [or wife] can’t put him down at night! Only I can do it.” Like when only the mother can feed the baby, this is a recipe for maternal burnout. Every parent or other caregiver should feel comfortable doing the bedtime routine and putting the child down at an early age. If you as the primary caregiver already feel stuck in this situation, you need to go out with friends for the evening. I promise you that Dad will figure it out. And don’t be afraid to get a babysitter. Obviously, you will be nervous. If you can, start with a grandparent the first few times you go out.
- Put Your Child to Bed Drowsy but Awake, Starting Around Three to Four Months Try it out, both at bedtime and for naps. If it is a disaster the first time, pick your child up and try again in a week or two. Don’t be afraid to let your child fuss a bit; this is natural. Hysterical screaming is another story at this age, however—this means that your child probably still needs you to help her fall asleep. You can try again in a week or so.
- Don’t Sprint into Your Child’s Room at Night at the First Sound of Wakefulness I remember hustling into my son’s room at the slightest sound so that I could stuff the binky in his mouth and perhaps get back to sleep quickly. This led to him waking up more and more for the contact with me. Channel the French parent and remember that the random cry, burp, fart, or snort does not demand immediate attention. After the first few months, it’s a great idea to let your child fuss a bit before you go in. Often these brief awakenings will self-resolve.
- Don’t Obsess over the Monitor I can’t believe the amount of technology being hawked to anxious parents these days. Babies’ bedrooms are monitored to a degree that would astound a Cold War spymaster—temperature, movement, sound, ambient light levels, heart rate, and so on. I think that the majority of this technology is cumbersome, expensive, and unnecessary. Human infants have thrived for thousands of years without video monitors. Sure, you should be able to hear your child if she is distressed, but you don’t need multi-sensor surveillance for this. Save the money and get an audio monitor.
- Talk with Your Pediatrician About the Need for Room Sharing in the first six months It’s pretty clear that room sharing reduces the risk of SIDS in newborns and young infants, but there is some evidence that if parents are particularly sleep deprived, they may end up in unsafe situations with their baby (like falling asleep on a couch or chair holding their infant). So if you are really struggling, talk about strategies with your pediatrician and perhaps consider transitioning your baby out of your room before six months of age.
- Sleep in Motion in the First Few Months Is OK, but After That, Be at Home We loved our son’s swing when he was a newborn because it would help him settle. Nowadays a lot of families are using the SNOO to put their baby to sleep at night. A friend of mine used to drive to Starbucks to get her son to nap, and would drive around for hours to get him to stay asleep. In the first 3-4 months, I think this is fine for nap time. Any longer, however, and your child will start to develop a habit that will be hard to break. Of course, anyplace you have your child sleeping needs to be safe.
- Naps Are Hard—but a Few Techniques Can Help There’s not as much research about addressing nap issues as there is about improving nighttime sleep. Naps are challenging especially in the first few months. If you fix nighttime sleep, however, the naps tend to get better. Here are a few principles for dealing with naps:
- Keep the nap prep short and sweet. Your nap time ritual should be a scaled-down version of your bedtime routine. So if bedtime takes thirty minutes, fifteen to twenty minutes is as long as the nap time ritual should be.
- Play with the timing. After six months of age, try two to three hours after waking for nap #1, around midday for nap #2, and possibly a short nap around 3:00–4:00 p.m. If your child does not fall asleep after thirty minutes, get her up and wait until the next nap period to try again.
- Avoid too much napping in the late afternoon. For older children, don’t let your child nap past 4:00 p.m. unless he can still fall asleep at his regular bedtime and sleep through the night.
- Respect the nap. Before I had children, I always wondered why my friends were so strict about the timing and duration of their children’s naps. But then I had kids—and the cost of skipping naps became clear. My son would be miserable, and so would the rest of us. It won’t surprise you that we quickly learned to maintain our nap times and bedtimes with an almost religious zeal.
Find this useful? It’s from Chapter 1 of my book It’s Never Too Late to Sleep Train: The Low Stress Way to High Quality Sleep for Babies, Kid, and Parents.
