If you want your infant to sleep at night, you need to teach him how. This article will show you the mistakes that parents make and how to solve them. With a bit of effort, you can teach your child to recognize the difference between day and night. Once your child knows the difference you and your baby are on your way to a good night’s sleep.
Introduction
It happens to almost every new parent. After bring your child home from the hospital, you are treated to three or four consecutive days of paradise. Your new baby sleeps all the time. He or she seems so easy to care for. You are tempted to brag to your friends and family about what a good little sleeper you have. Then it happens. Shaking off the post-natal rust, your child realizes that she has needs, and the vocal cords necessary to let you know about them. From then on, your child seems to be up all night long. Every few minutes, it seems, you are in the baby’s room changing a diaper, preparing a meal or replacing a favorite nook. Yet during the day, when you would like your new arrival to be up and alert, he is sleeping like a log. Though there are good nights and bad nights, you suffer through sleep depravation through much of the first year, maybe longer. Little did you know that, with the exception of the first few months, it is often possible to convince your baby to sleep through the night. Fortunately, after reading this article, you will know how to make sleepless nights for you and your loved ones a thing of the past.
Reality Check
It is important to realize that your infant son or daughter is not going to sleep through the night right away. With a stomach less than the size of a fist, it does not take long for a previous feeding to fade into memory (or for a small bladder to reach capacity for that matter). When you first bring your baby home, she is probably consuming somewhere around two ounces of breast milk or formula per feeding. If you are using bottles at this time, your will notice that you are going through quite a few of them per day. The first few months, however, are a time of tremendous growth for your new baby. Though you can’t see it, his little stomach is growing as fast as his cute little toes. That is good news, since your child should begin drinking more fluid while requiring fewer feedings. Once your baby starts drinking about four ounces at a feeding, there is no reason why you can’t enjoy some serious snooze time at night. Granted, the coveted eight hours of sleep will have to wait a bit. However, stomach and bladder capacity are the building blocks of a good night sleep. The trick is to capitalize on them.