It’s important to know that your baby will to some extent determine their own way of sleeping. There are numerous baby sleep patterns that have been outlined over the years. You will simply have to try some existing patterns and adapt them to the routine your child wants to make. Let’s look at how much sleep a baby needs and when they like to sleep.
Sleep Please!
Even if you think you’ve mastered sleeping for a newborn, by the time they reach 6 months many of them will begin to have problems sleeping. Research has shown that just over 20% of 9 month old babies find it hard to settle into a sleep pattern and just over 40% will wake up many times in the night.
A newborn child can sleep a lot! Newborns can put away as much as 16 hours of sleep in a day, most often this could be the 16 hours you are awake and hence why your own sleep becomes disturbed. At times like this you simply need to learn to sleep at the same time as your child does and “go with the flow”. They will often sleep in stretches of 3 to 4 hours and wake when hungry or their diaper is full.
Other baby sleep patterns will soon start to emerge within the first few months of their life. Therefore it is essential that you start to develop routines from an early age. This would be something whereby the baby is bathed, fed and then put to sleep around the same time each day. They soon get to know that bath then a feed means that the next stage is to go to sleep.
Once you begin to establish a routine with sleeping then just be aware if this sleep pattern changes. If they begin waking again it could be for a variety of reasons (for example an ear infection). As parents we are expected to know everything and be psychic!
We cannot possible know everything all the time so this is why we try to set out some baby sleep patterns from an early age then we can monitor the sleep that a baby has and see when something deviates from this routine.
If your baby is having trouble getting into a regular sleeping pattern then you need to recognize the signs and ensure that the bedroom is the right environment. This means dark and quiet and at the right temperatu
The baby sleep patterns that you face with your baby can be adapted to fit in with your life, over time, but just remember nothing is perfect and things do change. Look for the signs of them being sleepy. This can be when they are yawning, rubbing their eyes, fussing and looking away. The main thing to remember is that you can change their bedtime routines but it can take some time.
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