Baby Sleep Tips - Create A Familiar Environment
All newborns are, of course, different. Some sleep better than
others at a young age, which prompts many parents to trade
stories of how "lucky" or "unlucky" they were with a given
child. There is, no doubt, a certain amount of mystery to
getting a child to sleep well and through the night on his own.
Nevertheless, a plethora of baby sleep tips exist intended to
speed up the process which your child goes through before
sleeping on his own.
Getting your child to sleep on his own in a timely fashion
involves speeding up a natural transition: the one from sleeping
with his mother to sleeping on his own. At first, when your baby
wakes up in the middle of the night, he will cry for his mother,
as this is the only way he knows how to fall asleep. One of the
things you must do as a parent is help create the best
environment for your baby to fall asleep on his own.
Many people naturally assume that the best environment for sleep
is one of total silence: most of us are familiar with having to
tiptoe around a sleeping baby's room. Although a quiet
environment is the best one for most adults, you'd be well
advised to remember where your newborn baby has been sleeping
for the past nine months: in his mother's womb. In the womb, of
course, your newborn slept in many situations that were far from
quiet - when the mother was out in public, or socializing with
other people. For this reason a newborn baby will often sleep
better by being exposed to some quiet background noise.
You should be trying to allow some ambient "white noise" to be
around your baby when he goes to sleep. Sudden loud noises will,
of course, rouse him, but in most cases some background chatter
and other soothing noises will help the sleep process: most
adults, I'm sure, can likely remember falling asleep to the
sounds of their parents and their friends having a conversation.
There are products marketed to new parents to create these
ambient noises - most notably audio CDs containing tracks of
soothing noise. It usually isn't necessary to buy these, however
- in most cases simply leaving the door to the baby's nursery
ajar will do the trick. In a similar vein, if your baby falls
asleep around company, allow him to stay there rather than
moving him to a quiet room.
By helping to create the best possible environment for your
baby's sleep, you help him learn to fall asleep in his own.
Often a humming noise can help - we all know how easy it can be
to fall asleep in a moving car - so having a humidifier or fan
in the baby's room can often do wonders.
Whatever solution you choose, remember that it needn't be overly
complicated. Simply leave the door ajar, or let your baby sleep
in the company of others. Contrary to what many people
intuitively think, if you keep your baby from sleeping in total
silence, he'll often sleep much better.