Whether you are just going through a typical week or on vacation, it is always a blessing when your baby sleeps through the night.
Sometimes, your baby just cannot seem to sleep till late into the night, and this experience can be taxing on the tired parents.
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Here are some ideas that may mean your child sleeps for longer.
Have a Baby Capsule Ready
If you are going on a long journey, it would be wise to hire a baby capsule for the duration of your holiday, if you do not already have one. Your child might be active during the day, but as night falls, your child is likely to fall asleep in the car.
A baby capsule would enable you to transfer your sleeping child from the car to the bedroom after the long journey, so you only have to disturb them briefly to put them into their cot.
Hopefully, this can be done seamlessly with the least amount of disturbance to your sleeping child.
Let Your Child Fall Asleep
Rocking your child to sleep in their first few weeks would help to strengthen the mother-child bond, but you can start to cease this activity once your baby hits six-week-old.
Around this time, your baby’s circadian rhythm would have started to develop rather well. If you have the habit of rocking or feeding your child to sleep past this age, your child might begin depending on it to fall asleep rather than falling asleep on their own.
Try placing your child in the crib once they start showing signs that they are drowsy. This will give them a chance to learn to fall asleep on their own.
Maintain a Calm Ambience in the Room
A child or adult would fall asleep and stay asleep for longer when the room is comfortable and snug enough.
Babies often stay asleep longer when the room is fresh rather than warm. Your child can also learn to associate the dark surroundings in the place with sleep time.
Try to make it a habit to check the room’s temperature and brightness before you start setting your child to sleep.
It would also help to start speaking softly once you enter the room with your child. Keeping a low volume always contributes to a calming ambience.
Keep Some White Noise Playing
If your baby is sensitive to sound, try playing some white noise in the background to get them used to the sounds.
Many mobile apps provide a white noise ambience that you can keep looping through the night. You can choose one to play at a soft volume to provide a consistent and soothing sound for your child.
This white noise, while soft, can help to drown out other noises in the household. With any luck, your child might not wake up quickly to the smallest sound anymore.
Distinguish Daytime & Nighttime Activities
If your child is just several weeks old, you still need to help them to develop their sleep-wake cycle. Since babies are not born knowing the difference between daytime and nighttime, it will take some time before they understand that night time is for sleeping.
Keep daytime lively and bustling with activities for your child, and start to tone down as evening approaches. You can begin to keep things quieter and calmer as night approaches and bring your child to the bedroom at a fixed time each night.
Create a Short Bedtime Routine
Bringing your child to the bedroom can just be one of the steps in your bedtime routine. Try creating several other activities to fit into your routine.
These activities can include changing your child into a comfortable set of pajamas, singing a bedtime song and more.
The trick is to let your child associate certain activities with sleeping time. Once you have established the routine, your child will understand that it is time for them to go to sleep for the night.
Even if they do wake up in the middle of the night, the same calming ambiance surrounding your kids will make them realize that it is not the daytime yet. They might just continue sleeping.
Be Patient
Maybe your child has always had no problems sleeping through the night, and suddenly, they start waking up in the middle of the night for no reason at all.
If that is the case, there is no need to worry at all. Your child may just be going through a growth spurt, and this small growth stage usually lasts for only several days. Try to remember that this is just a temporary phase.
