How To Create A Baby’s Sleep Routine
The baby’s first months of life are often difficult for parents to rest. An excellent solution to help form your circadian cycle is to establish a routine for your baby to sleep. But how to do this?
In the first 4 to 5 months of life, a baby can sleep between 16 and 20 hours a day. He will not go to sleep continuously, he will sometimes wake up to feed and feel the necessary contact with his mother.
As the months go by, the number of hours he will need to sleep will decrease . At 9 months you will sleep approximately 14 hours a day.
To make this time fit with the rest of the family, we can prepare routines that get babies used to this rhythm.
In other words, predictability and repetition will give your body the stability it needs to develop in a healthy way.
Benefits of bedtime routines
The main reason we should consider creating a baby’s bedtime routine is to get him used to the pace of life of the people in the household.
This entails sleeping at night and occasionally taking naps during the day. In the case of the baby, of course, this latter behavior will be unavoidable.
Stability makes the baby feel safer and more loved. As he doesn’t control space or time yet, having habits tells him that everything is going well and that his mother is there to protect him.
Also, this will facilitate the inclusion of other activities in this scheme. For example, if the baby knows that, right after eating at night, he must go to bed, as a child he can add the habit of brushing his teeth before going to bed.
How to establish a routine for the baby to sleep?
This is not an easy task, but with patience and serenity, it will be perfectly possible to do it. The time to start entering these routines is between the sixth and eighth week of life. From then on, your little one will feel more relaxed if he is helped to carry out a predictable pace of activity.
Advice to consider for creating a routine
- Let him drain his energy through play, walks around the house, or dancing, so it’s easier to fall asleep later.
- Progressively advance from hectic activities to calmer ones.
- Bathing is an essential tool to help form a baby’s bedtime routine. Its warm temperature is very relaxing and the feeling of going to bed clean will be extremely welcoming.
- Generate a positive association. This means that going to sleep should be an activity of pleasure and not a reason for crying, screaming and kicking.
- Talk to the baby before bed. Like children’s stories, the time before bedtime is an exceptional time to talk calmly to your baby. Nothing better than feeling the company of your parents before going to bed.
Sample routine for the baby to sleep
- Play with him or put him to play and make him release as much tension as possible at that point.
- Then give him a hot bath. If this step makes your child too restless or he just doesn’t like the shower, it’s a good idea to leave it for afternoon hours.
- Feed him.
- Take him to his room. If possible, the room should be completely silent and the lights as dim as possible to keep your stimulation levels to a minimum.
- Whisper in her ear, tell a bedtime story or sing a lullaby.
- You can rock him to sleep if you don’t already do it directly in the crib.
While this isn’t the ultimate solution, it’s an excellent way to start fixing babies’ schedules. It may not work fully on the first try and it may take a while, but you will find that in the long run it will be worth it.
There are also other issues you should consider, such as your sleeping position, environmental factors (light, temperature, bed comfort, etc.) as well as other methods to help you fall asleep. Remember that it is critical that babies develop healthy habits.
Furthermore, when it comes to customs favorable to health, no age is too early to start including them. With patience and perseverance, you will make it!
