The first
thing to understand is that from an infant’s point
of view everything is new. The world is an abundance sometimes
over-abundance of stimulation. By the end of the day,
your baby is exhausted by all he has seen and experienced.
Tiredness as a sensation, even for adults is not a pleasant
experience. For a baby who doesn’t understand the
feeling it’s even worse. Add to that the fact that
you, the primary caregiver have spent all day catering
to his every need, playing with him and showering him
with affection. Now you are all of a sudden laying him
down and abandoning him in a dark room. Is it any wonder
your baby cries?
So what are some of the things you can do to help your
baby get his ‘zzz’s’ and in turn help
yourself get them too? Well, the first thing to remember
is that you are not alone! Every mother since the beginning
of time has had to deal with the trial of getting their
baby to sleep. There are as many different methods as
there are mothers, not to mention that what works for
one child, may not work for another, even in the same
family.
Jessica Torres, a 28 year old home daycare provider
from Welland, Ontario encountered this difference between
her two children. “My oldest Elaina (now 5) was
a great sleeper from the age of 6 weeks to about 9 months,
then she went through separation anxiety where for a
month she had to be able to see you to fall asleep,
even if she woke in the night you would need to go into
her room and stand there at her crib until she fell
asleep. She got over that and became a good sleeper,
but still wanted someone to sit with her while she fell
asleep. My youngest Jade (now 3), was a terrible sleeper,
she did not sleep through the night until she was almost
3. She would wake 3-4 times/night, and absolutely refused
to sleep in her crib!”
For Denise DiBuo, a 26 year old home maker from Toronto,
there was a need for reinforcements. Daddy had to take
over sleep time duty for their son. “With my son,
he had to have daddy put him to bed at night. I think
it was because he knew with me being home with him all
day, we play too much and daddy had to be the firm one.”
It’s a simple fact that your baby’s feeding
habits will be a major factor in dictating not only
his sleeping patters but yours as well. Getting up every
two hours isn’t anymore fun for him than it is
for you, and he has the added discomfort of hunger to
make him wake up. You will more than likely be as irritable
as he will, especially since you know that once your
baby is fed, you have the added stress of getting him
back to sleep.
There are two schools of thought on the ‘bed
sharing’ method. Some swear by it while others
discover it leads to more problems for them because
the child becomes too attached and the habit of having
the parent there becomes too ingrained. There’s
no way of knowing which way your baby will deal with
first ‘bed sharing’ and then the attempt
to wean them off needing your presence. For Sonia Marques,
a 26 year old Administrative Coordinator from Milton
Ontario, sharing her little girl’s bed became
a necessity to maintain the tactile motherly sensation
her child seemed to need to be comfortable enough to
drift off. “When she was still an infant she had
to be rocked to sleep. As she got older, she would lie
in her crib and fall asleep holding my hand. I had to
stay with her until she fell asleep. Now, she's nearly
two and she still needs me to be with her as she falls
asleep. She has a double bed now so she asks me to lay
down with her until she falls asleep.”
The most helpful thing you can do for your baby is
to not only remain calm and try your best to remain
soothing, understandably more difficult at three in
the morning than it is at seven at night, but a consistent
ritual is imperative as well. Keep bed times to the
same hour as often as possible, remove anything too
stimulating such as excessive noise or television, and
dim the lights. You can keep the hall light on to give
you some illumination in your baby’s dark nursery
until you can leave the room. A warm bath, favorite
toy, or even a favorite song,(the baby won’t care
if you can’t carry a tune) has been known to help
babies sleep.
Sometimes, just letting the baby cry himself to sleep
does the trick. For Alison Brown, a 26 year old court
reporter from Fayette, Missouri, this technique seemed
to work for her baby boy. “He had been sleeping
through the night, then all of the sudden, at about
7 months, he started waking up and thinking he had to
eat. So I decided to put him in his own room at that
point. He would wake up, but I knew he was okay, so
I let him cry for about five minutes the first couple
of nights, and he would put himself back to sleep and
slept through the night perfectly after that.”
While the sheer volume of advice out there on getting
your baby to sleep can seem as overwhelming as the stress
of dealing with the crying baby to begin with, it also
offers hope that what may not work for one baby, just
may work for yours. Your baby will let you know which
techniques work and which ones don’t.
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