Baby Care

Posts Tagged ‘Baby Sleeping’

Taking great care of your baby can be easy at times and also very tough at times. It’s important to stay level headed and know there will be ups and downs to being a parent. It will never be perfect, so all you can do is try your best and ensure the safety, healthiness, and happiness of your baby and your family.

Here are some baby care tips for a healthy and happy baby.

• Ensure your baby is properly fed. It’s good that your baby feels he/she is eating enough food, milk, or formula so your baby is not fussy through out the day. Overfeeding your baby may cause gas and upset stomachs so getting know your baby’s que’s for when they are full or when they are finished with their bottle will be important to keeping their gas levels down. If you do have a gassy baby, always properly burp your baby and make sure to get a good burp from your baby especially before putting them down to sleep. If not, your baby may be uncomfortably when sleeping and tend to spit up more often.
• Ensure your baby has proper sleep. Sleep training can be one of the toughest moments of your babies first year of life, so prepare for some good nights and some bad ones. When your baby has proper sleep, he will also tend to be less fussy and a more happy baby overall. Try the sleep train methods with letting your baby cry for a little and then stopping in to them know your there. Then, let your baby cry a few more minutes longer and stop back in again. Try to leave your baby in the crib and soothe them there… If your baby can learn to self-soothe in the crib, then the baby won’t really on your to pick them up all the time. Therefore, leaving the baby in the crib and trying to put back to bed there can help your baby. Another good time for nap time is put your baby to nap in the crib as opposed to a bouncer or a pack and play. Getting the baby used to sleeping in the crib will make them more comfortable in the crib. If your baby takes short naps, sometimes let your baby wake up and do their thing in the crib and then see if they put themselves back to sleep on their own before you step back in.
• Ensure there is proper playtime and activity. Keeping your baby stimulated is a very important part to your baby care development. If you let your baby lounge around all day and never take them anywhere, they will tend to get more fussy, but enrolling your baby in classes such as swim classes, music classes, baby gym, and more classes to interact with teachers and other babies will keep your baby stimulated and make them more happy during the day and also make your ques for sleep much more visible. If your baby is overly tired from a swim class, you will definitely know it, but if you are home all day with no activity for the baby, you may mistake a tiredness at home for being hungry.

Good luck and hope these baby care tips will help you maintain a happy and healthy baby!

Nighttime waking is one of the most common dilemmas for new parents. Here are a few simple tips you may want to try to get a bit more uninterrupted sleep:

• Keep to a routine. If your baby wakes up late in the morning to help make up for some of his late nights, begin waking him at an earlier time each day to help encourage him to get the sleep he needs at night — when the rest of the household sleeps.
• Choose a well-lit area for your baby’s naps. This will help encourage shorter naps, which in turn may help your little one sleep better at night.
• Increase daytime feeds. Feeding your baby more often during the day will allow him to meet his nutritional needs at a time more convenient to you.
• Feed your baby in a quiet, darkened room occasionally if your baby is easily distracted during the day.
• If breastfeeding, allow your baby to finish the first breast offered. This will provide him or her with more of your rich hindmilk, which may also help to space out his nighttime feeds.
• Carry your baby — with the aid of a sling or other baby carrier. This will help to keep your baby relaxed, especially during the early evening hours, encouraging an easy transition to sleep.
• Keep the evening calm to avoid over stimulation. If a bath is relaxing for your little one, you can bathe him before bed. If it’s too stimulating, bathe him at another time.
• Feed your baby in a darkened room at night if he or she wakes up hungry. Let him know that night is for sleeping.
• Avoid nighttime diaper changes if at all possible.
• And don’t forget to take care of yourself!

One of the first steps and more important baby care techniques is to devise a sleep routine for your baby. This sleep routine will the way that you get your baby to sleep each night, and also maybe give your family a little peach and quiet, especially if you have more than one child.

After talking to a number of parents, the Ferber sleep method is a good way to get your baby over their troublesome sleep habits. While this method is not for everyone and all parents need to use the sleep routine that works best for them, this Ferber method may help your baby soothe his/her self to sleep.

In a nutshell, the Ferber method states that you should let your baby cry a bit in the Crib on their own. After a few minutes of their crying, you stop by and comfort your baby. Do not pick your baby up out of their crib… Simply try to soothe the baby in the Crib and let them know that you are there. Then, leave the baby to go to sleep again. This next time, wait a few more minutes longer (i.e however much you can stand) and go back in and repeat the process. For the first night, it could take you a numerous amount of entries into the baby’s room. However, after a few nights, your baby should be on their way to sleeping on their own.

With our baby, as opposed to running this sleep routine in a matter of one weekend or a few nights, we practiced a method similar to the Ferber method over a month. We invested in a Summer Video monitor, which is definitely a good investment. We would devise an after feeding routine whereby we soothe our baby with books, light music, sounds, etc. After the baby was finally getting tired, we would put our baby in the crib while the baby was awake and take notice of the babies cues on the video monitor. All in all, he learned to soothe himself to sleep, all the while chewing on his hands. However, that seems to be our baby’s way of soothing himself. I would recommend not using a pacifier so you can teach your baby to soothe and fall asleep without it.

Good luck with getting your baby to sleep on their own and creating a great baby care technique and sleep routine to provide your family with peace in the evening!