Baby Care

Posts Tagged ‘sleep’

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!

One of the most important baby care items you have to keep an eye out for is SIDS. SIDS stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and is causing by accidental loss of oxygen and suffocation while the baby sleeps at night. Many of the SIDS cases happen for babies between the ages of 2-6 months and babies that are on their stomach. However, there are cases of SIDS when the Baby is not sleeping on their stomach. Proper Baby Care recommendations by doctors and hospitals are to put babies to sleep in their cribs with nothing else, so no blankets, baby bumpers, and more!

With many parents we’ve talked to, we’ve seen tons of cases of babies hitting their heads on the crib rails and also getting their feet stuck in the crib railings. While there is definitely some risk to babies getting injured by getting stuck in the crib rails or banging their heads. Most parents think it’s not worth the risk of having bumpers, heavy blankets, and would rather limit the risk of SIDS.

Baby Bumpers can be thick pads that protect the baby from banging their heads or getting stuck in the railings. We would recommend the Breathable Baby Bumpers first to test to see if they work for your needs as they are made of a mesh Baby Bumpers and more breathable than the thick pad Baby Bumpers. Still there is an increased risk with bumpers, however, getting breathable bumpers is a good option if your baby is turning all the way around, banging their head or getting stuck in the crib rails. These breathable bumpers are very cheap and may make a good option to try out before putting heavily padded bumpers into the crib with your baby at night.

It’s also a good option to invest in a Summer baby monitor with video so you can check on your baby once in a while in their crib to make sure they are not stuck in the corner of the crib in a position that they may not be able to get themselves out of.

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!

For many years pediatricians gently (and sometimes rigidly) convinced parents that their children should sleep in cots, carrycots, cradles, baskets – anywhere, just not in the parental bed. Mothers and fathers – especially in the last few years – on the contrary, continue arguing with the doctors, claiming that the most natural and beneficial for the child is to share a bed with parents. Those preferring to sleep with a child believe that it contributes to successful breast-feeding, strengthening the connection between mother and child and even helps to prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SVDS). However – is there any actual confirmation of this? And besides, is it safe to sleep with the child?

Here is the answer. Recent studies have confirmed everything that pediatricians have been saying for many years. For children there is nothing good in sharing a bed with parents. Moreover – there is a certain risk. And before putting baby to sleep with you in one bed, you need to understand the possible consequences. The study involved cases of infant mortality in the United States over a twenty-year-period ending with 2004. Researchers collected information on all children who died suddenly. Causes of death in most cases have not been established – they were explained as SVDS. SVDS statistics, for a twenty-year-period showed a favorable trend in the time when the campaign «sleeping on the back» was being carried – after a study it was found that for children who sleep on the stomach, the risk of sudden infant death syndrome is higher than for others.

But there is another category of infant deaths that pediatricians find an explanation: the accidental asphyxiation and strangulation in bed. The number of cases increased four times during the last 20 years. Of course, some of these cases have nothing to do with this issue. Thus, the cause of 15% of deaths was the unsuccessful design of children’s cot. However, more than 50% of cases of suffocation in the sleep occurred in a situation where the baby and his parents were sleeping together. And, as a rule, the proximate cause of the death of a baby was when of the parents press a child down with his weight in a dream.
It is necessary to understand how high the risk of such a tragic outcome is, and therefore decide for themselves whether to share a bed with a child or not.