Sleeping Disorder

Some typical sleep habits at this age.
Newborn babies sleep a lot, an average of 18 hours a day during the first weeks. At the age of three months, babies are sleeping about 15 hours. What can disturb parents is that the child is sleeping 3-4 hours at a time, whether it is day or night. You as parents will not sleep more than 3-4 hours. During the night, you will also feed and change diapers and in the day, you play with your child.
Many parents are concerned about sudden infant death during the first months. Many recommend that the child should sleep on their backs. Let the child be placed with his feet in the foot of the bed so that the child can’t crawl too far under the covers so that the child becomes overheated. The temperature of the room must be around 18 degrees Celsius. Do not use thick quilts, but rather thin blankets. You can check the child’s temperature by putting your hand on the baby’s stomach and if the baby feels too warm you can switch to a thinner blanket.
At eight week’s age many children are sleeping all night but there are many children who do not. It may take up to four or five months for some to do that. If you want to help your child to sleep through the night, there are methods that can contribute to this.

• Teach yourself to recognize when the child is tired. The first few weeks your child will be awake for about two hours at a time. If you let it go longer before you put your baby to bed it may be more difficult to get the baby to sleep. You must put your baby to bed when you see that the baby is getting tired. After a while you will notice where your baby is sleepy.

• You can teach your baby the difference between day and night. You can play as much as you can with the child during the day when the child is alert. Allow a lot of lights, let your radio or television to be switched on during the day. You should not let the baby fall asleep while breastfeeding. During the night, you should keep the room dark and quiet. It will not be long before your baby know that they must sleep during the night.

• Let the child go to sleep alone. At seven weeks of age, you can begin to let the child go to sleep alone. If you rock your child to sleep during the first eight weeks the child will learn this. The child would then expect to be rocked every time it is the bedtime. This is how you create a bad habit for your child.

Potential pitfalls
A very small baby usually has such a large need for sleep. However at two or three months, for example, your baby:

• waking at night more often than needed

• develop associations of sleep that can lead to problems later

Newborns need to wake up during the night so they can breastfeed, but some children wakes unintentionally themselves without the need. Sometimes it may be sufficient to know that you are close to go calmly back to sleep.

To avoid associated sleep habits that you have to cradle or feed your baby to sleep, it’s good to put your baby to bed when it is sleepy and not when the baby have fallen to sleep..

Approaches to sleep problems.

You can teach your child to sleep all night long, piece by piece. Different experts have different views on how this is best done and there are several ways of thinking, which sometimes is contradictory to one another. Below you can briefly read about the most common methods.

 Even at six weeks, your baby can establish good sleep habits. The key is to find solid routines on night-accession and daytime naps and to put baby to bed before it has fallen asleep. As long as your baby falls asleep himself, is it okay to react if it wakes up. Replace associated habits about falling asleep that requires you to be in place (such as nursing or rocking) with others who are still there when your baby wakes up (maybe a favorite blanket).

 You want to do what is best for your child and good sleep is part of it. Your baby will understand so far not his best in this regard and will cry if it does not get what they want. Your goal is to help your baby learn to sleep and sleep itself.

 Teach your baby to sleep on their own and coming to rest on its own if it wakes up at night. You can help your child learn the difference between night and day from the start by making night breast feeding to a low-key business and bring on the baby sleeps longer than a few hours in the day. Finally, your baby will learn to “save” most of sleep at night. When it wakes up, which it guaranteed to do, can you talk to your baby to calm it, but let it go longer and longer periods between intervals. This helps the baby to come to rest on its own machine.

 Help your baby to come to rest and go to sleep alone. Do not let your baby cry to sleep but do not react at the slightest peep either. Wait a few minutes to see if your baby is really awake and need your comfort, then go into comfort and reassure, but to lift it out of bed. Instead, you can caress your baby with your hand and talk soothingly. First, you can go in every few minutes, later you can talk with calming baby without going into the room. It is good to also have a quiet and nice evening routine, you can for example read a good night story.

Create a positive attitude to sleeping with your child by being there and create a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere that makes it easy to fall asleep. Your baby will learn, to sleep is a pleasant state, and not something to be afraid of.

There is no “right” way to help your baby to sleep through the night. You get to choose what feels right for your family.