Newborn Sleep Training Methods

https://youtu.be/-sctCzeeBRY One of the most asked questions is how you can get your new baby to do the very best they can with their sleep. Now, we all know that newborns aren’t going to sleep through the night. In fact none of us do, but what’s the best they could be doing and are they doing that? And more importantly, how can we instill some really basic strategies as a parent, actual parenting techniques, to encourage healthier sleep from them as they develop and they grow and as they’re ready? This is a really exciting topic and something I wish I knew when I had my first baby, in fact this should be in the New Baby Bible that we need to be given when we have a baby for the first time. Now, it’s not really sleep training. Sleep training is something that I would reserve for the six month age bracket and beyond, maybe just before that. But when we’re talking about new babies and newborns, lots of people use the idea or the phrase, sleep shaping, and I think that’s more appropriate. I like to call it sleep prep because we’re just preparing them to become a good sleeper. So we are going to do some sleep prep. And this isn’t about the baby really doing anything. This is parenting strategies that are kindly and lovingly going to just set the scene and show them the way and really just create that space and that environment for them to do the very best that they can with their sleep, which brings me nicely on to my very first point, which is environment. The environment is absolutely key and the first and most simple thing that you can use to help your baby to recognize things, to give them cues and triggers, and it will even help encourage their circadian rhythm, which is their body clock, which will help them recognize night from day, sleep-time from awake-time. In time, they’ll get this, but by showing that from the beginning, that’s really going to help them get there sooner. So how can you do that with night and day? Well, obviously you’ve got light and dark, so we want lights on or daylight coming in when it’s daytime and we want to black out the daylight or have all the lights off and have it nice and dark when it’s nighttime; that is a simple day/night differentiation. But also with naps, it’s fine when they’re having their daytime sleep to make it a little bit darker. If they’re in their cot or in their sleep space, in a bedroom, I would absolutely close the curtains and make it nice and dark because darkness promotes the production of melatonin, which is the sleepy hormone. And light is actually going to interfere with that a bit and make it a little bit harder. Of course, they will still produce melatonin and they will still have a sleep in the light, new babies do. You’ve seen that, they’ll sleep anywhere. They’ll sleep in a pram or in a noisy restaurant. They will sleep anywhere, but by showing them this and by helping them along with those rhythms, it will help to create that rhythmicity in their body of sleep-time, wake-time, sleep-time, wake-time, rather than relying on things like the motions of prams or the bottle or the this or the that, to get them to sleep, so it’s just really good practice. The other thing that is a factor in the environment is you. You are a part of the environment around them. When you are fully animated, making eye contact and directly engaging, that’s what I call daytime mode, full voice comes out and you might be sing-songy and you’re cheerful with your child, and you’re just all expressive; that’s a daytime version of you. The nighttime version of you goes to just whisper. No voice comes out and just really bland and boring, trying to keep your facial expressions pretty neutral. You’re not cross or grumpy, but you are also not all animated and engaging. Think “Nothing to see here,” Zen-zone and quiet and calm. And I say bland and boring, because I think that’s the best way to explain it because as your baby grows, and as they become more aware and alert and into what’s g