15 tips for newborns | Helping your baby sleep from DAY ONE! - Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant and Potty Training Coach

15 tips for newborns | Helping your baby sleep from DAY ONE!

Congratulations, you have a newborn baby or you’re expecting a newborn baby and you’re trying to plan ahead. Well, today I am going to give you 15 tips on newborn sleep and how to maximize the amount of sleep that you are not going to get, that you are going to get when your baby is born. I know I joke, but seriously, when you first have your baby, you are going to be in survival mode, and all you have to focus on is surviving. You just brought a human into the world.

15 tips for newborns | Helping your baby sleep from DAY ONE!

Now, it’s really important to have realistic expectations that sleep is not going to be perfect. But with these 15 tips, I can help you make it a little bit better and easier for that time when you do sleep train your baby.

Have short weight windows. You have to be realistic that your baby can only handle about 45 minutes of being awake in between sleep periods.
You need to help your baby correct their day versus night confusion. I have a whole video right here that you can watch after you watch this video on how to correct this day versus night confusion, https://youtu.be/R698aaJFTGA
Wake your baby every two, two hours during the day. I know they say never wake a sleeping baby, but you need to wake a sleeping baby during the day and that’s going to help them with their day versus night confusion.
Replicate the womb. The womb that your baby grew inside had all of these qualities that you need to replicate. So I want you to first swaddle your baby if they don’t like it with their arms up, Swaddle them with their arms down. Try different kinds of swaddles.
This goes hand in hand with replicating the womb because you need to have white noise while your baby is sleeping. If you think about that womb environment, it was slushy and loud.
It has to be black out dark while your baby is sleeping and light during awake time. I always recommend blackout Easy window covers
Check the temperature of the bedroom that your baby is sleeping in. You want to aim between 68 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit.
Getting outside earlier in the day. It’s going to tell your baby’s body, it’s daytime, vitamin D and all the amazing things, and it’s going to help them develop their circadian rhythm.
Use the Five S’s for soothing when your baby is really upset. If you’re not familiar with the five S is check out this video right here, HOW TO CALM A FUSSY BABY | Tips to Help Your Baby Relax, because that is going to describe every single detail that you need to know.
Keep your baby fully awake during their feeding during the day and make sure that they are getting a full feed. When your baby is just snacking and dozing off, they’re not getting a full feeding and they’re not going to fall into a good habit of eating and then sleeping for a longer duration, then just 20 to 30 minutes, waking up hungry again and needing to eat again and then dozing off again. You’re gonna find yourself just snacking and sleeping all day long.
Follow the eat play sleep routine. Eat play sleep routine means that when your baby wakes up, you are going to feed him or her, you’re going to make sure that they stay awake during this whole feeding, and then play with them and then put them down for sleep, repeat. Now of course you don’t have to do this in the middle of the night. If your baby still needs feeding overnight, just eat and put them back to sleep while we’re on the topic of eating overnight.
Make sure that when you’re feeding your baby overnight that you’re keeping it dark and quiet.
During the evening hours you may notice that your child is really fussy. Watch this video here, https://youtu.be/jNoE-PG-YGE to learn more about the witching hour. But what you may need to do in those early months and weeks is to cluster feed in the evening. Now really, this is your baby’s way of telling your body to produce more milk and maybe this means that you’re just doing an extra bottle in the evening or whatever it may be.
Have a conversation with your partner and take shifts. What you want to do is have one partner, stay away with the baby until about 10 or 11 o’clock at night. A dream feed and then go to bed for the night. That first stretch of sleep is going to be the longest. So you want to make sure that you’re going to sleep before that so that you’re clocking a couple hours of sleep. So that when your baby wakes up around two a.m. you’re ready to feed the baby and then put the baby back to sleep and then you’re on duty until 7 a.m.
Stop stressing out about all of these things, it’s just not worth it. Just love that baby, give them everything they are telling you that they need, and learn their cues.