Surviving the Newborn Witching Hour | BABY SLEEP TIPS
Surviving the Newborn Witching Hour | BABY SLEEP TIPS
You have your baby, you get home from the hospital, you heal your body, you establish your milk supply, you’re figuring out how much formula your baby needs, your baby sleeps all the time and then… your baby’s crying constantly! What do you do? You know I’m gonna tell you, so keep reading!
Surviving the Newborn Witching Hour | BABY SLEEP TIPS
You may have heard of the witching hour, the period of purple crying, colic, reflux, all the things. But we are going to talk today mostly about the witching hour. Generally the witching hour is that 5 to 7 p.m. time period when your kid is just crying and crying, they’re overstimulated from the day and they’ve just had it; it’s very common. And then we have the period of purple crying, which is just a very heightened period of a lot more crying from your baby. This period generally peaks between six and eight weeks of your baby’s life and it’s usually very significantly decreased or stopped for the most part by 3-5 months.
How to get through this witching hour:
Tip 1: Is to cluster feed during the witching hour. Their body is gearing up and getting ready to sleep overnight, so they’re trying to tank up and really get as much breast milk or formula as possible.
Tip 2: Have less stimulation. Take them to a dark quiet room now, not trying to get them to sleep, that’s not the goal, and it’s not pitch black, but it’s just dim. And the goal is to just have less stimulation. Let the baby chill and have some sweet soft conversations together.
Tip 3: Is to baby wear. Of course your newborn needs to be facing in and you can have skin to skin time while your baby wearing, or obviously if you’re out and about, you’re not doing skin to skin, but baby wearing almost always calms the baby down
Tip 4: Offer more sucking. Now sucking is one of those reflexes that babies are born with and generally when they’re upset, they like to suck to soothe, you can offer a pacifier or a clean pinky.
Tip 5: Is to have a change of scenery. I like to take a baby outside on a walk. Now, if you are going to go out on a walk, you can use a stroller walk, but you also don’t want your baby falling asleep during this time because then that’s going to mess up their wake windows for the rest of the day and you may be dealing with a very, very, very late bedtime.
Tip 6: Make sure that your baby is not over tired. If your baby hasn’t had a lot of naps during the day, then they probably need to sleep. So when you’re doing all of these other soothing techniques and things to calm your baby down if they fall asleep great.
Tip 7: Is an infant massage. In my newborn sleep course I am going through all the different ways that you can massage your infant. So grab my course https://slumberandbloom.com/newborn-sleep-course/ It’s going to cover infant massage but also a ton of other things.
Tip 8: Take a bath with your baby. This is such a special bonding time together and it also really calms babies down.
Tip 9: Take turns with other caregivers. If you just need to take a break and step away.
Tip 10: Make sure that you have some solid nighttime routines with your baby. It does not have to be anything crazy or elaborate, but just having some sort of bedtime routine with your baby that is calming and soothing will help set the mood and set the tone for the night.
Make sure you go and grab my newborn baby sleep course, there is so much information about those first few months with your new baby.
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Missy Yandow
Pediatric Sleep Consultant
Potty Training Coach
