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“So, is he sleeping through his nights?” »,« It was magic for me, he slept from birth! “Oh you seem exhausted, eager for baby to sleep through the night don’t you ?! “: Ah those sweet words about our sleep and that of our newborns when we return from motherhood … Although each child has his own sleep pattern and that the councils can then prove ineffective, let us note already that “to make his nights” for an infant is equivalent on average to sleep between 7 to 12 hours consecutively.
How long does a baby sleep?
As it grows, its need for sleep goes to reduce one’s self. Baby needs 17 to 20 hours of sleep per day from birth; from 12 to 16 hours between 4 and 12 months; from 1 to 2 years, it is between 11 and 14 pm; from 3 to 5 years old, between 10 am and 13 pm; then at least 9 hours from the age of 6. Unless our child suffers from sleep disorders, which then requires an exchange on this subject with our pediatrician, he should therefore still give us a few hours of rest. But what we want is not so much for the baby to fall asleep: it is for him to stay asleep for more than ten minutes!
When will baby make his nights?
No need to hope for six hour naps or eight nights when our baby is born. Indeed, the small size of the baby’s stomach encourages him to ask for food every 1 to 4 hours on average. It is only after three months that it can be ready for full nights. From this moment, it is recommended to set up a routineto promote the stability and duration of baby’s sleep.
All about baby naps
If baby sleeps most of the time at birth and only emerges from his sleep cycles to feed, real naps begin to appear. around three months. On average, our child needs three or four nice naps until his first year. Often it is spread over the day: a first in the morning after the first bottle or the first feeding, the second at the end of the morning, the third at the beginning of the afternoon, and a small last at the end of the afternoon. midday.
While each child has their own rhythm, naps are generally reduced to two or three a day in the second year, then only one from two or two and a half years. If from time to time, or suddenly, our child no longer wants to take a nap, we can try to put in place pre-sleep rituals and take care to schedule your days well so as not to miss your “sleep window “ and that naps become a reassuring landmark in the midst of habits!
What routine for her sleep cycle?
To make it easier to fall asleep – and that the sleep lasts a long time! – some repetitive rules can be useful.
Create a resting space for our newborn
It is good to delimit the place to sleep and to dissociate it well from those to play and to wake up. So let’s remove games and distractions around the cradle as much as possible.
The latest recommendations from early childhood professionals, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, encourage share your room with her newborn, at least the first six months, or even the first year. It would help regulate baby’s breathing, its temperature, even the reactions of its nervous system, and above all to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. On the other hand, the American Academy of Pediatrics clearly distinguishes between sharing a room with a baby and that of sharing a bed. She advises against co-sleeping so as not to prevent our newborns from developing their individuality. Even when sharing the same room, so that baby does not get used to going back to sleep when he sees us sleeping nearby, it may be relevant to install a curtain, a screen or any visual wall between our bed and his.
Distinguish between day and night during naps
For baby to sleep through the night, he must already understand the difference between day and night, which happens on average around 2 months. But we can help him to distinguish by modulating the light of our home depending on the time of day: dim light during baby’s naps during the day and almost complete darkness at night!
Create white noise
A dull, continuous and low-intensity noise, such as that of a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine, would have hypnotic capacities on baby and make it easier for him to fall asleep. It reminds them intrauterine life and its muffled noises, from those of digestion, to our voice or the music we were listening to. No need to spend the night cleaning up to recreate these reassuring sounds! It exists today fluff that produces white noise, or YouTube videos that last for hours and hours … Be careful in the latter case to place your phone in airplane mode to protect baby from the waves.
The right temperature for an optimized sleep time
Just like us, baby will surely prefer not to be too bundled up to sleep well. On average, the correct room temperature for our newborn is between 19 and 23 degrees. And important point: it is necessary as much as possible to ensure the stability of the temperature around our newborn baby when he sleeps. So let’s find a place to place your cradle that is not near windows, in a draft, or in the passage of ventilation or heating vents.
Is it okay to swaddle your child?
If our child is struggling to find a peaceful sleep, we can try to swaddle him, which reminds him of his mother’s belly. Wrapped in a blanket or swaddle as in a soft cocoon, baby feels calmer and less anxious. Don’t panic if baby doesn’t like: not all are receptive to this method. A technique to abandon as soon as baby is able to turn on his stomach and risks choking on his mattress.
When to separate from your baby at night?
From the age of six months, you can get your baby to fall asleep in his own room. To make it progressive, we can start with one nap per day in his room, the others in that of the parents where he began to take his marks. He then has time to acclimatize and will not experience the passage to his room. like a break. If sleep becomes complicated then, we can try the 5-10-15 method to slowly get him used to falling asleep and going back to sleep without us… And us without him! In all cases, it is necessary that all those close to the baby rely on consistency and habit in order to establish structuring benchmarks.