How to get a baby to sleep
Losing sleep is torture. No, seriously, sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture throughout history. It affects both physical and mental health and in its most severe cases, can cause hallucinations. Hopefully you’re not sitting at home imagining you’re in a Fight Club right now but if you are a sleep deprived mum, you probably feel like tearing your hair out. But it does get better. Here’s my advice to encourage those naps or – better still – how to get a baby to sleep through the night.
Porridge
This is the ultimate tip. It saved me from a nightmare of an eight month regression – simply give your baby a bowl of porridge before bedtime. It keeps their stomach nice and full and it’s so good to see your baby settling into a deep sleep, knowing they won’t be hungry any time soon. The only problem with this is you have to wait until your child can eat baby porridge. And when you’re in the middle of sleep deprivation, that can be four long arduous months.
Bath
This is great for not only wearing them out, but also building a regular routine to signpost that it’s nearly bedtime. They get to feel all warm and cosy in the water before you put on a sleepsuit and wrap them up in a swaddle or sleeping bag. One way I can guarantee to get my 9 monther to sleep is a bath followed by…
Warm milk
I’ve talked before about how I want an adult version of this. I know adults have hot chocolate but there’s something about sweet, warm baby milk that seems to send them off. If you’re breastfeeding or using bottled formula milk you might not have experienced the magical wonder of giving your little one a warm bottle and watching them settle down.
Sleep feed
I didn’t realise the power of this until my second baby came along. If you’ve noticed a pattern to when your baby wakes up, hit him/ her with a sleep feed so they stay asleep and you don’t have to spend an hour cradling them back into the moses basket/ cot again. This is how I got my evenings back during one of the early sleep regressions: after drifting off at 6.30pm, I kept seeing my baby’s smiling face reappear an hour later. By getting the bottle in her mouth at 7.20pm, I kept her asleep until her bedtime porridge and got my evenings back.
Ewan the Sheep
I love this sheep! It gave me that all important rest in the early days of motherhood. When my newborn would wake, a gentle press of Ewan’s hoof would send her back to sleep – firstly with womb noises, then a gentle lullaby as she got older. My only complaint was that it also worked on me so I had to be careful not to fall asleep when on duty. As my eldest got older, she became more immune to Ewan, so he stayed with me when she moved to her own room and helped with my pregnancy insomnia with my second.
Remember passive sleep
This was a valuable piece of advice I got from a fellow mum during the early newborn days: you know when you get woken up by your baby’s cries? Do nothing… at first. Obviously don’t leave them screaming for ages but it could just be that they’ve entered passive sleep and will soon settle. If you rush to pick them up, they will wake up fully and be VERY upset – which is exactly what I did in the early days. By holding back, you’re giving your baby (and yourself) the best night’s sleep.
Vacuum cleaner/ Tumble dryer
An underrated tip: use the technology around your house. There’s something about the sound of a vacuum cleaner or washing machine that makes a baby’s eyelids heavy. Plus it reminds you to get those important jobs done when you’re overwhelmed in baby cries and toddler tears. It also works at bedtime – I used to put my eldest down in her cotbed and vacuum clean upstairs; by the time I came back to check on her, she’d fallen asleep for the night.
Go for a walk
This works in two ways: if your baby is anything like my youngest, they will fall asleep the moment you start moving that pushchair. If your baby is anything like my eldest, they will stay awake during the whole walk due to major FOMO and fall asleep the moment you move from the cold outside to the warm indoors. Either way, if your child is getting cranky, this is a great way to get them off to sleep.
Drive
This is a method of complete desperation but it does work – I know of parents who have loaded their children into the car during the early hours out of desperation. Personally I recommend this method more for afternoon naps as no one should be behind the wheel on minimal sleep but a nice cozy car with gentle music is a wonder at getting your child to sleep. In fact, I avoid driving after 4pm because it works a little too well and I end up with a revitalised baby at 5pm who doesn’t need a bedtime until midnight.
Bed Spray
I have had a full night’s sleep after using a bedtime spray for the first time (My Little Coco, if you’re wondering) so there’s got to be something about these sprays. My only problem is I swear the little gremlins get immune to it. I’ve always wondered if I rotated the types of spray I’ve used, it would be enough to keep them sleeping. Either way, it’s another string to the bow of fighting the sleep demon.
