How to Make Your Newborn Sleep Longer & Better?

Posted by adeel on August 25th, 2019

The sleep requirements of a newborn can never be overemphasized. Most parents find a wide range of difficulties with regard to their newborn’s sleep patterns. This happens because most parents don’t know much about newborn sleep patterns and don’t know what steps to be taken to ensure that these patterns are retained.

The following guide should help you in this regard.

Newborn Sleep Patterns

As a parent who has to spend the first year of their child’s life sleeplessly, you will think that your newborn’s sleep patterns are completely disorganized. The key features of their sleep patterns can be as following:

• They Don’t Sleep Long: Newborns don’t sleep continuously for long sessions. They sleep in short bouts of half hour to 4 hours. They also don’t have any fixed sleep times. They can sleep at random times throughout the day and night.
• They Awaken Easily: Newborns are mostly in the active-sleep mode. It is a light sleep state when they have fluttering eyelids, body movements, and irregular breathing. This makes it easy for them to wake up at the slightest disturbance or sound.
• Different Sleep Times: As already mentioned, the sleep times for newborns are never consistent. It is important to know how much do newborns sleep. During the early few days after birth, your baby can sleep for as long as 18 hours a day. During the first month, the sleep duration is averaged at 14 hours. But there is not always consistency in this time. While some newborns can sleep for 9 hours, others can sleep for up to 19 hours per day.

So How to Get Your Newborn to Sleep More?

If you intend to have your newborn sleep for long periods of time during night-time, you should know that it is not going to be a simple and straightforward task. Your focus should be on trying new things to find a system that works best to make your baby sleep.

i. Swaddle

Babies up to 5 months have startle reflex that makes them feel as if they are falling. This causes the jerk movements, resulting in them waking up every now and then. It is recommended to keep a tight swaddle to prevent babies from waking up startled.

ii. Dreamfeed

This is the feeding provided to your baby before you go to sleep. This helps in preventing them from waking up before you fall asleep. Dreamfeed allows your baby to sleep longer when you are asleep. It is recommended to follow this strategy only up to 4 months. Even if your baby sleeps up to 3 hours at a stretch during night-time with this method, it can be a big achievement.

iii. Reduce Duration of Daytime Naps

This is a simple yet effective strategy to have your child sleep longer during night-time. It can be tough to wake up your sleeping baby, but this strategy does help. Don’t allow your child to sleep more than 2.5 hours during daytime.

Wake them up and feed them and try to keep them awake for some time. Then, you can allow them to take a nap. This not only helps your baby sleep better and longer at night, it also allows you to give them more feedings during daytime.

iv. Create White Noise

As already mentioned, it is too easy to break your newborn’s sleep with the slightest disturbance. So whether you have guests at home, a party, or you are travelling with your baby, it can be impossible to give them some good sleep. Creating white noise can help you get around this problem. For example, you can set up a fan in your baby’s room, not directly next to them, to create white noise. It can help muffle any other distributing noise and allow your newborn to sleep without interference.

So make sure to follow all these tips to have your newborn sleep longer and better.