This almost could’ve been an ‘ask the baby blogger’ blog, except that no one really asked me. But when it comes to getting babies to sleep there are a lot of myths out there. Since we have so many mommies who just gave birth, I thought this would be a good time to debunk some myths and give some tips on how to help your baby get to sleep. We’ve certainly covered this topic before, but it bears rehashing in the bleary eyed days of newborn-ness.
Sleep is a function of temperament. If you read Dr. Sears, this is one of his big ideas that you’ll see over and over again. Likewise, if you talk to parents who have a lot of children, like more than 3, you’ll also hear the same sentiment. The bad sleepers are the ones who tend to be more active, and needy. The good sleepers are often the ones who are easily pacified, and contented to just sit and watch the world go on around them. When you’re talking about newborns, there really isn’t a point at which you ‘spoil’ them so they become bad sleepers–even if you cuddle all the time.
Another popular myth is that giving a baby cereal before bed will help him sleep better because his tummy is more full. There are certain situations in which giving an infant rice cereal is called for and will help him sleep but this is simply not true for the general population. Baby’s need the nutritional content in breast milk (or formula if you’re bottle feeding) and replacing a feeding with cereal at a young age is just not a good idea.
Some parents swear by letting the baby cry it out, the Ferber method or something similar. Newborns are too young for this. They cry as a means to communicate, and ignoring that makes their key defense mechanism useless and that’s not a good thing.
The reality is, newborns wake around the clock. There’s just no way getting around it. Babies in general tend to go in spurts of waking more at night and then sleeping through depending on growth spurts and teething among other factors. New parents just are not going to get that much sleep or at least not as much as they’d like. However, there are some ways in which you can maximize your baby’s own natural ability to sleep better. Look soon for a blog on how to get babies to sleep better at night!