Family & Education

How To Help Your Baby Get To Sleep

How To Help Your Baby Get To Sleep

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How to put your baby to sleep: the proper and most effective way to give your baby, and yourself, a good nights rest, while keeping both of you happy. There are common mistakes with babies, such rocking them to sleep, which you should avoid if you want to get your baby to fall asleep independently. This is important so that you can maintain a balanced routine between the baby and your handling of her. Enlarge How to put your baby to sleep: the proper and most effective way to give your baby, and yourself, a good nights rest, while keeping both of you happy. There are common mistakes with babies, such rocking them to sleep, which you should avoid if you want to get your baby to fall asleep independently. This is important so that you can maintain a balanced routine between the baby and your handling of her.

Step 1: Sleeping

So hows the sleeping been going?

It's an absolute nightmare, I just can't get her to settle, I don't know what to do.

Sleeping is often a really big issue for most parents. A really good thing to do is to try to develop a routine as soon as possible; give her a bath first of all maybe, then you would give her a feed, have a little cuddle, and they then form a connection.

Step 2: Cuddle The Baby

So with the cuddle do I actually rock her to sleep?

There is a lot of research and advice around saying that you musn't cuddle your baby to sleep. What often happens is that the baby will wake up an hour later, or a couple hours later, and will want you to do exactly that again, because that is the pattern. You can do the cuddling earlier on, you can sit and do lots of face stuff, and have it so she's quite drowsy and she can snuggle down and get herself off to sleep. And then when she wakes up later, she'll just sort of sort herself out, without having you have to interact all that time.