Research has shown that a young baby can start to distinguish between night and day from as young as two weeks with a little gentle guidance. Here are six simple strategies that work.

1 – In the day, expose your baby to as much daylight as possible. Daylight has been proven to aid baby’s night sleep. Go outside, even when he’s sleeping. If you’re in the house, keep the curtains open and trun the lights on if it’s dark outside.

2 – When your baby is awake (for a very short time in the early weeks) interact with him, talk to him, stroke his skin and place your face near his so he can see you. At this age, there’s no need for any stimulation other than being close to his family. Just being held is stimulating for an infant.

3 – Night time should be dark and quiet. Use a night light when feeding your baby and don’t engage with him too much. A cuddle and feed and straight back to bed will set him up for healthy sleeping habits in the next few months. Only change his nappy if you really need to and keep your voice low.

4 – Introduce sleep cues through short routines so that your baby knows it’s time to sleep. In the early days, this won’t mean much to your baby. But after a few months, he will understand that you are following the ‘pre-sleep’ routine and this will help him to settle easily.

A simple pre-bedtime routine might be a bath or wash, a sleepsuit, sleeping bag, cuddle, feed and bed. For nap time, a little face wash, nappy change, sleeping bag and feed will let your baby know he’s going for a sleep.

5 – Help your baby learn to self soothe by introducing sleep props that don’t need your presence. A baby sleep CD that plays a steady heartbeat, white noise or the rhythm of the sea are all effective in helping to lull him to sleep and to transition between sleep cycles.

Introduce a baby comforter toy or lovey from an early age by holding it between you when feeding. Later this will become an important sleep cue for your baby as he learns to self settle without your help. You shouldn’t leave your baby alone with the comforter until he is fully mobile and you’re sure it’s safe.

Later, you can detach it and give to him for cuddles. And when you feel it is safe, you can leave it with him at sleep times too. Baby comforters have been proven to help babies sleep through the night from an early age.

Baby sleeping bags are useful as part of the bedtime routine and will also stop your baby waking with the cold at night.

6 – Create a place for sleep. In the first few weeks your baby will probably fall asleep anywhere and everywhere. He will feel most safe when with you and probably enjoy sleeping snuggled up against your skin.

Decide on where you want your baby to sleep at night and give him every opportunity to nap there so that it becomes familiar to him. This will be a gradual process over many weeks. You’re aiming to have a place for your baby to sleep where he feels safe and consistency will help with this.

Setting up good habits from the start will be much easier now than later on.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.