Sleeping – Day and night confusion

March 8th, 2006

Even though newborns feed fairly regularly around the clock, most soon learn to sleep between night feeds and be wakeful after day feeds. Some, however, get night and day confused and tend to have at least one really long day sleep with some lengthy periods awake overnight. If this suits you and your family that is fine, but it is possible to change this pattern around if you want to.

• Make sure your baby has plenty of day feeds. If it has been 4 hours from the beginning of the last feed, wake him gently and offer a feed.
• Encourage good active play times before or after day feeds, when your baby is awake and alert.
• Keep night feeds ‘boring’. Keep the light low, try not to talk to him (a smile is OK), only change the nappy if you really need to, and get him back to bed and sleep as soon as you can.
• Even quite young babies tend to have one longer sleep in each 24 hours. If you want this at night, make sure he doesn’t get in the habit of having this sleep during the day. It is OK to wake a sleeping baby if you are trying to change a pattern.

Entry Filed under: Tips & Tricks