Your baby

 The Early days.

For the first few weeks of his life your new baby may seem to do very little but eat and sleep, it is very common for new parents to find that their whole day revolves around feeding the baby and trying to get him back to sleep. When my daughter was 3 weeks old I remember sitting and looking at her one afternoon and thinking “people tell you that looking after a baby is hard and tiring but they don?t tell you that at times it can be downright boring”. Your baby's sleep is incredibly important to his health and growth, in fact newborn babies sleep for around 17- 20 hours per day and of this up to 80 per cent of their sleeping time is spent dreaming this is far longer than you will spend dreaming each night. There are a number of good reasons for this huge amount of sleep firstly during sleep growth regulatory hormones are released more frequently and in greater quantities and secondly your baby is busy processing all of the new experiences he has had that day!. In the first 2 or 3 months the “sleep issue” is often the one that causes the most headaches and worry for parents. Although it may seem as if a baby sleeping for 17-20 hours a day would leave plenty of time for rest and relaxation this is definitely not the case. The main problem that new parents face is that their baby does not share their ideas of day and night, in fact the baby at first has no idea that they are different. A baby will wake up every two to three hours for a feed regardless of the time of day. So for the first 2 months the new family tends to live in 2-3 hours slots rather than in 24 hour days like the rest of the world. Gradually your baby will come to recognize that day and night are different and that night time is for sleeping and eventually you will get a while nights sleep, whether this process takes 6 weeks or 6 years depends on the personalities and needs of both the baby and its parents.

Helping your baby get back to sleep

Most babies wake up around 20 times every night, many of these times they put themselves back to sleep without waking you up but for a certain number they will require extra help to drift back off to sleep. One of the major reasons they will wake up is hunger, as I said before babies feed about every 2-3 hours even during the night and so when your baby wakes up hungry it is very unlikely to go back to sleep without being fed. There are a few things which you can do to make these night time feeds less disruptive to your sleep and to help your little one get back to sleep after his huger has been satisfied. 
a) Keep the lights as dim as possible so that your baby remains calm, darkness is also a good sign to him that it is still “sleepy time”. 
b) Avoid to stimulating you rbaby too much. I don't mean that you have to ignore your baby completely but if you keep games and toys for the daytime only he will realise that fun is for the daytime and sleeping is for the night time. This will also reduce the likelihood of baby waking in the night and crying for attention. There are of course plenty of other things which wake your baby during the night. A dirty or wet nappy is another one which cannot be ignored, but again if you keep the room dark and quiet it will help to minimize the disruption that a nappy change will cause. Another cause for waking up is for comfort, many babies have an object that brings them comfort for example a dummy or blanket but others find their only comfort is in a hug from mummy or daddy, if your baby falls into the later category you could try simply gently rubbing his head when he wakes to let him know you are there, or, as I spent many evenings and nights doing with my daughter, holding her hand through the bars of the cot. Many times that your baby wakes it will be for no real reason other than the fact that his body has a shorter sleep cycle than the average adult, he will over time learn to drift back to sleep almost every time he wakes. This skill will get better as he gets older and needs less urgent attention in the night (i.e skips night time feeding and has fewer dirty nappies). One thing you could do to help him is to make sure that he doesn't get distracted by toys or interesting objects near to his cot, these will keep him awake where he may have fallen back to sleep without them. 
During the day there are also thing which you can do to help your baby sleep at night. For example, if he is napping in the day keep going with your normal activities, don't be quiet for him, so that at night the silence and darkness are cues for him to sleep. It is easy to listen to peoples ideas on how to get your baby to sleep but in the end as with most advice you will probably find that you take some bits, adapt other bits and completely ignore yet other bits. For all my ideas about keeping the room dark and quiet I have spent many nights on the couch watching tv with her falling asleep on my lap!.

Establishing a routine

One of the best things you can do to help your baby settle each night is to give him a good idea of what to expect every day. A simple evening routine can really work wonders and I found that within about 2 weeks of introducing an evening bath before bed every night my daughter was falling asleep earlier and more easily. Of course she was still waking up for feeds every 3 or 4 hours at that point but an extra hour in the evening really made a difference to how rested I felt and how much time I had to myself. A simple evening routine could be 6.00pm Bath 6.30pm Bottle 7.00pm Story/song/hugs (depending on the age of your baby) 7.30pm bed Feeds or nappy changes after this are kept in the bedroom darkened etc. Obviously the times may vary depending on the age of your baby and on how the day has gone, your baby might be hungrier earlier or later on some days than other for example.

Sleeping Safely

It is very important to keep your baby sleeping safely, always lie him on his back to sleep and put him in the feet to foot position ( with his feet at the bottom of the cot/basket) This prevents him from wriggling under the blankets during the night. Another good thing to try is a baby sleeping bag, these keep your baby at a pretty stable temperature and cannot be kicked of or wriggled under, so no more waking to tuck your baby back in after he has kicked the blankets off.