In the first months of his life, the child mostly sleeps, waking up only to eat. New mothers are mentally prepared for the fact that they will have to get up at night. However, it often happens that a child, having overcome it, still does not allow his parents to get enough sleep and requires attention several times a night. How to teach a child to sleep through the night? First of all, I would like to note that you will not solve this issue at once. We'll have to be patient.

It's best to start at a very young age. Very often we hear such an expression as “the child confused day and night.” This phrase means that the baby sleeps soundly during the day and is awake at night. This situation is typical for children in the first and second months of life. Parents often wonder “how to teach a newborn to sleep at night.” The thing is that the baby doesn’t care what time of day it is. Such concepts as night and day do not yet exist for him. In such a situation, we can advise the following. During the day, even if the child is sleeping, do not create perfect silence. Let the room be light. The child will not be disturbed by the sound of the TV or your conversations. At night, on the contrary, it should be dark and quiet. In this way, the newborn will learn to distinguish the times of day.

It may also happen that your treasure has already learned to sit, the first tooth is about to appear, and you are still forced to get up to him several times a night. How to teach a baby to sleep at night?

Children at this age do not sleep as deeply as adults. In addition, they need to eat much more often. First of all, we can recommend co-sleeping. Next to the mother, the baby feels protected and sleeps more soundly, therefore waking up less often. Try to regulate his diet; he should go to bed well-fed, then the likelihood that he will wake up soon is small.

For many parents, the question of how to teach a child to sleep through the night remains painful for a long time. There are a number of standard tips that help many. Try to walk before bed and be sure to ventilate the room in which the child sleeps. Do not arrange active games in the evening. Set them aside for the morning or afternoon. A bath is an excellent relaxing remedy. You can add various herbs to the water, this will help the baby calm down and get ready for sleep. After the bath, feed him and put him to bed. If your child likes to listen to fairy tales or lullabies, be sure to perform them for him.

Such simple tips on how to teach a child to sleep through the night often help parents. But it is worth considering that all children are different, and what suits one may not necessarily please another. What should you do if, despite all your efforts, your baby wakes up and screams at night? Make sure your baby is not sick, has a clean diaper, and is not hungry. Only after this can we say with confidence that he is simply being capricious. Don't approach him at the first cry. Try to ignore it. Usually by the third or fourth night the child learns to fall asleep on his own.

How to teach a child to sleep through the night? Everyone chooses their own method. The main thing that everyone without exception will need is

Even before the birth of a child, mothers try to think through all the important issues, including where the child will sleep. After birth, another question arises: what should be done to ensure that the baby sleeps all night? What is the reason that babies have restless sleep, and how to deal with it? The general condition of the body and its development depend on sleep.

Establishing a daily routine from birth is an important task. Not only the child, but the whole family will have a rest.

How much should an infant sleep in the first month? A newborn baby sleeps about 17-18 hours a day. Children at this age never sleep more than 3-4 hours - neither day nor night.

Careful monitoring of your baby will help you establish a rest routine. What matters is how long he stays awake. The waking time is no more than 2 hours. If you don't keep track of time and put your child to bed later, he will become overtired. Signs of drowsiness include yawning and touching your face. At this time, you need to put the baby in the crib. You can sing a lullaby, or just talk quietly, monotonously. Such attentiveness will help teach the baby to sleep in its place.

During the daytime, you need to communicate with the newborn more often and carry him in your arms. If a child wakes up at night, you should not play with him or talk for a long time. No need to turn on the light. These actions will help establish a routine, and it will be easy to teach the child to distinguish between day and night.

How long does a 2-3 month old baby sleep? By 3 months, sleep duration decreases to 15 hours.

The baby sleeps twice a day. Children's daily routine should be supplemented with rituals of waking up and going to bed.

How long should a one year old baby sleep? By the end of the 12th month, your baby should sleep about 12 hours a day. At this time, the transition to one-day sleep occurs.

If you have managed to establish a sleep-wake routine, the child eats well, walks a lot, but still has difficulty falling asleep and sleeps little (less than 40 minutes), you should consult a doctor for advice.

What problems might you encounter?

In order to teach your baby to sleep through the night, you need to understand the reasons for waking up.

1. During the first month, the baby wakes up from hunger. If parents want to solve the problem with a large portion of food before bed, then this will not save the situation. Sleeping on a full stomach is even worse. Babies who are breastfed and sleep with their mother may wake up every 40 minutes.
2. Too strong emotions during the day lead to the fact that the baby sleeps only 30-40 minutes. The nervous system of children is very weak, they can have bad dreams and wake up.
3. Sleep disturbance can occur due to poor health: colic, teething, colds. In this case, the baby sleeps for only 30-40 minutes.
4. The day and night routine in children is disrupted.
5. Uncomfortable clothing can cause short sleep - 30-40 minutes. Clothes should be made from natural and high-quality material, there should be no rough seams or unnecessary details.

During healthy sleep, the child should not breathe through his mouth. Breathing through the nose allows the air to warm up and clear dust particles. The lungs work actively and saturate the blood with oxygen. When a baby sleeps with his mouth open, cold air enters the lungs and there is a risk of colds.

It is important to understand why a child sleeps with his mouth open. This can lead to problems such as sleep disturbance, anemia and hypoxia. The older the child gets, the more difficult it will be to wean him from this habit.

• The child sleeps with his mouth open due to an uncomfortable position.
• Perhaps the nose is clogged with mucus or crusts have formed, and the child is forced to breathe through the mouth.

If all possible causes have been eliminated, and the baby still sleeps with his mouth open not only at night, but also during the day, then we can talk about a habit. Parents will have to make efforts to teach their baby to sleep with his mouth closed.

Falling asleep with mom until one year of age is normal. If your baby falls asleep during breastfeeding, you can try to wean him off.

In the evening, before going to bed, you just need to put him in the crib and leave the room. He will cry for 20-30 minutes and fall asleep. You can sit next to the crib, but not respond to crying, or use a pacifier.

It happens that the baby sleeps only in his arms. As soon as he is placed in his crib, he opens his eyes. In the arms of the child he feels the warmth and protection of his mother. To wean him off this without injuring the nervous system, you need to hold the baby in your arms more often during the day when he is not sleeping. Or you can replace the desire to sleep in your arms by sleeping together with your mother.

It is worth being patient to teach your baby to sleep in his own crib. How long it will take depends on the baby’s temperament, his health characteristics and the atmosphere in the house.

Helper for a long and healthy rest

When children wake up every 30-40 minutes, a sleeping bag can help solve the problem. A child in a dream, moving his legs and arms, wakes himself up and opens up.

How a sleeping bag can be useful:

• you will feel warm and cozy all night long;
• while feeding in your arms, the baby will also feel comfortable;
• the bag will not be able to fall;
• The sleeping bag is convenient to take with you on a trip.

The sleeping bag should be used immediately after discharge from the maternity hospital. If this is done later, it will be more difficult to train the child to sleep in new conditions.

The only disadvantage of a sleeping bag is the inconvenience of changing a diaper or changing a diaper.

How to choose the right sleeping bag? It must match the size of the baby. The neckline should not fit too tightly around the neck. A sleeping bag can have sleeves. It would be better if it had a zipper. When choosing a sleeping bag, you need to take into account the air temperature in the room.

The sleeping bag has become a popular product for newborns. You can buy it at any specialized store, or sew it yourself.

Basic rules for putting your baby to bed

If you properly establish a daily routine, this will help parents put their child to sleep quickly and throughout the night. Otherwise it will wake up every 30 minutes. Consistency and consistency will help improve the process of going to bed.

1. You need to decide what time you plan to go to bed each day.
2. A few hours before bedtime, active games, loud sounds, and vivid impressions should be avoided.
3. Taking a bath in a warm bath will help you get ready for a good night's sleep.
4. A massage will help relax your muscles and calm your nervous system.
5. After putting the baby in the crib, you need to sit next to him for some time. You can read a book, sing a lullaby.

By doing several similar sequential actions every day, you can teach your baby to fall asleep quickly.

Most babies can sleep through the night by six months. Some parental mistakes lead to the newborn waking up every 30–40 minutes. To change the routine and teach him to sleep through the night, parents need to make every effort and patience.

• Night feeding (many children have only a habit by this time).
• Wrong mode: sleeps a lot during the day, little activity.
• There is no ritual before bed.
• You should not hold your baby in your arms for a long time before going to bed.

If your baby is 7 months old and continues to fall asleep in your arms day and night, you can begin to patiently explain to him that he needs to sleep in a crib. At this age, children are already able to understand the speech of an adult.

It is easy to train your baby to sleep next to his mother. This way he calms down and falls asleep faster, especially if he is breastfed. If the mother allowed the child to sleep with her during the first days, she will have to face the problem of how to wean the child from such sleep. It doesn’t matter how many months the baby will be at this moment. You need to choose the right moment when it is better to teach your child to sleep separately.

• The best time is when the baby has stopped suckling or only eats breast milk during the day.
• It is easier to teach children who have established deep and long sleep.
• During the day he can play on his own for a long time without requiring attention.

Experts advise not to leave your child playing in the crib during the day. To do this, you need to allocate special places: a corner for games, a playpen. The crib is designed for relaxation.

It is this idea that needs to be formed in the baby.

Rest too short. What to do

Healthy sleep consists of a slow and rapid sleep cycle. During the fast (superficial) phase, a person has vivid, emotional dreams. Deep (slow) sleep is characterized by relaxation of the body. In adults, sleep begins with the rapid phase, and then the slow phase begins. In infants the opposite may be true.

Children have a short sleep cycle, and the baby can sleep through one phase. How long does the fast phase last in infants? The fast phase lasts 20-30 minutes. It is better to rock your baby in your arms before deep sleep appears. Otherwise, when changing the place of laying, the baby will immediately wake up.

During REM sleep, you experience what happened during the day. Physical development occurs during the slow-wave sleep phase. This is why sleep is so important for children.

Healthy sleep for children depends on their internal state. External factors (light, sound) have little effect on the quality of sleep. It is important to establish emotional contact with your baby in the first month.

If a baby's sleep lasts only 30–40 minutes, it is considered short. During this time it is impossible to regain strength. The child will wake up cranky and look overtired during the day.

As soon as a baby appears in the house, parents may forget about normal sleep. Many people are concerned with the question of how long it will take for the child to wake up to eat at night. What determines a baby's quiet, long night's sleep? In this article we will try to find answers to questions regarding how to teach a child to sleep through the night.

At what age do babies start sleeping through the night?

You can often hear while walking with young mothers that their child has been sleeping through the night for six months without waking up. Let's figure it out together whether this is really true. It is worth noting that now we will talk about healthy children who are not bothered by colic, fever, runny nose, diaper rash and are not teething.

A healthy newborn baby wakes up almost every 2-3 hours to eat, both during the day and at night. In order for the child to sleep without waking up, it is necessary to gradually prepare his body for longer breaks between meals.

You can’t abruptly wean your baby off late-night snacks.

Starting from three months, the interval between feedings increases to 3–4 hours. At 6 months, one or two night feedings are enough. Closer to nine months of age, the child begins to eat once a night.

Thus, under normal circumstances, a one-year-old baby can sleep the whole night without waking up.

But these are just statistics, and often even one-year-old children wake up to drink milk, formula, water or yogurt.

The number of feedings also depends on whether the baby is bottle- or natural-fed. It has been proven that artificial babies sleep longer and more soundly than infants.

While the mother is breastfeeding, the baby, regardless of age, will wake up at night and look for the breast.

Why does a child wake up at night?

If nothing bothers him, he can sleep peacefully through the night or wake up to have a snack. If he wakes up very often and cries for no apparent reason and cannot fall asleep, then you need to pay attention to all of the following factors:

• too active rhythm of the baby's daytime pastime - overexcitement;
• physical ailments (teething, runny nose, high fever, colic);
• the presence of diaper rash and sweat rash;
• full diaper;
• unfavorable microclimate of the room (too high or low temperature, high or low air humidity);
• noise around (music, conversations, knocking doors, etc.).

A healthy child's sleep is a dream when everyone is sweet and comfortable - both adults and children!

Komarovsky E. O.

http://articles.komarovskiy.net/10-pravil-zdorovogo-detskogo-sna.html

How to teach your baby to sleep through the night

For a productive and comfortable night's sleep, you must adhere to the following basic rules:

• maintain a constant air temperature in the room;
• two hours before bedtime, stop active games and settle into a calm mood;
• before going to bed, bathe the baby in warm water with chamomile;
• have a relaxing massage with baby body oil;
• take care of comfortable, comfortable bed linen and nightgown;
• if the weather permits, it is advisable to take a walk in the fresh air before going to bed;
• Correctly plan your baby’s daily diet during the day so that he doesn’t feel hungry at night. But you shouldn’t overfeed, as at night he will moan and roll over from side to side;
• Don't let yourself sleep too much during the day. In order to know whether your baby sleeps a lot or not, you need to know the daily need for sleep depending on his age.

The most important rule is the established daily routine, which must be observed by all family members without exception. Lights out should be the same for everyone. In the room where the baby sleeps, it is necessary to turn off the lights and turn off all appliances.

Video: how to teach someone to sleep through the night without feeding

The main mistakes that parents make when weaning their children from night feedings

Weaning off night feedings is a gradual process that requires patience. You can’t suddenly stop feeding him at night if his body is used to it and requires it.

The main mistakes that parents make when trying to teach their child to sleep without prolonged awakenings:

• they do not pay attention to night screams and crying, believing that the baby will get tired and fall asleep on his own;
• They are trying to replace the mixture with water or juice. Water and juice are unable to satisfy hunger;
• throughout the day they try to load the child with all sorts of active games, in the hope that he will be exhausted and sleep better.

What does Dr. Komarovsky think about night sleep - video

Sleep is the key to an active and healthy child. And parents should create all the conditions for a calm and comfortable sleep for their child, because not much is needed for this.

Most often, young families expecting a new addition understand that with the arrival of a baby in the house, they will have to forget about peaceful nights spent in their bed for some time. You should not believe the stories of a friend who claims that her baby has been sleeping throughout the night since birth. Most likely, my friend is exaggerating, and in her concept “all night” is the time from one in the morning to four in the morning.

Therefore, mothers and fathers must understand that finding an answer to the question of how to teach a child to sleep through the night until he is at least 1 year old is unrealistic. However, there are methods that can help make life easier for families.

It is impossible to teach an infant to sleep through the night for the reason that the baby cannot withstand such a long break without food. Newborn babies should receive food with a break of about 2 hours (and during the period of lactation, perhaps more often). Night time is no exception. So, the mother will have to get up 3-4 times a night to feed the baby. At about 3 months, a child can sleep at night for 4-5 hours, a six-month-old child needs 1-2 night feedings, at 9 months it is enough to feed the child once at night.

After a year, a child can easily do without food at night, however, many children do not want to put up with this situation and continue to wake up at night until they are 1.5-2 years old.

Read also: How to teach a child to drink from a sippy cup: features of models and teaching methods

But feeling hungry is not the only factor that can cause a child to wake up at night. The baby's daily routine is not yet familiar enough to him, so he cannot sleep for 7-8 hours straight without a break.

Despite the fact that it is almost impossible to teach a child under one year to sleep through the night, it is at this age that it is necessary to begin to develop healthy habits that will make life much easier for parents when the baby gets older.

"Confused day with night"

Probably, many families have encountered a situation where a baby sleeps peacefully almost all day, waking up only to eat, and at night he gives a “concert.” Moreover, the child is not bothered by anything, he just slept well and wants to play and communicate with his parents. In this case, they say that the baby mixed up the time of day, that is, he experienced a regime failure.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with this for the baby. But parents experience a lot of inconvenience. And if the mother can still sleep at least a couple of hours during the day, when the baby is resting peacefully, and only conditionally, since no one has canceled the usual household chores, then the father, who needs to go to work after a sleepless night, can only feel sorry for him.

Of course, in wealthy families, this issue can be resolved very simply. Dad sleeps peacefully in a room located at a distance from the nursery, a housekeeper does the housework, and a nanny helps mom and baby. But for ordinary families, whose only assistant is a grandmother, and even then she is not always able to come to the rescue, such a failure of the regime can become very problematic.

Read also: How to potty train a two year old? Choose the “throne” and be patient

Unfortunately, there is no radical way of fighting that allows you to restore normal conditions in one day. It will be necessary to persistently and gradually transfer the child to a normal mode, trying not to let him fall asleep during the day.

So, to teach your baby to sleep through the night without waking up, you need to start developing healthy habits from infancy. To do this, you can use the Komarovsky method to organize healthy sleep.

First of all, you need to understand that a child’s sleep is a component of his life, which is closely connected with other aspects: walks, nutrition, hygiene procedures, etc. Therefore, it is impossible to organize a child’s normal sleep without worrying about normalizing the diet or neglecting the rules of hygiene.

Doctor's advice:

• More than anything else, a child needs parents who are rested and in a good mood, so there is no need to try to embrace the immensity and redo everything in the world. There will be nothing wrong if the family eats the simplest dishes, but the mother will have the opportunity to fully rest;

• The child’s routine needs to be adjusted to the family routine. Decide on your bedtime and try not to deviate from the accepted rules. The child, in essence, does not care whether he sleeps from 9 pm to 5 am, or from 11 pm to 7 am. But for parents this moment can be significant;

• Decide where and with whom the child will sleep. Pediatricians do not approve of the fashionable hobby today: sleeping together with a child in the parent’s bed. But if it is more convenient for this family, then you can choose this option. Ideally, a child under one year old should sleep in a separate crib placed in the parents’ bedroom. But after a year he can be “resettled” into a separate room;

• Don't be afraid to wake your baby if he sleeps too long during the day. There are accepted sleep standards for children of different ages, which you need to focus on, not forgetting that all children are individual. For example, a 6-month-old baby, on average, should sleep 14.5 hours a day. Therefore, if you want your baby to sleep at least 8 hours at night, you should not let him sleep during the day for more than 6.5 hours. If the baby sleeps 9-10 hours during the day, then the parents are guaranteed a sleepless night;

• It is imperative to optimize feeding so that the child does not wake up at night from hunger;

• During periods of wakefulness, the baby should be active. Massage and gymnastics are useful for very young children; children who have learned to crawl should move more;

• the bedroom should not be too hot and the air should not be stagnant;

Lyudmila Sergeevna Sokolova

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