Most newly born babies find it difficult to sleep throughout the night or without being held, hence the nursing becoming restless at night.
The medical reason your baby won’t sleep at night is that their brain changes cycle and babies move from rapid eye movement (REM) to non-REM sleep at night.
This is also the reason pregnant women sleep better during the day than the night because their babies are awake at night.
While daily routine, breastfeeding style, care, and sleep rhythm can help as natural sleep remedies for babies, how good or bad your baby sleeps at night depends on the baby’s personality.
How to Train Your Baby to Sleep at Night?
In the first few weeks of life, you should try to discipline your baby and develop rituals that make him relax and happy with you and the new environment.
Keep the child busy with toys and music during the day, and make sure he sleeps deeply during the day to replicate this at night.
If your baby sleeps any time he wants, then he’s not likely to learn a safe day-night rhythm. If your baby sleeps too much in the day, then he may want to play at night because he has rested enough.
Songs, stories, and massage help the baby to play enough, find his sleep rhythm and become calmer.
How to Calm Fussy Baby at Night
If your baby is not sleeping and crying at night, you’re not alone in this situation. There are always moments in which babies react differently.
You can massage your baby, pat him on the back and gently massage his face. Don’t leave your baby crying to sleep as this is cruel and can make your baby difficult to train later.
Also note that babies like being carried in their hands than being laid on the bed, your baby can cry for a few minutes after placing him on the bed, simply pat him and play with him before he sleeps off.
Train him to understand that there is time to cuddle, play and carry, and time to rest and sleep.
To soothe overtired babies, or a baby that stops sleeping every 2 hours, you can offer him formula at night to help him sleep longer at night.
The formula takes longer to digest, so the baby can remain full and asleep at night, but the formula does not have sleep hormones.
Breast milk on the other hand has sleep hormones and it’s easy to digest for babies.
Therefore, nursing mothers can strike a balance here by mixing breast milk with formula and offering their babies at night to make them sleep through the night.
To put your baby to sleep in 40 seconds or under a few minutes in the middle of the night, you should change his sleep position, offer a massage, give water, make sure the room is not too cold or hot, and there’s maximum conform for your baby.
You can also give sleep syrup to make your baby sleep fast at night, but you should consult your doctor before trying this method.
Making sure you don’t get your baby addicted to drugs before he can sleep well is very important as a nursing mother.
If your baby has grown well and is already eating food, the food you offer your baby and the amount can also affect the sleeping behavior.
Note, there’s no magical food or recipes to make your baby sleep at night, rice or any other cereals do not help with sleep.
