New Parents and Newborns

No amount of reading about newborns can truly prepare you for living with one. They sleep for sixteen hours out of every twenty-four; they can't yet tell day from night; and their communication is limited to crying and, if necessary, screaming. It's a difficult adjustment for new parents, who may have been expecting the calm and cherubic, playful infant idealized in baby stores and the media.

The sleep cycles of newborns can be especially problematic in a busy household. Since they can't tell day from night, they may (and often do) wake crying throughout the night. Their crying may be spurred by an uncomfortable or itchy baby blanket, a baby blanket being wrapped too snugly or not snugly enough, hunger, fear, the desire for warmth and comfort, or simple boredom.

It's natural, at three in the morning, to want to know the best way to get your baby to sleep again. With small infants, an attempted feeding and swaddling them tightly in a baby blanket is often all they need to go back to dreamland and let you return to bed as well. For the rest of the time, however, it's important to know more about baby sleep cycles.

Helping Baby Learn to Sleep

Adjusting to life outside of the womb disrupts the sleep/wake cycles your baby had while still inside his mother's uterus. He may still sleep at around the same times, but he may have trouble transitioning from awake to asleep without the familiar noises and sensations of his prenatal home. Your goal, as a parent, is to try and replicate the sleeping environment he had inside the womb as much as possible, in an effort to teach him how to go to sleep on his own.

The first and foremost consideration is comfort. Every parent must learn how to swaddle a baby in a baby blanket. For most infants, this is the only way to get comfortable enough to sleep. Swaddling is easy: fold down one corner of a baby blanket to make a three-pointed, flat-topped shape. Place your baby in the center of the baby blanket so that the "wings" of the baby blanket are around his arms and the baby blanket will wrap around his shoulders. Tuck up the bottom corner over his legs, fold one side in and tuck it beneath his body, then wrap the other "wing" of the baby blanket around and tuck it into the body of the baby blanket. It may look incredibly uncomfortable to you, but swaddling brings back memories of life in the womb, and most babies crave that cramped, cozy feeling.

If you keep the lights in your baby's room dim, remember to put him down when he's drowsy or already asleep, ensure he has a full tummy and a clean nappy, and swaddle him tightly, he will learn - gradually, over the course of about six months - when it's time to settle himself down for bed. Until then, run through this list whenever he cries, and console yourself with the knowledge that in a few short months you'll once again be able to sleep through the night.