Prevent Overtiredness and Teach Independent Sleep Skills

There are several key pieces to successfully putting your baby to sleep:

1. Prevent Overtiredness

Sleep begets sleep, and as such, an overtired baby fights sleep. To prevent overtiredness, follow age-appropriate wake windows and watch for your baby’s sleepy cues. These signs tell you that your baby is ready for sleep.

2. Teach Independent Sleep Skills

Once your baby is older than four months, you can teach them independent sleep skills. This means starting with optimizing their sleep, then working on sleep initiation, nap lengthening, and finally dropping wake windows (if you want!)

Decrease Stimulation

Most sleep consultants advise keeping the room dark. Blackout curtains are a great investment and work to ensure better sleep for adults and babies alike. You must cut out all loud and disruptive noises as they distract the kids. Playing white noise can work for some children. It worked for my older child but not for the younger ones. Most kids love rocking movements and fall asleep easily in a rocker or arms.

However, I always experienced pain in my arms while rocking, and moving from rocker to bed was a nightmare. Thus, I adopted a different approach. I normally put the child on my chest in a hugging position and rock up and down. I also sing a lullaby or chant ‘aum’ alongside.

This is very effective at calming the baby and helps to get past sleep resistance most times. It also helps to dim lights and minimize stimulations towards bedtime.

Set a Lights Off Time

Babies thrive on routine, hence, establishing a proper routine can help you in putting your baby to sleep. I highly suggest identifying a time at night when you will put the lights off.

This will signal your baby that it is nighttime and time for sleep. Doing this on a regular basis will create a routine. Aside from that, this will also encourage the release of the sleep hormone melatonin, which further encourages deep sleep.