All month at BirminghamMommy.com we are going to be featuring tips and bits of knowledge for new moms. We already do this throughout the year, but you’ll see a lot of it this month. And we don’t know everything!! Please comment and let us know your opinion!
This is all you need to know:
Most essential book ever: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. Seriously, it’s ESSENTIAL.
It’s a good middle ground book- it doesn’t fall into either extreme— it’s not strict like Babywise and not attachment parenting like Dr. Sears, but somewhere in the middle. The author promotes the idea that sleep is vital to your child’s health.
More or less the idea is to follow a few guidelines:
1. watch your child for signs of drowsiness (it explains the signs)
2. put him/her down to sleep when you first see the signs of tiredness
3. most children under 6 months do not stay awake for longer than 2-3 hours at a time
4. DO NOT just put your child down to nap when you feel like it – that’s just letting him/her cry, not TEACHING them to sleep
5. Most children need to go to sleep at night earlier than you’d think
6. Going to bed earlier promotes later sleeping, Sleep begets sleep!
I had no idea about #6… I was putting my son to bed later and later hoping he’d sleep past 4am. Then I put him to bed at 6:30pm one night and he slept until 7:30am. That wasn’t a fluke, it became his normal routine. The book also helped me get him on a nap schedule. He was overall so much happier when well-rested.
It also addresses colic and a myriad of other obstacles for sleep. It goes well into preschool and school-aged childrens’ sleep issues as well. Go online and read some of the reviews, you’ll be sold!