Mommy & Baby: How Should Your Baby Sleep?
Posted by Kirsten Hawkins on: 2005-09-16 17:31:04
Parent-Directed Feeding (PDF) directly ties in to sleeping patterns of your young baby. It provides consistency, routine, and an ability to predict with a tremendous amount of accuracy what’s going on when your little one cries. Confidence as a mommy comes when you know what to expect. Mom is also able to get more rest when utilizing PDF, ultimately making her healthier and more able to meet her baby’s and family’s needs.
Expecting babies to sleep through the night is very realistic, achievable, and reasonable goal, however it almost never happens without parental guidance. Babies that are healthy & full term are typically able to sleep between 7-8 hours at a time during the night between 7-14 weeks of age. When a baby reaches this milestone is very individual, but typically by 3 months of age, a properly-nourished PDF baby is sleeping through the night.
There is an art form to encouraging your baby to develop healthy sleep patterns, and as I mentioned earlier, it is rooted in the feeding-philosophy you adhere to. Using a PDF flexible routine, you’ll want to set up your baby’s routine to look like this (and in the following order):
Feeding time
Wake time
Nap time
When you establish this pattern, your baby’s sleep patterns will become predictable in short-order. Do not confuse the last two and encourage your baby to fall asleep while eating; you’ll set up a pattern that you won’t be able to sustain and won’t give your baby the adequate sleep she requires to grow and be healthy. Babies do know when they are sleepy, but they have no ability to establish this routine for themselves, and if left to their own abilities, they will not develop healthy sleep patterns.
Failure to establish continuous night-time sleep is not a result of breast- or bottle-feeding. Neither the composition of breast milk or formula nor the speed with which either are digested have any bearing on a baby’s ability to establish healthy nighttime sleep patterns.
If nothing else, good nighttime sleep habits produce healthier, more intelligent children, and thus should be a priority for parents to establish in their children’s lives. About The Author: Kirsten Hawkins is a baby and parenting expert specializing new mothers and single parent issues. Visit http://www.babyhelp411.com/ for more information on how to raising healthy, happy children.
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