Here - Health Promotion Agency

The first weeks
S LEEPING
Some babies sleep much more than
others. Some sleep in long patches,
some in short. Some soon sleep right
through the night, some don’t for a
long time. Your baby will have his or
her own pattern of waking and
sleeping, and it’s unlikely to be the
same as other babies you know.
In the early weeks your baby’s
sleeping pattern is very unlikely to
fit in with your need for sleep. Try
to follow your baby’s needs. You’ll
gradually get to know when sleep
is needed. Don’t catch up on
housework while your baby sleeps.
Snatch sleep and rest whenever
you can.
A baby who wants to sleep isn’t
likely to be disturbed by household
noise, so there’s no need to keep
the house silent while your baby
sleeps. In fact, it will help you if
your child gets used to sleeping
through a certain amount of noise.
Most parents want their children
to learn to sleep for the longest
period at night – when they are
sleeping – and it helps if you
encourage night-time sleeping right
from the start by teaching your baby
that the night-time is different from
the daytime. During night feeds:
● keep the lights down low;
● keep your voice low and don’t
talk much;
● put your baby down as soon as you
have fed and changed him or her;
● don’t change your baby if a
change is not needed.
If your baby always falls asleep in your
arms, at your breast, in your partner’s
arms, or with someone by the cot, he
or she might not easily take to settling
alone. This might not matter to you
and may be unavoidable in the early
weeks, particularly with a breastfed
baby, but, if you want your baby to
get used to going off to sleep alone,
it’s wise to start putting the baby
down before he or she falls asleep
right from the beginning, whenever
this is possible. However, you may
need to wait until the baby is alert
for longer or more frequent periods.
Remember though, the longer
you leave it, the more difficult it
will become.
Once you’ve established a pattern,
you may want to try and shift things
around a bit. For example, you may
wake your baby for a feed just before
you go to bed in the hope that you’ll
get a good long stretch of sleep
before he or she wakes again.
See pages 55–6 for more information
about sleeping problems in older
babies and children. Cry-SIS, the
organisation for parents of crying
babies, can also offer help with
sleeping problems (address on page 147).
SAFE SLEEPING
Reducing the risk of cot death
Sadly, we don’t yet know why some
babies die suddenly and for no
apparent reason from what is called
cot death or Sudden Infant Death
Syndrome (SIDS). But we do know
that placing a baby to sleep on his or
her back from the very beginning
reduces the risk, and that exposing a
baby to cigarette smoke or
overheating a baby increases the risk.
‘It wasn’t that she wouldn’t
sleep when she needed to.
She just didn’t need it. Or at
least, she needed a whole lot
less than we did. It’s not
getting your baby to sleep
that’s the problem; it’s getting
enough sleep yourself.’
‘I would just get one of them
off to sleep when the other
one woke for a feed. I was
desperately tired but
gradually they got into a
pattern and at last I could get
some sleep myself.’
The ‘feet to foot’ position
means that the baby’s feet
are right at the end of the
cot to prevent the baby
wriggling under the
covers.
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