Sleep becomes a focal point when you have a baby in the home. While your baby needs a lot of sleep, he doesn't always sleep for long periods of time at night when you want to sleep. Regular waking during the night is normal, especially in the first few months. Bedtime routines help your baby learn healthy sleep habits during his first year.
Sleep Times
A newborn starts at about 16 hours of sleep per day, according to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. As she gets older, this amount of sleep time decreases slightly. Between one and three months, babies sleep about 15 hours. From six months to one year, the average is 14 hours per day. Young babies usually only sleep around eight or nine hours at night, with the remainder of their sleep time occurring during the day. By six months, your baby may sleep for 10 or 11 hours at night. As the length of nighttime sleep increases, the amount of daytime sleep decreases.
Waking
Waking is normal for infants, particularly during the nighttime sleep period. While your baby is likely to sleep eight or more hours at night, he is only likely to sleep for a few hours before waking. Young infants need to eat during these times. When he reaches three months, the stretches may increase to around five hours at a time. By six months, your baby may sleep straight through at night without waking up to eat. Babies don't always begin sleeping through the night in the first year. Work with your baby's sleep rhythms and eating needs to establish nighttime sleep
Problems
Even once your infant begins sleeping through the night, she is likely to have nights when she wakes. In some cases, these wakings occur every night over several days or even weeks. Reasons for the sleep difficulty include teething, growth spurts, illness, reaching developmental milestones like crawling and separation anxiety. If your infant becomes overly tired, she may also have difficulty falling sleep or staying asleep. Your baby may cry or try to cling to you when you put her to bed.
Tips
Regular sleep routines at bedtime help your infant fall asleep easier and avoid waking prematurely. Tune into your baby's natural sleep schedule by recognizing signs of sleepiness like yawning or rubbing his eyes. Go through the same steps in the bedtime routine every night so it becomes natural to your baby and helps him ease into sleep. Give him time to calm himself down if he cries at night, especially once he gets older. Staying calm yourself gives him a greater sense of calm, making it easier to go back to sleep.
