Newborn sleep: 5 tricks for peaceful nights
Rivers of ink have always been spent on the sleep of the newborn and perhaps together with breastfeeding, it is to be considered as the most topical, controversial, debated and “hot” topic.
Mothers of children who sleep through the night perhaps do not realize their immense fortune, those who have overcome the very tiring phase of awakenings probably remember it as a particularly stressful period both for their life and for the couple, those who are going through this phase, they are often looking for advice from friends or more and more often on the net in the spaces dedicated to these topics.
In fact, among mothers in fact, the phrase ” Awakenings are physiological up to three years of age ” resonates everywhere like a mantra and is often pronounced almost as a synonym of “resignation”. Sooner or later it will pass, hopefully sooner rather than later, but in any case there is not much you can do.
Surely there are no elixirs or magic potions to help parents exhausted by months (or years) of sleepless nights or dotted with dozens of awakenings, but there are certainly some tricks to at least try to make the nights of the whole family more serene.
As a first point, we all know that children need routine , serenity, marked days, calm rhythms and predictability. Surely routines don’t solve the sleep problem but they definitely make the little one more serene and less agitated.
Every parent would dream of peaceful nights and rhythmic and regular rhythms, but this is not as easy as one might think, or in any case good habits must be built and consolidated over time.
Massimo Bernardi , specialist in Pediatrics and author of over 60 scientific publications, provides some ideas to parents in this regard, to help them in a practical way in managing their children’s sleep.
1) The well-being of the child comes first
In order for a child to sleep peacefully, let us remember that he must be in a state of well-being in which his needs are fully satisfied and nothing can be a nuisance for him. He won’t rest well if he isn’t full, if he hasn’t been changed, if the environment around him isn’t relaxed and serene but on the contrary is psychologically tense, if he isn’t in a comfortable position or if he is disturbed by his mother’s absence. Therefore, Bernardi affirms: “ When your child is sleepy, stay close to him , forget the discussions with the husband, make sure that the little one is at ease, that he is not thirsty, smile at him, talk to him, possibly sing a lullaby ” .
Children, even very small ones, are very capable of capturing the surrounding environment and the signals that come from it: if mum and dad are tense, they will somehow perceive it and will also be affected in their own way.
2) Let the baby move
Even small children prefer one sleeping position rather than another and of course this must also be taken into account.
Absolutely avoid putting a soft pillow in the cradle or cot into which he can sink his face , because it can be really risky for suffocation and do not try to “fix” the child in any position using very tight blankets or anything that can make him feel immobile he is forced”.
No adult would like to sleep feeling “trapped”, children certainly are no different from us.
3) Beware of the heat
On this point Bernardi is very clear, the tendency to cover children excessively can be a factor of enormous disturbance for them: “Do n’t let them suffer from the heat, because they are a fierce enemy of children . Often the newborn can’t sleep, he’s very agitated, tormented by thirst, suffering in an impressive way, just because he has an extra blanket . Indeed, remember that if your child has hot hands, or worse if his head is all sweaty, it means that the temperature is too high for him or that he is too covered up, and that he suffers from it . The hands of a child who is well must be fresh ”.
4) Respect the child’s rhythm
Even settling on sleep schedules is of little use, every child has his own rhythm and you can’t do anything but understand and respect it.
You can certainly help the little one to regulate himself by adopting small but constant expedients such as keeping mealtimes as stable as possible , making sure that at certain times of the day the house is quiet and his room in dim light, having a bath that calm and relax him. In doing so, underlines the pediatrician: “ Little by little the child will get used to alternating wakefulness and sleep. But don’t force it too much. If he is fast asleep, don’t wake him up because it’s feeding time; wait for it to wake up by itself. You will move the meal by half an hour, or in the worst case scenario, you will even skip a feed. Nothing bad will happen. And don’t expect him to sleep at that precise moment that you think is the right one.A little flexibility is needed . But don’t go overboard in the opposite direction either: every child has his own rhythm and it’s good that it doesn’t change every day .
If your child usually falls asleep around nine in the evening, you don’t need to stay there with a stopwatch in hand, but neither do you have to put him to rest once at nine, once at half past seven, once again at eleven.
In other words, you will have to adapt your activities and the running of the house a little to the habits of the little one: if one evening you send him to bed at seven because you have to go out to dinner with friends, and the following evening you keep him in the living room until ten because Aunt Clotilde is coming and wants to see her little nephew, then you cannot expect the child to meekly follow a rhythm that you have broken “.
5) The hours of sleep of the newborn
The amount of sleep wouldn’t seem like a big deal either. If we cannot know exactly how many hours the child needs to rest, he does know.
It is said that a newborn sleeps twenty hours a day, but this does not seem to be a fact that corresponds to reality. Some newborns never seem to sleep and are just as healthy as the most sleepyheads.
The task of the parents, concludes Bernardi in this case is to respect the child and his needs , favoring a minimum of regularity in the timetables within reasonable limits.
Kathryn Barlow is an OB/GYN doctor, which is the medical specialty that deals with the care of women's reproductive health, including pregnancy and childbirth.
Obstetricians provide care to women during pregnancy, labor, and delivery, while gynecologists focus on the health of the female reproductive system, including the ovaries, uterus, vagina, and breasts. OB/GYN doctors are trained to provide medical and surgical care for a wide range of conditions related to women's reproductive health.