The ABC's of Infant Sleep- Daytime Sleep!

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If ever you hear (or read!) anything I say, make it this little piece of advice right here.

When parents contact us about maximizing sleep with a baby their questions often look like this:

"My baby is waking up every 45 minutes throughout the night.What do I do?"

"We spend hours getting our baby to sleep for bedtime, only to wake in an hour and a half.Why is this?"

"Our daughter hates her bassinet and screams the moment we lay her down. Will she always hate it?"

The list goes on. The struggle is REAL. Oh so real. I've mentioned before in our series ABC's of Infant Sleep that Mr. Teel and I were in the very shoes I just described and desperately needed something to help us experience some sort of respite.

Just like during our pregnancy we heard advice that I swear was conjured up from some people's dreams as I envied anyone who got to shut their eyes for more than a couple hours at a time.

The most common bit of advice we got from 'momlookers' (those are the onlookers that give us mom's advice at first glance of our pregnant bodies or tired eyes, lol!) is to KEEP.BABY.AWAKE.ALL.DAY. and they will sleep all night.

No. Nope. Just no.

This advice, if tried, will backfire on you. I promise.

Backfire how? You ask.

Let me show you.

Frequent night wakings.
BIG struggle with naps.
Overstimulated baby.
Overtired baby.
Harder to soothe baby.
Cranky baby.
Even more tired parents.
Now cranky parents.

That idea and approach to sleep doesn't even work for most toddlers. So, beware of that advice!

Okay, so what DO you do?

Our first blog during this series was about awake times and this is absolutely the foundation of a solid healthy pattern of sleep for your baby.

Be sure and read our blog ABC's of Infant Sleep- Awake Times! to match your child's age with how long they should be awake during the day.

It doesn't matter if your baby sleeps in your arms, in their crib, on the go in the car seat, in the stroller on a walk...as long as they get the sleep they need during the day you are setting them up for a better nights sleep.

Now we all have off days and this is okay! Nothing terrible will happen if your baby is awake for too long, but it can and usually will make nights more challenging.

Also, changes take time! No one's sleep is perfect, even as the grown up adults that we are, we have nights of messed up sleep.

But using this advice will give you a starting point to do your detective work with your baby when adjusting schedules or figuring out why xy or z is happening.

If you have questions outside of the awake times and want some help with them contact us! As Certified Postpartum & Infant Care Doulas and Infant Sleep Coaches, we are happy to help guide you through some rough patches.