You are not alone, a quarter of children under fives have sleep problems, if your newborn baby is waking up in the night your sleep patterns will be disturbed.
Lots of babies, especially new born babies are night-time babies. New born babies should sleep 1.5 to 2 hours at a time during the day.
New born babies sleep 16-18 hours out of 24hours though they wake up often. So what can you do? It is better to try and reset the baby's clock starting from 8 weeks by trying a bedtime routine of a bath and massage between 6pm-7pm, it is tiring I know, you need to be persistent and your efforts will pay off.
- Get the baby up in the morning at normal waking time, rather than letting her sleep to make up for the lost time. It may be tempting to let the baby sleep so you can catch up on sleep yourself, or get a few minutes of peace and quiet.
- Give your baby a simple wash (top and tail) and change her out of her night clothes.
Your baby will soon learn that daytime is for fun and night-time is for sleeping, the process may take several days or even a few weeks, but if you stick to it, you will soon have yourself a daytime baby. - Play with her as much as you can throughout the day so the she won't go to sleep. Even if she's sleeping soundly wake her up for feeds. For the last feed between 7pm-7:30pm it is advisable to give baby a top up feed if your breastfeeding, just to make sure the baby is full up, as breast milk is lighter in the evenings.
- Keep the curtains open in her room and be your noisy self. Do not turn the ringer off the phone or avoid turning on the dishwasher. That way your baby won't become a light sleeper.
- Do not play with her in the night. Keep her room dark, with just the minimum amount of light for feeds and nappy changes, be quiet and soothing.
Your baby will soon learn that daytime is for fun and night- time is for sleeping.