How To Improve Your Baby’s Sleep

Registered Nurse Karen Pohl shares five sleep training tips for new parents

As a new parent, one of the very first things to go out the window is a good night’s sleep. Many times this can start as early as the first trimester of pregnancy. One of my very first pregnancy symptoms was difficulty sleeping. I felt restless, had vivid wild dreams and was up with frequent urination right from the start. As parents, it’s almost like we wear exhaustion as a badge of honour; as though being exhausted is a reward for being an amazing parent. What if I told you that you could be an incredible parent AND still get a solid night’s sleep?

I know, it sounds like a stretch in those early days, even years, but I promise there are tools to help. Parenting is exhausting, setting up your baby with good sleep habits can help you both get more sleep and allow you to be the best parent you can be. Here’s a few steps you can take to improve your family’s sleep:

Optimize the sleep environment.

Infants start producing their own melatonin by about 12 weeks of age. Melatonin is our sleep hormone; it helps us fall asleep and stay asleep. Naturally, this hormone increases around 7 p.m. and continues to rise until about midnight where it stays high for the remainder of the night and decreases again toward morning. Darkness helps our bodies know it’s time to make melatonin. Keeping the lights dim in the evening prior to bedtime and making the room as dark as possible can improve sleep – for everyone!

The ideal temperatures for sleep are 18-20 degrees Celsius.

White noise can be helpful to provide a constant sound so abrupt loud noises do not wake up your baby. Keep the noise machine a few feet away from baby’s head, at no more than 50 decibels to protect their hearing.

Follow age-appropriate awake times.

Awake times are the amount of time a baby is awake between each period of sleep throughout the day. For example, the amount of time a newborn should be awake is about 45 minutes. This means when that newborn wakes up in the morning, they need to be fed, burped, diaper changed and back to sleep 45 minutes later. This time increases as babies get older. It’s a misconception that keeping a baby awake for longer will help them sleep longer!

Age --> Awake Time

0-2 months --> Up to 1 hour

2-3.5 months --> Up to 2 hours

5-7 months --> Up to 2 hours 15 minutes

8-13 months --> Up to 4 hours

14 months - 3 years --> Up to 6 hours

Another schedule tip we like to use is the MAMAS method. This is what you would do during an awake period.

  • M = Milk (feed your baby)
  • A = Activity (i.e. burp, changed diaper, floor play)
  • M = Milk (for babies on solids, this would be where you’d feed solids)
  • A = Activity
  • S = Sleep

The MAMAS method helps keep milk (bottle or breastfeeding) away from sleep. In younger babies, their awake period may be too short to offer two feeding sessions, that is ok! You would just do one feed, then activity and then sleep.

One big misconception is that offering a huge feed right before bed will help your baby sleep longer. Just like adults, babies have caloric needs that need to be met in a 24 hour period. Offering plenty of feeds throughout the day allows babies to fill this need throughout the daytime, helping to decrease the number of feeds they need overnight.

The golden ticket to better sleep is bedtime!

Being super consistent with a bedtime routine, learning the right timing for your babe, avoiding making the baby drowsy throughout feeds and eliminating sleep props can all result in better sleep. Sleep props are anything that helps a baby or child fall asleep that is outside of them. Examples include: feeding to sleep, rocking, and soothers. Whatever a baby needs at the start of the night to fall asleep, is what they will need when they rouse throughout the night to get back to sleep.

A really great example of this is my oldest son. He was nursed to sleep until he was 15 months old. He would sleep for a couple of hours and then wake up because he could not connect his sleep cycles independently. Then I would go into his room, nurse him again and hold him until he was in a deep sleep before putting him back down. Repeat all night long. I was tired. I was getting short spurts of sleep throughout the night for months. In fact, he didn’t sleep solidly through the night until he was 3.5 years old. I always kept some kind of sleep prop with him. He was nursed to sleep, then had a soother, was rocked, and then we laid with him in his bed. With both my second and third kids, I followed the MAMAS routine and awake times and had two incredible sleepers from just a few months old.

Did you know that infants and children rouse 4-6 times throughout the night? This happens as they transition from one sleep cycle into the next. If they have strong independent sleep skills, they will be able to put themselves back to sleep. If there is something preventing independent sleep skills, they will most likely wake up and let you know that they are awake and need help getting back to sleep.

You’ll often hear about various sleep regressions, but they’re really progressions! As babies hit different developmental milestones, it is very normal for them to experience sleep disturbances and start waking more frequently overnight. I like to encourage families to practice new skills frequently throughout awake time during the day to help master new skills, tire out a kiddo and discourage them from practicing new skills when they should be sleeping. Most babies will move through a developmental milestone within 7-10 days, some may take as long as three weeks.

Remember, there is no right or wrong way to parent. If your baby has sleep props and it’s working for you, you can absolutely keep them. If your baby has shorter awake times or doesn’t like white noise, no big deal. It’s only a problem if it’s a problem for you. If it’s a problem, there are many resources and approaches you can take to improve your family’s sleep.

Karen Pohl

Karen Pohl is a Registered Nurse and mother of three young children serving the Grey and Bruce Counties and Collingwood area. Since beginning her nursing career in 2007 with a specialization in pediatrics, she’s gained extensive experience providing pediatric and newborn care including as a registered nurse in the oncology and emergency departments of Sick Kids Hospital. Karen currently offers pre-natal, postpartum and early childhood support to parents and families at The Mama Coach and Inkblot Therapy.