The one thing most of us need in our life is a good night’s sleep. You may be completely baffled to learn your infant daughter did not inherit this need. Darkness and daylight mean nothing to her. She will sleep and stay awake whenever she wants. And it will often seem that her desires are exactly the opposite of your own. While you may prefer to sleep at night, you’ll soon learn that babies have other plans for the nighttime hours. At first, your newborn will sleep most of the day (about sixteen out of twenty-four hours) and wake about every three or four hours for a feeding. After about a week, she’ll begin to spend more and more time awake and more time feeding. But it’s still too early to set up any kind of sleep or feeding schedule. An infant’s stomach is too small to hold enough food to last for long stretches between feedings. From one to two months of age, infants spend more daytime hours awake, taking in the world around them. Still, most babies this age need at least 2 one-to-three-hour naps every day—one in the morning and one after lunch. If your daughter sleeps longer than three or four hours during daytime naps, wake her up so she will be sleepy at bedtime. At this age, many infants begin to skip at least one nighttime feeding. You can encourage a longer stretch between nighttime feedings by letting your daughter cry and fuss a bit before running to the rescue. Very often babies awake at night (as we all do) and just need a few minutes of fussing to settle back down and fall asleep again. Give your daughter a chance to learn how to self-soothe. You’ll be glad you did when she is able to put herself back to sleep without your help over the next year. At this time, you can emphasize the differences between night and day by keeping the baby’s sleeping room dark at night and doing the necessary feeding and changing in a quick, quiet way. Don’t talk, play, or turn on the lights. During the day, let the sunshine in, let the noise and bustle level stay higher, and play and talk with your daughter whenever she is awake. Unless your newborn is particularly sensitive to noise, it pays to keep daytime noise levels normal even when she is napping. That way she’ll get used to snoozing through ringing phones and normal conversation. By six weeks, babies tend to sleep longest in the evening, usually for three to five hours at a stretch, and this trend becomes stronger as the months pass. If you feed her at 10 or 11 .., you may even be able to sleep until dawn. At about three months, most bottle-fed babies no longer need feedings at night, even though they may enjoy them. Breast-fed babies usually reach that point a little later, perhaps at five or six months. By three months, your daughter will be ready to have a more formal sleep schedule. You can begin to put her down at the same time every day for naps and bedtime. Remember to put her to sleep while she’s still awake and not feeding. If you feed your daughter to sleep, she will need you to do it again and again every time she wakes in the middle of the night. Once she learns to associate feeding with sleeping, it will be hard to break the habit and she will want to suck in order to fall asleep every night. Throughout the night when she wakes naturally, she’ll find she can’t put herself back to sleep without feeding (or the pacifier!). This is also bad for her developing teeth. When the teeth begin to break through at about four months, bedtime feedings make cavities far more likely because the liquid pools around the teeth as the baby sleeps. So after feeding, wake your daughter, burp her, then put her down so she learns how to put herself to sleep without a feeding. It’s the middle of the night and your daughter is crying for a feeding. “Why not let her sleep in my bed so I don’t have to keep getting up?” you wonder. There are many parents who strongly support the family bed and the emotional advantages they feel it gives to the whole family. On the other hand, there are many who see this arrangement as both an intrusion of privacy and a dangerous situation for the child. In my case, I did not bring my baby daughter to my bed because my three-year-old son was still there! I had let him move in as an infant and he had no intention of moving out to make room for his little sister. The family bed did not work well for me! The final decision on whether or not to bring your daughter into your bed is entirely up to you. If you decide to make room for a squiggly infant (even if it’s just for the feeding) keep these safety tips in mind Remove all pillows and comforters. Your daughter can’t push them out of the way if they get pulled over her face while you sleep. Also do not bring a baby into your bed if you sleep on a waterbed, feather bed, or sheepskin. They, too, can cause suffocation. Do not bring your daughter into your bed if you are under the influence of alcohol, medications, or other drugs. You will not hear her cry if you roll over on her and suffocate her. (Sadly, it has happened.) Be sure your daughter can easily sleep on her back to avoid SIDS. Don’t over-bundle your daughter; she will have your body heat as well as her own. Overheating is one suspected cause of SIDS.Put your daughter in the middle of the bed so she can’t roll off. (Even newborns work their way across the bed as your own body shifts positions during the night.)
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