A Reader Asks:

My son is 2 weeks old and the nights are really rough. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do, I can’t put him down for 10 minutes without him becoming fussy. People told me my the first month or so would hard, but I had no idea how true that is until now. I need some sleep BAD. Why is my newborn so fussy at night?

Jessi Says:

Wow. I’ve been there, mama. Three times.

The nights were so rough the first few weeks, I wondered how anyone could possibly want to have more than one baby. Why would you put yourself through such torture more than once? I even broke down and called my mom in the middle of the night a couple times, bawling my eyes out. I frequently asked her why she would subject herself to two more children after living through the first. It’s nothing short of masochism.

Then I had two more.

Sleepless nights are ugly while they’re going on, but like childbirth, your love for your child overrides the temporary pain of it. A mother’s heart is bigger than any midnight crankiness, or days you’re so tired you walk into walls.

So why is this baby so fussy?

I’m sure you’ve heard someone talk about her baby’s days and nights being “mixed up” and there’s some truth to it. When your baby was occupying your uterus, he was in a nearly constant state of darkness, so the concept of “day” and “night” didn’t exist.

What he did know was, you were at rest at certain times of the day, so he wasn’t being rocked by your movements (while you walked around, exercised or swayed to music) and he didn’t have your soothing voice to lull him to sleep. Your daily activity was actually helping him rest better.

When you were pregnant, did you ever notice that as soon as you sat down to read a book or snuggled into bed for the night, your little man would start bopping around like a crazy person? That’s exactly what’s happening now, except he’s in the outside world, and can voice his need for attention.

I wish I could tell you I have a miracle cure for what ails ya, but I don’t.

There are (thankfully) ways to work with his schedule to get some sleep until his internal clock shifts to a more reasonable schedule.

• Take naps during the day. If he’s napping, follow his lead. It may be difficult to adjust to at first, but your body needs rest and you have to get it when you can. Don’t waste that precious time on cleaning or doing dishes. Those things will wait. Trust me
• Enlist help. If you’re parenting with a partner, make sure that he or she is taking turns with the overnight responsibilities. If you’re going it alone, ask for help. You have family and friends who want to be there for you. This is great time to take them up on it. They’d rather take night duty a couple times than see you miserable
• Don’t turn on the lights. If he’s up before the sun, don’t turn on bright lights or watch exciting TV shows. Making a “daytime” atmosphere confuses your message that this is sleep time. If you need some light, use a small lamp or nightlight. It may be boring, but it’s more restful for both of you
• Let him hear you. Babies like sound, especially your voice. If he needs to hear you singing softly or reading a book quietly, the sound of your voice may soothe him to sleep faster
• If you’ve fed and changed him and he’s still fussy, he might have a tummy-ache. Take turns rubbing his back and belly to relieve any gas that might be causing him discomfort. You can also lay him on his back and gently push his legs up so his knees come to his chest. He may toot or belch his way to happily groggy

Hang in there, sister. Every parent has been where you’re at, and many of us went on to have other little ones afterward. You WILL survive this and even laugh about it some day. As an added bonus, you can hold it over his head when he’s a teenager. It gives the “Because I said so” defense some more firepower.

“Why can’t I sleep in? It’s Saturday.”

“Sleep? SLEEP? When you were a baby, I never got WINK of sleep and you didn’t care what day it was. You can’t sleep in, because I say so. See you in 10 minutes.”

See? It all works out in the end. Someday he’ll be asking you why his newborn is so fussy, and you’ll have a story to tell.

Jessi Arias-Cooper is the senior writer and an editor for Advice4Parenting.com. She is a work-from-home mother of 3 boys and has been married for 10 years. If she had time for hobbies and interests outside of parenting and keeping house, they would be jewelry making, baking, watching bad B-movie horror flicks and creative writing . If you have a question for Jessi, click here.

Photo: flickr.com/photos/tandemracer/536589614/

During the early months of your baby’s life, finding time to take care of yourself can seem impossible. The good news…it’s not. With a little flexibility, you won’t have to sacrifice the simple things in life that keep you happy and healthy.

There are three basic things every new mom wants and needs:

1. More sleep

2. To eat real meals (with both hands)

3. A hot shower.

Once you’re out of the hospital and on your own, you’ll have no choice but to learn how to work with your baby to make sure that you’re both getting what you need.

It can take weeks, sometimes even months, for your baby to sleep through the night. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a stinky, starving zombie.

The key to meeting your obligations to yourself, is to study and understand your baby’s sleeping and eating patterns. How long does she sleep between feedings? How often, and at what time, does she stay awake for an hour or more?

Babies’ schedules can appear to be completely chaotic at first, but if you pay attention, you’ll catch on to a pattern fairly quickly. They will generally find a comfortable rhythm and stick to it for a while.

Once you have your little peanut’s schedule figured out, you can fit your life into her schedule. Prioritize: Naps first, food second, and finally…ahhh…a relaxing shower.

With a little planning, your life can still be yours. A happy mom makes for a happy baby. If you’re too rundown to bring your mommy-ing “A-Game” to the party, you’ll both be miserable.

Give yourself the gift of self-indulgence, even if it’s just in the form of meeting your basic daily needs, and your early mothering experience will be a relaxed, content one.

Jessi Arias-Cooper is the senior writer and an editor for Advice4Parenting.com. She is a work-from-home mother of 3 boys and has been married for 10 years. Jessi co-owns Profitable Prose, with her husband, Brock. If she had time for hobbies and interests outside of parenting and keeping house, they would be jewelry making, baking, watching bad B-movie horror flicks and creative writing.

by Lisa Henley

If your child loves to stay up late or continually can’t sleep past a certain hour, you know it’s time to teach your child to sleep. Children absolutely must have the right amount of sleep to properly function emotionally, physically, and mentally. And when they sleep well, so will you!

Starting at an early age is critical. This is true even though their sleeping habits will change with age. It’ll create a self-care mindset that’ll make it important to them to sleep enough, regardless of their actual routine. That can be powerful in an increasingly cluttered and complex world, with many studies claiming that children have sleep problems and don’t get enough rest to maintain good energy and health levels.

So how can you teach your child to sleep? Here are a few quick tips recommended by the National Sleep Association:

Have your child avoid sugary foods and caffeine. These are stimulants that can interfere with sleep while causing hard crashes later, especially in smaller children.

Create a cutoff time for stimulating activities, as this will help relax your child and get her ready for bed.

Don’t let your child fall asleep wherever she is. Get her to bed when she’s drowsy or tired, since then she’ll already be there and will learn to associate her bed with the only place to sleep. She’ll start going there on her own when sleepy.

Start a consistent bedtime routine, but be sure to ease your child into that routine slowly. The best way to teach your child to sleep is to make sure this routine is regular.

Sleep Tips for Newborns and Babies

On average, newborns sleep between 10 and 18 hours a day, only waking when they need to eat. Newborns are likely to sleep in short increments because they need food more often.

At this stage, there is no reason to teach your baby to sleep; just let her sleep. As your baby gets older, you can look for small and helpful ways to form good sleep habits. It’s ideal to do it over time this way, vs. as one big intervention. After all, how hard would it be for you to change over night?

Sleep Tips for Toddlers and Preschoolers

On average, most toddlers sleep around 12 to 14 hours a day. A 1- to 3-hour nap is also common for this age group. Give your child that rest, but, don’t schedule this or any other nap too close to bedtime, as this will keep her up later.

Be warned. This is the stage in which your child will likely start asserting her own will. You’ll need to be more vigilant in helping her keep to a sleeping routine, being as creative as possible to make sleeping the most desirable option.

One way is to have the same prep routine each night. That means her teeth must be brushed, clothes changed, and toys put away by the same time each night. And doing al of that naturally sets the stage for sleeping. Voila!

Whatever you choose, keep testing things. Sometimes it can seem impossible to teach your child to sleep, but rest assured that there’s a mix that’ll work like magic for your child.

Click here for more great tips on how to get your child to sleep and put an end to the stress and frustration of sleepless nights for you and your child for good

Sometimes it seems impossible to figure out how to get a Baby to sleep so that you can too.  Ahh, the perils of parenthood.  Your little one has a mind and schedule all his (or her!) own, which is probably much different than yours.  But don’t worry.  Billions of parents all over the world have had the same problem with their babies before too, so you can drink of their wisdom to finally get some rest yourself.

Here are some quick tips…

First, realize that getting your Baby to sleep at night doesn’t usually happen overnight. It takes consistent repetition of the same pattern of cues and a safe, soothing environment for your baby to feel comfortable enough to drift off into slumber naturally.  There is simply no health way to force your baby to sleep.  Be very wary of any methods that claim to induce your infant into sleeping, since they may either be unsafe or-at best-they won’t work over the long-term.

Second, be open to testing, testing and testing some more. The more finely attuned you become to your baby’s “sleep personality,” the more you’ll have an intuition for what will work to cuddle Baby to sleep under various circumstances.  And that’s key, because your little tike’s sleep patterns will vary according to all sorts of factors, ranging from food intake and stimulation during the day to the more esoteric seasonal variations in daylight and temperature.

Third, establish a strategy between you and your partner (if you have one).  Waking up at night to tend your baby can be incredibly tiring, so do your best to share the burden.  Make an agreement with your partner upfront so sometimes you get to keep sleeping even when Baby is crying, knowing that your partner is on the case to work things out.

Speaking of which, it’s crucial to have your baby get used to being held and nurtured back to sleep by both partners.  If the baby requires only Mommy to make things right, then it will put undue stress on her and wear her out much faster.

Of course, the best case is when Baby wakes up and goes back to sleep without either of you ever getting involved.  Consider leaving on some very gentle lullabies on loop or other music your baby likes, so that he or she will hear it after waking up and naturally ease back into a rest state from restlessness.

If you do all of the above, you will be well on your way to having your baby consistently sleep through the night.  You will also be much more savvy about what to adjust if it stops working for any reason, including your baby simply growing older.  And that kind of flexible approach is how to get a Baby to sleep so you can too!

Click here to find out how to quickly and easy get your baby to sleep through the night.