5 Tips to Solve Your Baby’s Sleep Issues

Struggling with a baby not sleeping well at night? Don’t worry – you most definitely aren’t alone! A lot of parents experience this, especially with their first little ones. 

Luckily for you, there are still things to be done other than tearing out your hair. Today, we’ll go over our favourite answers to the question of how to make baby sleep. From smart parenting strategies to baby sleep products, these should help you solve your problem!

1. Set a bedtime schedule

The first solution is among the most effective. Just set a soothing bedtime routine from the time your baby is around 6 or so weeks old and stick to it! 

Plan for the routine to be around minutes long. The goal is to use it to calm your baby and get them to understand that it’s time to wind down and start getting ready for rest. 

Every baby is different, of course, but here are examples of things that calm most babies:

As much as possible, you want the last minutes of the routine to take place in the nursery, where the lights should already be dimmed. This is a clear signal that, over time, they’ll learn means it’s the hour for sleep!

2. Save most of the excitement and attention for “awake times”

As much as possible, don’t get your baby worked up by doing things like playing with them at nighttime. This is a good way to throw your little one’s inner clock off! 

Get them used to the idea of daytime being the “exciting time” when they can play, get attention, and more. At nighttime, restrain yourself from doing the same things and stick with calming, soothing activities and attitudes. 

This is a good way to train a baby to recognise that you – and they, by extension – should have lower energy at night, which can help them fall asleep more easily.

3. Get them a pacifier – or several!

Here’s one of our favourite baby sleep products: the trusty pacifier. Beloved by babies over ages, this staple of every nursery can come in clutch when your little one needs soothing at night too. 

Just a little tip: some babies can actually wake up and make a fuss if they lose their pacifiers in the middle of the night. Fortunately, you can prepare for this ahead of time (and even start teaching them the basics of self-soothing in the process). 

All you have to do is make sure they have more than one pacifier in the crib. A good idea is to put one in either corner near their head. 

Then, when you notice that they’ve lost the one they’re using, you can show them where the spares are by leading their hands to the extras. That way, they’ll always know where to find the spares!

4. Lower the nursery temperature

Cooler temperatures help signal to the baby that it’s nighttime, which means they should be resting. Besides, babies are like most of us – they sleep better when it’s cooler. 

Just make sure you don’t set the aircon to an inhospitable temperature, of course. You have to see what your baby’s comfortable with, but generally, something in the region of 22 or 23 degrees Celsius is probably fine.

5. Grab a white noise machine

A lot of babies actually like white noise, so it wouldn’t hurt to add one to your nursery. Combined with a nicely dim, cool room, the white noise should add to the soothing stimuli encouraging your baby to go to sleep.

An added benefit is that the white noise can help cover up other sounds that may jolt your baby from sleep even as he starts to nod off.

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