As a working mom of four, I’ve developed a pretty effective strategy for keeping baby happy and adhering to daily routines, which allows you to have time for yourself, other family members, work, and friends. In this article I will share the tools and knowledge I’ve accumulated over my 12 years of parenting, and I hope it will help you as much as it helped me.
The main thing we need to remember is to start slow. Naturally, you can’t establish daily routines for your baby from day one. Give yourself 3-4 weeks of bonding and observing your newborn. If you’re new to parenting, you might feel frustrated and unsure of what to look out for. Some babies may be awake more than others or have shorter sleep periods. Some will sleep 5-6 hours through the night from the first days, while others wake up every 2-3 hours. However, all babies are very systematic and disciplined creatures. So, if we establish good routines, primarily for ourselves, we will achieve a very peaceful and calm start to parenthood.
From birth, if you notice that your baby’s sleeping hours are a bit different from the information you find on the internet, don’t be confused; it’s all normal for the first few months. You need to try to adapt and assist your baby in the most effective way to not miss sleeping windows.
One of the most common problems for moms, especially with babies in their first months of life, is sleep disturbances.
If you’re wondering why the newborn babies of your friends sleep 24/7 and don’t bother them at all, but your little one screams around the clock and you can’t remember the last time you showered, then I have some news for you. It can all be fixed by following a simple schedule that your baby needs.
The problem of sleep disturbance is most often faced when a mom doesn’t understand the paradigm in which their baby lives and develops. Actually, this life is pretty simple. The entire cycle of the baby consists of four components:
- Time of active wakefulness (immediately after the baby wakes up)
- Time of quiet wakefulness (when we are preparing to go to sleep)
- The window into sleeping (begins when the baby starts to fall asleep)
- Sleeping
If you don’t grasp this foundation and incorrectly schedule activities for your baby — choosing to bathe or massage them instead of putting them to sleep during their sleep window — you disrupt your child’s natural biological rhythm. This disruption leads to an increased level of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, being released into your baby’s bloodstream, making it nearly impossible to settle them to sleep.
So, what should we look out for?
Firstly, take note of when your baby awakens. Immediately after waking, we enter a period of active wakefulness, during which we can talk, play, show contrasting toys, massage, feed, and engage in activities like swimming gymnastics — in short, provide maximum stimulation.
Following this period, we transition to a time of quiet wakefulness. We cease all stimulating activities, dim the lights, and proceed to sleep in the manner you prefer, whether it be rocking, playing music, or singing a lullaby.
You might wonder — how can I see the difference between when my baby is in an active state, a quiet state, and when it’s time to sleep?
There are countless charts on the internet indicating how much babies typically sleep and stay awake by month. However, it’s important to remember that not all babies fit these patterns.
Ultimately, YOU are the best observer of your baby.
I created Daily planner and Log book, 2 in 1 for mommy and baby, that you can find HERE.
With this planner, you can create a personalised daily routine plan for the first 100 days with your newborn, and note the times when YOUR baby is awake and asleep.
To recognise when the sleep window begins, simply observe your baby. When you notice their eyes becoming slightly red and they start to lose interest in games and conversations, it’s time to understand that the period of active wakefulness has ended. You should then transition to a state of quiet wakefulness with dimmed lights before moving into the sleep phase.
The next point to address is the period of quiet wakefulness. Let’s say playtime is over, you’ve fed the baby, and you notice their eyes beginning to close. At this moment, our primary goal is to ensure that the baby doesn’t become overstimulated and start reacting strongly to anything. To achieve this, we have three amazing tools:
- Light
- Temperature
- Sounds
Firstly, light.
If you have a baby in the house, it’s the best if you have 3 lightning sources at home.
- Bright (sun) light (from the window or light bulbs that will tell our body that now is light and now we need to stay awake.
- Twilight or dimmed light (For example closed curtains and little night light. This we use in times of quiet wakefulness and that gives signal to our body that soon it will be dark, and we will go to sleep).
- Complete darkness (Here the best option at daytime is a “black out” curtains, or if you have a room without windows it’s also an option).
Secondly, the temperature.
The optimal temperature for sleep varies between 19°C and 22°C (66.2°F – 69.8°F). If you’re accustomed to sleeping in warmer temperatures, begin adjusting by lowering the temperature by 1°C each week until you reach this optimal range.
Remember, a baby in the first few months of life typically wakes up for only three reasons:
- I’m hungry
- I’ve had enough sleep
- I’m uncomfortable (either it’s too cold, too warm, or there’s an issue with the diaper — dirty or chafing).
Thirdly, sounds.
Babes in the first 3 moths of life hear differently. Its very important to understand that nothing should interfere with the child’s sleep. Because the sleep is the key to high-quality harmonious development and maturation of the child.
To secure this nice sleep we have an amazing tool – white noise. You can find it on YouTube (just google video “white noise for babies” or “hairdryer noise for sleeping”) or buy simple toy that is placed next to crib and makes this kind of sounds.
What is the point of this and why it should be used? Well, first of all, white noise imitates what our baby heard in the mommy’s womb and the other, most important in my opinion thing is that it helps to absorb additional signals that can be heard from another rooms. Maybe you have older kids and they dropped something on the floor, and it broke, so white noise will actually muffle these sounds and baby will not react to them and continue to sleep.
I used white noise with my second and third child and never had problem with their sleeping. Even in times we were doing repairs in our flat and it was a lot of hammering and buzzing.
Window into sleep.
This is the very moment when it’s time to get baby to sleep. And here of course you should use your rituals and associations for falling asleep. As I told in the beginning, our babies are incredibly systematic and incredibly disciplined creatures. And we as parents should also measure up to them. So the key for this particular part of cycle is to master our rituals for getting baby to sleep. As an example, I can tell a little bit about what I was doing with my babies, and what really made it easier for me. I swaddled my little ones, took them in my arms and went for a little walk in our apartment. We said good night to all our toys around, sang a little song and then quietly lay down together and began to sleep. There is a huge number of variations of the rituals and for each mommy this is very individual and there is no template unfortunately. As a ritual many use breastfeeding and babies going into sleep while eating. I also did that with my first child, but problem about this variant of ritual is that as baby gets older and you want to stop breastfeeding, it is very hard to replace this ritual. Also, if they sleep with breast in their mouth and you take it out they can wake up again. So I would not advice to do that or try to change this ritual not later then baby is half year old.
Finally, the last part of the cycle that begins with a window into sleep is sleep itself. This may seem simple, and you might think that you understand when your baby is sleeping. If the eyes are closed for a long time, then the baby is sleeping. But it’s not that simple. When a baby grunts, constantly moves, tosses, and turns while sleeping, and on top of that, we see movement of the eyeballs under closed eyelids – this is not the deep sleep that we are trying to achieve. It’s only light sleep, and here you need to be as vigilant as possible so that nothing happens, and our baby does not wake up. Newborn babies and babies in their first months of life spend most of their time exactly in this superficial light sleep. Deep sleep looks exactly the same as for us, adults.
The most common mistake comes exactly from there – you don’t allow your child to go into deep sleep. As soon as the baby closes its eyes and lies like that for 2-3 minutes, and it seems like they have fallen asleep, we move them to the crib and voilà! Literally 2-3 minutes later, the baby wakes up and gives us a well-known signal in the form of crying.
In conclusion.
I just want to remind you of one more most important thing you need to remember. The reason for a child’s poor sleep in the first months of life is not that you have a special and unusual baby that just wants to scream. Most of the time, it lies in the fact that the mommy can’t yet accept that she is a mommy and that the child doesn’t yet understand that they are a separate entity from the mother. The child feels like a part of you and basically can’t sleep, live, and interact without you. It is essential for your child’s nervous system to register you in their sight to be sure that they are safe, they can rest, and they can sleep.
If you implement the tools I gave you here, then the problems will become much less. And don’t forget the basis that holds this entire structure – your awareness of the fact that you are now a mother and your key task is to help your little baby mature and grow healthy.
Maria Markes 