Baby sleep – tips and advice

Just like adults, all babies are different – including when it comes to sleep. While some seem to be able to sleep for hours in a stretch, others think that 20-minute shifts are enough in the beginning. We know it might sound unfair, but instead of being upset, it’s better to spend your energy trying to find ways to get through it – because if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that this will pass! Maybe your baby’s sleep schedule changed last week, and it might change again next week. Try to have faith that sleep will gradually stabilise and you will sleep more consistently with time.

How many hours does a baby sleep per night?

Newborn babies sleep at fairly regular intervals throughout the day’s 24 hours and don’t find it particularly necessary to differentiate between night and day. Around 4–6 months, many babies stop eating at night, which means this is when you can start to feel more optimistic about getting a few more consecutive hours of sleep. But we’re not talking about eight-hour nights here – that would be very rare indeed – rather, a typical night for a one-year-old isn’t much more than five cohesive hours. So when your little one cheerfully pops up at 4:30 am and wants to play, that usually (unfortunately) means your day has begun. If your household has two parents, then you can help each other out, and the parent who knows they’re on the morning shift can try to go to bed earlier the night before.

Can a baby sleep too much?

For some, the issue of sleep is about the reverse: the baby seems to be sleeping too much. That might sound remarkable to parents of babies who sleep less, but it’s easy to worry if it seems as if your baby is sleeping constantly. Maybe this is because most of the time, when we talk about sleep and babies, we’re focused on how we never get to sleep and the baby only takes quick naps. But all babies are different and the fact is that a newborn baby can sleep as many as 18 hours per day. And if those 18 hours are distributed across a few naps, it can easily feel like the baby is sleeping constantly. But if the baby seems cheerful and is gaining weight properly, you can set your worries aside and instead take joy in the fact that you get to have a bit of rest as well. However, if you’re worried that something isn’t right or if you think your baby is sick, you can always contact your paediatrician or a doctor.

Instead of drawn-out bedtimes

How we approach routines in general can vary a lot: some people value having a certain amount of predictability in life, while for others, that matters less. We also differ in our views of parenting and sleep routines for our babies. One thing it might be good to keep in mind is that your baby has absolutely no need to match up with any schedule; all they need to do is follow their own internal eating and sleeping clock. Not until later will it be important to go to bed at a certain time each night, simply because there are times to be mindful of in the morning, and the baby will have fewer opportunities to sleep and recover during the day. But when the baby is brand new, that actually doesn’t matter at all – infants are pros at getting the sleep they need. However, if you want to establish a bedtime routine anyway because it helps you, then of course you should try and do so. But if it’s the case that half the time, it takes hours to get the baby to sleep and everyone is getting frustrated, then it might be wise to reconsider. Instead, just forget about the clock and try to follow your baby’s sleep patterns: put them to bed when they seem sleepy (and try to remind yourself that sleep routines and patterns come and go.)

Are there any tips for improving baby’s sleep?

So are there any concrete tips for helping a baby fall asleep – or fall back asleep? Alas, universal tricks that work with every baby are hard to come by, but there are some things you can try:

• Follow the baby’s rhythms and aim to put them to bed when they show signs of being tired, even if it’s an hour earlier or later than you had intended.
• Don’t try to keep the baby awake during the day so that they will sleep better at night. Most of the time, that just creates an overtired baby who has a tougher time falling asleep. When your little one is around 3 years old, it may indeed be the case that daytime naps disrupt nighttime sleep, but babies very much have a need to sleep during the day. In fact, the better your baby sleeps during the day, the better they tend to sleep at night.
• Infants under six months should always sleep on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome, but if you are awake yourself, then the baby can sleep on your tummy, which most babies enjoy.
• You can try resting a hand on the baby as they fall asleep, a method that is inspired by animals. Calmly place your hand on the baby, similarly to how many animals place a paw on their young to indicate that it’s time to sleep. The idea is that this safe and secure hand will soothe the baby, who can feel that a parent is near, when it’s time to sleep or fall back asleep.
• Brand new babies can’t differentiate between day and night, but slightly older babies may have an easier time falling asleep if the bedroom is dark and cool – and if they try to settle down for a while before bedtime.
• Have the baby sleep in the same room as a parent – the sound of breathing and familiar noises while they sleep will help baby feel secure and improve the chances of everyone sleeping more soundly. You will also have a shorter distance to cross when it’s time to feed the baby in the middle of the night.
• Review your pre-sleep feeding habits. Satiated babies tend to sleep better and longer, but sometimes as a parent, you might crave sleep so much that you accidentally overfeed the baby, who will then wake up from a tummy ache. So give this some thought and consider whether you’ve noticed a pattern.
• Does the baby wake up and have trouble falling back asleep? In the beginning, infants almost always wake up from hunger and need to eat, but the more aware the baby becomes, the more reasons might be behind why they’ve woken up. In other words, it isn’t necessarily breast- or bottle feeding that the baby needs; a pacifier or a hand to hold might work just as well.
• Skin contact is soothing and a great idea if your child seems upset and is struggling to calm down.
• Slightly older babies and children may periodically sleep more restlessly if something in life is changing, for example, if they’re starting to crawl/walk, or if they’re beginning preschool. It is completely normal for sleep to be impacted when many new impressions need to be processed and the best approach is to have some patience and offer plenty of snuggles.

Compromises that work

For some children, sleep will be a struggle no matter what you do. Maybe you’ve tried everything and nothing seems to work – and that can be frustrating to say the least. So try to remind yourself that babies are all different and they all sleep differently. We know that this can be particularly easy to forget if you have multiple children. Drawing comparisons with what worked for your first-born just isn’t very helpful if your first child slept well – and anywhere – and your second seems to sleep almost not at all.

What you need to do in the moment is to find compromises that work, take a deep breath and realise it just might not get any better than this for now, and adapt your life accordingly. Scale back on things that take up energy. If there are two of you, try sleeping in different rooms at night and allow each other to sleep undisturbed in shifts – or get outside help. Does the baby only sleep when carried? If so, that may be the solution for a while: one parent sleeps and the other carries. If you’re struggling with baby’s sleep, it’s important to remind yourself regularly that this is temporary, and that how babies sleep will change faster than you realise. Overall, it’s a good idea to help one another out if you live in a multi-parent household; even the parent on parental leave needs the chance to sleep at night, because the job of caring for a baby during the day is incredibly demanding. You can also always call your paediatrician to ask for advice if things get too tough. They can brainstorm together with you, and make sure your family receives additional support if needed, for example, from a psychologist or doctor. If your sleep situation feels chaotic, and if you’re extremely exhausted, it’s possible that you are the one having trouble sleeping, rather than the baby. Maybe the baby is waking up, but falls back asleep quickly, while you lie awake forever each time. If you’re struggling with sleep as a parent, it’s important to contact your doctor – good help is available for adults who can’t sleep!

If you are negatively impacted by your disrupted sleep, it might also be important to not get stuck in thoughts about how “this is just how life will be from now on”, or to build up a fear that “if we do things a certain way right now, we’ll have to keep doing things that way forever”. Because like we said: that simply isn’t true. When it comes to sleep, our best tip is to focus on what works now, because routines can be changed and habits can be broken. And it will actually get better – even if it doesn’t seem like it today.

Please note that all information above is based on Swedish recommendations.