1. Watch for "drowsy signs." The key to helping babies learn to soothe themselves to sleep is to get them to bed before they become overtired. If a baby is already crying, it is too late. The baby is already overtired. Drowsy signs to watch for include yawning, rubbing his or her eyes, staring dreamily off into space, and an overall decrease in activity level. That last two "drowsy signs" mentioned can be very subtle so you need to watch carefully until you learn to recognize your own child's drowsy signs easily. The decrease in activity level may seem like a slight "lull" in your child's activity or play. If you don't recognize this lull, you may let your baby stay awake too long. Once they become overtired, their energy-level may actually increase so that the baby seems "wired" or over-stimulated. If your baby starts to cry, it means that he or she is already overtired. When a baby or child is overtired their body releases cortisol, a stress hormone, and the baby will actually seem to fight sleep. If you start soothing your baby and get them to bed when they start showing drowsy signs, it will be much easier for the baby to fall asleep than if you start soothing when the baby is already overtired.
2. Respect the 1- to 2-hour window. Newborns and young babies cannot stay awake very long, initially. For the first few days to a week, your baby will likely sleep almost all the time between feedings. You may even have to wake your baby up to feed them, sometimes. After they come out of this early, very sleepy time, Your baby will start to have some more alert times, but you will need to be very vigilant to start soothing your baby back to sleep when you first start noticing drowsy signs - even if it's only been fifteen minutes or so! If you let your baby become overtired, this is when you will likely start getting into the cycle of crying and difficulty falling asleep, leading to your baby being more overtired, leading to more crying... For the first few months, your goal should be to have your baby back in bed no more than two hours after he or she wakes up. This includes feeding time, maybe a little bit of play time or tummy time and the soothe to sleep routine, which may or may not include another feeding. Let me emphasize again that you are not just starting to settle your baby after two hours - you need to aim to be finished soothing your baby and have him or her back in bed by the end of the two hour window. It may seem as though you would be napping your baby many, many times a day if you follow this rule, but it actually fits into Dr. Weissbluth's suggested nap schedule quite nicely. The way it worked for my daughter was that we would start the day around 7:00 to 7:30 in the morning with her first feeding of the day. Then after a diaper change, a bit of tummy time, and another feeding, she would go for her first nap around 9am and sleep until around 11 or 11:30. Afternoon nap started around 1:00pm and lasted until 2:30pm or 3:00pm. Her third nap would be the shortest, around 4:00pm until 4:45pm or so, and then she was naturally ready to go bed for the night around 6:15pm to 6:30pm.
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3. Learn your baby's natural sleep rhythms. For the first couple of months, your baby's sleeping times may be somewhat random, but if you follow the first two guidelines, eventually you will start to notice a pattern as to when your baby starts showing drowsy signs. These correspond to your baby's natural sleep-wake rhythms. Start paying attention to the clock times when you see the drowsy signs. When you see that they are occurring at roughly the same times each day, you can start planning your daily routines around these times and set them as your baby's regular naptimes. Once this natural schedule emerges, you won't have to be as vigilant in watching for drowsy signs, since you know the time by which you need to have your baby in bed. If you are having trouble seeing this pattern, you may want to try keeping a sleep log for your baby in which you record all the times your baby falls asleep and wakes up, for a week or more, and then look at the sleep log to see if any pattern emerges.
4. Develop consistent bedtime soothing routines. Most people are familiar with the concept of bedtime routines, and the sooner you start them, the better. A pre-sleep routine can be as simple as a feeding and a lullaby, or it can include a bath, a story, a walk in the stroller - whatever helps your baby fall asleep. The important thing is to keep the routine consistent. It may change and evolve as your baby grows, but for the most part it should be the same on a day-to-day basis. This helps your child to associate certain activities with sleep and eases the transition from awake time to sleep time. Eventually, the bedtime routines will help your child learn to soothe him- or herself to sleep. Although consistency is important, you can vary it a little according to circumstances. For example, if your child is excited from an unusually busy or fun day, you may want to lengthen the soothing routine a bit to help him or her to calm down and get ready to sleep. You can also use a different routine for daytime naps versus nighttime soothing routines, since daytime sleep differs qualitatively from nighttime sleep. Just keep the daytime routines consistent each day and the nighttime routines consistent each night. One more tip for soothing routines - it is fine to include a stroller walk, a car ride, or some time in a baby swing, if that is what it takes to get your baby to sleep, but once the baby is asleep, you need to stop the movement and, if possible, transfer the baby to his or her crib or cradle. Motionless sleep is best. In other words, babies do not get as deep a sleep when they are moving, as they do when they are stationary.
5. Try an earlier bedtime.This may seem counter-intuitive but when children become overtired their bodies release stress hormones in order to keep themselves awake. These hormones actually create a heightened state of arousal which makes it more difficult for them to fall asleep (see step 1). If you move your child's bedtime earlier each night by about 15 to 20 minutes until you find the time at which your baby or child will easily fall asleep, then you will be ensuring that they do not become overtired before their bedtime. Many parents fear that if they put their child to bed earlier, they will just wake up earlier. In fact, the opposite occurs. Children who previously woke up too early, actually sleep later and wake up more cheerful when they have an earlier bedtime. The more well rested a child is, the easier the child will fall asleep and stay asleep.
