If you have a newborn or toddler, you know how intense the steps are to get them to stick to their routine. Besides crying and feeding, there’s one more thing the baby needs in her routine: sleep.
According to doctors, the process of making the baby sleep in the crib is much safer than making him sleep in the bed. Sharing the same bed with a baby can create chances for SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome.
Most people don’t know it, but cribs are made for a reason: they create a safe boundary wall for your children and provide them with the safest sleeping environment.
So even if your baby wants to keep holding you while you sleep or when he wants to share a bed with you, it is your responsibility to separate him and put him in the crib. After all, safety is every parent’s top concern.
Baby can sleep in your arm, in your bed right next to you, even in the stroller, so why do parents sometimes have such a hard time sleeping in a crib?
Putting the baby to sleep in the crib
Well, when your baby was in the womb, he had comfortable territory, he was swaddled, and he felt safe. Now, when they’re sent to sleep in the crib all alone and open, it’s no wonder they find it difficult. Here are some tips and tricks for parents to help get baby to sleep in the crib.
1. Establish a positive sleep environment. Keep the crib in its own room, at least for the first 6 months or a year.
2. Keep the room temperature cool. Babies have a hard time sleeping when they are hot.
3. Your baby will never sleep in a crib if he is not well dressed according to the temperature of the room. To make your baby comfortable in a crib, dress him in the sleeper. The sleeper should not be very heavy or extremely fit. Remember, it’s not to make them look good, it’s to make them feel comfortable.
4. Wrapping them can add more comfort and security. Though you should keep in mind that you should stop swaddling once your baby is able to roll over.
5. Noise of any kind should not reach the crib.
6. Keep lighting as low as possible in the room around the crib.
7. The smell of a mother is what the baby likes. If a mother can sleep with the baby’s sheet and then give it to the baby in her crib, she will calm the baby and help the baby sleep in the crib.
Apart from these things, one must keep in mind that there must be a sleep routine. Although babies never follow a routine, they sleep when they want to. But if there is a routine, being in a crib will signal to them that it is time for bed and they will eventually get used to it.