Safe sleep guidelines can be difficult to understand, especially when tired. Check out this article to ensure you are not making typical baby sleep mistakes. One of the three basic things you consider before having a baby is baby sleep. You might feel overburdened by all the competing baby sleep philosophies in books and on blogs, the endless dos and don’ts, conflicting rules, and frightening safety warnings as you get to know your newborn’s sleep needs and ever-changing patterns and rhythms and adjust to the new-parent sleep deprivation. If you want to know what mistakes almost all parents make regarding their baby’s sleep, this article is for you. Hence, you can make your baby sleep comfortably by avoiding all these mistakes.
Frequent Baby Sleep Mistakes Made by New Parents
You are still facing problems about how to convince your cute little creature to sleep through the night in the meantime. You may take various approaches, and it is up to you to choose which ones are effective. But there are others you should completely ignore. Here are eleven frequent blunders parents make when their babies sleep.
Being on the Couch While Holding an Infant in Your Arms is Extremely Risky
We understand that no other experience compares to dozing off on the couch with a baby on your chest. Many a worn-out new mother has dozed off for a short while with her sleeping child curled up warmly on a nursing pillow or spread across her lap. Most experts contend that sharing a couch or armchair with a newborn is a severe infant sleep error. Due to the chance of dropping or suffocating the baby, it is far riskier than co-sleeping in a bed. If you are going to nap or sleep with your baby—which, despite what physicians advise, many parents do—choose bed-sharing and do it as safely as possible, with no blankets or pillows in the bed.
Do Not Expect that the Baby’s Relaxed, Sleepy Stage will Remain Indefinitely
Your tranquil, drowsy infant who drifts off to sleep after feeding may not always be this way. It is not necessarily true that the first few weeks or even months will reveal what kind of sleeper you were lucky enough to win in the newborn sleep lottery. Early on, some infants may sporadically sleep through the night, but this does not guarantee that it will last forever. Have you yet successfully navigated the four-month sleep regression? Yes, you may want to do some research on it.
Although rocking or nursing your baby to sleep in preparation for naps and night may be effective for you, be aware that occasionally it just stops working. Try not to boast if you are one of the fortunate parents with a “unicorn baby,” which means your child is sleeping well without much of your help. While that other parent with the colicky, sleepless infant has not worked it out, it does not always indicate that you are doing it correctly.
Do Not Allow Your Infant to Nap in the Car Seat
This one is controversial because we have all experienced it. The benefit of the bucket seat is that you can pop it out and move your sleeping infant inside for the remainder of her nap if your baby passes out in the car seat while you are traveling home or running errands. However, the experts warn against placing a baby in a bucket car seat placed on the ground or fastened to a stroller since the child’s head could slip forward and result in a condition known as positional asphyxiation. It is considerably safer to let your infant sleep in the car seat when it is attached to the base and mounted in the car because of the angle of the seat’s design.
Moreover, a critical baby sleep error is leaving your infant in a car seat overnight while you are not awake enough to check on her. Because it restricts motion and increases the risk of positional plagiocephaly, specialists advise keeping a baby in a car seat, bouncer, or swing for no more than 30 minutes at a time (known as a flattened head syndrome). However, we would want to recognize that this 30-minute limit is impractical while traveling, for parents who have long commutes to work or childcare, or when the swing is the only location you can get your baby to nap.
The Baby’s Teething Should Not be a Reason to Delay Sleep Training
Your child’s teething is constant, the baby is ill with the flu or contracting a disease, coming to terms with things maybe overtire, or the baby is experiencing Undiagnosed Fussy Baby Syndrome. Understanding that it may never feel like the appropriate time to start sleep training is crucial. According to experts, between the ages of six and twelve months is the best time to sleep with a baby, but use your discretion and trust your instincts. Before you begin, you must commit to sleep training; otherwise, you won’t follow through.
Parents’ Lack of Coordination
Make sure you and your spouse, if you have one, agree on the baby’s sleeping schedule. You should use the same methods while putting the infant to bed and taking turns. Your baby will feel more constancy when sleeping as a result.
Avoid Purchasing the Adorable Crib Bumper Sets that You See on Instagram
This one is really simple to follow: Utilize no crib bumpers. After doctors lobbied against them for years were outlawed in the US. Yes, some babies move a lot when they sleep, particularly when they are just beginning to roll, crawl, or walk. However, it is doubtful they would suffer a significant injury if they banged their heads against a crib rail.
Even though those breathable mesh bumpers are effective at preventing soothers (and tiny hands and feet) from sticking out of the crib slats, they are not advised owing to the possibility of entanglement and strangulation (Another word of caution: older, more mobile babies can use bumpers as a step while attempting to climb out of the crib). While we are at it, you should also refrain from using an “infant lounger” for unattended sleep within (or outside) the crib. Although they are technically no longer offered in the USA, comparable products are still available.
Failure to Follow a Regular Sleep Schedule
Babies require regularity in their bedtimes and nap times. Their internal clock may become confused by an erratic sleep routine, which will keep you and the baby up at night. On the other hand, a child’s body can learn when to go to sleep by adhering to regularly scheduled bedtimes. Try your best to regulate your baby’s sleep times as much as possible, even though it might not always be possible to stick to the routine.
Do Not Become Overconfident Due to a Modern Baby Monitor
Although baby monitors are very helpful, parents cannot use them as a replacement for good baby sleep habits. If you hear your baby wriggling, a glance at a video monitor can help determine if it is a full wakeup or simply some insignificant wriggling. Sometimes you can quickly pop a pacifier back in before things get out of hand or return to your Netflix without opening the nursery door.
However, some parents are going overboard by investing in wearable vital-sign monitoring gadgets that track an infant’s heart rate and oxygen saturation levels. These cardiorespiratory monitors and the sensors that go beneath the baby’s mattress are not recommended by the experts because they may result in false alarms that worry parents and prompt pointless ER visits and tests. Because they assume the gadget will notify them of any issues, they can also cause parents to become less focused on encouraging their children to sleep safely. Guidelines for sound sleep must still be followed. You should keep blankets and cushions out of the crib, always place your baby in the crib on their back (never on their side or their stomach), and cease swaddling them once they can turn over.
If Room Sharing is Not Working for You, Stop After Six Months
This is a challenging one. Experts have disagreed on how long a baby should sleep in the same room as their parents. The experts most recently advised room-sharing for at least six months, ideally a full year, in the summer of 2022. But let’s face it, Most babies outgrow the bassinet by months four, five, or six (or begin rolling over or pulling up on the sides), and many parents’ bedrooms only have space for a bassinet, not a full crib. Some infants will sleep more soundly in their room and wake up during the night less frequently if they hear or smell their parents nearby. If your kid is right next to you, teaching independent sleep or using the cry-it-out sleep training method is also challenging.
Mom and dad’s sleep should also not be overlooked. If room-sharing works for you, great but do not feel pressured into it beyond six months. Many parents claim they don’t sleep as well when their kid is in their room because they wake up with every single grunt, snore, or fart the baby makes.
Using Sleep Crutches as Support
As a new mom, rocking your infant to sleep seems natural. However, routines like rocking or nursing your infant can cause them to learn to depend on you to fall asleep. Sleep aids provide a temporary solution, but they can make going to bed for you and your infant more challenging. Rocking your infant till they are no longer awake but still drowsy is an excellent solution.
Conclusion: Baby Sleep Mistakes Made by New Parents
It can be tempting to keep your infant or toddler up after a long day at work so you can spend more time with them. Or perhaps you are hoping they will get so exhausted that they pass out. But most of the time, you as parents face the issue of baby sleep. This article has given you the top 11 baby sleep mistakes so you can avoid them to get better sleep for your babies.