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Step 1
Coming home from the hospital, everyone is filled with joy and excitement. You once had the comfort of the hospital personnel to watch over your new bundle and now you are home and may be dealing with your newborn not sleeping. First of all, it is fairly common for a newborn or baby to not sleep all night. Your baby may be hungry and may require feedings every two to three hours. If you find your baby awake most of the night and sleepy during the day, you will need to start working on transitioning your baby to better sleeping habits.
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Step 2
These are merely tips with my newborn; you should always consult your doctor with questions. The most effective way we were able to have our baby sleep at night was to have her swaddled in a blanket. We attended a class at the hospital and learned with a doll on how to swaddle our baby.
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Step 3
From our experience, we learned to have the mattress where our baby's head lies to have it elevated. We simply put a couple of books under the mattress to raise it about an inch to two inches. This seemed to be effective to help prevent spitting up. Our baby was born c-section and spitting up was a concern of ours. It gave us some comfort in elevating the mattress.
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Step 4
In our baby class we took in the hospital, it was recommended to bathe our baby 2-3 times per week and only do soap 1 or 2 times with the bathing. For the first four months, we did bathe our baby every evening. Our goal was to create a routine. Our evening routine stayed consistent from 6 PM on of playing, bathing, and then last bottle. Once our baby was a bit older, and if she would wake in the middle of the night, we began to stop giving a bottle. However, we did not stop giving her a bottle until she was about 6 months old. We also gave her water to help with this process. If she would wake in the middle of the night, we would not make noise or be excited she was awake. We would stay quiet, often change her diaper, and put her in a swaddle. This seemed to help her go back to sleep. In our experience, we were sleeping full nights by the time she was six weeks old. We did not use bumpers and always had our baby sleep on her back.
