Sleep Training for babies- Yay or Nay?(with some life saving tricks)
There’s a lot of talk these days around sleep training techniques. These are designed to make the baby sleep through the night, by themselves. The idea is to eliminate the baby’s dependency on the parents to sleep. A lot of people adopt these techniques, and even I was toying with the idea of adopting it for my child. I saw a couple of videos on sleep training, as my baby would not go to sleep without me and it used to take some time (and effort) to put her to sleep each night. I am not sure if there are other methods, but the ones that I came across are based on cry-it-out, where you follow a bed-time routine and then allow the baby to sleep on his/her own. If the baby cries, let him/her cry-it-out and settle down. This teaches babies to self-soothe.
There are mixed arguments about whether this is the right approach or not. I am sure those who follow it must find it very difficult, but I simply could not bring myself to follow this approach. I found this very traumatic for both, the mother and the baby who has just arrived in this world and is still adjusting to it. I feel that babies eventually learn to sleep through the night by themselves. You can definitely set a routine for the baby, to make it easier for him/her to identify what comes next and ease transitioning to the next activity. You can even try out the below mentioned tricks –
- Give the baby a massage and warm bath.
- Swaddle the baby- swaddling works wonders in most cases.
- Feed the baby and try not letting him/her baby sleep until the feed is complete. A fuller baby will sleep longer.
- Dim the lights and play some soft calming music while putting the baby to sleep
- Keep the sleeping area clean and remove all distractions like toys, clothes etc. However, if your baby has a favourite soft toy, keep it next to him/her for comfort.
These tricks work in lot of cases, and will allow your baby to sleep through the night. Even if these don’t work for you, enjoy putting your baby to sleep before they grow old enough (which they do real soon) to do things on their own.
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