In any weird situation - go to sleep
Having a baby is
not just a weird situation, it is when everything is not going as planned,
it seems that no one in the world has ever given birth or raised children,
otherwise how can you explain that you have more questions than Google has
answers?
When
I was preparing for the arrival of my daughter, I read everything about
breastfeeding, I learned how to change diapers in the dark, I practiced my
bathing skills using a watermelon as my guinea pig, also did it with one hand –
just in case. I mastered swaddling
a doll, I ironed all tiny baby outfits. A
couple of months later that all this useless and did not prepare me for the
main challenge - the disastrous lack of sleep. My
daughter slept some insane stupid weird short naps, was very irritated and
upset and I had no idea what to do about it.
Now, looking
back, I realize that most of the birth classes don’t cover the subject of child’s
sleep at all or mention it as in “well, be prepared to be sleep-deprived for at
least a year”. And in general all the urban myths are telling us “babies never
sleep”, “hang in there, you are a parent now”, “it will get better eventually
(when they go to college)”. Well, that’s not true!
Babies do sleep! In fact, they LOVE sleeping. The problem is that the parents not always know how to help them yet! In this blog, we will together with you fight the stereotypes, I'll write about the sleep habits, and how to fix them. I’ll also tell you what to do if you can’t manage it yourself and need help.
Where do we start improving
our child’s sleep habits? Let's make sure that your kid gets to sleep as much
as it needs, otherwise you are not gonna be a happy bunny! At
every age, children need a different amount of sleep, and if they don’t get
enough, their life becomes hard, sad and annoying, which means that your life
turns into a nightmare. Below
you can find the benchmark for amount of sleep, which helps you to figure out
if the child sleeps enough.
Newborns - 16-19
hours a day.
1-2 months. -
15-17 hours.
3-4 months. -
14-17 hours.
5-6 months. -
13-16 hours.
6-8 months. -
13-15 hours.
9-11 months. -
12-15 hours.
12 months -
12-14 hours.
1,5 years - 12-14 hours.
2 years - 11-14 hours.
3 years - 11-13 hours.