Teaching Your Baby to Rest

“I will both lie down in peace, and sleep: for You alone,O LORD, make me dwell in safety.” Psalm 4:8

Dearest Daughters,

Teaching your new baby to sleep can be a challenge, but don’t panic!

Sleep is actually something that a baby must learn. In the beginning, their habits and patterns are very chaotic; I suppose that means they are hardly patterns at all! Their little bodies have not yet gotten everything organized. They have not yet matured into the rhythms of sleeping and waking, eating and digesting, playing and relaxing, the way an adult body functions.

So don’t panic in those first weeks when you feel like you can’t tell when they want to eat and when they want to sleep. That is all part of the process.

But from my point of view, teaching your baby to sleep—and to sleep peacefully—is an incredibly important element of their early connection and training, because it is one of the first places that you teach your baby to trust.

You are teaching them:

Mommy is here. I am safe. Everything is quiet. I can let go. I can relax and rest in her arms, and then in the places where she lays me to rest.

This is a beautiful connection, and one that is building trust.

So don’t measure your success in motherhood by how well your six-week-old is sleeping! You have just begun the journey of motherhood and one of your first training experiences.

Teach the Difference Between Day and Night

Begin by teaching your baby the difference between night and day.

This isn’t a lesson plan that you’re going to organize, but rather a concept that you bear in mind throughout your own days and nights.

During the day, and specifically during your baby’s wakeful times, open the curtains. Open the windows if the weather is nice. Bring your baby to sit somewhere where they can watch you. Take your baby outside to experience the fresh air. Give them a bath. Talk and sing to them. Let them experience the ordinary life of the household.

With my babies, I really focused in the evenings on doing some of these activities, like taking the baby outside or giving them a bath, so that they could be wakeful and interested during that fussy time of the evening. Then they would be ready to relax and go to sleep.

Accentuate the difference between day and night, sleep time and wake time.

If the curtains are open and there is a fresh breeze during the day and during the times you want your baby to be wakeful, then when it is time to sleep, close the curtains, quiet the room, lower the lights, and bring the space in closer.

You are gently teaching their little body, Now it is time to rest.

Learn Your Baby’s Sleepy Language

The next thing I would do is learn your baby’s sleepy language.

Does your baby begin rubbing an ear? Yawning? Do the eyes become heavy-lidded? Do you notice a glazed-over expression or a particular kind of fussing?

Learn to recognize the way fatigue expresses itself in your particular baby. When you begin to see those signs, take note: This is what my baby looks like when he is tired.

It may be a good time for a nap or bedtime. If it isn’t quite the appropriate time, you may be able to take the baby outside, give them a bath, or engage them for a little longer as you gradually work toward the rhythm you are trying to establish. Don’t force an exhausted baby to stay awake, but little by little you can begin helping their days fall into a rhythm.

Develop a Bedtime Ritual

This, to me, is one of the most important things I did with my children. They all learned to love bedtime.

It doesn’t need to be an hour-long routine. In fact, I think simple is better, but try to do it in much the same way every time. Your baby will begin to recognize the cues that mean, It is time to go to sleep.

A typical newborn bedtime routine for me might have looked something like this:

Change the baby’s diaper. Put on pajamas and swaddle the baby while they are still young enough for swaddling. Feed and burp the baby with the lights down low. Rock and cuddle for a little while. Then sing a specific song while gently stroking their back in a circle.

As the baby is drifting off to sleep, or has just drifted off, I would gently ease them into their cradle, bottom first and head second, and lay them in a safe position. I would leave my hand resting on them for a moment, whisper a prayer, wait until I felt that little body relax, and then slowly slide my hand away.

That was a very typical routine for me when my newborns were learning to go to sleep.

Don’t be concerned by every little fuss and squirm. Babies make noises in their sleep and as they are letting go into sleep, just as adults sometimes twitch or jerk when they are drifting off.

Try to do the same thing each time. The repetition itself becomes comforting.

Don’t Be Afraid to Comfort Your Baby

Have freedom to do what helps you with your baby. If rocking, cuddling, patting, or gently rubbing their back helps your baby go to sleep, that does not mean you are necessarily creating some terrible habit. Just do it in moderation.

You don’t need to rock for two hours every night. Decide what you are willing and able to do consistently. Perhaps you rock for a few minutes, sing your song, rub their back, say your prayer, and then put them down.

Do approximately that same amount each time, and gradually they will learn what those things mean.

This is what we do before sleep.

I know what comes next.

I am safe.

I can relax.

Consistency is more important than creating some elaborate routine.

Make Sleep Safe

Your baby’s sleep space also needs to be safe. Use a firm, flat sleep surface, and place your baby in a position where their airway is open and clear. The current recommended model is on their back. Keep the actual sleeping area clear of squishy pillows, loose blankets, and other soft things that could cover the baby’s face or interfere with breathing.

I always liked giving my babies a small, soft mini blanket or little stuffed animal to cuddle while I breastfed them. They became familiar with the feel and smell of that special object, and it became another comforting cue.

And if your child eventually becomes attached to a particular comfort object when they are old enough to safely sleep with it, my practical advice is: have two! Buy two identical ones before you desperately need the second one.

If one is lost, dirty, or accidentally left somewhere, you will be very glad you did. My babies became attached to their special little things, and later it helped them sleep almost anywhere. That was a lifesaver to me.

Inch Toward a Rhythm

The habit of sleep develops over weeks and even months. I usually set a goal of having my baby settled into a somewhat predictable sleeping schedule by around three months. It wasn’t always accomplished for me by then, and sometimes it happened a little earlier, but it was usually somewhere close.

But we tried to inch toward the goal of a rhythm each day: a morning nap, an afternoon nap, and sometimes an additional nap when they were very little, and, as much as possible, a consistent nighttime bedtime.

Keeping bedtime fairly consistent was very, very helpful, both the timing and the routine surrounding it.

I always sang “Jesus Loves Me,” when I put my babies down for the night.

I always prayed as I put my hand on my baby’s back or body for a moment and gently rub until I felt their little body let go.

The moment that their little body relaxed in absolute trust and surrendered to sleep was always one of my favorite feelings in motherhood.

As your baby gets a little older and you know that they’re fed, dry, comfortable, and safe, you don’t necessarily have to rush in at every little complaint. Sometimes babies fuss briefly in their sleep and then settle themselves again. It helped me to set a timer, once they were old enough to have a sleep schedule, and see if they’d settle after five or ten minutes. If they didn’t, I’d go in quietly and repeat the last little piece of the bedtime ritual, a hand laid gently on them, a familiar prayer or song, a little pat, it was enough to remind them, Oh yes. It is still time to sleep.

But with a very young newborn, frequent waking and feeding are normal, so respond to their needs. There isn’t a problem just because your newborn wakes up!

You are both learning.

A Lesson I Learned the Hard Way

Now I have to tell you a funny story.

Breastfeeding during the night was always challenging because I could never remember which side I’d fed the baby on last. So I developed a system: I would lay my baby in the cradle with his head pointing in the direction of the side I needed to feed him on the next time.

When Blair was a baby, I fed him a lot during the night because he was a big and hungry baby.

One night, he woke up wailing to be fed again. Half asleep, I staggered toward the cradle, certain that I knew which direction his head was pointing because, of course, I had my wonderful system.

Apparently, somewhere along the way, my system, or rather, my memory, had failed. It was dark, and when I picked him up, I remember thinking that he felt very funny.

Then I realized that I had picked him up thinking his bottom was his head! This got him very quiet.

I was horrified when I realized how I was holding him. Fortunately, I had picked him up very gently, and he was nothing but a little surprised. So perhaps that was not the best method!

From then on, I put my baby’s head facing the same direction no matter which side I had fed them on. So the lesson is to develop the methods that actually help you remember what your very sleep-deprived brain is likely to forget!

Most of all, give yourself grace. Give your baby grace. You are learning each other.

For me, putting my babies to bed became one of the absolute sweetest bonding experiences of motherhood. I loved holding a fretful little baby and feeling the fretfulness slowly give way to peace. I loved feeling that little body relax against me and finally surrender itself to rest.

Because more than all the routines, schedules and naps, the real message that you are teaching is that: Mommy is here. You are safe. You are loved. You can rest. You can trust me.

And that, after all, is so much of what being a mommy is all about.

With all my love,

Mom