Newborn Sleep Expectations – Why Newborn Sleep Is Unpredictable and What to Expect

https://youtu.be/jcIL4atJGC0 Are you expecting a baby or have a newborn and wondering what you can expect from their sleep in these early weeks? Well, don't worry. I've got you covered. I'm going to share with you exactly what newborn sleep looks like, what you can expect, and how you can best shape things for a future good sleeper. The first tip I want to share with you is a little golden nugget that we were given by mother nature, and that is those first 48 hours after your baby is born, they tend to sleep a lot. The baby's probably tired from their venture into the world and of course, a mother is going to be tired after what we go through to bring them into the world. So those first 48 hours are your chance to rest and recover. So if you're having your first baby, I would hold off on the family visitors and just say, "Just give me a couple of days, and then you can come and see the new baby." Because you really need to recover. So, take the advice and block that time out for yourself for that recovery. You're going to be in a much better state to be an amazing mommy to that newborn who's going to be demanding on you in those early weeks and you need to have your strength to do that. Okay, but what sort of sleep can we expect from a newborn baby? Well, newborns are typically unable to be awake for more than about 45 minutes to an hour at a time. So, if your baby is awake for longer than that, they're probably going to start to get fractious and they'll be fussing, perhaps crying. And sometimes especially as a new parent, we might not know why. And we often have that go-to solution, which is, "Oh, the baby's crying, it must be hungry." But sometimes they will just be tired. It’s natural to respond to a crying baby with things like rocking them and feeding them and pacing the room with them. But sometimes you can do all these things and they're still crying and they're still fussing and it's just that they want to be asleep. They don't know how to put themselves to sleep. They have no idea how to get into that place. So they rely on us to pretty much do it for them in these early weeks. But knowing that 45 minutes to an hour is about the maximum wait time they can handle can really help you watch the clock. And if your little one isn't fussing and seems quite happy, still get them down for that nap because when they do start crying and fussing, it's possibly too late. And if they've gone past tired and into an overtired state, they may be wired and it's much harder to settle an overtired baby than it is to settle a content, but tired, baby. The next tip for you is to consider the daytime and nighttime environments. By helping to demonstrate those, you can set triggers and cues up for your baby and really help them to get their circadian rhythm, which is their body clock into a really good pattern and recognising night and day. Make sure the room is nice and dark when it's nighttime and when it's daytime and time to be awake, make sure they're in a light environment. Different seasons will require you to work harder at this. You’ll need to block out all the daylight creeping in during the summer months and you’ll need to turn on lights in the wintertime when it’s still dark in the morning. It's not just the light in the room that sends day and night signals to your baby, it's also you as a parent, your ‘parent mode’, as I call it. You can have a daytime and nighttime mode as well. When it's daytime, you're engaged, you're animated and your face is expressive and you've got a full voice that comes out. You're talking to them, you're interacting with them. And that's very much a daytime mode. When it's nighttime, we want to take YOU into nighttime mode. And this is where you're very bland and boring. The voice goes,