Tips from a dad on helping your baby sleep

Ask most doctors how much sleep a baby needs and it’ll vary between 15-12 hours total, depending on how old your child is.  We’ve been very fortunate in that Baby Mojo has been a great sleeper ever since the second day out of the hospital.

The first night home for him was a disaster, but not because of anything he did.  We put him to bed around 9:30, which was far too late.  From there he cried, got fed, cried, cried some more and the process repeated itself until morning.

The second night home was much smoother.  We put him in his crib at the much earlier bedtime of 6:30.  He slept for three hours and we woke him for feeding.  That bedtime has stuck ever since then and it has worked like a charm.  It’s worked because your child need to sleep and mom and dad need to relax.  If we put him to bed at 8:30 then we wouldn’t have anytime to ourselves to relax, watch television or simply de-stress from a day at work or staying at home with the child. 

True, your child would still sleep the same amount of time during the night.  But this way everybody wins and your child is not running the show.

Daddy Mojo’s child is a schedule baby.  If your child loves a schedule then you can attest about the importance of keeping them on it.   We can’t always keep them on schedule because some fun or unexpected things will ultimately throw them off. 

Even when special occasions happened we managed to get him to sleep within half an hour of his bed time.  We do this for his benefit and our benefit.  When he’s this young he needs things to be as constant as possible.  Yeah, we do lots of family events, festivals and visits to the neighbors, but around 6:00 that winds down and we have to head home.