Newborn Bedtime Routine

So in terms of bedtime routine, it's a great idea to start to establish that as soon as you get home from the hospital. So you can do whatever you feel like you want to have established for your baby. A lot of people do a bath. They read some stories. It can feel silly to read books to babies right now, but it's wonderful for their language development. You don't have to worry about following the whole story or showing them the pictures. But just talking to them is a great thing to do before bed. And then wrapping them up and saying good night. And again, having all of the feeds that you do in the middle of the night, even if they're waking up frequently, be done in a dark, quiet environment to keep things as peaceful as possible. Right now, babies will sleep through anything. They'll sleep through New York construction and sirens. But eventually, they will be more sensitive. One thing that can be really helpful is using a white noise machine, if that's something that you're interested in, and making sure, again, that their room is as dark and quiet as possible. The ideal is to put the baby down, what we call drowsy but awake, which is pretty sleepy and right on the edge of falling asleep, but awake enough to know where they're falling asleep. That will help you with future sleep training because they're learning how to self-soothe and how to put themselves to sleep. So if you rock or hold a baby until they fall asleep and then you put them down in the crib, when they wake up, they're really surprised that they're not in your arms anymore. But if you have them fall asleep in the crib, then when they naturally wake up overnight, as we all do, they'll be able to put themselves back to sleep. Another wonderful thing to use is a pacifier. So pacifiers are totally okay for babies. They actually have been shown to be linked to a reduction in sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, and babies have a lower stress hormone who suck, whether it's on a pacifier or on their thumb. So if you are interested in giving your baby a pacifier, that can be a wonderful cue for sleep, and it can also help to put them to sleep awake so that they can suck and help themselves fall asleep.