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Effective Baby Sleep Methods
For lots of new parents, getting their babies to sleep at night is a very difficult task. Lots of experts suggest that you should let you baby to learn how to sleep on his or her own. There are lots of methods to do this. One of the best ways is to help your child to develop at least one sleep association. When your baby wakes up in the middle of the night, he will try to recreate the sleeping environment through the associations, such as his mother or the mother’s hand. If he can’t find the associations, he will feel unfamiliar and start to cry. Your task is to introduce other items into your baby’s sleeping routine, such as staffed animals or blanket. In this way, he will gradually create the association with these items for sleep. When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he will be able to sleep again without you by grabbing his stuffed animals, etc.
Another baby sleep method is Ferber Method, which was invented by Dr. Richard Ferber. Briefly, after a warm, loving pre-bedtime routine such as singing, rocking, or reading a book, you put your child to bed while he's still awake. Once you put him in bed, leave the room. If your baby start crying, wait and allow him to cry for about five minutes, then re-enter the room to console him. It's important that you stay in the room for only one to two minutes and that you don't pick him up or rock him. The second time you leave the room, wait 10 minutes before returning the room, if he’s still crying. The rest of the night, wait for a maximum of fifteen minutes. You baby will eventually fall asleep on his own during one of the 15 minute periods in which you are out of the room.
The second night, you should begin with a 10 minute wait before re-entering the room, and increase by 5 minute intervals to a maximum of 20 minutes. Increase your initial and subsequent wait times by 5 minutes each night.
Although it is difficult to listen to your baby cry at the first few nights, the Ferber method is very effective and safe, and your child will soon learn to go to sleep on his own.
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