Can You Sleep Train a Newborn?

Sleep training is a hot topic with parents of older babies and toddlers. So many are struggling and bewildered. New parents either pray they will escape this fate or confidently assume they are the exception. It isn’t really the roulette wheel that it seems. Parents are often told that they cannot do much to develop good sleep habits until a child is 3-4 months old. Well, waiting until then may have already set your child up for trouble.

Both the Baby Whisperer series and Dr. Harvey Karp’s Happiest Baby on the Block books describe routines that are loving and sensitive to a baby’s needs. They don’t take sides on the co-sleeping controversy. Both teach families how to read a baby’s cues and create early healthy habits that can survive teething, illness, and growth spurts.

A very young baby can anticipate and can benefit from a routine (not a rigid schedule) that starts in the morning and brings them to nighttime ready to rest and renew. My favorite newborn strategy is the “dream feed”. Waking your baby (yes, waking them up!) to have a filling feed not too long after that initial bedtime nursing or bottle tops them off for a longer period of sleep. A brain that is used to a cycle of naps during the day and a longer sleep at night is ready for the greater demands of the day (and night) at 3-4 months. The child who has no sense of day and night and wakes habitually at all hours is never refreshed. Never mind the state of his parents.

The other strategy that makes a huge difference to families is to understand that bedtime really starts in the morning. If your child’s schedule has been disrupted intentionally or unintentionally, it will make it very difficult to fall asleep. Not responding to those subtle sleep signs will sabotage a very good bedtime plan. If you want to develop good sleep routines,then time, tide and sleep wait for no baby.