5 Tips to Help Your Baby Nap

5 Tips to Help Your Baby Nap Without

Ever Leaving Them to Cry

Developed by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka Ed.D.

1. Establish a consistent wake window. While you won’t wake your baby, allow sounds from the environment to cue them this is when your family’s day begins. Grind that coffee, open blinds, and turn on lights. A consistent wake time – give or take 30 minutes - allows you to begin predicting the timing of the first nap and helps to develop your baby’s body clock.
2. Know your baby’s sleep cues.  There are 3 levels of sleep cues. Catch your baby at level one or two, the slight turning away, drooping of the cheeks, or eye rub. If your baby is crying, they’ve hit level three signifying you’ve missed their window and will now struggle to sleep.
3. Guard the first nap. When babies miss their first nap, it can disrupt sleep for the rest of the day.
4. Calm yourself.  Before you pick up your baby take a deep breath to center yourself. They’ll synchronize to you and fall asleep faster.
5. Use the gentle nudge to independent sleep. If your baby naps twenty minutes in a crib but naps for 2 hours when you hold them, try placing them in the crib once. When they alert, practice is over. Pick them up and hold them for the remainder of their nap. But the next day try it again. One day that twenty minutes will become forty, and then an hour or more.

For more information grab a copy of "Raising Your Spirited Baby".

Available on Amazon

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