Babies younger than four months old have very different sleep needs than older babies. This article will help you understand your newborn baby's developing sleep patterns, and will help you develop reasonable expectations when it comes to your baby and sleep.

The first thing to know is that ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE will have an opinion about how you should handle sleep issues with your newborn - and with older babies too, it seems. The danger to a new parent is that these pieces of well-intentioned advice, or anecdote, or comparison, can have a really negative effect on our morale, our trust in our own parenting skills and, by extension, our babies' development, UNLESS WE KNOW THE FACTS - and that's why this website is here: the more knowledge you have the less likely that other people will make you doubt your parenting decisions.

When you have your facts straight, and a considered and agreed parenting plan with the others raising your child, you will be able to respond with confidence to those who are well-meaning but offering contrary or incorrect advice. So, your first step is to get informed: know what you are doing, and know why you are doing it. Read books and magazines, attend classes or support groups where you can join with likeminded parents: it all helps.

During the early weeks of your baby's life, they will sleep when they are tired - it's that simple. You can't do much to get a new baby to sleep when they aren't tired, and you can't do much to keep them awake when they are!

A very important point to understand about newborn babies is that they have very, very tiny tummies - a rough guide is that a human stomach is the size of the palm of that human's hand: have look at your baby's palm and see what we mean! New babies grow fast, their diet is 100% liquid, and it is digested quickly (although formula digests less quickly than breastmilk as the ingredients are cow-based, not human!) And of course, they need to feed day AND night.

While it might sometimes seem like a nice idea to put baby down for the night at a specific time and not hear from them again till morning, surely even the most naiive among us know that this is not a realistic goal for a tiny baby and nor is it desireable: newborns need to be fed every two to four hours, sometimes more.

During those early weeks and months, your baby will have some so-called growth spurts - actually developmental stages where they feed and feed and feed - which affect not only daytime, but also nighttime feeding too, sometimes pushing that two- to four-hour schedule to a one- to two-hour schedule around the clock. Which CAN be exhausting!

If you have listened to the wel-intentioned folk we mentioned in paragraph two, then you will have heard that babies "should' start sleeping through the night at 2 to 4 months of age - however what you need to know, so that you don't start to beat yourself up or consider sleep training your tiny baby, is that for a new baby, a five-hour stretch IS a full night: many (but nowhere near all) babies at this age can sleep uninterrupted from for example midnight to 5 a.m, or 8pm to 1am, or even 2am to 7am - not that they always do, even once they have started. This is probably a far cry from what you may have thought "sleeping through the night" meant!

What's more, while the scientific definition of "sleeping through the night" is five hours, most of us wouldn't consider that anywhere near a full night's sleep for ourselves. Also, some of these sleep-through-the-nighters will suddenly begin waking more frequently, and it's often a full year or even two until your little one will settle into a mature, all-night, every night sleep pattern.

The fact is that a typical newborn baby sleeps 17 hours a day, and this sleep is distributed evenly over six to seven brief sleep periods. While in the beginning baby will find their own time to sleep and to wake, with some gentle encouragement, and given the time and effort, you can manipulate their routines and help them distinguish between nighttime sleep and daytime sleep, and this will help baby sleep for those longer periods at night.

The most important thing here is to make sure that baby naps in the daytime in a lit room where all the noises of the day can be heard: perhaps in a pram, moses basket or bouncychair in the main area of your home. Then make nighttime sleep snuggly, dark and quiet. You can also help your baby differentiate day naps from night sleep by implementing a bed time routine such as a nightly bath and a change into sleeping pyjamas, to signal the difference between the two.

Another way to encourage good sleeping patterns is to learn to recognise the signs that your baby is tired, and put them down for a nap as soon as you see them: while sometimes it seems they can fall asleep anywhere, babies can't always understand her own sleepy signs and know when to have a quick nap. A baby who is encouraged to stay awake when their body is craving sleep is typically an unhappy baby, because over time, this pattern will develop into sleep deprivation, which further complicates your baby's developing sleep maturity. Learn to read your baby's sleepy signs, such as quietening down, losing interest in playing, nuzzling into you, and squalking a bit, and put them down for a sleep when that window of opportunity presents itself.

Surely there isn't a single parent who enjoys getting up throughout the night to tend to a baby's needs, because as much as we adore our babies, it's exhausting and soul-destroying when you're woken up over and over again, night after night. However, since it's a fact that your baby will be waking you up, at least in the beginning, and even then it will still happen sporadically until they are at least 3 or 4 years old, you may as well make yourself as comfortable as possible. The first step is to learn to relax about night wakings right now: being stressed or frustrated about having to get up won't help, and might make you less likely to sleep well afterwards. Rest assured that if you learn to understand your baby, the sleep situation will improve day by day; and before you know it, your little newborn won't be so little anymore, that once-tiny baby will be crawling about all over the place, chattering away and getting into mischief all day, and sleeping peacefully all night long.

It is completely normal and natural for a newborn to fall asleep while suckling at the breast, feeding from a bottle, or sucking on a dummy: some people will tell you that when a baby always falls asleep this way, they will learn to associate suckling / feeding / sucking with falling asleep, and over time, they will not be able to fall asleep any other way. Sleep experts refer to this as a "negative sleep association."

Elizabeth Pantley, author of the 'No Cry Seep Solution' says, " I certainly disagree, and so would my baby. It is probably the most positive, natural, pleasant sleep association a baby can have. However, a large percentage of parents who are struggling with older babies who cannot fall asleep or stay asleep are fighting this natural and powerful sucking-to-sleep association. If you want your baby to be able to fall asleep without your help, it is essential that you sometimes let your newborn baby suck until he is sleepy, but not totally asleep. When you can, remove the breast, bottle, or pacifier from his mouth and let him finish falling asleep without something in his mouth. When you do this, your baby may resist, root, and fuss to regain the nipple. It's perfectly okay to give him back the breast, bottle, or pacifier and start over a few minutes later. If you do this often enough, he will eventually learn how to fall asleep without sucking."

Some paediatricians and Health Visitors recommend that parents shouldn't let a newborn sleep longer than three or four hours without feeding, and of course in fact the vast majority of new babies wake far more frequently than that. No matter what, your baby will wake up during the night.: the trick is to find a coping mechanism, and if it is more important to you that your baby starts to sleep through as soon as they are physically able so that you can maximise your own sleep, than it is to be available to provide your baby with the emotional attachment they need in the night even if it means sacrificung your own sleep to do it, then the trick is to learn when you should pick them up for a night feed, and when you can let them try to go back to sleep on her own.

This is a time when you need to focus your instincts and intuition, and learn how to read your baby's signals. Here's a useful piece of information: babies make many sleeping sounds, from grunts to whimpers to outright cries, and these noises don't always signal awakening or hunger - they are just little sleeping noises, and your baby is often nearly or even totally asleep. If you respond to every one of these noises, you risk teaching the baby to wake more often.

If you watch and listen carefully, you can learn to differentiate between these sleeping sounds and awake and hungry sounds. Obviously, if your baby is awake and hungry, you'll want to feed them ASAP - and if you respond immediately, then when the feed is over they will usually go back to sleep very quickly: if however you let the cries escalate, baby will wake themselves up completely and be in a state where they find it much harder to get back to sleep. Not to mention that you will then be wide awake, too!

Co-Sleeping or Bed Sharing

Breastfeeding is best for your baby’s health and your own health. The longer you breastfeed, the greater the health benefits for you both.

It is recommended that your baby shares a room with you for at least the first 6 months, as this helps with breastfeeding and protects babies against cot death.

Bringing your baby into bed with you means that you can breastfeed in comfort. This may be why mothers who share a bed with their baby tend to breastfeed for longer than those who don’t.

As it is easy to fall asleep while breastfeeding, especially when lying down, there are some important points to consider before taking your baby into bed with you. In particular, adult beds are not designed with infant safety in mind. Babies can die if they get trapped or wedged in the bed or if a parent lies on them, so the safest place for a baby to sleep is in a cot by your bed.

However, you can reduce the risk of accidents and, because bed sharing helps with breastfeeding, you may find this leaflet useful