Newborn babies are the most dependent mammals, when they are born they cannot stand to follow their mother, nor cling on to her, so they are totally reliant upon the mother, father or caregiver.
The newborn’s brain is primitive and a baby is incapable of any sort of rational thought or conclusion. Fortunately, the baby is born with a powerful, instinctive survival mechanism. Nature has prepared the baby to seek comfort, care and food as these are essential to his survival. He also needs to feed frequently, 8-12 times in 24 hours so you can see why in the early days your sleep will be broken. The interesting aspect to this, is that most women I work with find it is not so much being woken for a feed that is hard to deal with, it is not being able to go back to sleep quickly because the baby will not settle.
WHY WON'T HE SETTLE?
Because he NEEDS to be close to you for survival. So we have a cycle develop where the parent is desperate for the baby to go back to sleep but s/he cannot because he is in fright mode and needs to be held or close to the parent. The more desperate you become, the more the baby senses it and feels even more anxious, EEK!
This difficulty does tend to improve with time but in the early days you may need to accept that you will spend some time helping your baby to settle after a feed. It is worth reading Sarah Ockwell Smith’s work on this.
So, plan for a 24 hour day with frequent short periods of sleep, rest as much as possible and take all the help that you can. Once the milk comes in and your baby is feeding well you may notice a longer sleep in the morning (when your milk supply is highest) frequent and patchy feeds in the evening (when your milk supply may need stimulation) and a longer
period of sleep at some point in the night.
Remember that for a baby, 4-5 hours at night is a long sleep. If you are formula feeding you may notice
a similar pattern but generally as baby gets bigger
s/he may develop his/ her own pattern.
If it feels overwhelming, take heart that this is a very short period in a baby’s life and you will get through it. Try to share your feelings with your NCT mates and
be glad you aren’t
back at work.
Good Luck.
1st 6 MONTH SLEEP SOLUTIONS
The variety of options on the market can be overwhelming when it comes to babies & cots are no exception. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that in the early days, babies struggle to sleep or settle if they are no being held, consequently any sleep option which recreates the feeling of being held or places the baby close to the mum is going to be beneficial.
SLEEPING LIKE
A BABY
TINA PERRIDGE looks at why babies can be difficult to settle at night
www.neighbourhoodmidwives.co.uk