Babies develop rhythms for sleeping , and these rhythms are connected to each other. After the first few days  of life, babies develop a predicable cycle of activity: wake up, nurse or take a bottle, look around and socialize, fall asleep, repeat. As sleep begins to occur more and more at night, feeding switch more and more to the day. As I mentioned earlier, by about four months, most babies are physically able to go eight or more hours at night without eating.

The coordination of hunger and sleep is an example of how baby’s behavior becomes organized over time. Early on, parents play a crucial role in supporting this organization, feeding their babies and putting them down to sleep on a regular schedule (although not an overly rigid one). In time, though, the babies take over the organizing for themselves, and eventually, regular cycles of sleep and hunger become automatic.

Some babies are by their nature more regular in their rhythms than others. Regularity is an aspect of temperament, a baby’s inborn behavior style. If your baby is one who becomes hungry every four hours like clockwork, then it will be easy for you to plan your day around her feeding and sleep periods. But if your child has an underlying biological rhythm that is less regular- going now two hours between feedings, now five- it will be harder fro you and your baby to get on the same schedule. As a result, she is bound to be hungry sometimes when you aren’t ready to feed her, and may not be hungry at other times when you are.

You can help a baby to be more regular by setting up routines and sticking to them. But some babies have a very hard time fitting their biological rhythms into a schedule. This may be especially true of babies who are premature or who were sick a lot when they were newborns. With these babies, it’s important that parent be flexible enough to meet their needs. Otherwise, the babies are bound to be unhappy a lot of the time- either hungry or overstuffed, too sleepy to interact with their parents, or too active when the parents need to sleep.

PRACTICAL TIPS
-Spend as much time as possible holding your baby. Contact, especially skin to skin contact with your infant right up on your chest, has a calming effect that may improve his alertness, feeding and sleeping. During the day, a cloth baby carrier gives your little one the warmth and security of being held while letting you have your hands free.

-Nurse or offer a bottle when your baby is hungry. While your ultimate goal is to get your baby  on a reasonable schedule, at first it is even more important for him to be comfortable and develop good feeding skills. Remember, comfortable babies sleep better. Babies who fuss longer before getting fed into a vicious cycle of irritability, poor feeding and poor sleeping.

-Get to know your baby’s stress signals. Every baby does things that lets parents know when he ah s has too much excitement and needs a rest. These signals include yawning, turning away, and jitteriness of the lower jaw, turning pale around the mouth, spitting up or closing his eyes. If you’ve been talking or playing with your baby and you see these signals, he probably needs sleep or simply a bit of quite time. Premature and small babies or those who have been ill, often can stand only a little bit of stimulation before they require some peace and quite.

-Wake your newborn after four hours or so. Even though you’d think that more sleep is better, the goal is for your baby to have a regular sleep-eat pattern. New babies need to eat roughly every four hours, if not more often. A one or two week old infant who sleeps six or eight hours at stretch is too sleepy. After about four hours, try to wake up your baby and offer a feed.

-Be more interesting and playful during the day, and more businesslike and boring at night. As I explained above, this is the best way to help babies sort out night from day.

-Give your baby time to settle down in his own. If you rush in the minute he starts fussing, he won’t learn this important skill. I f your newborn is sleepy in another room and you’ve installed a baby monitor, consider turning it down at night so that you don’t hear every little gurgle and rustle coming from your baby’s room; chance are, if he really needs you, h can cry loud enough to get your attention. (Infant monitors are solid as safety equipment, but careful research has failed to show that they actually make babies safer.)

- Help your newborn find his own thumb. Sucking a thumb or fist is one way little babies can themselves down. When they get older, such techniques allow them to sleep through the night. And, unlike a dummy, a thumb never gets lost. Parents often view thumb sucking as a negative habit, but it’s really a natural and powerful way that babies soothe themselves, and most give it up naturally when they learn  other self comforting techniques as toddlers or preschoolers.

- Get as much rest as you can, napping when your baby naps. Even though the goal is for your baby to eventually stay  awake more during the night and sleep more at night, in the beginning you will have to be awake a lot at night. If you are exhausted, you’ll feel miserable and you are won’t be able to be as comforting to your baby as you’d like.

- Don’t be shy about asking for help from other family members, especially your spouse or partner. Taking care of a new baby is hard work. Let others in the family assume some of your chores and responsibilities, such as cleaning or cooking, so that you can focus in your baby and keep up your own energy.

- And remember: Always put your newborn to sleep on his back to reduce the risk of SIDS.