5 tips for better sleep during baby's 2nd month.

So your baby is in the second month of development now, starting to do things like focus on your face while eating, smiling and sometimes laughing in their sleep. This is a very cute stage, and it's even cuter when they sleep well at night. Babies at this age still need to eat at night, but they should be sleeping longer and eating a bit less over all. This is a great time to begin to lay some very basic groundwork for future sleep training. Whether the sleep-solution you go with has crying, or no crying, the adjustment will be smoother if your baby is already sleeping well with some basic positive associations in place.

1. Warm your baby's crib mattress before you lay baby down.
Whether you use a heating pad or a sack of lentils heated in the oven, warming up your baby's bed mattress will help when transferring him into bed, or even relaxing him when placed there awake. For an adult the feel of crisp cool sheets might feel like the most relaxing and comfortable place in the world, but for your baby, your arms are the most safe and relaxing place and they are warm. So it makes perfect sense that your baby would associate a warm surface with safety. Do not leave the heating pad in you baby's crib for too long (over an hour) or heat it too hot (it should feel about as warm as your baby's forehead) and if you are using an electric heating pad check the cord regularly for any hot-spots or fraying. I really recommend using the lentils since they are not a fire-hazard, if you don't have a good bag, you could use a pillow-case or a large sock.


2. Place a recently worn T-shirt in the crib with your baby.
Your baby's eyes might not work so well, and their hearing largely lacks focus and reference points at the age of two months, but their sense of smell is already working quite well. A mother has certain pheromones in her scent that a baby responds to very powerfully. Preemie babies who are given a "scent doll" that their mother has slept with while she was pregnant are calmer, eat more, and sleep better than preemies who aren't. I've observed that this holds true for older babies as well. When a baby can smell her mommies natural body scent, she will be more relaxed and sleep longer. I think it is best to only use the T-shirt at night, because it will encourage a sense of safety and security that will hopefully become associated with their sleeping area and with night time in general.

3. Extend time between feedings by 15 minutes.
Eventually your baby will need to give up the feedings in the middle of the night, and with a little prep work that should be a lot easier. As soon as you hear your baby begin fussing respond, but instead of offering them the feeding right away, try to soothe them without it first. Use a pacifier (or dummy), bounce, sway, sing, hum and jiggle. Try to put off your baby's feeding as long as you can, to a minimum of 15 minutes and a maximum of 30. If your baby falls back to sleep without eating, then the next time they wake up, go ahead and feed them right then. Your baby still needs about 2-3 feeds a night at this point, so the delay in the feeds only serves to prepare your baby for sleep training by widening the gap between when they expect to be fed. If your baby is not responding well to your attempts to soothe them without food, discontinue the delays for a while, some babies are not ready to try this until the third month.

4. Pull the night cap down over your baby's eyes.
This trick won't work for long, just a month or so. Your baby's eyes are just starting to develop enough that they can see more distinct shapes, and they are fascinated with high-contrast images like black and white mobiles and posters. They are often so intent on looking around it is hard to relax and let their eyes close. However if you just pull down the front of their hat to cover their eyes they are still too young to realize why they can't see and begin resisting. It is a great way to help your baby relax and drift off to sleep, but like I said it won't be long before your baby catches on to what you are doing and starts to turn their head back and forth to wiggle out of the hat.

5. Use a metronome in the nursery at night.
The rhythmic might be reminiscent of your heart beat, though I think the reason this works is because it gives your baby's conscious mind something to focus on and that makes relaxing easier. Years ago mothers used to tuck a pocket watch under their baby's pillow to help sooth them to sleep. It was this old tradition that led me to try the metronome with one of the baby's i was taking care of a few years ago. He had a particularly hard time going to sleep during the day while I was tending him and his mother was at work, but one day I tried the metronome, and he calmed right down and was asleep in his crib before I knew it. I've been a believer ever since. In homes where there is no metronome, I'll some times tap a pencil on the night stand in a steady rhythm, and it seems to help most of the time too.

The second month is usually a bit easier for parents than the first month, whether that is because your baby is finding a more predictable routine, or because the you are getting used to the sleepless nights it's nice to feel it getting easier. Hopefully these tips can help for those times when your baby has forgotten that the second month is supposed to be easier, and help prepare you all for the next few months (One more great sleep tip can be found here: http://www.everythingmom.com). If you find these tips helpful, please refer them to any new or expecting parents. Happy parenting!

5 tips for reintroducing the breast to your baby.

Introducing your baby to the breast can be a deceptively difficult thing for many mothers. Whether you have been experiencing a low flow, your milk seems to disagree with you baby or due to prematurity your baby was introduced to the bottle before the breast, some mothers have a difficult time convincing their little one to give breastfeeding a try. There are a few little tips I have for moms to help babies overcome their mammary shyness. Of course there are times when nothing can convince a baby to take to the breast, (or the breast to produce milk) but thanks to all of the wonderful advances in formula, babies who are not breast fed are still able to grow and develop just fine. For those moms who want to, and are able to, breast feed but are hitting a rough spot at the very beginning, I wish you luck and I hope my tips can help.


1. Offer your baby breast milk in a bottle if they initially reject the breast.
If your newborn rejects the breast on your first try, don't automatically give up and substitute formula. Pump every 2 hours for 15 minutes at minimum, holding your baby skin-to-skin to stimulate flow, and add as much of your own milk to the feeds as possible. Having your baby on you while pumping helps associate the smell of milk with you, an association that is important to have in place if you want to avoid future rejections.



2. Moisten a small clean cloth with breast milk and wipe out your baby's mouth after feeds.
Even if your baby is being supplemented with formula, you want the lingering taste in their mouth to be your breast milk. Leaving the cloth near your baby between feeds will also familiarize your baby with the smell, and reinforce a positive association.


3. Experiment with different nursing positions.
For many babies, especially premature babies, the problem of reflux is very real, but undiagnosed. The most common nursing holds for babies are completely horizontal, this can cause a great deal of discomfort in a baby with reflux, the signs of which (arching of the back, tightly closing the mouth, crying out in short high pitched cries and gagging) can look very much like breast rejection to a new mother. Bottle feeding naturally lends itself to an incline, and when new mothers see that their baby willingly takes the bottle, they can easily come to the conclusion that their baby would rather have it than the breast. Sometimes this is in fact the case, but just to be sure, I recommend that moms do try an inclined nursing position before deciding on primarily using the bottle.


4. Use a nipple-shield to reintroduce the breast to your baby.
If your baby has had a few feedings by bottle because they just weren't taking to the breast right away, or because your milk supply took a little longer to kick in, don't just try to give them your breast without the plastic barrier. The nipple shield helps regulate your milk flow to more closely resemble a bottles, and the texture is consistent with a bottle nipple, these elements, along with the fact that a nipple shield makes extracting the milk from your breast a little bit easier, makes the nipple shield a great way to gradually reintroduce the breast. After your baby is consistently nursing with the nipple shield in place, you can start removing it toward the end of the nursing, and letting your baby try recreational bare skin nursing for a while. As soon as your baby takes the nipple bare with no resistance, you can begin trying the feedings without the nipple shield at all.


5. Use your pinkie as a pacifier until your baby is using the breast for feeds.
The warm real feel of skin is just not able to be completely duplicated by pacifier producers, and the comfort provided by pacifier use can cause resistance to the texture of your nipple. Using your finger both will trigger your own chemistry to produce more milk, and give your baby a realistic association of texture with comfort. Make sure your fingernails and any hang nails are trimmed off as far as they'll go, and use an emery board to round off any hard edges for safety. Keep your finger very clean, wash it between every use. Place the pad of your pinkie (or larger finger if your baby seems unsatisfied with the pinkie), on the roof of your baby's mouth, nail-side down, against the tongue. Every baby I've tried this with over the years has found it very soothing, and I recommend it often. Since you may want your baby to be soothed without your needing to stand there with your finger in their mouth eventually, as soon as your baby is taking all feeds from the breast feel free to substitute an actual pacifier for your finger.

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