How Do You Get Your Baby On A Sleep Schedule?

” There really is no schedule of sleep in the newborn period.  It’s developmentally led. In about three or four months, we can start to play our card. Follow the baby’s lead those first couple of months. B\y three or four months, you can really read their cues and learn them. A baby who is not hungry maybe shouldn’t be fed. So a newborn is feeding every two to three hours — even overnight because they need those calories. But the four-month-old isn’t always hungry. Yes, they’re teething, and they’re yelling at you. But you don’t have to feed them as much. So I look at it as getting that first stretch at night. Establish your bedtime routine. Read to them, perhaps take a bath, and then let’s try to get that bedtime going. That first stretch — whether it’s four to six hours — is your starting point and that sometimes does involve them waking and saying, “Hey, I’m awake and I need your help in going back to bed.” But maybe that’s the time to say “No, we need to have you self soothe and sleep learn” — if not sleep train. Yes, they might play their card and cry. It’s not simply the “cry it out” method that we promote. But we’ll do it together. We’ll figure them out. We’ll learn their cues, and we’ll try to get that stretch – so, hopefully by six or nine months, you’re maybe even seeing that ten to twelve magical hours of sleep, and you can return to being a normal person once again.”