Newborn babies do not have a regular sleeping pattern yet. So, they often wake up at night and sleep during the day.
If you are a new mom, you need to note that actually you are able to manage your baby’s sleeping pattern with sensory stimulation. For example, you are able to dim the room’s light, carrying them or playing white noise.
Here are the ways that you are able to do to stimulate babies’ five senses to get them to sleep easily so that they can sleep better at night.
Understanding Babies’ Sleep Needs
Sleeping is important for the process of your babies’ growth, especially for their brain. Sleeping is also useful for keeping their body endurance.
Newborn babies need more sleeping time than adults. Since they are born until 3 months old, babies need around 14 to 17 hours a day for sleeping where it is divided into nap and sleep at night. When they get older, their sleeping needs will decrease.
When babies are sleeping, usually they are disturbed by being hungry or wet diapers. If you wonder about how often they wake up, it depends on how often they suckle. For your information, newborn babies have a small capacity of stomach so no wonder why they wake up every 1.5 to 3 hours because they are hungry.
5 Effective Ways to Get Babies to Sleep Through Sensory Stimulation
As moms, you have to make sure that your babies have enough sleep and also their sleeping quality is good. You need to note that newborn babies still do not differentiate between day or night yet so that you have to create good sleep habits for them.
You surely want your babies to sleep like a log. If so, you need to read the ways to get your babies to sleep through sensory stimulation below.
1. Visual Sensory Stimulation: dim the room’s light
When you dim the light, it can be a sign that it is time to sleep. Doing it will also help them to understand day and night.
2. Stimulation of the taste buds: breastfeed the baby
By breastfeeding them, it can make them sleep easily. It is because when they are suckling, they feel comfortable. So, they can sleep quickly.
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When they sleep with a full stomach, they will not be fussy. However, you have to make sure that you give them enough breast milk and do not give it to them excessively.
3. Tactile stimulation: wear comfortable clothes
Your babies need to wear comfortable clothes where it is smooth, not tight, absorbs sweat, and doesn’t make them hot or cold. If they wear comfortable clothes, it can train their tactile stimulation. You also have to make sure that the temperature in your room is comfortable enough for babies.
You can also give a gentle and soothing massage so that they can sleep quickly.
4. Auditory stimulation: play white noise
When your baby is in your womb, he or she listens to your heartbeats where this constant and stable sound is called white noise. After they are born, listening to white noise can block other disturbing noise so that they can sleep quickly.
Some white noise that you can choose is the sound of raindrops, the sound of a hairdryer, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner.
5. Olfactory stimulation: use aromatherapy
Aromatherapy can help your babies to sleep tightly. Lavender essential oil is usually used for this. You are able to add it to the water for their bath or you can use the oil to massage them. When you want to use aromatherapy oil, you have to make sure that you choose the safe one for your babies.
Note that, if you want the ways above to work, you have to make them a routine so that your babies can get used to it.
