Your baby waking early in the morning or from a nap can throw your day off. Adjust these 3 simple things, and help stop your baby from rising too soon. It's one thing to celebrate your baby finally putting herself to sleep, but what do you do when she wakes up early? You've tried moving bedtime back to as late as 10pm with no luck—she's still up by 5am. Sometimes she's ready to get up for the day, while other times she clearly still needs more sleep. To make things worse, her early wake-ups are throwing off her naps, making her cranky long before she's supposed to sleep. You've tried … [Read more...]
Baby Wakes Up Every Hour? Must-Know Tips for Parents
No parent enjoys getting up when their baby is waking up at night. No worries—if your baby wakes up every hour, get her sleeping in no time with these tips. The past few weeks had been brutal. Not only did my baby not know how to fall asleep on his own consistently, he'd also flip onto his tummy... and not know what to do. The result? My husband and I were up every hour to flip him over, or rock him to sleep. Sadly, I wish I could say that my baby waking up frequently was a new development. But since his newborn days, my little guy was never the best sleeper. I dreaded looking at the … [Read more...]
What You Need to Know About the 11 Month Sleep Regression
Is your 11 month old waking up at night or suddenly refusing to sleep? Discover tips to cope with the 11 month sleep regression and end your sleep problems! There can't seriously be an 11 month sleep regression, I thought. But lo and behold, a quick internet search showed that I wasn't the only one with a little one suddenly not sleeping well. The new sleep patterns—if you could call them that—felt like our family was back on the newborn schedule. Because for months, my son would go down at bedtime easily and happily. If he happened to fuss in the middle of the night, he'd only do so … [Read more...]
5 Tips to Stop the Pain After Breastfeeding
Are you experiencing breast pain after breastfeeding or pumping? These tips will help you find breastfeeding pain relief. This can't be normal, I thought to myself. Once again, I found myself curled on my bed in a fetal position, with tears squeezing out of my eyes. The sharp, shooting pains that happened after breastfeeding—even after pumping—came once again. They felt like electric shocks coming and going, for at least 30 minutes after I nursed the twins. So much so that I wanted to quit breastfeeding altogether. This wasn't the first time, either. A few years earlier, I was a … [Read more...]
How to Get a Teething Baby to Sleep
Teething baby won’t sleep at night? Discover how to get a teething baby to sleep, the tips and products that help, and how to handle the sleep regression. I can't remember how many times my baby would fuss and I'd declare, "He must be teething," only for no teeth to show. Another fussy episode would pass, and again I'd say, "Okay, now he's probably teething," yet still no teeth would poke through. After a while I got tired of blaming his fits on his teeth. That is, until the fiasco a few weeks back when, for about half an hour or so, he was inconsolable. Nothing that normally soothed … [Read more...]
What Having a “Spoiled Baby” Really Means
Feeling conflicted with advice you hear about raising a spoiled baby? Put a rest to your doubts and discover what it really means to “spoil a baby.” My twins couldn't be more different, even from infancy. While one could entertain himself and wait if I put him down, his brother would last—at most—10 minutes before hollering for attention. He didn't like to be alone, preferring to be held all day. Putting him down to sleep usually meant hearing him wake up and cry within minutes. He also preferred sleeping on me. The snuggles felt good, of course, but I could hardly get things done … [Read more...]
What to Do When Your Baby Wakes Up Crying from Naps
Let's start with a reassurance: if your baby wakes up crying from naps, you're in the majority. Rare is the baby who wakes up from a nap, cooing and waiting for you to come get him. Instead, most babies let us know that nap time is over with their piercing, shrill cries. Still... if you're in the minority of parents whose babies did wake up just fine but are now cranky after naps, you're not without hope, either. Perhaps your baby started waking up from naps crying so hard, only calming down once you pick him up. He wants to be held all day long, crying if you so much as put him down. … [Read more...]
How to Get a Sick Baby to Sleep
Is your baby feeling sick and struggling to sleep well? Learn how to get a sick baby to sleep, keep him comfortable, and soothe him back to health. After almost a year of never being sick, my baby finally succumbed to a fever and cold. Sure, the fever was only 99.6 degrees, but that, combined with a bad cold for the last few days, made going to sleep nearly impossible. Over the previous few months, I finally helped him sleep through the night. But now that he was sick, we were back to frequent wake-ups and sleeping a couple hours at a time. He'd wake up crying, which didn't exactly … [Read more...]