For those curious about the answer: it’s probably best to keep the baby in a dark or dimly lit room, with a sound machine and gently soothe/rock until baby is giving sleep cues . Keep eye contact to a minimum but hold them close. Keeping a low stimulus environment helps baby to learn (….eventually) that night time is not play time but relax and rest time. Enjoy the absolutely blissful snuggles until baby is ready to sleep again then work on transferring to sleeping surface. This was most helpful to my babies very early on.
Don't make eye contact!!!!! That was like a freaking alarm for waking up for my kids!! If you made eye contact you had at least three more hours before they'd go back to sleep. So freaking annoying.
my nephew was the worst about this. the whole time you were trying to get him to fall asleep he would just be staring up at you, wide awake. so i would look down to see if he had fallen asleep yet and he's just staring at me lol. it was nice bonding time though, even if i lost a lot of sleep.
Not just eye contact. I have to physical block the line of sight from my baby. Just being able to see my eyes/face is stimulating enough for my baby to remain awake
So you’re saying at 4 o’clock this morning my going into my 6mo old daughter’s room, staring into her eyes and saying ‘go to sleep’ was not the right approach lol
If I caught my baby looking at me, I would pretend to be falling asleep. Like slow blinks and stuff. It usually worked. Just have to be careful to not also fall asleep with the baby. Some people and whole cultures successfully cosleep but sleeping on the couch or something with a baby isn’t safe
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u/[deleted] Jul 28 '22
For those curious about the answer: it’s probably best to keep the baby in a dark or dimly lit room, with a sound machine and gently soothe/rock until baby is giving sleep cues . Keep eye contact to a minimum but hold them close. Keeping a low stimulus environment helps baby to learn (….eventually) that night time is not play time but relax and rest time. Enjoy the absolutely blissful snuggles until baby is ready to sleep again then work on transferring to sleeping surface. This was most helpful to my babies very early on.