Baby Diaries, A Guide for New Mothers: Part 6 - Establishing a sleeping routine for your newborn

A continuation of the Baby Diaries Series

There is no hard and fast rule about how new babies sleep. Depending on the personality – and they do have them even at a very young age – they will sleep as much as twelve out of twenty-four hours, and anything in between.

The important thing is to teach your baby the difference between night and day because they’re not able to differentiate between the two (discussed below). As time goes by, baby will realise that the dark time is sleepy time and the light time is wakey time (with periods of sleepy time chucked in at intervals). My first baby learned it in six weeks, at which time she started sleeping through the night. The subsequent ones took a bit longer.

This sounds odd and impossible, but it can be done because we managed to do it successfully. Having said that, babies are all little individuals, and should not be treated as such.

Regulations and points of training should not rule the way you behave with your new infant. With that in mind, here are some ways that will help your new baby to eventually fall into a nice night sleep pattern. I have practiced all these that I’m about to tell you, and I can vouch for their effectiveness.

Establish a bedtime routine

Many people find it helpful to have a bed time routine. If you start out early enough, it will be helpful to you in the long run when baby grows into a toddler. Don’t have play time at night before baby goes to bed. Do quiet things like a bath, change into nightclothes, and a nice long feed and a cuddle. It’s a good idea to do this feed in a different room from the one you usually use. For example if daytime feeds are done on the sofa in the living room, your night time feed could be done in a bedroom with the lights turned down low. In the summer, close the curtains or have a black-out blind. Voices should be kept low and less energetic, and toys should be put away. This has to be done not once in a while, but each and every night for the routine to be properly established.

Putting down baby

No, this is not insulting them - no amount of insults will make a baby go to sleep. Seriously, try putting down baby before she/he falls asleep. If baby always falls asleep in your arms, he/she will naturally think that this is how humans are meant to sleep. Remember that baby is a blank canvass. He/she knows nothing but what you will teach them from this point onwards. After the bath, (and a nice rub or massage if you have time) a change, a feed and a cuddle, let baby fall asleep in her/his own bed. Infants will cry when they’re about to fall asleep. It’s an odd sensation that they have yet to get used to. Let them cry for a bit (but not for too long). If they’re becoming too agitated, pick them up, talk to them, cuddle them and when they’re fine, put them down again. This may take a few tries to work, and you will certainly have to keep it up for a period of time before baby learns that this is the routine. Keep at it, and don’t give up. Remember that it’s unkind to leave baby screaming indefinitely – we never did this. It takes care and consideration, but it also takes determination for this to effectively work.

Teach baby night and day

When our infants woke up in the daytime, we spoke to them in a cheery, excited voice. We played with and sang to them. We spoke to them while we did the nappy changes, left the music on, tickled toes and made a fuss etc. Daytime feeding was always done in the living room. Evening feeds when baby wasn’t expected to go to sleep were done in this room with the bright lights on, surrounded by normal living noises. Our babies learned that this was wakey, happy time.

Night time: first of all, we made sure that baby was dry and clean and safely tucked in before we went to bed. I usually did a big feed at about 7 pm, so I sure that baby would be ready for a top up feed between 10 and 11 pm just before I finally tucked in for the night. Even if baby was sleeping at this time, I would carefully put him/her at the breast where they would happily feed while half-asleep.

When our babies woke up in the night for night feeds (and this was started the day they came home from hospital), the light was left off. We didn’t speak to them. My husband changed their nappy in silence (the night light was always plugged in for this purpose so that we didn’t have to turn on a light) then brought them to our bed where I was sitting up ready to do a feed. This I did in the dark and in complete silence. Baby was then burped and put back into his/her cot. They settled down straight away in most cases, but when they didn’t, they were picked up, cuddled (in silence, in the dark), put back into the cot and tucked in again. If necessary, this was repeated, but negotiations or pleasantries were never entered into. Our babies soon learned that dark time was sleepy time, not only for little ones, but for Mummy and Daddy as well. This is a personal account, it’s what worked for us.

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The Stay-at-Home Mum’s Guide to Remaining Glamorous

These days lots of women are deciding to take a break from the office and their careers in order to stay at home and raise their babies until it’s time for them to start school. This is a great sacrifice, as we usually have to retrain before we resume work after the kids have gone out to full-time schooling. However, it’s admirable that women (and quite a lot of men) are viewing the issue of having and raising their kids as a personal and intimate responsibility, regardless of what they have to forgo.

Nevertheless, staying at home has its obvious downsides. The pressures of a full-time, 24-hour-a-day job like a homemaker’s can leave us forgetting; firstly, who we really are, and secondly, that we are not only a parent, but a spouse and an individual as well.

One obvious disadvantage in choosing to work in, rather than out of the home is that women especially, allow the glamour in their looks to fade away. This should not be allowed, diva sisters, so I’ve cooked up the following recipe! They are some small but important ways to keep ourselves attractive and preserve the efficient, confident sex appeal we possessed while working out of the home.
Refuse to allow staying at home to rob you of your femininity and sex appeal. (This article is written by a woman, therefore from a woman’s perspective).


Keep smelling good


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It is inevitable that we’ll smell of vomit, bleach, or baby wipes at intervals during the day - maybe of all of them at the same time. However, take a fraction of a second to apply a bit of perfume on your body. Everyone has a smell, and while your counterparts who’re still at the office accessorise with ‘covet’ and ‘poison,’ there is no reason why you shouldn’t also wear a bit of fragrance to do your job. Apply a mild perfume behind your ears or neck where the baby will not be overwhelmed by it, but at a place where your older children and husband could still smell it as they cuddle up to you. It does not go unnoticed. My sister once borrowed my perfume when she stayed over for the week-end. Just before she left, my daughter, after giving her a cuddle announced, ‘You smell nice. Just like Mummy!’

Look after your hair

The very last thing a mother on call has time for, is her own hair. Prepare for this when you’re planning a pregnancy by growing your hair to a length which is long enough to braid, or put into a pony tail with little effort. If your hair is short, it’s likely that you’ll end up wearing a hat/cap when you rush out to do yet another set of shopping. You don’t want this. Having longish hair, means that if you’re in a hurry, you could always have handy a mixture of water with a blob of hair conditioner kept in a spray top bottle. Spray this on your hair when in a hurry and sweep it up in a pony tail. If you have curly hair keeping it in braids is always neater than wearing it wild and frizzy (because you’ve had no time to spend the hour it requires to tame it). Keeping your hair neat is vital to your image and perfect for staving off the ‘haggard mother’ look. Your work keeps you tied to the house. While this means that you’re unlikely to be coiffured, it doesn’t mean that your hair has to look out of control.

Keep your face frame in shape

Like a gorgeous picture frame adds beauty and elegance to a photograph, your eyebrows (your face’s frame) add character and interest to your face. Eyebrows are so important to your face because they can be the difference between you looking tired, or looking fresh and ‘on the ball.’ The condition of your eyebrows also affects how old you look. They don’t need much work, and certainly are not expensive to keep in shape. Try plucking them from the underside for a quick clean and shape-up. Definitive, step-by-step guide here. Dab a bit of Vaseline or clear mascara to keep them in line and you’ll notice the lift this simple act gives to your eyes and entire face.

Keep yourself fit


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You don’t have to join an expensive gym to keep fit. You probably won’t have the time anyway. Buy four different aerobics tapes (one for each work-out day in the week) and exercise with them when your babies are asleep. Keep fit, energised, happy and healthy by switching between these tapes while exercising in your own home. There is no expensive gym outfits to buy this way. If you have school-going kids, walk them to school, pushing the baby in the pram. Twenty minutes of walking daily will put you on the right track to regaining your pre-pregnancy shape.

Show interest in your husband

You rightfully expect your husband to show some personal interest in you after he’s been at work all day. When you were working outside the home you returned this acknowledgement because you knew that this is an important ingredient for happiness and contentment in marriage. Do not let this ‘marriage maintenance’ fall apart just because you’ve now changed jobs to work from your own home with your own family. When you were at the office, you put in the effort to make a hot drink for colleagues at break time. Your husband is now your colleague as you work together to bring up your family. On one hand he takes care of the accounts, on the other, you, of personnel. If he keeps up his side of the agreement, there is every reason for you to maintain your half of it. That’s true partnership!

Keep up-to-date with what’s happening around you

Do not, under any circumstance, lose contact with what’s going on in the world. Your husband is bombarded with that constantly, so after work, be the person with whom he can talk these things through. Leave the radio on and listen to the news, turn off the television, as you’ll be tempted to sit and watch everything before and after the news has finished. Join a library, take the baby in the buggy and walk over there. Half an hour’s walking to the library is a good way to give the infant some fresh air and for you to take some scenic exercise. Borrow books and read them. Reading and intelligence are fantastically attractive, so don’t lose part of your sex appeal by becoming a stay-at-home mum who never picks up a book. Remember that when you go back to work outside the home you wouldn’t get the chance to improve and build up your general knowledge. This is the perfect time to do so. Do not miss out on this priceless opportunity.

Don’t lose the ‘classy’ in you

Don’t become a drab. While dating, you kept your air of mystery. Back then, you didn’t let your now husband see you on the toilet, you burped loudly only when he was out of ear shot. You yawned with your hand over your mouth. I’m not saying that you cannot be free to do these things in your own home, because you are. You change in your own bedroom and not in the living room, not because you haven’t got a right to, but because you don’t want your kids to see your nakedness. Therefore, even though we’re free to do what we want, we’ve still limited ourselves in specific ways out of consideration for the other people with whom we share the home. Maintaining a small amount of ‘personal space’ - even when you share your most intimate moments with someone else - is still possible. As a way of preserving your sex-appeal and mystery even to your own husband, little things like bathroom activities could still be done in private. My husband sees my perfect eyebrows and admires them. He knows that I pluck them but has never seen this ‘process of perfection’ because I feel that this would make them less appealing to him. This is just one example of keeping a few ‘mysteries.’ After all, husbands and wives already share so many intimate things with each other, it won’t hurt to keep a few innocent ‘secrets’ which aren’t really secrets.


Make the effort when you go out



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No matter how old a woman gets, she’s always going to be proud to step out with a fit, well-dressed, attractive-looking man on her arm. The trouble is, men feel the same way about us too. There is no need to dress expensively. Just make sure that the clothes you wear around the house to do your various jobs, (including feeding the kids), are not the same ones you rush out to the store wearing. It takes a second to pull on a pair of trendy jeans and a stylish top. Track suit bottoms are comfortable, but they’re for the gym and for lounging around. Not because you now have children it’s suddenly okay to go on a family outing wearing a stained track suit and trainers. If you’re careful to shop for clothes without complicated buttons, knots etc, you can maintain your femininity and sex appeal when you go out, by quickly changing into something fresh and more appropriate. I know I do.

Many women forget to keep themselves attractive and business-like when they make the decision to stay home to raise young children. This does not have to be the case for you. Remember that you not only have to fulfil the role of a mother, but also of a wife and an equal partner to your husband. You don’t want to be that woman interested only in talking about what colour the baby sick was (and as mothers we do a lot of that), but one who stays as sexy and as attractive as she was before the home became her sole workplace.

Stay glamorous!

Baby Diaries, A Guide for New Mothers: Part 5 - Baby's Health Irritations

A continuation in the series (10 parts) of Baby Diaries

Young babies are susceptible to mild health irritations. If you’re not sure about the severity of the situation it’s best to consult your health professional right away. It’s better to pay a visit to the doctor and be turned away for being too panicky, than risk infection from diseases that may permanently harm your baby. Your health visitor will no doubt inform you about all the inoculations your baby should receive and when, and will teach you how to spot real illnesses when they occur. In this section we will discuss some mild health issues and how best to deal with them at home.

Diarrhoea and vomiting

Both at the same time is always bad news and should be taken very seriously. However, sometimes baby will get an upset stomach which doesn’t seem to affect his/her general health. When this happens baby’s motions will be loser and smellier than usual. There may even be traces of mucus in the stool. Many times mild diarrhoea can be due to something the mother may have eaten while breastfeeding. Vomiting, on the other hand, can occur when baby is too full or have a cough. My last baby was sick on a regular basis because she had a persistent, dry cough. If her stomach was full and she had a coughing spell she would be thoroughly sick – and I’m not talking about posseting (discussed below).

In the case of mild diarrhoea or vomiting, feed as normal, especially if you’re breast feeding. This is because young infants tend to dehydrate at a faster rate than adults. Older babies will benefit from cooled previously boiled water (if they refuse milk). If problem persists, contact your doctor and they will keep baby properly hydrated until the illness subsides.

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