Research On Infant sleep

Taking a decision to SLEEP TRAIN my baby and actually doing it were two completely different things.In all my free time and when my baby slept i was reading.I got online googled "INFANT SLEEP"and started browsing through the innumerable articles i found online about sleep.I did not have to search very hard.

Fortunately for me i have an elder sibling that has a baby that was sleep trained.Watching my niece sleep so well and seeing how she is so energetic,active and most importantly HAPPY throughout the day i decided that it was what i wanted for my baby. She recommended i read a book about babies and sleeping that completely changed my life. What i did not know then was that it would help change so many other  mothers lives too.The book advocated a routine.

I started to look for routine in my baby"s life.On paying attention to her feed times I realised that on average she fed every 3 hours.So that meant a total of 8 feedings in a 24 hour cycle.
Sometimes she was happy to sleep for 6 hours in the day without a feed and would stay up in the night like an owl.An angelic Lil owl nonetheless.She was happy to drop a feed in the day and slept through a feed time but woke up more frequently at night.

Why was my baby taking such long naps in the day and waking at night?????it seemed like she had her body clock all wrong. For some strange reason she thought night was day and day was night.Looking back on my pregnancy also i realised that she was most active in my womb during the night,when i was still and sleeping.My constant moving around in the day had rocked her to sleep the 9mths that she was in the womb.So her tiny body clock had set itself to that pattern of sleeping.
They pick up things so fast when they are little.  Habits form so easily with them.Especially ones like being cradled ,walked or rocked to sleep.It definitely reminds them of the time in the womb.

Gifting my baby SLEEP

Being a New Mommy is not easy....Its an emotional roller coaster.I vaguely remember the first few days after having a baby..... days of endless wakings through the night with a new born.feeling so tired all day,sleep deprived,irritable,and lacking energy to do anything....Over a few weeks i realised that sleep for "ME" had become a thing of the past....Getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep might be a distant dream..I was exhausted all the time....Days and nights just merged into one another.I went from one task to the next like a zombie,without thought.

I needed to get some sleep. But how?????The only way i was going to get some sleep is if my baby got some sleep.I needed to be well rested at night so I'd have more energy to meet my growing baby's needs. What do i do to get my baby to sleep through the night????

In India it is considered absolutely NORMAL  for a baby to wake through the night their whole first year and sometimes even longer....So asking people around me for advice did me no good. I was told that its a natural and that the baby would sleep longer when the baby is older,so i should accept the fact and be prepared to wake through the night for the 1st whole year of the babies life.I found that very hard to digest.

On reading articles,posts,blogs and books about babies and sleep.It seemed normal for babies to sleep through the night around 4 months of age.Mostly everything i read seemed to be happening in the WEST.
Wait are Our babies different from babies in the west?????? that they can have babies sleeping thru the night at 4 months of age and i would have to Wait a whole year to be able to sleep even 8 hours at a stretch.

Call me Crazy but i love my sleep,I was tired of being tired and sleep deprived all the time.That's when I decided that SLEEP was the best gift i could give my baby and myself.
A sleeping baby= A happy mommy.