Baby Sleep Ideas – Baby Advice by Babble Soft
Jun 25 2007
Many seasoned parents probably know this: When all else fails to calm your baby down (i.e., mylicon drops, gripe water, walking around the house a million times (with your baby next to your chest, in a sling, on your shoulder, or on your back), putting your baby on a running clothes dryer, standing by the refrigerator in a semi-comatose state, yelling at your partner, yelling at yourself, yelling at your baby, all sorts of herbal/homeopathic medicines, giving him/her a pacifier, giving him/her food (bottle or breast), and/or pinching yourself, try a) putting your baby in the car and driving around or b) walk outside.
Several people will tell you (they told us) that putting your baby in a car and driving them around would create bad sleeping habits. We finally figured out we were screwed no matter what we did since our son (who is now 4 1/2) was born with the questionable ability to sleep so driving him around so that he could fall sleep would calm us down and in more cases than not put him to sleep so we wouldn’t totally lose it. Driving around in the car was a much better solution for us than being in the same room with him while we were extremely sleep deprived and irritable (caution: don’t drive when you think you too might fall asleep!). If you feel sleepy and your baby has fallen asleep stop the car somewhere safe and take a nap yourself. If you are close to home see if you can take your baby out of the car (keep him/her in their car seat), bring him/her inside and crash on the nearest couch.
Several well meaning folks might also tell you that you shouldn’t take your baby outside when it’s cold. Here in Texas it doesn’t get cold too often, but we found even on cold days taking him outside for 2-5 minutes made him look around and calm down. The only trouble with this tactic is he would cry for a bit when we first walked outside making us (or mainly me) worry about waking the neighbors! Thankfully, our daughter was born a wonderful sleeper because otherwise I might not have survived to write this tip!
Aruni
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As a reminder, these tips are based on our experiences, as well as those of our friends and readers. Please always consult with your doctor before implementing any tip that might impact the health of your baby. If you have a tip you’d like to submit please send an email to babblesoft blogger for possible inclusion. Please check the ‘baby tips’ category to make sure your tip (in some form or fashion) hasn’t already been posted. If it has been, feel free to comment on that post and support the tip. We also welcome respectful challenges to the tips because as is noted in our ‘inaugural’ baby tip ‘everything is relative!’ We will, of course, give anyone who submits a tip we publish credit and a link back to their site!
Author: Aruni | Filed under: babble soft, baby advice, baby stuff, baby tips, sleep | Tags: baby advice, baby sleep, calm baby, driving baby in car, taking baby outside, walking baby | 2 Comments »
We’re seeing remarkable differences between our five-year-old Noah and our three-month-old Lucas in the sleep department. Noah was a car sleeper, and in fact, still is. Lucas, on the other hand, hates his car seat, gives us the “What are you doing?” look when we strap him in, and alternates between glowering and full-on screaming on many of the car rides we embark on. The only time I got it to work (early in the trial-and-error phase), he woke up as soon as I got him out of the car seat, and I don’t think he was sleeping very deeply at all.
Noah is still such a car sleeper that he will often conk out next to his screaming brother and sleep for the duration of a trip. Part of me finds that a tempting coping mechanism, but, of course, I’m not only the parent, but I’m the parent with the steering wheel in my hands …
On the other hand, I can usually get Lucas to sleep by walking him around for five to ten minutes. As with all things babies, for each individual one, your mileage may vary.
The drive your kid around town was a lifesaver for me. Even though I was doing most of the night duty Aruni couldn’t get sleep at night because our son was up crying every few hours. Taking our son on 2-3 hour drives was not only relaxing (I’ve always liked the crusin’ thing) but allowed Aruni to get some rest too. In addition, I got to see parts of Austin that I didn’t know existed!
-Erin