BABY’S SLEEPING HABITS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25660, 7 October 1944, Page 2

BABY’S SLEEPING HABITS

(By the Department of Health)

That overworked joke about father having to walk the floor at night with a recalcitrant baby is not a joke to those fathers who have to do it. And there is really no need for it. If proper sleeping habits are early encouraged in the baby, father can rest assured of undisturbed nights. The first task is to develop independence. In the maternity home baby sleeps in a nursery and comes to no harm. When he arrives home this good habit should be continued. Baby should have a room of his own, though the mother, of course, should be within call. Regularity, the key to baby nurture, applies. to sleep as well as to bathing and eating. So go by , the clock and have regular bedtimes and waking times. , , , The healthy baby, when put to bed, may lie awake, make noises, burble a little to himself, and then drop off to sleep. He may cry a while. If he wakes at night after the last feed, mother is needed. There are soothing, comforting and settling to be done. If he is left to cry himself to sleep again he may develop fears and the start of bad sleeping habits. . Somehow the child who is allowed to sleep in its parents’ room is conscious of the adult life at its elbow, and is liable to be disturbed by it psychologically. So besides regularity and mothering at the right times, see that baby has a room to himself. Bad sleeping habits in the pre-school child often date from wrong habits developed when a baby.