Young babies sleep a lot of the time, but even when they're tiny they don't necessarily sleep when it's most convenient for their parents. The easiest way to deal with a baby in these early days and weeks is to be flexible. Try to arrange your lives so that you can make use of the baby's sleep time, and when she's awake, try to make yourselves free to feed and play with her. Be aware that she's already laying down patterns of sleep and wakefulness that will serve as a guide to when she'll sleep and when she'll wake later on. You can affect things, if you want to, by being aware of her sleep patterns and by sometimes gently shifting the balance so that she gets the idea of when to have longer sleeps, when it's Just a catnap, and when it's time to be properly awake.

Never too young to play

When i had my first baby, I thought for a long time that she was "too young to play." I'd put her in her cot, or lie her on the sofa near me, and she'd look around and watch the sunlight on the sitting room wall or the pattern on the curtains - and I wouldn't realize what a great playtime she was having!

Watching the world

When my third daughter came along a couple of years ago, she arrived into a house already teeming with toys. Within a day or two of birth, her older sisters were already attaching shaker-bracelets to her wrists and ankles, and waving brightly colored cloth books in her direction. I don't know if all this emphasis on playing from an early age led to a better quality of playtime for her than for my eldest child, but I do know now that babies "play" from the moment they're born. Not that they realize it, of course: your child won't have a concept of play for ages yet. But what she does have, even at her age, is curiosity. Along with feeding, it's the most motivating impetus in her life - one she simply can't help herself from following.

When you lie your baby down on a blanket on the floor or on some other surface, make sure that you put her somewhere with something to look at. It doesn't have to be anything very sophisticated - brightly colored curtains will captivate her, as will a light shade, or the branches of a tree swinging gently in the breeze.

0 1

E-Mail

Add Favorite

Print It

Free Sign Up - Start Making Money on Flixya »

Comments