Tips for new parents
Why Does Your Baby Not Want to Sleep?
Some tips on how to help your baby fall asleep.
When you become parent for the first time, your life changes. Often a challenge you have to deal with is that you would like to sleep, but you really cannot. And that happens more often when your baby does not sleep.
Your baby does not want to sleep. Why does this happen? Are there ways to help your baby fall asleep?
If you are worried your baby is sick or in distress, please consult a doctor. But assuming that the babies are physically well — and that they are not hungry and that the diaper is clean, one of the following three situations may happen:
- your baby is not sleepy
- your baby is too agitated
- you are too agitated
Your baby is not sleepy
Unfortunately, this is the worst case for a tired parent, even though it is fine for your baby. Your baby does not want to sleep, because they are not sleepy.
Any attempt to put them to sleep is useless, indeed the only effect it can produce is to make you more nervous, making the situation worse.
What to do in this case? Just forget it.
Keep calm and pick up your babies from the cot where you put them to sleep and take them elsewhere. Maybe try some games or some pastime.
When the babies are sleepy, they themselves will give you a signal: the yawn. After two, three, four yawns, your babies are ready to go to sleep.
Now a question remains: how to recognize if your babies are not sleepy? Indeed, it is very simple: if after 10–15 minutes of waiting for them to fall asleep, their eyes are still open and they are still active — they probably are not sleepy.
Instead, if after 10–15 minutes, your babies are calm on the bed, it means that they are sleepy, but they need more times to fall asleep. In this case, you could caress them or sing a quiet song.
Your baby is too agitated
Another possible reason your babies don't want to sleep is because they are very agitated. Usually this is due to the fact that the children had a very eventful day, without any nap or afternoon break.
Babies, in fact, behave like adults. A tired adult sleeps, but a stressed and agitated adult has difficulty falling asleep. Similarly, restless babies cannot fall asleep.
Babies may be agitated because they watched too much television or screens, or did not sleep during the afternoon (if they very young), or they are overwhelmed by various activities and could not find a moment in the day to rest.
To solve the problem, the key word here is: slow down.
Slow down your baby's activities, let them relax during the day. Find a moment to cuddle them, to read stories with them. Turn off your computer and television.
While it may initially seem that your babies require more attention, in the long run you will see that the babies will probably calm down and go to bed peacefully.
Life is too short to live in a hurry.
You are too agitated
Last, but not least, another possible cause of the problem could be your agitation. It may happen, in fact, that you are tired and want to sleep so you get agitated, because you want your babies to sleep by force.
And here comes the problem. As children perceive everything, they also sense your agitation and that you want to put them to bed by force.
And thus?
Try to relax. Your goal is not to force your babies to sleep, but rather to create a peaceful situation.
Your children, as well as every person, need a peaceful, calm environment and only then can they fall asleep peacefully. Sleep is the consequence of a relaxing context.
No one would fall asleep in the middle of a battlefield!
Summary
In this article, I have investigated three possible causes of why babies do not want to go to bed: the baby is not sleepy, the baby is agitated, you are agitated. There may be others.
If you have any ongoing concerns about your baby’s sleep habits, please be sure to consult a doctor or pediatrician.
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