Baby Won’t Sleep

Baby won't sleepBabies are supposed to be sleeping most of the time (14 to 18 hours a day, according to baby sleep charts). So when your baby won’t sleep, it gets pretty frustrating. Sleep deprivation can be harmful both to babies and their parents, especially when it’s a long-term problem. Hopefully you’re not here because your newborn of 0-2 months won’t sleep longer than 2-4 hours at a time, because that’s perfectly normal.

However, if your baby is 3 months or older and you’re still having some sleeping problems, this article might help you.
Contents:
How Much Should Your Baby Sleep?
Problem: Baby Won’t Sleep Long Enough
Problem: Baby Won’t Fall Asleep
Problem: Baby Won’t Sleep in the Crib

How Much Should Your Baby Sleep?

The hours you might expect your baby to sleep depends largely on his or her age. Newborns (0-3 months) typically eat, sleep, and poop in 2-4 hour cycles around the clock. Not much you can do about that. Starting at 3-4 months, your baby might turn a corner and start sleeping longer (hopefully at night, but the morning nap after breakfast is common too), say 5-7 hours. At this point, you know your baby is capable of sleeping for long periods, and your goal should be to line that up with your own nighttime sleep schedule as much as possible!

At around 6 months of age, usually when your pediatrician encourages you to start feeding the baby solid food, you might see another change, as many babies start sleeping through the night. It might not happen at 6 months; it could just as easily be 12 months until the stars align to make this happen. Be patient, and keep working at it.

See our baby sleep chart for a detailed breakdown of average daily sleep, number of naps, and longest sleep stretch by adjusted age.

Problem: Baby Won’t Sleep Long Enough

why won't my baby sleepThe thing about babies is that they’re completely unaware of “expected” sleeping hours and sleep charts and the need for mom and dad to actually get REM sleep. If your baby won’t sleep for long stretches (especially at night), you are not alone! Most parents go through this with at least one child. First, reassure yourself that, eventually, your baby is going to sleep through the night. It may not be tonight or even a week from now, but it WILL happen. This is human nature. Second, let’s go through some of the more common reasons that a baby won’t sleep, and see if there’s anything that applies to your little one.

Cause #1: The baby is hungry

Hunger is, in my experience, one of the most common reasons that a baby won’t sleep for long periods. In support of this notion is the observation that breastfed babies tend to have shorter sleep cycles than formula-fed babies, simply because breast milk (being completely natural) is digested more easily. When your baby wakes up crying, does he or she root around for a nipple? If you offer a pacifier, is it slurped at hungrily and then spit out in utter disappointment? If so, hunger is a likely culprit.

Of course, you’re probably not a moron. Of course you fed the baby before bed. However, a lot of times parents just don’t realize how much babies are capable of eating as they grow and get older. What filled the little one’s tummy last month probably isn’t enough any longer. Making sure that your baby’s appetite is fully sated right before bed is a key step in extending those sleep hours. See our article on nighttime feeding and sleep for more help in this area.

Cause #2: The baby has gas or digestive issues

Many babies, especially at the newborn stage, don’t have a fully developed digestive system yet. This can cause delayed stomach discomfort that wakes your baby up in the middle of an otherwise happy sleep cycle. Also, since their diet for the first 6 months is completely liquid, it’s very easy for babies to get bubbles in the tummy. Unless you do a great job burping the baby, those can come back to bite you in the middle of the night.

One way to determine if gassiness or digestive discomfort are to blame is to watch how your baby acts and cries when he/she wakes up. Squirming, grimacing in pain are positive indicators. A baby that simply lays still and cries might just be hungry. Even if you’re not certain, working to minimize gassiness overnight is always a good strategy for baby sleep training. See our article on 5 things to do when gas keeps baby awake.

Cause #3: When baby is teething

Teething is one of the most troublesome events you’ll ever encounter. Usually the process begins when the baby is 3-4 months old and continues until all the teeth have come in. This one is frustrating because there’s just no way to see it coming. You’ll just suddenly notice an exceptionally fussy baby who:

  • Can’t fall asleep, or doesn’t stay asleep for long.
  • Wakes up screaming, as if in pain
  • Spits out the pacifier
  • Seems hungry, but refuses to drink from a bottle

Check for this by washing your hands thoroughly, and then running a finger, with great care, along your baby’s gums. Often you can see where a place is red and/or swollen. If you run a finger over it, you’ll feel the roughness of the tooth breaching the gums.

Once you confirm that teething is the reason your baby won’t go to sleep, apply a teething pain ointment (mild antisthetic like Baby Orajel) to that part of the gums. Baby Tylenol may help as well. The torment will end when the tooth breaches and comes in. For more help, see our article on what to do when baby is teething.

Cause #4: Something External Woke the Baby Up

Babies, just like adults, wake up in response to things in their environment. It’s a survival instinct, but often when your baby is safe and sound, it’s just something that causes unnecessary wake-ups. There are lots of external things that can have this effect, including:

  • Temperature changes. If the baby gets too hot or too cold, they might easily wake up. Do your best to keep a steady temperature in the room, and consider swaddling your baby or using a baby sleep sack to keep them warm enough.
  • Wet or dirty diaper. Some babies can sleep through this, but most won’t. That’s why you change the diaper right before bed and maybe use the super-absorbent nighttime ones. We have a whole article about the importance of diapers for sleeping.
  • Loud noises. The world outside your baby’s nursery can be quite inconsiderate when it comes to baby’s sleep time. We’ve had issues with garbage trucks, leafblowers, noisy neighbors, and even older siblings waking our little ones up. Unfortunately, most of us can’t control everything that could make a noise, so the best defense is a crib soother or sound machine or even just a fan. The idea is to provide some white noise that drowns out random sounds.
  • Sunlight. A lot of people are early-morning risers who are up by sunrise. I am not one of them. For me, a baby waking up at dawn is not a good thing. If you notice your little one’s wake-ups coincide with when it starts to get light out, the sun might be to blame. Block out that light as much as possible with room-darkening window shades and heavy curtains. Even a tiny crack can let a beam of sunlight in to shine right on the baby’s face. We use tape, books, pillows, or whatever’s necessary to make every window totally sunproof.

For a more in-depth look at this, you might enjoy our article 7 reasons your baby woke up last night.

Problem: Baby Won’t Fall Asleep

Another issue many parents encounter is the baby that refuses to fall asleep, even when it’s bedtime and mommy and daddy are completely worn out. If you have this problem, the solution is less about finding a “cause” and more about establishing good, regular habits for you and your baby. This is what baby sleep training is all about: finding a routine that works because it meets all of your baby’s needs and prepares them, mentally and physically, for falling asleep. Here are three questions to ask yourself:

  1. Did you get your baby ready for sleep? This means you’ve fed and burped the baby, changed the diaper, put on soft comfy pajamas, done the swaddle or sleep sack, and maybe even did some rocking and/or a lullaby. All of these are the sensory cues that your baby’s about to go to bed for the big sleep.
  2. Is it time for the baby to go to sleep? If the baby just got up an hour ago, he or she won’t be ready for bed. Many parents find a sort of rhythm with their babies, a cycle of eating, play time, diaper changes, and sleeping so that everything is spaced out nicely. Some of my readers object to the idea of a “schedule” for a baby. However, if you’ve ever visited (or been in) the NICU, you’ll see a very organized one: each baby under a nurse’s care eats, gets changed, and sleeps by the clock. You don’t have to be this draconian, but keeping to a somewhat regular daily routine will help.
  3. Have you established and followed a good bedtime routine? This is a process that you go through every night with the baby, both to get them ready for bed (as in item #1) and to make the process a habitual one with no surprises. The bath-bottle-bed routine is a classic example. The warm wetness of the bath, brief chill of getting out, followed by warm clothes and a bottle of milk has been putting babies to sleep for decades. See our guide to establishing a baby bedtime routine for some pointers.

For more help with this problem, see our list of 12 ways to help a baby go to sleep.

Problem: Baby Won’t Sleep in the Crib

This is a special problem, one for which (unfortunately) the parents get most of the blame. It’s very easy to get into the habit of letting your baby fall asleep where he or she does it best: the swing, the couch, the parents’ bed, or in mommy’s arms. And it tends to be fricking adorable when your baby does konk out in these places. However, getting your baby to sleep in the crib is a critical, critical step for you to establish healthy sleep habits. It also happens to be the safest place for baby to sleep at night.

Ideally, you started putting baby in the crib to sleep from the day he or she got home from the hospital. That’s the easiest way because they’re so little that their bodies just need sleep and they can’t fight it. The longer you wait, the harder it gets to make a transition. If you need help, see our article on getting baby to sleep in the crib.

Getting A Sick Baby To Sleep

getting sick baby to sleepSick babies often won’t sleep. When your baby is sick, all of those good sleeping habits seem to go out the window. Even babies that have been sleeping through the night for months suddenly have trouble falling asleep or wake up periodically at night. It’s especially frustrating for the parents, because we know our little one is suffering but feel powerless to help.

In this article we’ll talk about how being sick disrupts a baby’s sleep habits, and what you can do about it.
Contents:
1. How to tell when your baby is sick
2. Why sick babies won’t sleep
3. Help a sick baby sleep

Signs that your baby is sick

Most of the symptoms of a sick baby are pretty obvious, but it’s a bit harder because they can’t communicate with you. Here are the signs that your baby is falling ill:

  • Runny nose. This is the classic symptom, the one you often notice first. Keep lots of tissues handy and wipe whenever you can. The moistened Boogie Wipes are good for this.
  • Coughing and sneezing. This is another symptom, and one that can linger long after your child has otherwise recovered. Fair warning: infants have absolutely no concept of covering the mouth or turning away. They will literally cough into your open mouth if you’re not careful!
  • Congestion. You notice this primarily in two ways. First, you hear it when they breathe. Second, you notice that they have to spit out the bottle or pacifier to breathe because their nasal passages are clogged.
  • Fever. The most measurable and definitive symptom that your baby is sick is a consistent fever above 100.3 degrees (F). It’s tough to measure a baby’s temperature accurately using crappy little baby thermometers, so I highly recommend one of the no-touch infrared thermometers; they cost around $30.

Why sick babies won’t sleep

The reasons babies have trouble sleeping are similar to the problems that we grown-ups encounter, with some additions:

  1. Trouble breathing. This is mostly due to congestion, and it gets in the way of keeping the pacifier in.
  2. Can’t eat enough. A sore throat, irritability, loss of appetite, or all three keeps the baby from eating enough.
  3. Coughing. This can wake the baby up or prevent him or her from falling asleep.
  4. Fatigue. You’d think this would help the baby sleep, and sometimes it does. Other times they’re overtired and too fussy to go to sleep.

Helping a sick baby sleep

You’re going to need a well-stocked baby medicine cabinet with an arsenal of things to make your baby more comfortable. Stock up now, before the symptoms hit, and you’ll be glad that you did. Here are some specific things to help make your baby more comfortable when sick.

Getting Baby’s Nose Clear

I don’t recommend the blue bulb syringes for trying to clear out baby’s nose. It’s hard to know how deep to push these in, and most of the time you just end up irritating the nose even more. Our pediatrician recommended instead using infant saline drops (such as Little Noses) several times a day: two drops in each nostril before they eat and before they go to sleep. You don’t have to use a syringe to clear it out and the drops won’t sting. We also came to appreciate Boogie Wipes, soft little moistened tissues for gently rubbing the crusties away.

With saline drops you can provide your baby some relief, but let’s be honest, it’s not equivalent to adult blowing his or her nose. Some congestion will remain. It’s time to ask yourself: how far are you willing to go to help your sick baby?

Saline Drops for Sick Babies
Saline Drops
Nose Wipes for Sick Babies
Nose Wipes

The Nosefrida Snotsucker

There’s another, more direct option for getting the snot out. Something that has 800+ reviews on Amazon, most of which give it 5 stars. I’m talking about the Nosefrida Snotsucker Nasal Aspirator.

This is a Swedish device that you can use to physically clear out your baby’s nose, not unlike a bulb syringe except you (the parent) provide the suction. In that way it seems a bit safer than other snot-suckers.

Now, this idea probably grosses you out. But is it any worse than being peed, pooped, or spit-up on by your little one? You’ve undoubtedly been through that. So bite the bullet and order this.


Nosefrida Aspirator

Help with Breathing Problems, Coughing, and Sore Throat

The dry, stale air indoors in winter time is a major culprit for breathing problems. You can minimize the problem with a humidifier for the babies’ room. Humidifiers now-a-days come in two forms: warm and cool. I don’t know much about the differences between them, only that cool-air is the newer thing and these tend to be a bit more expensive.

We chose a cool-air humidifier for safety reasons, not just for the babies but for their two-year-old sister. Crane makes a series of small, quiet cool-air humidifiers for children shaped like a penguin, frog, cow, puppy, or half a dozen other animals. They’re cute and have over 3,000 reviews on Amazon, usually a good sign.

Humidifiers for Sick Baby
Cool Air Humidifier

Dress Your Baby Comfortably

Even if your baby has a fever, you want to dress him or her warm enough (especially for bedtime). Usually a clean diaper, long-sleeve pajamas, and a swaddle or sleep sacket is the winning combination. For a complete guide, see our article on what a newborn should sleep in.

Elevate the Crib Mattress

Second, we elevated one side of the bed so that our babies’ heads were higher than their feet. This helps keep their airways clear of mucous, which is loosened by the saline drops. You can do this the “right” way, by lowering the setting at the foot of the bed (assuming that the crib is already at its highest setting), or you can do this the “easy” way by putting a couple of books or similar sturdy, flat objects under the head of the mattress.

Don’t use baby sleep positioners, ramps, or other after-market products that go in the baby’s crib. They’re not safe, especially for infants! See our article on the myth of baby sleep positioners.

 

Infrared baby thermometerChecking for Fever

You can often tell that your baby has a fever when you pick him or her up, because feverish babies feel unusually warm. It’s best to know if and when your baby has a fever, and just what that fever could be (your pediatrician will probably ask). Taking an unhappy baby’s temperature is an exercise in frustration, particularly when using those crappy little thermometers they give you in the hospital.

Fortunately, there are now reasonably priced infrared baby thermometers that take temperatures quite accurately in just a few seconds. Well worth the investment!

Treat Your Infant’s Fever (if possible)

If your baby has a fever, he’s probably uncomfortable even with a clear nose. And you should be checking for fever on a regular basis. I wouldn’t bother with the cheap plastic digital thermometers… they’re inaccurate, even when you get them to work.

If your pediatrician gives the OK, you can treat your baby’s fever with a number of over-the-counter pain reliever / fever reducer products. These are usually acetaminophen- or ibuprofen-based, in liquid form, often flavored to make your infant take them. Follow the dosage instructions carefully, as these medicines tend to vary in concentration. It goes better if your infant is partly or fully inclined, and somewhat calm. Administering medicine helps if you do it a little bit at the time so that your baby can swallow it. Make sure that you wash the dropper after each dose!

You should also look into the Cold and Flu Season section of Amazon.com. They have everything you could possibly need!


Baby Advil

What To Read Next

If you like this article, you might want to subscribe by e-mail or RSS so that you’re notified when new content is posted.

Sick Baby medicine cabinet Periodic Table of Baby SLeep Train baby to sleep through the night Essential Baby Sleep Gear
With cold and flu season approaching, here are 14 things for baby’s medicine cabinet. The periodic table of baby sleep has all the essential elements for healthy baby sleep habits. Visit our sleep training section for strategies and tips for teaching your baby to sleep through the night. Check out our reviews of Essential baby gear for helping babies sleep at night.