TIMES THE BABY WILL WAKE UP
- Moments after you get into bed to go to sleep.
- Later on in the night, moments after you have gone back to sleep after a lengthy interruption.
- 4.32 a.m.
- 5.46 a.m.
- During the day, just after your partner has walked out of the door.
- During your favourite TV programme.
- When you are on the phone.
- During sex.
- When you are washing up.
- When your partner is on the phone.
- Any other time you need the baby to be awake.
Everyone wonders whether they are doing the right thing here. Some people have baby in bed with them. Half the books say this is the best thing you can do for baby. The other half say this is the worst thing you can do for baby. There are definite advantages. If baby wakes up, neither of you has to get out of bed. But if your baby is anything like mine, it will wriggle and flap for hours like a newly caught fish. You will live in terror of rolling over and squashing baby to death.
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| Tips On How To Get Babies Wind Up |
If baby is sleeping all night and you are not, obviously that's not ideal. You may come to the conclusion that having baby in bed with you is fine for the first few weeks, but more trouble than it's worth thereafter. Atrocious for your sex life, too.
Next option is the nursery. In all films and TV series in which someone has a baby, someone else lovingly decorates and equips a beautiful new nursery, complete with bunny rabbit wallpaper and roughly £3,000 worth of new toys. (The more carefully prepared the nursery, the higher the probability that the fictional baby will be pointlessly murdered, allowing its grieving parents several long scenes in the nursery sobbing over abandoned teddy bears.)
Nurseries make parents feel that they are doing the right thing by their baby, and are good for showing off to neighbors. Nonetheless, a newborn baby may not react too favorably to being shoved away out of sight. Newborns want their mummies. They have no eye for interior decor. Proximity is all. Leave the nursery for later.
The standard compromise is to put the cot next to the bed in your room. This is convenient for whichever one will be feeding Junior in the small hours, and also more convenient for the one who wants to go back to sleep. Baby can hear you breathing, if not snoring. If he/she wakes up, you can deal with the problem straight away with minimal fuss. All this makes baby feel secure and loved, which of course is the idea. It's not a bad compromise at all.
WIND
They guzzle, they digest, they burp and they raft. This is the theory. And yet their tiny digestive systems are fantastically sensitive - particularly at bedtime. Most babies go to sleep after they have been fed, but the air they inhale with their gutful of milk often wakes them again half an hour or so later. And a baby that has slept half an hour may not be quite as enthusiastic about going to sleep as it was half an hour ago. It may even have a spark of merriment in its eye. You, probably, will not.
So before you put Junior down for the night, you will need to wind him or her. One burp could do it. As the months pass you will learn to interpret every rumble and creak of your baby's digestive system. A few, rare babies fart and burp with ease; most seem to store them up, as though there's a shortage coming. So I have a tip, which I was told by a friend, who was told it by a friend, who said she saw it on TV. If your infant is full of wind, lean him/her against your shoulder and walk up and down the stairs over and over again.
The up-and-down movement apparently encourages those tiny bubbles of gas to make straight for the exit. I know it works, because I did it several times a day for months on end for our firstborn, who was the Wind Queen of London N6. (I have never been so fit, before or since.)
Incidentally, breast milk is said by many experts to generate less wind than formula milk. I have read in another book that formula milk, because it is 'heavier', will satisfy babies more and therefore make them sleep longer. On your left, a rock. On your right, a hard place. To find out more, you can check out Tips On How To Get Babies Wind Up.