Some Mythical Things Said To Help Babies Sleep Better

I love advice from other generations or other cultures maybe more than the next person, but sometimes the advice given spans from unsafe to coincidental. Let’s dive in.

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If you’ve been a mom for more than a minute, you’ve probably heard some wacky ideas about how to get your newborn to sleep.

But how to separate fact from fiction?

The truth is when we are exhausted we get desperate.

• We wake up in half panic and desperation.
• Zombie like behavior starts to come out.
• Someone gives us advice – no matter how silly or fantastical – and we are like BEST IDEA EVER, DOING THAT TONIGHT because we can’t take it anymore.

Here are some of the most popular and common “mythical” or holy grail ideas to help baby sleep better.

No daytime sleep

“Keep baby up all day so they’ll sleep all night”.

Ok, whoever tells you that, must not like you very much. Also, make sure they’re around at 8pm so you can hand them your extremely fussy, overtired baby.

The truth is, you need the right BALANCE of daytime and nighttime sleep. Not to completely cut out one to achieve the other. Sure, some babies will crash all night because they’re so incredibly overtired, but this will eventually catch up with them.

A little baby cereal in the bottle

It’ll fill them up more, right? No.

Please only give your newborn breastmilk or formula.

Starting solids too soon can cause a host of issues and can be a choking hazard. Besides, it’s not shown to help sleep unless the issue was hunger based. In which case you can simply feed more.

You do want to focus on making sure your baby gets nice, full milk feeds during the day so that they can sleep their longest stretch of sleep in the middle of the night, but adding cereal in the bottle is not the way to achieve this.

Warm bath with lavender

We know people swear by this, but I’m willing to bet it’s not THE magical thing that is helping baby sleep. They’re probably doing a lot of other things right and/or they just have a naturally good sleeper.

There’s nothing wrong with having this as part of your sleep routine, and it may help provide a little bit of extra calm to your baby’s bedtime routine.

For other babies, though, baths can do the opposite – either cause them to be fussy because they do not enjoy baths, or wake them up too much and make them harder to settle.

Try it and see how your baby does.

But again, baby sleep is complex. If your baby sleeps well after a warm bath, you probably either have a naturally good sleeper or you’re doing some other healthy baby sleep things. Like a proper routine and sleep practices that allow independent settling.

Cut out all good things from your diet

Coffee. Chocolate. Leafy greens. Beans. Dairy. Soy. Gluten.

You name it, someone out there has claimed that cutting it out of their diet helped THEIR baby. Lady in the grocery store, if you’re going to tell a brand new mama to cut out chocolate and cheese from her diet, you better have some amazing science to back that up.

Cross cultural research has shown that newborns are no more or less fussy in cultures that have large amounts of these foods (and others) in the mother’s diet. For instance, nursing moms tend to eat a large amount of beans in Latin America, but this does not correlate to fussier babies.

The problem with dropping food groups unnecessarily for moms is…

It may feel too difficult to maintain and make you want to quit breastfeeding sooner. I mean if many moms had to choose between cream in their coffee and breastfeeding, it would be a hard choice.

You may also get a “false positive”.

Meaning, eliminating a food in your diet will take several weeks to see if baby becomes less fussy. Babies will naturally become less fussy as they get closer to the end of the “4th trimester” (the first 13 weeks of life) anyway.

So, mom may notice less fussiness and attribute it to the change in her diet. When actually it was from the baby getting older.

Obviously if your little one has a food allergy you must eliminate. But simply eliminating foods to try and help baby sleep will take weeks or tweaking and is a whole much more complex than simply sleep training.

Essential oils

I love essential oils and use them regularly in our home.

From anything like headaches to earaches to skin issues and more. We love them and use them and believe in them.

But they don’t solve sleep issues.

Newborn and infant sleep issues are much more complex than this. While certain oils may be part of a positive, calming bedtime routine, the oils in themselves do not have magical sleep-inducing powers.

If the reason your little one doesn’t sleep well is overstimulation, creating a calming wind down routine will achieve your goal of soothing.

A little whiskey in the bottle

I know you’re desperate, but please do not channel your inner 19th century pioneer woman. 😉

There are quite a few questionable practices that were commonly used in the past, including giving your baby opium (read that interesting history here).

We all get desperate enough sometimes to do anything… but sleep training ain’t so bad you need to drug your baby.

Let him sleep on his belly

Although this might help some babies sleep better, it’s so dangerous.

Actually, the reason this tends to work is because when they are on their backs their own startle reflex can’t wake them up. You can achieve this same result by swaddling your baby.

SIDS deaths reduced by almost 50% once the AAP started recommending always placing babies on their backs for sleep. Check out more safe sleep rules here.

Remember that SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is the #1 risk to your baby’s life statistically speaking and claims more than 3,500 lives per year. This is so horribly tragic, but the risks can be greatly reduced by sleeping your baby on their backs in safe sleep spaces.

Bundle her up in blankets and tons of layers

Using the Eskimo baby method is not only dangerous from a safe-sleep perspective (overheating = dangerous) but it will more likely impede good sleep. Unless you’re having your baby nap in freezing weather outside like some cultures do.

That’s because our bodies naturally want to cool down to prepare for sleep, so you’re making their bodies work even harder. Babies need typically one more layer than we do.

Not to mention, overheating can lead to a sweaty baby, which in turn increases their risk of getting too cold once they’re left in wet clothing all night. In extreme cases, it can lead to hypothermia.

Read: The Nap Trap – How To Deal With It & Not Resist It

Moral of the story…

There are many things that can help calm and soothe baby. And we should do these because it’s our joy and privilege to do so.

But one quick silver bullet will not help a baby who is sleep deprived from lack of consistent routine or inability to fall asleep on their own.

Those are the main things that help baby sleep.