Playing Lullabies All Night For Baby

Limit it to 30 minutes: Kennedy says not to let lullabies run all night, because the brain stays attuned to sound and might not get into a deep sleep. Playing music for a half-hour after bedtime is good.. Also, you can start the music when you start the bedtime routine, to let kids know it’s time to wind down.

A sleep sack is a one-piece wearable blanket designed to keep your baby warm and safe in their crib. It’s a special garment that looks like any sleeper at the top, but fans out into a closed sack at the bottom — think of it as a tiny sleeping bag your baby can wear.

Adding cereal to a bottle of breast milk or formula has often been recommended to help a baby sleep better. But there’s no evidence that babies will go to sleep faster or sleep better if they’re given cereal — or even a full meal — just before going to bed.

Also, cereal is only “empty calories” for babies under 4 to 6 months old, with little nutritional value except in older babies. Second, feeding before bed usually does not help a child sleep though the night (at least, in most babies over two or three months old.) Feeding to sleep can lead to dentition, so called bottle caries.

This coincidence perpetuates the dangerous myth that cereal in a bottle does indeed help an infant sleep through the night. To further this explanation, let us recall that between 6-8 months old, baby is often back to waking at night for a feeding.

When your baby is 4-6 months old, you may be told to start offering solid food, usually single-grain cereal. Our pediatrician’s baby guide further specifies that the first solid foods (in order) should be rice cereal, oatmeal cereal, and then barley cereal. See our guide on When to Give Baby Cereal.

To further this explanation, let us recall that between 6-8 months old, baby is often back to waking at night for a feeding. By this time baby should be eating solids and it appears that those solids are no longer helping baby sleep through the night.