Continuation from Surviving a Newborn’s First Month – Part 1

Also see my Baby Essentials Checklist: The Immediate First Weeks for a helpful list of must-have newborn items.

Right from the first day after coming home from hospital, we tried to establish consistency for our baby to transition her to this new, unknown world. Hubby and I had already discussed and agreed to certain conditions to help her adjust, including starting her off on being able to differentiate between day and night.

Day Time
We had hoped that contrasting activites for day and night encouraged Madi to settle better for sleep at night. During the day, we ensured Madi had soft, relaxing piano music in the nursery (thank you, Youtube Music), plenty of tummy time, and some moments in the sunshine to soak up vitamin D (helped with her jaundice). At first, I had the blinds in her room up to ensure it was nice and bright, but I found it adversely affected her sleep, so now I keep the blinds down and her room in perpetual shadow. I only take her into the nursery to sleep; all other times, she’s brought out to feed and play in the brighter lounge room.

To help with dry skin and flaking, we had a humidifier running at all times (except for rainy days), and a purifier to keep clean air circulating in the room. I highly recommend the humidifier, which is from Glow Dreaming. It makes for an incredibly thoughtful gift and is a 3-in-1 machine. The Glow Dreaming unit has multiple settings of LED light (red and green in varying brightness), pink noise (there’s a difference, but it just sounds like white noise to us), and a timed humidifier. It’s also helpful that each part can be individually switched off.

Night Time
Surprisingly for us, sleep deprivation was never a big issue. Yes, there were night feeds, and I would be the only one waking up for it so as to have hubby refreshed to help handover during the day while I took naps. Madi would sleep a decent 3-4 hour stint through the night, which was a good two sleep cycles for me, and enough not to turn me into a daytime zombie. After putting her down to sleep at 7pm, she’ll generally wake for a feed around 11pm, sleep again until around 3am, and wake up in the morning between 6-7am.

Additionally, we also had the white noise (pink noise?) in her room after sundown and kept on throughout the night. For those that prefer lullaby music at night, this Spotify playlist (lullaby renditions of popular music) came highly recommended from my mother’s group!

Although there’s scientific support backing the effectiveness of Glow Dreaming, when hubby and I tried it on ourselves before the arrival of Madi, we weren’t used to sleeping with either the light or noise (mostly hubby; I wasn’t as bothered). It may be because neither of us ever had issues falling asleep, and we were used to darkness and silence. Madi doesn’t seem to mind any of it, although I’ve yet to determine if the machine really assists her with better sleep. I don’t keep the red light on throughout the night as darkness is still best, but it is useful for night feeds and nappy changes. Being softer and non-glaring, it has less potential to stimulate or rouse Madi during this time.

We also made a point to not talk or engage with her if she woke past her bedtime, and avoided any eye contact as it supposedly signals to babies to wake back up and become more alert.