What is the number one thing you hear about from new parents?

Sleep.

Or rather, the complete lack of it.

Newborn babies are notorious for upending the sleeping habits of their parents. We all know how a bad night's sleep can derail your day, how about chronic lack of sleep and a large accumulate sleep debt? I'm not looking forward to finding out...

Baby's sleep is a big topic, today I'm going to just home in on the sleeping environment, and 3 things you can do to make it more conducive to your baby's (and therefore your) sleep.

1 - Safe Sleeping

A baby's bassinet (or crib) should be essentially empty, no blankets, soft toys, overhanging cords from the nearby window. These are all baby hazards and can increase the risk of SUID. Keep it simple, a swaddled baby and a firm mattress.

2 - Dark Room

Making the bedroom as dark as possible provides a consistent and calming environment for your baby. Black-out blinds are great, although I've also heard that black garbage bags taped to the window are quite effective.

3 - White Noise

White noise helps block out background noise and creates a consistent sound that the baby associates with going to sleep. We almost want to simulate what it's like for the baby in the womb (apparently they play white noise in there too).

Once you've nailed those things then your newborn will be pulling 12-hour marathon sleeps in no time... OK, not exactly, sleep frequency and duration will effectively be a random variable for the first few months, but these things will (hopefully) increase the mean and reduce the variance just a little.