Nap and Nighttime Sleep Solutions

Tips to Create the Perfect Sleep Environment

By Shannon McKelden

Some babies are great sleepers and others need help to get the rest they need. How can parents encourage restful naps and fewer nighttime awakenings? Check out the advice of sleep experts on creating the perfect environment for zzz's.

Jill Spivack, co-author with Jennifer Waldburger of the iParenting Media Award-winning program, The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parents Guide to Getting Your Child to Sleep – From Birth to Age 5 (HCI Books, 2007), lists these as common sleep disruptors:

• Too much light
• Temperature
• Too much stimulation in the crib or bedroom (i.e. mobiles, aquariums, blinky toys)
• Noise from the outside (traffic, birds chirping) or from the house (noisy siblings, phones ringing, television or stereo noise)

While it's obviously dark at night, controlling light for naptimes may be more difficult. Spivack recommends on a scale of one to 10 (10 being darkest) about an eight or a nine for night and naps. "This helps Baby avoid becoming interested in something (like fingers or toes) when he should still be sleeping," she says.

Complete darkness makes nighttime feedings or diaper changes difficult.

"Nightlights are OK, even if just for the parents," says Dr. Polly Moore, author of the upcoming book, The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program (Workman Publishing, 2008). "I personally used a nightlight only at the diapering table, and I used a red bulb ... the long wavelength frequencies of light have less capability of resetting your baby's daily clock. Nobody wants the baby confusing day with night!"

Want to see more?

• Hit the Sack, Baby: Why Are Some Experts Recommending Sleep Sacks?
• Bedtime for Toddlers: 10 Steps to Sleep Without Tears
• Sleep Soothers: 7 Ways to Get Baby to Sleep
• Check out our Article Library.
• Talk about it!