Lets be honest there is just no such thing as an easy method or a magic wand to make a baby sleep.
In the first three months they go through so many leaps that it is impossible to keep up with them.
However here are a few things that you can try to make things a little easier when it comes to babies sleep time.
FULL BELLY:
We all know even as an adult, we sleep better if we have had a good nutritional meal. Well it is the same for babies!!
It is hard to get baby on any kind of feeding routine when they are newborns however by a few weeks old you should be able to stretch their feeds out to around 2-3 hours apart during the day. Make sure you stretch their last feed until just before you are going to put them down for the night. Alternate boobs (if breast feeding) or make a slightly larger bottle and give them as much as you can.
-On the nights that you notice they haven't fed much then wake them up for a 'dream feed' and that should let them, and you, sleep for that little bit longer.
Always make sure you take, even just 5more minutes, to make sure you have released all of there gas and change their nappy half way through the feed so when they are milk drunk and totally full you can place them straight into their bed for a nice long restful sleep.
DIFFERENTIATE DAY FROM NIGHT:
Do this as soon as you can!! you will love yourself for it!
Be as loud as you want during the day, play music, do your vacuuming, mow the lawns, let the other kids be noisy and leave the curtains open and the room light. If baby is in a bassinet, leave them in the room you are in. If you are napping yourself put baby in their room but still have music playing so it is constant noise.
Then at night time have a night time routine that is calming and relaxing.
From birth with both of our girls we established a bath, book, milk bed routine and that seemed to work wonders with them!?
Dim lighting, close curtains and make things a little darker and moodier.
Give them a nice warm bath, you can even add gentle natural essential lavender oil to a diffuser or straight into their bath (do a skin check before doing this)
Read a book as a family, this not only helps with speech later on but it is a nice way to wind down from the day and have a minute to snuggle as a family.
Full their belly and burp well, do this in a dim lit room with no other distractions or stimulations (t.v etc) and then straight into bed.
SWADDLE OR SLEEP BAG
This is not for every baby but my girls loved it.
Babies naturally have a startle reflex so if you have their little arms snuggled into a swaddle blanket or sleep bag then they are less likely to undo all your hard work by waking themselves up. It can also prevent them from rolling over
ROCK, CUDDLE, BUM TAP:
These are great ways to get baby to sleep but be careful because babies can get used to or reliant on these to go to sleep and trust me, as they grow it is not much fun on the arms!!
While I was feeding I would cuddle our girls, then burp them well. Stand up to rock them in my arms and tap their bum until they where almost asleep, then place them into their bassinet. This worked a treat for a long time until they started to get bigger and my arms would go dead trying to rock them to sleep!!
I then changed to lying them in the cot more awake and sitting next to the cot and tapping their bum or gently running my finger down there nose or drawing circles gently on their temple. This was much nicer on my arms!!
Every baby is different and likes different things but the biggest trick is to be patient!!!!!
This is very hard for me and I'm sure a lot of other parents because in your mind you have 47.2million other things to also get done before you go to bed!! However taking the time to settle your baby over anything else will DEFINATLY pay off in the long run and you will all get more sleep because of it.
I hope this helps and you and your baby are sleeping like your husband in no time hehe
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