Did you know that babies sleep before birth? I’m sure you did. But, the environment in which they are used to sleeping changes drastically at birth. Instead of being cuddled in a nice, warm, cozy womb, they suddenly find themselves in a brightly lit, noisy, confusing world. No wonder babies can have trouble sleeping; they don’t know where they are.

The easiest way to help a baby sleep is to try and give them an environment that’s as close to the one in which they have been comfortable for the last nine months. So, what does that environment include? Well, we know it’s warm, dark and moves around while they are sleeping; we know that they can’t move a whole lot; and we know that the thing they hear the most is their mother’s heartbeat. Oh, one more thing, they are used to being in an environment where they are in contact with another human being twenty-four/seven.

Okay, so how do we re-create that environment? Actually, a lot of thought has been put into that question by companies that manufacture clothes, furniture and other products for babies. There are a myriad of products available on the market, to help you help your baby sleep well.

With our children, we’ve found two things that were very helpful. The first is to have the baby sleep in something that is moving. I don’t know how many baby swings we went through, but I’m pretty sure we had more swings than we had kids. My favorite one had a bassinette to start out with for the baby and a seat for when they got a little bigger. All we had to do is put our children into the seat, and it would lull them to sleep.

The other product that helped a lot was one of those teddy bears which play a recording of the sounds from the mother’s womb. That always seemed to comfort our babies, helping them get to sleep. Between the two of these products, we had a lot of peaceful time with babies asleep.