Rock-a-Bye Baby: How to Get Your Newborn to Fall Asleep

Sleep-deprived parents want to quiet a fussy baby for a safe and sound slumber. Harvey Karp, author of The Happiest Baby on the Block, has just the trick.
https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/video/karp-baby-sleep?src=soc_yt

— TRANSCRIPT —
[MUSIC PLAYING] JOHN WHYTE: Welcome, everyone. I’m Dr. John Whyte. I’m the Chief Medical Officer at WebMD. What’s the first question you ask when someone has a newborn? You say, “How’s the baby sleeping?” Then you usually follow with, “How are you sleeping?”

But what really is so important about sleep for infants? Does it really matter? And more importantly, how do you know when to intervene? And what do you do? My guest today has the answers. Dr. Harvey Karp is a pediatrician and is a best-selling author on books around how to raise the healthiest baby. Dr. Karp, thanks for joining me today.

HARVEY KARP: Thanks, John. It’s good to be with you.

JOHN WHYTE: I want to start off with, can you talk to our audience about just how important is sleep at this time of life in a baby’s really early days?

HARVEY KARP: You know, we all need sleep, right? And we’re a sleep-deprived nation as it is. But babies are great at sleeping actually. They sleep when they need to. It’s usually the parents who are struggling because they’re not getting the sleep they need because think of it this way: In the womb, you’re caring for your baby, feeding them every second, holding them every second.

Once they’re born, your baby goes, “Well, I gave you 2 hours off. What are you complaining about?” And that interruption of sleep can be so, so challenging for the parents. Sleep deprivation is probably the number one struggle that new parents have. Of course, babies do need sleep. And studies show that sleep helps improve brain development, et cetera. It’s very valuable for babies to get extra sleep as well.

JOHN WHYTE: And how much sleep should they be having early on, say in that first year?

HARVEY KARP: On average, they’re getting about 14 hours a night. Twelve hours would be rock bottom. And 18 or 19 hours might be the top level.

JOHN WHYTE: And what’s the impact on parents? I mean, a lot of people may think, well, that’s just a rite of passage. And it’ll get better in a few months. What were you seeing in your practice that you said, hmm, now might be the time to intervene?

HARVEY KARP: Well, what I was seeing in my practice was I, as all pediatricians, all doctors are taught that some babies cry a lot. We call it colic. Don’t know what causes it. But it goes away. And babies don’t sleep a lot in the beginning. They have to wake up and eat a lot.

But by the time they get to be 4 or 5 or 6 months, if they’re not sleeping better, they can go through sleep training. And we basically told parents, suck it up and get ready to deal with it because it’s not going to be easy.

And understand the fact that today, having a nanny is pretty kush, not many people can afford that. But up until 100 years ago, everyone had five nannies. You had your grandmother, your aunt, your older sister, all living with you or right near you.

And so what parents are doing today, they could kind of– they should be patting themselves on the back for doing a great job. Having jobs, taking care of other kids, and taking care of a baby, it’s hard work.

So it turns out that, what do babies need to sleep? Everybody knows. It’s rocking and shushing. And in fact, even though we, pediatricians, tell parents, well, babies don’t sleep a lot in the beginning, if a family or when a family came to me and said, “I’m struggling here. I’m exhausted. I’m getting depressed. I can’t handle this anymore. It’s just too hard.” We would often say, OK, there’s a secret thing you can do that immediately increases sleep and reduces crying. Drive them all night in the car. Of course, the parent’s not going to.

JOHN WHYTE: I’ve done that. I’ve done that.

HARVEY KARP: Have you? Really?

JOHN WHYTE: Yes.

HARVEY KARP: But what if you could drive them all night in the car with you keeping your head on the pillow? And that’s really what the goal is. How can we give tools to parents to improve infant sleep imitating the car?

And basically, the car is imitating the experience in the womb because, believe it or not, before the baby is born, the sound is louder than a vacuum cleaner 24/7, rah, rah, rah, rah kind of a sound. The baby is constantly rocked. Every time you breathe, you’re rocking your baby with your diaphragm pressing against the uterus. And they’re constantly held in a tight little ball.

Transcript in its entirety can be found by clicking here:
https://www.webmd.com/parenting/baby/video/karp-baby-sleep?src=soc_yt