Problems with falling asleep of the baby at 6 months
Especially in the first year of life most babies have problems falling asleep. While in the first 3 months almost everything revolves around satisfying basic human needs, such as food intake, sufficient sleep and rest, as well as physical attention, the child’s needs gradually change in the following months. Babies at 6 months begin to explore the world and need more attention from their parents.
At 6 months, a regular sleep rhythm should gradually be established. The babies sleep about 14 – 15 hours a day. From the 6th month of life they can theoretically manage without an additional nightly food intake.
If the baby has trouble sleeping, it may be helpful at this age to pay attention to a regular evening ritual. The babies then slowly begin to get used to the routine. Make sure that the environment is quiet, avoid loud noises and do not take the baby out of the crib immediately when he or she cries. With soft persuasion and a gentle touch, the children can quickly calm down. The presence of the parents is enough for the babies to feel safe and secure.
Problems with falling asleep of the baby at 9 months
The older the babies become, the more the daily need for sleep decreases. Even babies at 9 months of age can still have great difficulty falling asleep. On the one hand, this often affects babies who have not yet developed a regular sleeping rhythm or who lack fixed sleeping rituals.
If the parents have not yet been able to establish a regularity of sleep and lack consistency in their actions, it is particularly difficult to alleviate the problem of falling asleep at this age. In addition, the fear of separation slowly develops in babies at this age. In most cases, the fear of separation arises from the 8th month of life onwards and intensifies already existing sleeping problems or leads to a newly arising difficulty in falling asleep in babies who have already developed a regular, independent rhythm by this time.
When the parents leave the room, the baby begins to cry and simply cannot be calmed down. In this situation, the baby has to learn to trust the parents that they are close by and can come immediately if anything should happen. The babies have to be told that nothing happens to them when the lights go out and they are alone in their crib.
A cuddly toy in the crib can be helpful, for example, to share the loneliness with the child and make it easier to separate from the parents. Sometimes it helps to leave a small light on. This reduces the threatening darkness and the babies lose their fear.
