My son was born with a small problem.  He prefers to sleep during the day, and party all night long.  I mean, there cannot be much worse than that, sleep habit that is.  I have spent the last three weeks getting him to figure out the difference between night and day. 

While I am not a morning person, I still want to sleep at night.  The first thing I did was make sure that he had a designated spot to sleep at night.  Not a problem for most people.  Next, during the day I make sure to keep the house at a normal activity level.  I never tell the older kids to be quiet because the baby is sleeping.  I still vacuum.  I never turn the ringers on my phone off.  I hope to teach him two things this way, one that the day time is not for serious deep sleep.  And two, I want him to learn the ability to sleep through various noises.  I don’t want to worry about nap time being interrupted later on by the door bell ringing.  If he learns to sleep through it now, chances are he’ll do a better job ignoring those noises later. 

My next step was to never swaddle him during the day.  He gets laid down in his bouncer, swing, or crib on his back without any preamble.  As always, I do my very best to lay him down before he is sleeping.  You have to wait for that golden moment of “almost asleep.”  My final step was to make the night time feedings extremely boring.  I do not turn on the light, or talk to him.  I make sure that the time is purely necessity, and no fun.  It took us some time, but he now sleeps at night.  Next hurdle?  Getting to sleep the whole night. 

-Stephanie Wright