Health Tip: Sleep Train Your Baby

(HealthDay News) — Young infants need 12 to 15 hours of sleep a day, the National Sleep Foundation says.
Ideally, those hours are consecutive.

After your infant reaches 4 months or so, you can train baby to sleep at night and not during the day, the Foundation says. It offers this advice:

Let baby learn to self-soothe.Put baby down drowsy, allowing the infant to fall asleep on his or her own. Then if baby wakes in the middle of the night, the infant can put himself or herself back to sleep without crying out for you.
Make bedtime consistent. Put baby down to sleep as close to the same time every night.
Accept setbacks. If baby is sick or a parent is traveling, baby may wake early.
There is no “correct” way to sleep train. Determine which approach is right for you.
Eventually, sleep training should work. As many as 80 percent of 9-month-olds sleep through the night, the foundation says.