Insomnia is a disorder that very few people would ever think to associate with an infant – after all, why would babies, who spend most of their days asleep anyway, have a hard time doing the thing babies seem to do best? But in fact, some doctors believe that babies are just as capable of developing insomnia an adult is – and for new parents, baby insomnia can be a huge problem. First-time parents especially have a hard time coping with baby insomnia because they don’t have any special “tricks” to help them try and get a baby back to sleep. Thankfully there are some things that parents who believe their baby has insomnia can do to help their baby regain a normal a sleep pattern.

Understanding what insomnia actually is goes a long way in helping to cope with and even get rid of it. Put simply, insomnia is an inability to either fall asleep in the first place or stay asleep once you are asleep. In most cases, insomnia is related to stress, which is why it’s most often attributed to adults – they worry over job or bill problems and their sleep suffers. But many doctors actually agree that babies are capable of baby insomnia.

It’s very unlikely that a doctor will actually prescribe any kind of medication for insomnia to an infant – the medication would be far too likely to cause problems in the baby’s rain development. However, there are other solutions that are likely to work, the main one being an investment in an average white noise machine. White noise machines are designed to eliminate sounds in a room – in other words, they are able to actually make it so that babies don’t wake up when they hear noises. White noise machines work because they produce a single noise that the human brain then “latches onto” – the brain focuses on that one single noise, blocking out all the others, including those likely to wake someone up.

However, if you want to try a more natural remedy, try putting the infant on a very strict schedule. This means that a baby should be put to sleep and woken up – or be allowed to wake up – at the same time every day. Eventually, they will reach a point where their brain starts telling them it’s time for sleep and they will become tired. These are the best ways to try and eliminate baby insomnia.