Nobody ever imagines that babies – who seem to spend all their time sleeping and who seem to be designed to basically eat and sleep – would ever be capable of suffering from insomnia, but in today’s world, it’s not only conceivable – it happens. 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. Coping with baby insomnia can be very difficult on the entire family, especially when it seems are no “tricks” that can help ease a baby off to sleep. Luckily, just like with adults who suffer from insomnia, there are some things that can be done to help babies fall asleep when they need to.

Understanding what insomnia actually is can be the biggest step in helping cope with baby insomnia. Simply put, insomnia is a disorder in which a person either can’t fall asleep or they can’t stay asleep once they fall asleep. In a great deal of cases, insomnia occurs in a person because of light-related stress: job worries or bill worries are a huge factor in it, which explains why few people think baby insomnia can be real, because what do babies have to worry over? But many physicians agree that baby insomnia is real and can affect babies just like it does adults.

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. Instead, doctors often point to a rather simple solution that usually works: investing in a white noise machine to help babies sleep at night. White noise machines are made with the intent of drowning out all the sounds in the room – they actually either absorb sounds or eliminate them so that babies don’t get woken up by noises that disturb them in the night. The machines are able to do this because they produce a noise that gives the infant’s brain a specific sound to zone in on – and when the baby “locks on” to that sound, it drowns out all others, making the brain ignore them so the baby doesn’t wake up.

One of the best ways to actually help prevent baby insomnia is to ensure that your baby is on a set schedule – that way their body is “trained” to sleep at certain times and to be awake at certain times. This means you have to put them to bed and down for naps at the same time every day and that you have to wake them up at the same time every day so that they get used to it. This trains the body into a type of cycle that then continues; the baby becomes tired around the time it should be going to sleep. These are the best ways to try and eliminate baby insomnia.