While many babies under the age of one have difficulty sleeping through the night there are three major actual sleep problems some babies suffer. Not being able to fall asleep, waking for long periods of time in the night and waking at irregular times or irregular sleep patterns.

In the first few months of life all of the above is not that abnormal as young infants often wake because they are hungry and may not have very concrete sleep patterns yet to begin with. After this, you can try making some simple adjustments to correct sleep problems.

• Keep major active time to the daytime hours, turn down the lights, and keep things calm when it is dark. This will help baby learn that when it becomes dark it is time to settle down and go to sleep. Light plays a major part in controlling most babies sleep patterns.
• If the baby makes noise at night don’t immediately rush in and begin soothing, wait, the baby may go back to sleep on its own if left alone. When you do need to soothe the baby don’t do so in a stimulating way. Leave the lights off, don’t talk or play with the baby just pick him or her up and rock them or feed them. Be consistent in the method you use to get baby back to sleep.
• Pick an appropriate bedtime for your babies sleep needs. For example, don’t try to make an 8 month old baby sleep as much as a newborn. Observe your baby’ natural sleep patterns and work with this. However, try to stick to the same bed time rather than letting it be variable, let the wake up time be variable.
• Try to keep naps earlier in the day. While you may not have complete control over this, give baby sleep opportunities as much as possible early in the day, late naps can lead to night time wakefulness.
• Establish a nighttime routine. This is a set of actions you do every night without fail that ends in bedtime. You may give a bath, a feeding and then a story for example and then turn the lights off and let baby sleep.

If all of the above fails be sure to speak with your pediatrician there are medical issues that can cause sleep problems such as sleep apnea, teeth grinding and other physical defects.