As anyone who has ever been a new mom or known a new mom well knows, one of the hardest parts is coping with the change in your sleeping schedule. Although newborns usually sleep between 14 and 16 hours a day, they usually do not sleep for periods of time in excess of two to three hours. This means that newborns almost always wake up in the middle of the night. Moreover, babies require so much time and attention that just getting through the day is tiring enough.

When considering what type of gift to give a new mom, there are as many options as there are babies in the world. So many people give mothers infant clothes or toys and other fun things like that. There can, however, be no more practical gift than one that addresses the sleep issue. After all, a rested mom is a happy mom, and as my mother used to say, "No one's happy if mom isn't happy."

The Gift of Sleep for a New Mom

There are two approaches to address the sleep issues of a new mom. One way is to focus on the sleep of the child. There are very few things that can be done to make a newborn child sleep through the night. However, there are ways to calm a fussy newborn that can lead to a less stressful day for mom. Swaddling a baby tightly in a blanket has been proven for generations to aid in this endeavor. Blankets designed specifically for swaddling with easy to read instructions sewn onto them make a great gift.

The other approach to the sleep issue is to address the sleep of the mom. Many parenting experts suggest that a new mom sleep when the baby sleeps so that she can get the most sleep possible. It is sometimes hard for a new mom to adjust to sleeping during the day, however. Therefore, a great gift would be a sleep machine. Such a machine can produce either white noise or sounds of nature that help lull the mom to sleep, even if it will only be for a couple hours.