If your baby tosses and turns all night, reworking their sleep routine might solve the issue. There's no such thing as a bad sleeper, just bad sleep habits, and they're usually reversible, says Ingrid Prueher, a pediatric sleep consultant in Fairfield, Connecticut, and host of the Baby Sleep 911 video series. Avoid these common sleep saboteurs, and you may actually snooze through the night. In this article I will explain to you how to put a baby to sleep in the right way.

One of the ways a baby learns it's time to go to sleep is from cues in the environment, notes Deborah Givan, M.D., director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Riley Hospital for Children, in Indianapolis. About 30 minutes before bedtime, turn the noise down and dim the lights. The right lighting is essential because it helps set a baby's internal clock, she explains. Our brain associates light and dark with being awake or asleep. Turning the lights low at night—and exposing your baby to bright light in the a.m.—will help this process along.

If you put your baby in the crib when they're already asleep and they wake up in the night, which all humans do, they won't recognize their surroundings and will need your help getting back to sleep," notes Dr. Givan. "Try to put your baby down drowsy but awake." This will help them learn to self-soothe and fall asleep—and, more importantly, fall back to sleep—on their own, which is the main goal of sleep training.