Some babies are great sleepers and others need help to get the rest they need. How can parents encourage restful naps and fewer nighttime awakenings? Check out the advice of sleep experts on creating the perfect environment for zzz's.

Jill Spivack, co-author with Jennifer Waldburger of the iParenting Media Award-winning program, The Sleepeasy Solution: The Exhausted Parents Guide to Getting Your Child to Sleep – From Birth to Age 5 (HCI Books, 2007), lists these as common sleep disruptors:

• Too much light
• Temperature
• Too much stimulation in the crib or bedroom (i.e. mobiles, aquariums, blinky toys)
• Noise from the outside (traffic, birds chirping) or from the house (noisy siblings, phones ringing, television or stereo noise)

While it's obviously dark at night, controlling light for naptimes may be more difficult. Spivack recommends on a scale of one to 10 (10 being darkest) about an eight or a nine for night and naps. "This helps Baby avoid becoming interested in something (like fingers or toes) when he should still be sleeping," she says.

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