For friends and family of newborns:<p>Hold the advice unless it is asked for (and don't be offended if it is then ignored)<p>Looking after the baby may not be what the new parents would prefer you to do. Offer to do chores - laundry, shopping, bins, cleaning etc. Don't be offended if they also take the opportunity to sleep.<p>If you are giving presents - include something that is purely for the mum that is not related to motherhood - great book, fave. magazines, skin care makeup etc. as appropriate.
We co-slept with each of our 3 kids when they were newborns (which is not recommended by American doctors but is very common throughout the world) and from talking with friends and family I think we got quite a bit more sleep than the average parent of a newborn, and a couple of our kids have not been particularly good sleepers.<p>I would also add that I agree 100% with the comments about most advice not being particularly useful and also that sleep/nighttime strategy is dictated a lot by work schedule, breastfeeding/bottle feeding, and whether you co-sleep in addition to the differences in each baby.
My wife is pregnant with our first. I am receiving advice constantly, but will have to wait to see what will be effective. The most interesting advice for me is the Baby-led potty training [1]. If it will work it should probably make nights easier, because change of diapers would go away earlier.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby-led_potty_training" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby-led_potty_training</a>
As a new parent myself (my son is two months old), what strikes me is how pretty much everyone has their opinion on how we should feed or make our baby sleep. Some say we should help him sleep in our arms, others say we shouldn't touch him when he's in his bed...<p>Lately we've decided to put him in his bed and come reassure him if he wakes up, but each time we have to go comfort him we wait longer than the previous time. So we do 5 minutes, 10 min, 20 min, and so on... Usually he sleeps after the 20 minutes mark.
Nine children here. We were lucky and figured out our kids pretty early. If they act up at night it generally means they're over tired from not sleeping during the day. Worked with every kid for us. One bad night and the next day we doubled down on protecting the daytime nap. Solved it every time.
We got so much advice on how we should handle the sleep of our baby daughter and we didn't follow any. The first weeks, she was sleeping close to 20 hours a day, which gradually became less. But she showed no real day-night pattern. Also when she was a few months old, we didn't put her to sleep at a fixed time, as it was advised, as we still had a socially active life and just took her everywhere we went. When she got about 9 months old, she suddenly began to want to sleep at 8:30pm and woke up at 7. We didn't pressure her, she just showed us that this is how she likes it and she still wants to sleep now that she is 13months old. So our opinion is: you can try many things, maybe you change something. But in the end, the kid regulates itself if you let it.