So you're a parent looking for a good night's rest, huh? Welcome to the club, newbie. 😴
Okay, okay, this isn't a helpless case. But let's take a step back and acknowledge that sleep can be hard enough to obtain as an adult looking out for yourself, much less when you're looking after a little one. And yet, sufficient sleep is often a necessary ingredient for having the energy to take care of yourself in other ways, like sticking to a nutrition or exercise plan, which leads to making better decisions for you and your family. I myself spent a couple months carefully tracking and optimizing my sleep during the pandemic, but that's a post for another day!
It's no surprise that baby's inconsistent sleep schedule is one of the biggest hurdles of new parenthood. In fact, I'd say that there's a non-zero possibility that some parents will be reading this in the middle of the night, desperate for answers to their baby's restlessness so everyone can get back to sleep. But as new parents, it's important to experience two insights up front about baby waking you up throughout the night:
- This is natural.
- This is temporary.
You'll hear this again and again (on this blog and elsewhere), that every child and their situation is unique. This is not a cop-out, it's preparing you to be able to handle those unique experiences with your own child, in the moment. If at any time it sounds like I'm oversimplifying the process, please recognize that I'm simply sharing what has (sometimes) been successful for our child and family as a whole, which may trigger ideas for how you can attempt with your own. Having said that, you may find that any successful strategy will contain long-term habits and a nurturing environment that reinforces those habits, just like learning to do anything new.
Also, even once you succeed, there will be regressions. When your baby learns to stand, they may be too scared to lay back down. Sometimes your baby will only want to sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed for a while. If you go on an international trip, expect the jet lag to lead to weeks of inconsistent sleep. Eventually, your baby will climb out of the crib and refuse to sleep anywhere but a bed. All of these have happened to us, but if you work out a good routine early on, you'll always have a baseline to return to.
Without further ado, I'll share what helped us get our daughter to sleep through the night within the first few months. In addition to a lot of luck, of course.
Newborn Routine
To prepare your newborn for sleep training down the road, try introducing them to a regular feeding schedule immediately out of the womb. At the hospital, nurses in the NICU got our premie on a three hour schedule (2, 5, 8, and 11, AM and PM), which each included "prepping" the milk, feeding, burping, changing diapers, holding, putting back to sleep, and then waiting for the cycle to start all over again. This introduced some much-needed consistency for all of us. Eventually this evolved to a more dynamic "timer-based" schedule where we'd set a, say, three hour timer after baby's previous feeding began. This structure will create the sense of a regular cycle for baby, which can be combined with listening for baby's cues when your pediatrician is comfortable with that.
Sleep Training
Before you attempt to begin training your baby to sleep through the night, it's recommended that you wait until only after your little one is at least two months old and weighs 11+ lbs. Otherwise, their newborn body is simply unequipped to handle long stretches without feeding. There are a myriad of books you can read on the subject and philosophies to experiment with, but when I confronted our pediatrician on what actually works, he responded that there is really only one method - Cry It Out.
This was one of the most difficult things for me to come to terms with as a parent. Watching or hearing your baby cry and purposefully not doing anything about it? When I'd seen other parents employ this method before having my own child, I thought they were straight up cold hearted. As it turns out, you're helping your child to cultivate the simple (in theory), yet paramount skill of soothing themselves to sleep. You cannot force your child to sleep, and if you were to attempt to, it would have the opposite effect of preventing this skill from being developed.
Triggering the Senses
Here are some environmental cues that you can manipulate for your child to associate with becoming sleepier and preparing for bedtime, which encompass all five senses.
- Visual: Turn off overhead lights, close curtains, turn on small side lamp on while winding down, show pictures from books, eliminate screens, start crib mobile and/or turn on temporary night light, set total darkness at sleep time
- Haptic: Wash body/face with warm water, cool core temperature from room or fan, change into comfy PJs, brush “teeth”, consider swaddling or holding after feeding
- Auditory: Play lullabies music, keep everything else quiet, read book(s), set crib mobile to timer
- Olfactory: Apply lotion after bath
- Taste: Feed milk
- Set lights in the house to a dim, warm yellow at sunset
- Heat room temperature (by 1-3° above sleep temperature) 30-60 mins prior to bedtime routine
- At the start of the routine, cool and maintain the room temperature to an optimal 68-72°, in order to cool baby's core temperature
Continuing the Routine
Similar to the newborn schedule, we maintained a consistent set of activities that started at the same time each night. Our feeding involved a combination of breast feeding and re-heating stored breast milk, with formula supplementation when needed. Once the milk was prepared, we would wash our baby (full baths every other night, and just the face with a washcloth on the off nights), and then change her into PJs. We would feed her, burp/hold her, and read her a book. Finally, when we noticed her getting sleepy we'd lay her in the crib and start the mobile lullabies, turning off any other music and lights and shutting the curtains to make the room as dark as possible. A more detailed schedule breakdown with approximate time lengths for feedings and other events during the day will be saved for a future post (here it is!).
This is when the Cry It Out method would come into play and we'd have our baby monitor on and ready to go. We would only go in if the baby has thrown up, if the crying is particularly strong, or if the baby is still crying moderately after 20 minutes. We'll then go through our checklist to resolve the crying as best as possible, which I will also save for a future post (here it is!). Once she's calmed down a bit we would lay down with her for 5-10 minutes before putting her back in her crib. Finally, we'll wait another 20-30 minutes before starting the cycle over again.
A mindfulness approach may be helpful while listening to your baby cry it out in the other room. Pay close attention to your reaction. Do you feel anxious or upset? How do you know you're feeling those emotions, can you pinpoint the actual sensations in your body? Try to notice these sensations in the present moment, and whether they are constant or whether they come and go. Let them be and see what happens.
UPDATE: Here's a follow-up post on how we used our experience to handle sleep training successfully with our second child: Sleepy Habits: A Case Study for Baby #2.
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