It's 4:00 a.m on the day my youngest daughter turns 7 weeks old. You may be thinking, "that poor mom, you know its been a rough night if she is blogging at 4:00 a.m."
Wrong, I just woke my daughter for the first time in 8+ hours to eat. I can't say this is the "norm" yet, but she is consistently doing 5-8 hour stretches of sleep at night, before going down for another 4 or so hour stretch. If you're a mom of an infant, you feel like a million bucks after that kind of sleep and I had to share what we did to get here.
When we started "sleep training" our oldest, Lorelai, at around 6 weeks old...I started to think maybe we just had a good sleeper. She had colic, MSPI (if you don't know what this is...you're one of the lucky ones) and all kinds of tummy issues leaving us with a screaming baby any time she was awake. She wasn't exactly the poster child for a kid that would sleep well. I told myself that sleeping well was the least she could do for the horror she put us through during her waking hours.
With our second, we started using "good sleep habits" at just a few days old and sleep training by 4 weeks, producing what I believe is a "good sleeper."
Yes, I think some kids are more apt to sleep better, but from talking with many of my friends that have "bad sleepers" I firmly believe parents can really help with training their child to sleep at the best of that child's ability.
Here is what I love about sleep training (and its not the actual sleep). It's that as a parent I have the coolest job in the world to give my child the ability to learn, develop and grow...and eventually not need me so much. And it is fascinating that this can start at such a young age.
Teaching my daughter good sleep habits at weeks 0-4 looked like this: letting her learn not to require being held to go to sleep, laying her down awake and letting her fall asleep on her own (not rocking/nursing her to sleep), giving her a routine. A routine at this age was as simple as being in her dimly lit bedroom, giving her a bottle, diaper change, swaddle and setting her down in her designated sleep spot (her rock-n-play right now) and sometimes letting her fuss for a minute or two before getting her.
Her ability to sleep at night comes just as much from what we do during the day. We keep her on an "eat, play, sleep" cycle. That means making sure she eats after sleeping so she is rested to get in a full feeding, and keeping her up to "play" a bit after eating. At this age "play" just means keeping her awake and doing things like diaper changes, baths, talking to her. Her cycle also means we make sure she is eating every 2.5-3 hours during the day....so we actually wake our sleeping baby if it has been longer than that time frame since she has eaten.
What we don't do:
1. We don't "cry it out" and let our daughter cry for long periods of time without getting her. Right now its only a minute or two that we let her cry. As she gets older there are times we've had to let Lorelai cry more like 10 or 15 minutes, allowing her time to learn to put herself back to sleep.
2. We don't refrain from feeding our kids if they are off cycle. For example if she at an hour ago, and seems hungry I still feed her even though it hasn't been 2.5 hours since her last feed. However, if she is hungry it is telling me she didn't eat enough at her first feeding and I should make changes to get her to eat more. I also don't assume that a fussy baby means she is hungry, and I learn to better read her signs to be able to tell.
What we do:
1. We keep a cycle, and we don't make many exceptions. That means we have a bedtime, and we try everything we can to keep our kids on that bedtime schedule until about age 2...which is when we made more exceptions with Lorelai. That means if we have an event or family function, we leave in time to get the kids down by their prescribed (between 7-7:45) bedtime. Lorelai is old enough now that one or two nights of going down to bed late during a month isn't going to mess with her clock, but we were very strict those for 2 years. However, there are times where I do hold Pepper as she naps (not when she sleeps at night) or give her a bottle a little early so we can get out the door for an appointment. As we grow to get more of a schedule of less frequent naps, we also are home for scheduled nap times. For Lorelai that is from 12:30/1- 4 p.m right now, but there was a time that was also 10:00 a.m when she was younger.
2. We track her eating on an app. We use "baby tracker" to track feedings. For the first few weeks we use it to track diapers, but Kevin and I love that it syncs with our phones, so either of us can open the app and see when she was fed. This is also great if your child is on a medication to track when a mediation was last given.
3. We problem solve. If there is something not going quite right, we find out what is causing it. We don't chalk it up to my child's personality. If she is struggling to sleep, she may be overtired from not napping long enough during the day for example.
There are two books we really love on this topic. On Becoming Baby Wise and 12 Hours Sleep By Twelve Weeks Old. Personally when it comes to parenting there is no one book I follow, I find it is best to read a mix of books on any topic (you should have seen everything I read for potty training...which I'll probably write about some day) and decide what you want for yourself. We take aspects of each of these, as well as our own personal intuition to sleep train our daughters. Another book I love that isn't specifically about sleep is Bringing Up Bebe.
I've also read studies that show this type of "training" gives your child the tools to be more self sufficient later, it allows them to be more patient toddlers, and become better "learners" on other topics.
Why am I sharing this? I'm SO GLAD that when Lorelai was 6 weeks old someone shared their Baby Wise experience with us. We had no idea sleep training was even a practice until that occurred. Whether you choose to "sleep train" a child or not, its really tough as a parent of a baby to do anything except try to survive. We found this practice to be in the "short term pain, long term gain" category. Those first few nights of putting your baby down to sleep on their own is terrible...when you know if you just let her sleep in your arms she would be asleep in a minute rather than squirming in her sleep. However, making a decision to allow Pepper to learn to sleep without being held drastically change how our first couple weeks of having a newborn looked compared to Lorelai...and what we gained was huge!
Wrong, I just woke my daughter for the first time in 8+ hours to eat. I can't say this is the "norm" yet, but she is consistently doing 5-8 hour stretches of sleep at night, before going down for another 4 or so hour stretch. If you're a mom of an infant, you feel like a million bucks after that kind of sleep and I had to share what we did to get here.
When we started "sleep training" our oldest, Lorelai, at around 6 weeks old...I started to think maybe we just had a good sleeper. She had colic, MSPI (if you don't know what this is...you're one of the lucky ones) and all kinds of tummy issues leaving us with a screaming baby any time she was awake. She wasn't exactly the poster child for a kid that would sleep well. I told myself that sleeping well was the least she could do for the horror she put us through during her waking hours.
With our second, we started using "good sleep habits" at just a few days old and sleep training by 4 weeks, producing what I believe is a "good sleeper."
Yes, I think some kids are more apt to sleep better, but from talking with many of my friends that have "bad sleepers" I firmly believe parents can really help with training their child to sleep at the best of that child's ability.
Here is what I love about sleep training (and its not the actual sleep). It's that as a parent I have the coolest job in the world to give my child the ability to learn, develop and grow...and eventually not need me so much. And it is fascinating that this can start at such a young age.
Teaching my daughter good sleep habits at weeks 0-4 looked like this: letting her learn not to require being held to go to sleep, laying her down awake and letting her fall asleep on her own (not rocking/nursing her to sleep), giving her a routine. A routine at this age was as simple as being in her dimly lit bedroom, giving her a bottle, diaper change, swaddle and setting her down in her designated sleep spot (her rock-n-play right now) and sometimes letting her fuss for a minute or two before getting her.
Her ability to sleep at night comes just as much from what we do during the day. We keep her on an "eat, play, sleep" cycle. That means making sure she eats after sleeping so she is rested to get in a full feeding, and keeping her up to "play" a bit after eating. At this age "play" just means keeping her awake and doing things like diaper changes, baths, talking to her. Her cycle also means we make sure she is eating every 2.5-3 hours during the day....so we actually wake our sleeping baby if it has been longer than that time frame since she has eaten.
What we don't do:
1. We don't "cry it out" and let our daughter cry for long periods of time without getting her. Right now its only a minute or two that we let her cry. As she gets older there are times we've had to let Lorelai cry more like 10 or 15 minutes, allowing her time to learn to put herself back to sleep.
2. We don't refrain from feeding our kids if they are off cycle. For example if she at an hour ago, and seems hungry I still feed her even though it hasn't been 2.5 hours since her last feed. However, if she is hungry it is telling me she didn't eat enough at her first feeding and I should make changes to get her to eat more. I also don't assume that a fussy baby means she is hungry, and I learn to better read her signs to be able to tell.
What we do:
1. We keep a cycle, and we don't make many exceptions. That means we have a bedtime, and we try everything we can to keep our kids on that bedtime schedule until about age 2...which is when we made more exceptions with Lorelai. That means if we have an event or family function, we leave in time to get the kids down by their prescribed (between 7-7:45) bedtime. Lorelai is old enough now that one or two nights of going down to bed late during a month isn't going to mess with her clock, but we were very strict those for 2 years. However, there are times where I do hold Pepper as she naps (not when she sleeps at night) or give her a bottle a little early so we can get out the door for an appointment. As we grow to get more of a schedule of less frequent naps, we also are home for scheduled nap times. For Lorelai that is from 12:30/1- 4 p.m right now, but there was a time that was also 10:00 a.m when she was younger.
2. We track her eating on an app. We use "baby tracker" to track feedings. For the first few weeks we use it to track diapers, but Kevin and I love that it syncs with our phones, so either of us can open the app and see when she was fed. This is also great if your child is on a medication to track when a mediation was last given.
3. We problem solve. If there is something not going quite right, we find out what is causing it. We don't chalk it up to my child's personality. If she is struggling to sleep, she may be overtired from not napping long enough during the day for example.There are two books we really love on this topic. On Becoming Baby Wise and 12 Hours Sleep By Twelve Weeks Old. Personally when it comes to parenting there is no one book I follow, I find it is best to read a mix of books on any topic (you should have seen everything I read for potty training...which I'll probably write about some day) and decide what you want for yourself. We take aspects of each of these, as well as our own personal intuition to sleep train our daughters. Another book I love that isn't specifically about sleep is Bringing Up Bebe.
I've also read studies that show this type of "training" gives your child the tools to be more self sufficient later, it allows them to be more patient toddlers, and become better "learners" on other topics.
Why am I sharing this? I'm SO GLAD that when Lorelai was 6 weeks old someone shared their Baby Wise experience with us. We had no idea sleep training was even a practice until that occurred. Whether you choose to "sleep train" a child or not, its really tough as a parent of a baby to do anything except try to survive. We found this practice to be in the "short term pain, long term gain" category. Those first few nights of putting your baby down to sleep on their own is terrible...when you know if you just let her sleep in your arms she would be asleep in a minute rather than squirming in her sleep. However, making a decision to allow Pepper to learn to sleep without being held drastically change how our first couple weeks of having a newborn looked compared to Lorelai...and what we gained was huge!
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