The other night, James and Elizabeth slept from 8pm to 5:30am. I then fed them and they went back to sleep until I woke them up at 8:30am. Whohoo! I felt like a new woman to get a long stretch of uninterrupted sleep.
After now helping five babies learn to sleep I've learned a few things. With our first baby, I felt very overwhelmed about teaching a baby how to sleep at night and for naps. I know people have very different opinions on this topic. Some are strict schedule and Baby Wise followers; others prefer attachment parenting and on-demand nursing, the Baby Whisperer also has good advice. Some people co-sleep with their baby for the first few years. Others put the baby in their crib from the first night home from the hospital. I'm just going to tell you what has worked best for us, what I like to call flexible scheduling. Maybe there's something there that can be helpful or useful to you.
I like to have a goal or target issue to work on for 1 to 2 weeks at a time during the first three months. Here's my approach:
- Weeks 1 and 2 Goal: Establish day vs. night and feeding routine
During those first few days and nights at home, the goal is survival. To me that means sleep whenever and however you can. This is really more important for mama than baby. You have just been through pregnancy and delivery and you need to rest. For me, that means if baby will sleep I am happy.
I try to start with my ideal sleeping situation (baby swaddled in the crib) but that doesn't always work. So some nights the baby may sleep in a swing or a bouncy seat or with me or Jay holding the baby. I am more apt to do those things at night to get baby to sleep at night than during the day. During the day, if baby will sleep that's great but I'm okay with him being more easily disturbed and woken. I think it helps establish the day vs night. At the same time, if grandma is there and wants to hold that sweet baby for 3 straight hours one afternoon so you can take a nap, go for it!
Nursing babies generally eat every 2 to 3 hours during those first few weeks, so even with good sleep patterns at this point you are still getting up frequently. During the night, just try to keep the lights dim and be quiet to signal that these feedings are different than during the day. During the day, open the shades, play music, sing and talk to your baby, etc to let baby know this is awake time. Some babies catch on to the day and night differences easier than others, so just be patient if you have a night owl. If you can keep baby awake and stimulated during the day, it generally won't take more than a week or two to get this part figured out.
- Weeks 3 and 4 Goal: Longer stretches of sleep and location of sleep
Once baby has day and night figured out, the goal is to start getting some longer stretches of sleep at night in a crib/bassinet. Most babies will have a 3-4, maybe even 5 hour stretch of sleep at some point in a 24 hour cycle. You want this to be at night, preferably while you are sleeping. If baby's long stretch is from 8pm-12am but you didn't go to sleep until 11pm that's not as helpful as if baby sleeps from 12am-4am straight through.
I tend to cluster feed in the early evening to make sure baby is very full, so even if I have done 3 hour feeding stretches during the day I generally do a 6pm, 8pm, 10pm feeding. After the 10pm feeding, I start some form of a bedtime routine and put baby to bed (diaper change, lights out, swaddle, rub her back or rock for 10-15 mins, etc). The goal is to start something consistent to signal that it is bedtime. At this point if baby cries when I put him down, I am generally okay with 15-30 mins of fussing. If he is still fussing at that point, I will rock or hold the baby for about 5 more mins and try to lay him down again. Sometimes I may go through this cycle for an hour or more before he falls truly asleep. Just be patient. The goal is to get the baby to sleep somewhere other than your arms all night. Depending on the baby, I have also put some of mine on their tummy to sleep at this point. I know all of the SID warnings. I do try it out for naps during the day for a few days to make sure they can turn their head and aren't face-planting into the mattress. If they have pretty good head control, I usually put them on their tummies. They sleep soooo much better this way.
- Weeks 5 thru 8 Goal: Continue to stretch out sleep and go to bed earlier
For some people, having a bed time of 10-11pm for baby is perfectly fine. I, however, am exhausted by 8-9pm especially after taking care of other children during the day also. So now that baby knows what bed time is and can sleep in his/her bed, I start to gradually back up bed time. Instead of 10pm, I start putting him down at 9:30. After a few days of that I back it up to 9pm. By the next week I try 8 or 8:30.
Babies usually need an 11-13 hour stretch of sleep so what time you put baby to bed may depend on what time you want baby to wake up for the day. Currently I need James and Elizabeth up by 7:30-8am each morning so I can take other kids to school, so my goal is to have them in bed between 7:30-8pm at night. Our first baby wanted to go to bed at 6:30pm because she liked to get up at 6:30am (I wish it hadn't been that early). Our other two were more 8:30--8:30 sleepers. But try to get about a 12 hour stretch. The baby will most likely still need to eat during those 12 hours, so I sometimes go up around 10ish and do a "dreamfeed"--feed the baby without completely waking her up. After that they can generally go a 5-6 hour stretch, so maybe they get back up at 3 or 4 am to eat, and then wake up for the day at 7:30-8am.
- Weeks 8 thru 12 Goal: Longer stretches of sleep and more consistent naps
Now that the baby is more consistent with night sleeping and feeding, the day time naps start to fall into a more consistent pattern. At this point, most babies are on the 1 1/2--2 hour pattern. By this I mean that they generally wake up ready to eat and are awake for 1 1/2-2 hours before they get sleepy again. I have to remember to look at the clock sometimes. I'll wonder why the sweet one is fussing for no apparent reason and then I realize, oh it's been almost 2 hours since she got up. Lay the sweet baby down and she goes right to sleep (not always, but usually within 10-15 mins). If I wait until the baby is too fussy and overly tired, it is much harder for him to peacefully fall asleep.
I generally start with 3 naps a day (one morning, one after lunch, one late afternoon) until I can stretch out the time between the morning and afternoon naps and transition to only 2 naps a day. This is usually around months 4 to 5 and I keep that schedule until they're 12-18 months and ready for one nap a day. Some babies are okay with being in carseats for a nap while you run errands, but I usually find that by 3 months they really need to be at home in their crib for consistent nap times. Yes, this greatly limits my ability to run errands or go anywhere for those first few months but it's worth it to me to not have overly tired and cranky babies.
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Okay, so there's my general synopsis of teaching a baby to sleep. Please keep in mind that this is just a general guideline. A few important things to remember are
1. be patient--with yourself and with baby. both of you are learning as you go. Will there be days when the baby is extra cranky from getting shots or out of routine because you're on vacation or falls asleep in the car before you get home? yes. just try to be flexible and adjust the rest of the day as necessary. it's just one day. You can try to get back on schedule the next day.
2. be consistent. someone once told me "begin as you wish to continue"--meaning, if you don't want baby sleeping in your bed at age 1 or 2, don't really start the habit when they're born. or if you want them to nap in their cribs, start naps there. Or conversely, if you really need baby to take naps in her carseat while you sit in the carline, then make that part of your routine.
3. treat each baby as an individual. I especially like to consult The Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg for figuring out baby's personality. For example, little James falls in her "touchy/sensitive" category and during those first few weeks really needed the extra swaddling and hugging and rocking and nursing. Elizabeth is more "textbook" and can really follow the general guidelines a little easier. Just reminding myself of this helped me bond with them individually when I was frustrated that they weren't doing the same thing.
Babies are pretty adaptable so really you just have to figure out what works for you and your family. Good luck and enjoy those sweet ones!
