Infant Sleep Tips

I have had a lot of new moms ask me for advice on how to get their kids to sleep.

I am not a professional. I am simply the mother of two baby boys born eight months apart (one biological and one adopted.) I followed that up with a baby girl. So I am also the mother of three children three and under at the same time. Counting my puppy, four kids four and under at the same time.

Please keep in mind:

1.  I know that all children are different. I do feel that we have pretty good advice based on the fact that what we did worked three times with three different children who are not genetically related and are different sexes. My boys slept through the night at eight weeks (bottle-fed Isaac) and ten weeks (breast-fed Elijah). Abigail slept through the night even earlier than the boys. They have, ever since, gone to bed at bedtime and not gotten up until the morning again barring unusual circumstances (like an illness.) They do wake up early, but they go to bed early as well.

Glean from this what you want. Don't take it as gospel. Please don't see what I am saying as slamming what you are doing. I have a saying. If it's working for you, keep doing it. This is just "what worked for me" in case you need something to try.

2. Children sleeping through the night and not sleeping in our bed and not needing to be rocked to sleep was important to us. It may not be important to you. If what you are doing works for your family, that is great. In our case, when the boys were little, I had two babies. I did not have the luxury to be rocking one to sleep when another was needing my attention as well. I was incredibly fatigued with flip-flopped nap schedules all day long. JB was in his final year of residency. JB and I needed our full night of sleep. Some people do well on little sleep. You can ask anyone who has known me well, and they will tell you that I am not one of those people. So sleep was a huge focus for us as we entered parenthood.

Okay, that said, here is what we did.

Read (a little). Firstly, we read the book Baby Wise. My friend Shannon and her husband Tristan had three boys that were all good sleepers. I wanted that. So I asked her what she did. She loaned me her book. I read it. JB read it.

Please note: I did not read this and do everything it said. Far from it. In fact, we gleaned only one major technique from this book (which was an underlying theme albeit) that we took to heart.

When our boys were newborns, right away, we implemented a pattern for their sleep. That pattern went as such:

• Eat time
• Play time
• Sleep time
• Repeat

Scheduled Feedings. The book talked about scheduling feeds and what-not. We didn't really do that. We attempted to find a good schedule for how often our kids ate, but both my biological children had trouble breastfeeding. Basically, we determined that I expelled milk very slowly. Therefore they were eating all day and burning as many calories as they were eating. I was feeding both Abigail and Elijah an hour on and an hour off all day long and they would collapse at the end of the day and fall asleep. Not good when you have other children waiting in the wings. However, even with that schedule, we implemented the pattern above.

Fall asleep solo. The idea is that baby learns to fall asleep without needing mom there to comfort. So we would feed, play with the baby (this might last two minutes with a newborn or an hour with an older baby) and then we swaddled and put the baby down to fall asleep on their own.

This is not to say that I did not hold my children during naps or put them in their swing or car seat for naps. I did all those things. But I didn't do it all the time. My general rule was one nap a day on Mommy's chest. I loved it. They loved it. But I didn't want them to require that. I wanted it to be an extra luxury. If baby fall asleep by you, and every time they wake up you are there, waking up without you there will cause great stress, crying, and a desire to be comforted by you again. And you need to sleep too.

Self-soothing. The other main thing we did was to let the baby self-comfort. This can be very hard for some parents. It was hard for me. JB had to practically block the door a few times to prevent me from going and picking up one of my boys. But if they had eaten, played, and were clean and dry, the idea is that they are able to fall back asleep when they wake up. You can go in and comfort them. You can give a pacifier or whatever else you want to help. But picking them up, feeding them, letting them fall asleep on you, will tell them that they need Mom to help them fall asleep. And they will require that again.

Mother-in-law's opinion. I remember when Elijah was a newborn. My mother-in-law was with us for the first two weeks, and I am pretty sure it took every fiber of her being not to go and pick up Elijah as he screamed to be held when it was "sleep time." It is not a comfortable feeling. However, we believe, from the beginning, that baby has the power to put themselves to sleep when they wake up even though mom is not there. So we let them cry it out. We set time limits. Especially during the first two to three months. They might need an extra feed during this time.

It was nearly a year and a half later, that I left my boys with my sister-in-law for JB's graduation banquet. When we came home, she said to us that it was a busy night. Lots of activity. Lots of crying and whining and fighting. But she then added the caveat, "I have never seen boys go to bed like your boys go to bed." I remember my mother-in-law laughing and telling us then how hard it had been to not say anything when Elijah was a newborn, but now, she saw why we did what we did.

Baby can do it! When baby is under a year, the major thing to note is that baby has the ability, from about two to three months on, to go over night without needing to eat. If baby is eating, it may because they are having dietary issues. But other than that, it is a comfort thing. Baby wants to be comforted and being with mom and fed, comforts baby.

Exhaustion will win. JB has a saying, "Exhaustion will win." He would say this to me when Isaac and Elijah were 4 or 5 months old and they had eaten and were changed and had fallen asleep and had then woken up and were screaming for us to come and get them. He would almost literally hold me down in the bed. We would time it. The longest either boy went was 45 minutes. But they never went 46 minutes. Once they did it for 45, the next night, it was almost always less. 40 minutes. 35. Way down the scale. I would have ruined it had I gone in at 45. If I did, the next night, they may have had the ability to push to 50 knowing that we came in the night before.

New moms. JB sees many new moms as a doctor. Especially when he was a resident. Almost always, when a mom came in complaining that the baby wasn't sleeping, the baby was being held most of the day. The in-laws and parents were there and every time the baby cried, baby was comforted. Then everyone left, and it was just dad and mom, and they couldn't get baby to sleep. JB would share this pattern with them, and nearly always, they returned one to two months later telling him that things were markedly improved. Not always perfect. But any improvement when talking about sleep is good!

Sleep environment. The other thing we do is create a good sleep environment. We use white noise machines. We keep the rooms well-carpetted to prevent sound from traveling. We do not, however, especially when the child is very little, attempt to create a noise-free environment, as this is not reasonable to expect. Kids will need to learn how to sleep amidst noise. If the dog barks, he barks. Get used to it kid!

Improvements. I cannot promise that this will work for you or your children. I can only say that this worked for me. I do not propose to be the Bible on Sleep. But I do think, if you follow what I am suggesting, you will see an improvement. And improvements are good.

Styles. Secondarily, this style may not be right for you. You may enjoy the night feeds or the child sleeping in bed with you. If you do, and it is working for you, that is great. But in our case, with two babies eight months apart, this style would have broken me down and left me a bumbling mess in the corner of a room. I didn't have grandparents around to help if I had a bad night of sleep. I had a husband working 90 hour weeks. I had a new puppy and two babies, and I needed to get a full night's sleep to be on my best the next day. (In addition, having time 
each evening with my husband is important to me.)

Recommendations. Did you know that it is recommended that a child gets the following amount of sleep?

• 1-4 weeks old (15-16 hours per day)
• 1-4 months old (14-15 hours)
• 4-12 months (14-15 hours)
• 1-3 years old (12-14 hours)
• 3-6 years old (10-12 hours)
• 7-12 years old (10-11 hours)

I cannot tell you how many crabby kids I have met. And when I observe their sleep schedule they are getting, sometimes a quarter less sleep each night then they are supposed to. My toddlers are supposed to be sleeping HALF OF THE DAY! They need that. Yes, my boys wake up early. But they sleep from about 7:30pm until 6am every day. That is 10.5 hours of sleep a day. They then take a nap for two to three hours bringing them to their 12-14 hour requirement. Kids need more sleep than they are getting. Kids that are staying up into the evening and not taking naps, are, in my opinion, sleep-deprived, and their behavior is a result. Both my boys appear to not need naps sometimes. But I have decided that they will be at least in kindergarten before I stop requiring him to rest in his room for two hours a day. Rest is better than nothing.

Crying it out. People also tell me that they feel letting a child cry it out is cruel. I have to disagree. We, as parents know better. We know that the sleep will make them feel better. We are just helping them to get what they need. In addition, while you may think it is psychologically damaging to let them cry it out, I have to think a sleep deprived parent is more psychologically damaging to the child.

Comments. I'd appreciate positive comments or comments sharing your own advice. But please do not "smash" mine. This is my blog. I was asked for my advice. Advice is information that can be taken or left behind. It will not hurt my feelings if you disagree. But do so kindly. Parents can get very touchy about this issue. JB and I offer our advice as simply "what worked for us." We have many people ask us what we did when they see how well our boys sleep.

P.S. We also swaddle. Here is a video showing our technique.

So, there you have it. My Sleep Bible.

Amen.