I was talking to my sister recently about newborn sleep tips and how hard it can be in the beginning. We were talking about getting a baby to sleep through the night. (Something that my first born didn’t do for almost a year.) Now that we have 3 kids, including one who sleeps SO well, I feel like I have a good handle on what works and doesn’t work for getting a baby to sleep.
First, let me say that every baby is different. But because I purposely did a few things with our third that I never did with our first and second baby, I think I have some good advice to offer other parents. I hope something in here helps you get your baby to sleep better! A few things that are probably important to note about me as a mother: I don’t have my kids on a rigid schedule. If the baby wakes up early, we do naptime early. If the kids are tired early, we start our bedtime routine early. If everyone’s having a great time playing a board game, we don’t rush to get into bed. For our family, there are routines (meaning the steps that you take to get from point A to point B) we do but we don’t necessarily stick to schedules (meaning that we don’t always have the baby take a nap for 2 hours from 10am to 12pm every day). That allows us to be a little more flexible with our days, which is especially helpful when we’re traveling with the family. Now, onto the good stuff…
Months 1-3 (Newborn Sleep)
I’m not going to lie, those first three months can be rough. With each of our babies, I felt like I had been hit by a truck the first few weeks. But then it gets better! I equate our incredible sleep with our third baby to a few very important points:
- She did not experience the same awful acid reflux that my first two had. That would keep us up half the night because they just couldn’t get comfortable.
- We used the SNOO baby bassinet (you can read my full SNOO review here!), which helped our baby learn to self soothe.
- I tried so so hard to employ “le pause,” a European method of not jumping as soon as the baby cries. I waited a beat before picking her up to see if she was just making noises or really needed me. I think the SNOO really helped with this, because if she wasn’t settled in 3-4 minutes it would alert me and I could go get her.
- I didn’t feed her to sleep. This one is really important because I KNOW that with my first baby I created a strong association between sucking on a bottle (or nursing) and going to sleep, and the only way she could fall asleep was to be eating. And if you have a baby, you already know that they have a hard time connecting their sleep cycles so they wake up every 45 minutes to three hours. And if you have to nurse your baby to sleep each time they wake up because they can’t self-soothe… well… you can see how much sleep I was getting (or not getting) in those early days with our first child!
“Will I Ever Sleep Again” and the 4 Month Regression
Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, babies go through a 4 month sleep regression where their brain development throws off everything. The best thing you can do at this point? For me, it was a) make sure the baby is safe and fed b) consistency. Establishing a simple and consistent routine for babies can help provide structure and stability, making life easier for both the baby and the parents. The most important part of any sleep regression (because don’t worry, it happens a few times in the first year or so!) is to maintain consistency with routine.
Consistent Evening Routine
Our evening routine:
- Start winding down for bedtime. Usually this means putting toys away, and the whole family heads upstairs to get the kids ready for bed.
- Warm baths for all three! (Or showers for the big kids)
- Change into pajamas and dim the lights to signal that it’s bedtime. Turn on the sound machine and sit down for stories.
- Baby wears a sleep sack at night. (It used to be a swaddle but she has since grown out of that.)
- Nurse or bottle first, THEN we do stories. Read a bedtime story or sing a lullaby to help get the baby ready for sleeping time.
- Put the baby down in the crib when she’s tired but NOT yet asleep.
- Lights out and shut the door
Sleep Training
A lot of people equate “sleep training” with “cry it out” (a method of leaving your baby to cry themselves to sleep). I was never on board with cry it out, to be honest.
With our first we turned to the Taking Cara Babies blog. At the time she was one of the only baby sleep consultants offering online help in the form of Instagram/blog content (or at least it seemed that way!). I was at what felt like a breaking point: It would take 45 minutes to get my daughter down for a 30 minute nap, she wasn’t sleeping through the night, and I was exhausted. I was back to working (albeit mostly from home) full-time, and I needed help.
The TCB program was essentially teaching my baby to self-soothe in a way of leaving her for a few minutes at a time, then checking in, then leaving her a few more minutes. There were a lot of tears (for her and for me), and looking back I’m glad we did it.
But if you’re starting from the beginning with a brand new baby and thinking about how you will get your newborn to sleep through the night- or even how to get your infant to sleep in the middle of the night- go back and read our evening routine. Feeding the baby FIRST and then doing stories and songs helped to break the association between feeding and sleeping. I think that’s probably the most important part of all of this… don’t create an association between feeding and sleeping with your newborn.
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