How I’ve Taught my Babies to Love to Sleep as Much as I Do

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It’s no secret that I love to sleep. With five little kids in the house, it would be easy to assume I don’t get much sleep. The fact of the matter is, I need to sleep to function! I can remember crying into my pillow at night out of sheer exhaustion during the first few weeks of a baby’s life. Thankfully, I can also say that my last three babies started sleeping through the night by a couple months old.

I was able to survive on adrenaline after babies one and two. Once baby three came around, I just plain couldn’t function without sleep. My focus became making sure he slept as well as possible at night and had a predictable rhythm during the day. I got some things right with him, and used the same approach for babies four and five who became absolute dreamboats and fantastic sleepers.

I’ve started my approach to sleep within the first few weeks of the baby’s life. I do believe it may make the first 2-3 months more work, but after that things become much easier. Never do I fight a baby to sleep. Never does it take me more than 5 minutes to put her down for a nap or to bed for the night. People are always amazed when I scoop up the baby, announce, “she’s tired,” lay her down and have her fall straight to sleep without hardly making a sound.

Please note that with my second baby, I did a lot of nursing and coaxing to sleep and she was not a good sleeper as a baby. I don’t pretend to know how much is nature vs nurture when it comes to sleep (I’m sure a lot is nature!), but I don’t think that sleep training comes entirely naturally and I’ve learned a lot through experience.

Rested babies = happy babies

My approach is not for everyone. If you want to cosleep, wear your baby in a carrier all day, and nurse on demand, more power to you! We all do things differently and I love that. If, like me, you have a lot of kids, need a little predictability and a lot of sleep, this may be a helpful approach for you. I found that my babies that I’ve taken this approach with are the sweetest, happiest babies. And while my babies do spend a lot of time alone in a crib, I’ve never had a hard time with bonding and am sure to give the baby tons of attention while awake. My well-rested babies have grown into well-adjusted kids who still understand that when it’s time to sleep, it’s time to sleep!

I have never used an extreme “cry it out” method, although some may find that approach helpful. My approach is gentle and has taught my babies to love sleep.

The goal of my approach is to be able to lay a baby down fully awake and have them fall asleep on their own. Once a baby learns this skill, naptimes are not a battle and the baby is more likely to self soothe at night and may even sleep through the night more easily.

Here is my approach for training a baby to be a good sleeper, starting from birth:

Weeks 1-2:

Hold your baby and get all the rest you can! Try and keep it light during the day and darker at night. Don’t freak out that your baby has nights and days all mixed up. This is normal! If you have other kids, “sleep when the baby sleeps” is a crock, but do everything you can to get some rest. I think nothing of a schedule during these first weeks, I nurse the baby as often as she wants, and allow her to sleep when and where she wants.

Weeks 3-7:

At this age, begin to establish a daytime eat, “play”, sleep cycle. After the baby eats, keep her awake, even for just a few minutes (and no more than an hour). Do not nurse the baby to sleep during the day. When baby is awake, keep her as engaged as possible. When ready for sleep, swaddle her and carry her around until she is just asleep or close to sleep, then lay her down in crib for sleep. Avoid holding the baby while she sleeps. (I know, it’s hard not to. But you’ll reap the rewards of this later.)

Focus on daytime habits and nights will often start to regulate too. After baby feeds in the night, lay her back down as soon as possible. If you have a rocking bassinet, try rocking her to sleep after you lay her back down rather than rocking her to sleep in your arms. When your baby is awake, hold her, kiss her, sing to her, talk to her, and engage her as much as possible. Use white noise, dim lighting, and a good swaddle. (These are my favorite.) I’m also a huge fan of pacifiers by this age. I did have one baby who would not take a pacifier until she was 6 months old, and she was still able to learn to self soothe to sleep without much fuss.

These SwaddleMe Pods are the absolute BEST swaddle sacks for little babies. No velcro and the baby can still move around a little, while still having that safe cozy feeling of a swaddle.

2 months:

Continue daytime pattern of eat, play, sleep. Focus on getting the baby full feedings and resist the urge to offer milk in between feedings. If baby has been awake longer than 45 minutes and begins to fuss or get overly wiggly, assume baby is tired. Swaddle and lay her down in crib fully awake. The key to baby falling asleep without crying is to lay her down before she is overly tired. The goal is now to lay baby down wide awake and have her fall asleep without crying. She may fuss or wiggle around some. If there is serious crying, carry baby until drowsy and lay her down again.

Do not worry about how long baby sleeps or how many naps she is taking each day. Work on establishing the eat, play, sleep rhythm. Feed her when she wakes up from each nap. After baby eats in the night, lay her back down as soon as possible.

*Baby may sleep a lot at this point! My son was never awake for more than 1.5 hours until he was almost a year and a half. 2 hours is the max a baby should go before being given the opportunity to sleep again and young babies may only have wake times of 30 minutes-1 hour. I should also note that it is not uncommon for a baby to wake up and fall back asleep during sleep. If a nap seems shorter than you expected, it’s okay to let her wriggle around for a few minutes and see if she settles back down. (this was learned with baby 4 when I would be preoccupied with the other kids, see her awake on the video monitor, only to find her back to sleep when I went to get her 5 or 10 minutes later.) This learning to fall back asleep without your help is what will help your baby start to sleep longer stretches at night as well.

3 months:

Continue to watch for subtle sleepy ques and swaddle and lay baby down before she is overtired. (45 minutes to 2 hours of wake time is normal at this age.) It’s okay to let her fuss or wiggle around a little. Leave her be and let her settle herself down to sleep. Do not pick her up unless she is crying and unable to settle herself down. If she’s not settling down, first try turning up white noise or patting her gently.

I find a swaddle sack that allows the baby to have her hands by her face really helps with self soothing at this age. I LOVE this one.

By 3 months, your baby may begin to shift to an earlier bedtime. Naps may also become longer and more predictable. At this point you may want to keep a log for a few days and track when baby is eating and sleeping. As patterns emerge, you can begin to set a more reliable schedule. I still find it most helpful to focus more on the pattern of the schedule than on exact times. Thus, whether the baby wakes up at 5 or 8 am, you can keep up her eat, play, sleep rhythm without having to try and force her to nap at exact times throughout the day.

4 months:

At some point between 3 and 5 months, your baby may no longer tolerate being swaddled. As soon as your baby can roll over, it is time to transition out of the swaddle and into a Zipadee-Zip sleep sack. This transition may take a few days. Your baby will have more range of motion, but the Zipadee-Zip is designed to provide comfort and mitigate the startle reflex a baby has that can wake her up prematurely during naps or at night.

As she becomes more aware of her body and the world around her, your baby may have a “sleep regression” around this age. I find it most helpful to stay calm and keep doing everything you’ve been doing. The baby will understand that nothing has changed and will continue to settle into good sleep habits.

And beyond…

Somewhere around 6 months, your baby will probably start to consolidate into 3 naps per day, then 2 naps, and between 15 months and 2 years, down to 1 nap a day. Pay attention to tired cues and keep up eat, play, sleep rhythm with no more than 2 hours of wake time between naps.

How do I just get the baby to sleep through the night?!

I have found that focusing on the healthy sleep habits I’ve outlined here during the day naturally helps a baby become a better sleeper at night. Why? They learn to self-soothe, they benefit from consistency/familiarity of routines surrounding sleep, and they do not become chronically over-tired, resulting in poor nighttime sleep.

I am so tired in the middle of the night, I am incapable of effective sleep training at night. If a baby under 6 months of age wakes in the night, especially a breast-fed baby, I’ll typically assume she is actually hungry and I will feed her and put her straight back to bed. Sometimes I will first try offering a pacifier and I am pleasantly surprised when that does work to put the baby back to sleep without feeding. I have always found that focusing on sleep training during the day translates into better nighttime sleep.

other notes

Every baby is a little different! I did not use white noise with my 3rd. My 4th did not take a pacifier. My 5th naps in a room full of daylight. It is okay to try a few things to see what works for your baby, but I find consistency to be the most important trick of the trade.

And here’s a closer look at my most recommended swaddles and sleep sacks. I’m not one to buy a lot of gadgets for a baby but these are sooo worth the investment!

Happy sleeping to you and yours!

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