ALL ABOUT SLEEP
Before having a baby I would hear my friends talking about sleep all. the. time. They would use terms like “sleep regressions,” “wake windows” and “crap naps” and I just assumed they were being overly obsessed with sleep and were kind of neurotic. But the truth is, as soon as you stop sleeping…you become obsessed with sleeping – with your baby’s sleep, your own sleep, and will probably do anything to try and get some sleep.
Which is why I’m not surprised now that over 50% of my DMs on Instagram are questions about Lily’s sleep, our routines, her nap schedule, etc. Instead of trying to answer the same questions all day (and I apologize that I can’t do that anymore) I wanted to create one post that answers alllll the questions with as much detail as possible.
I should probably title this “All About Sleep Part 1” as I know her sleep patterns will change again. She’ll hit a few more regressions. Teeth will come in. Naps will be dropped. But we’re not quite there yet so this will be all about Lily’s sleep until this point (4.5 months old). Let’s get into it.
When you first bring your baby home, you will hear all sorts of opinions about everything. One thing I was constantly told was “don’t create bad habits.” Bad habits were considered nursing them to sleep, putting them down only when they were sleeping, letting them nap on you, etc. This is so they could learn to self sooth and you can be more of a functioning human without having your baby attached to you at all times. But I chose to ignore all that and did things in a way that worked for me. I made the conscious decision that I did not believe in “bad habits” and would do whatever I wanted with Lily until it was time to sleep train her around 4 months old. Which basically meant, I did NOT put Lily down. If she wasn’t in the stroller, she was in a carrier on me, nursing on me or sleeping on me. And let me tell you, THIS WAS MY BEST DECISION EVER.
Aside from the awful pain I experienced with breastfeeding and my terrible anxiety in the early weeks, I can honestly say I really enjoyed the newborn phase. A lot of people hate it and that’s totally okay. But despite my challenges, I loved it. And I’m not saying that I hindsight. I recognized that I loved it at the time. Those long days of just nursing her on the couch. The co-sleeping from 4-6 am. The naps with her on my chest. I live for those moments.
I coddled the shit out of her from day 1. If she made 1 peep, I ran to her. If she let out a tiny cry, I hugged and shushed her. This girl only slept if she was nursed, rocked and swaddled to sleep with a pacifier. And only then, once I was 1000% sure she was sleeping, I would put her down and (sometimes) walk away.
This also meant that we did not have a schedule at all. I nursed her on demand and took her everywhere with me. She would sleep on the go and I never paid attention to the timing of anything. If she was hungry, she ate. Tired, she slept.
For me, this was wonderful. I loved not having a schedule. For a lot of people, however, the lack of a schedule and planning would drive them crazy and getting their baby on a schedule as soon as possible works for them. You have to do what works for you and that is the bottom line.
So now you know what life was like in the early days but I want to get into some specifics in terms of sleep to answer all the questions. Most importantly I want to talk about her schedule as this is the most common question I get asked. The best way to do this is to break down her sleep info into chunks. Here we go:
0-6 weeks – no schedule
Day Sleep:
We were lucky that Lily was back to her birth weight within 48 hours so we did not have to wake her to feed. As you read above, she napped on the go and slept when she was tired. Stroller, car, carrier, on me – she was super easy to bring around. I never paid attention to how long she actually slept for. I nursed on demand and that was it.
Night Sleep:
We were very lucky to have a night nurse during this time period (someone who stayed at our house and was up with her in the middle of the night). I would pump enough milk during the day and before bed so my nurse could give Lily 1-2 bottles. She typically slept for one long stretch (4-6 hours) and the remainder would be 2-3 hour stretches of sleep.
6-9 weeks – no schedule
Day Sleep:
Her day sleep was the same. She was still easy to take around.
Night Sleep:
She slept in the bassinet next to our bed. She was swaddled with arms in and had a pacifier. We would put her down with us for the night around 10pm. Her longest stretch of sleep would be 4-6 hours. Otherwise she was awake every 2-3 hours. Once I fed her she barely required any settling down and would fall right back asleep. Any feed that was after 5am I would unswaddle her and bring her into our bed to co-sleep. Miss that 🙁
9-14 weeks – a schedule naturally starts to form
Day Sleep:
This is when I started to notice some changes and did something that made a huge difference. I read about “wake windows” – that’s right! Officially became THAT mom. Before reading about wake windows, AKA how many minutes your baby should be awake at a particular age, I never really paid attention to her cues. If she cried, I offered the boob and that was pretty much it. But once I realized that Lily’s natural wake window at this age was 60-90 minutes and I actually started to pay attention, I saw right away that she would get tired at the 60 minute mark. Instead of trying to feed her, I would try and get her to nap. This usually meant rocking until she slept on me, offering her the pacifier or taking her on a walk. This is also how a natural schedule started to form. Her naps were random, ranging from 20 minutes to 2 hours, but we got into a routine of eat, play, sleep. At this point she would either nap on me, in the dockatot or in the stroller/carrier.
Night Sleep:
The schedule also started to naturally form at this point because I began to see she was getting really tired around 6 pm. We totally wanted to be that cool family taking our baby out to dinner at 10pm in the summer. We also wanted her to get her longest stretch of night sleep, which is usually the first stretch, when WE went to bed. But by 5:30 pm she was getting super cranky and giving us tired cues (yawning, rubbing eyes). We could tell Lily was ready for an actual bed time and wanted to honour that. So this meant around 6:30 pm we would bath her, feed her and put her to sleep wherever we were (dockatot on the couch, bassinet in our room, etc.) and then tip toe around her in the dark until we went to bed.
During this frame time we also began to practice with the monitor for naps and got used to putting her down for a nap in the bassinet and walking away.
At 14 weeks we transitioned her into her crib in the nursery and stuck to the following schedule:
6:00 pm bath time
6:30 pm breastfeed, rock, swaddle, pacifier, put down in crib fast asleep
9:30 pm – I pump and go to bed
11:00 pm Dream Feed – DC would give her a bottle of pumped milk and she would stay asleep for the whole feed
3:00-4:00 am – she would naturally wake up. I nursed her, changed her diaper and then rocked her back to sleep.
6:30 am – awake
16-17 weeks – sleep regression
Up until this point, I was tired but like, totally manageable and probably could have kept at the above schedule for a while. I was getting at least one decent 5 hour stretch of sleep and it was good enough. I had heard through the grapevine about this “4 month sleep regression” and it sounded pretty brutal but I was hoping maybe it wouldn’t hit her and she would just eventually sleep through the night…
Basically at 16 weeks on the dot Lily just decided she was over sleep. We would put her down for her 6:30 pm bedtime and her first wake up would be around 9:00 pm. From there she was basically up every 40 minutes – 2 hours.
The first night I fed her every time she woke up, the second night I tried to feed some times and do the pacifier the other times. It was a shit show. I tried getting rid of the dream feed. Unswaddling her arms. Not giving her the pacifier. But nothing really worked. It was your textbook regression and I knew that inevitably I had to sleep train her.
The 4 month regression happens because babies make a big developmental leap around then. It was a very cute and exciting time seeing her in this new phase during the day but at night it was brutal. Not all, but a lot of babies at this point need to be taught how to put themselves back to sleep and I knew it was time to teach Lily too.
17 weeks – sleep training
We were in the thick of the sleep regression when we started working with Amanda Jewson of Baby’s Best Sleep. I had first heard about Amanda when I listened to her interview on a podcast episode and loved her approach to sleep training. Up until this point, all I really knew about sleep training was the cry it out method – put your baby down awake, close the door behind you and let them cry themselves to sleep. This is the method I planned on doing because it was what all my friends had done and it worked. But the thought of it also gave me really bad anxiety.
Amanda’s method definitely has crying involved but it’s not just close the door and walk away. She does a full assessment with you at the beginning to understand your child’s medical history and needs. She also discusses what works for you as a parent and gives you options of how to deal with the crying – going in, staying by the crib, etc. (We chose to go in as little as possible because that worked for us).
I’ve been asked so many times exactly what her program is but it’s different for every baby. The main things are:
- Remove any “crutches” that you are comfortable with (we got rid of the swaddle, pacifier, dream feed and any middle of the night feeds)
- Put them down awake and let them learn to soothe themselves
- establish a routine and stick to it as best as possible
- During the day put her down for a nap after 2 hours of waking
- Put her to sleep the same way for naps as much as possible
Her program also did nap training at the same time which I actually found even more helpful than the night sleep, though it was harder work for us!
Look, sleep training is hard. Hearing your baby cry and not going to them right away if that’s what you were doing before is hard. But what helped me was reminding myself that I was teaching Lily one of the most important life skills which was to learn to sleep!!
What I loved about working with a sleep consultant was that I could close my ears to the rest of the world. Ignore all the advice, opinions and stories of other people and just listen to one EXPERT on what to do. We did the virtual program and having her calls and daily text support was beyond helpful.
It took one night of training for the night sleep and about two days for the naps. We basically went on lockdown in the house, made no plans and stuck to Amanda’s plan as strictly as possible. I actually really stuck to the plan as strictly as possible for 2 weeks which is what she recommends.
Now we try and nap her in the crib for all naps just because it’s easiest and continue to go by the 2 hours awake rule. She sleeps 12-13 hours per night (I would normally be afraid to write this but Amanda told me (I’m not jinxing it and it’s been over 3 weeks so I believe her haha) and we have a pretty standard routine.
18 weeks – present (21 weeks) – THE SCHEDULE
As I said above, we go by the 2 hour wake window. So every day is a bit different depending on when she wakes up in the morning and how long each nap is but I will give you an example of a typical day:
7:00 am – wake up
9:00 – 11:00 am – first nap
1:00 – 2:00 pm – second nap
4:00 – 5:00 – third nap
6:30 pm – bottle of milk that I pumped the night before
6:45 pm – bath
7:00 pm – asleep in crib
That’s it for her – she normally wakes up at the 12 or 13 hour mark.
I pump at 10:00pm and then go to bed. It took about 2 days for my boobs to level out and not be really uncomfortable/engorged. They are still full in the morning but not to the point of leaky discomfort. Sometimes if she doesn’t eat enough in the morning I will pump after the first feed just to completely empty them. I’m ready to get rid of the 10:00 pm pump so I can go to bed earlier but I like having that bottle of milk for the last feed of the day to ensure she’s getting enough.
Final Thoughts
There are so many benefits to sleep training because sleep is life. But there are definitely some things I don’t love about being on a schedule. I miss the spontaneity of our days in the beginning. I loved being out with her all day long and walking everywhere. I miss not having to rush home for a nap and being easy to make plans with. Most of all though, I miss co-sleeping with her.
The first night she slept 12 hours, I didn’t sleep at all. I was up watching the monitor and then staring at photos of her on my phone that I took of her sleeping on my chest. It made me more grateful than ever that I didn’t listen to anyone and let her sleep on me for as long as possible.
What makes it easier however (aside from my 8-9 hour sleeps) is knowing the alternative – the regression. It might not have lasted forever but it also might have? And I was not willing to go back to those hourly wake-ups.
Again, I know there will be more regressions in the future and things like teething, travel and colds that will wake her up but I feel prepared with the tools I learned from Amanda to get back on track. For example, she rolled onto her tummy the other night. I tried to flip her and she kept rolling back and crying. But luckily I just used what we did for training and by the next night she was back to 12 hours.
Like everything with babies, sleep isn’t linear and there will be a million changes and a lot of ups and downs but this is our story so far. So I just want to leave one final thought. This is Lily’s journey and this post isn’t meant for you to compare your baby or your story. It’s simply to have a resource to send you to that will hopefully answer all your questions. I know a lot of you have babies Lily’s age, are curious about sleep training or are desperate to get on a schedule so this explains how we got here today.
If I missed anything, please let me know in the comments or just DM me. And if you want to know exactly how the sleep training program works or for so much more info on sleep, check out Babys Best Sleep.
Sleep tight xoxo