Hey Friends! I’d like to start by saying I am no way claiming to be an expert at getting baby sleeping all night, I only have one baby myself so not trying to say I have all the answers. I am speaking about my experiences and how certain things have and have not worked for me.
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I feel like from the very beginning, right after we announced I was pregnant, what I heard most was how much I should take this time to rest. I had just been laid off of work due to the pandemic and I wouldn’t be getting much sleep once the baby is here. It honestly would be one of the things that would stress me out the most when I thought about what life would be like with a newborn. I love sleep, though I am not the type of person who sleeps all day or sleeps in past 9am but not getting a full nights rest has never been an easy thing for me to get through the following day. Anytime anyone asked me how I was doing whether I said I was doing great or feeling a bit massive the response was always “get the rest in now.” Though its hard, if you are a mother then I’m sure you know, its not easy to just “rest”, you’re uncomfortable, restless, stressed, nervous.. all the things that prohibits one from sleeping. I tried to rest when I could, when my body would allow me to, while I was “resting” I was researching every angle on how to get a newborn to sleep through the night. I read every article I could find, I asked a lot support groups what worked best for them, researched which sleep training classes people liked the most and at what stage we should take it. I was worried that I would be running on empty, miserable, and hating my life so much from the lack of sleep that I would instantly not be good at this motherhood thing. I was nervous. So when the day finally came (four days early) for her to finally be with us, it wasn’t even a thought on my mind. So many other things take over from then on.. Will she be ok? Will I be ok? What is it the birth processes going to be like? Who is she going to look like? Are we REALLY ready?
Well she was finally here! Perfect, small at only 5lbs, but perfect. Lets just say that first night, as tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep. I just stared at her, watched her in amazement that she was really real and that she was mine. Shocked that I had finally became what I always dreamed of becoming, a person someone called Mom. Of course Morgan fell right to sleep in the extra bed next to mine, snoring away but I didn’t care. I felt like maybe I’d be ok with no sleep…. haha if only. After a few nights in the hospital we got to go home, the real test was about to begin. Well she cried and cried throughout the first few nights and it was stressful, thankfully my Mother was here to help for the first week, she’s a Godsend and a true role model for me as I travel through this new chapter of Motherhood. Madison would eventually fall asleep being rocked in our arms after a feeding but it wouldn’t last more than a couple hours. I was breastfeeding at this time it was hard trying to keep her awake to finish her feedings so she would only eat a little bit and wake up a short while later for another feeding. I was TIRED. Of course now at this point the sound of Morgan in a deep sleep while I was praying for more than a hour long break made me furious. This was it, what I was so nervous of. I do want to say she wasn’t bad EVERY night after the first week or two, there were some nights that she did surprising well. It gave me the idea that even though she was still young that we should take a sleep training class since sometimes she did great and others not so much. We ended up doing the TakingCaraBabies sleep coarse online, it was AMAZING. It was sleep training geared for 4 months olds, I believe, but we knew that it was just getting her familiar with certain things and routines that was really going to be the game changer we needed. We took some of the tips they recommended to start trying and applied those to our day to day life with Madison. For example she says to never wake a sleeping baby.. at night (this is key).. but make sure they get all the feedings they are suppose to have during the day. That was honestly like the holy grail tips that we received, I truly believe it was what really worked for us in getting Madison to sleep almost fully through the night.
After about three to four weeks with the tips that we just learned we figured out that getting her “milk drunk” helped her go to sleep and stay asleep for long stretches of time along with making sure she got all her feedings during the day. From all the reading I did during pregnancy resting I remembered I read that babies are able to sleep fully through the night as long as they get the calories they require throughout the day, I did also confirm this with Madison’s Pediatrician. It was working, she did amazingly. We had the Baby Shusher and a bassinet from Graco that rocked so that we didn’t have to sit there rocking her to sleep and we used countless amounts of swaddles to find the one that we feel was the easiest to wrap and unwrap.
Of course she still had some bad nights but it was nothing compared to what we could have had. She has since been a really great sleeper. When I was still breastfeeding her I would still have to wake in the night to pump to keep up with my supply but eventually my body had had enough and wasn’t able to keep up with the amount that Madison was wanting to eat during each feeding. We had to start supplementing some feedings with formula and the first one we tried gave her terrible tummy trouble which would cause her to wake in the night sometimes. We tried different ones until we found what worked best for her and I know fed is best so we eventually made the hard decision to do strictly formula. She slept so good from then on really. She’s now almost 7months old and sleeps fully through the night and we even just made the transition to her crib in her room just a few weeks ago. I can do another post on the transition from the bassinet to the crib as well. Overall I am so impressed, she does still wake up in the night sometimes but she will not cry, she plays with her fingers and mumbles but will fall back to sleep fairly quickly on her own. Very rarely will she wake up crying and if she does its only because she wants her pacifier and she can’t find it haha. I will tell you the biggest tips I learned that I believe played a huge roll in her sleeping through the night is:
- Swaddling – babies have a startle reflex, I believe its until 4 or 5 months that will startle them awake if not wrapped up like a burrito.
- Noise machine – Madison loves the shusher – its suppose to calm them and remind them of the womb.
- Independent sleeping – this does not mean leaving your baby to sleep alone in the bassinet or crib and walking away and closing the door. I mean not needing you to rock or hold them in order for sleep to happen. We did rock in the beginning and then we transitioned Madison to her bassinet that also rocked her and then after a while we would not turn the rocking motion on. Now we just lay Madison down in her crib after her Good Night Moon story time and she will play with her fingers a little and mumble to herself as I sit in the rocking chair watching her go to sleep and she won’t need me at all. She falls asleep on her own. Not sure how things will be in the next 6months, if she will allow me to sit and stare at her in her crib while I rock comfortably in the chair next to her but we shall see.
- Early bedtime – Madison goes to bed at 7pm and wakes up anywhere between 530am and 630am. They are going to wake up around that time anyways usually so getting to bed earlier will be key in making sure they get enough hours of sleep so that way you have a nice calm non cranky baby during the day.
One last thing I do want to mention is that in all of my reading during pregnancy I did not come across anyone talking about the possibility of your baby getting a flat head. Maybe its something that people just know or maybe its a commonsense type of thing but it was something I was not prepared for. I did not realize that Madison would favor sleeping on the right side of her head looking toward the left. At one point we were doing tummy time and I had all of a sudden noticed that the back right side was much flatter than the rest of her head. I immediately started researching what had happened, then I started to notice that she would rarely turn her head to the right. She had a doctors appointment fairly soon I remember so I asked the Dr about it and said there was no need for concern but to do a few exercises with her during that day that would help loosen the neck muscles so that when she is sleeping she will turn her head from one side to the other rather than always on the same spot. We found a pillow on Amazon made for this type of thing and started using that in addition to her daily head and neck exercises. Now its pretty much nonexistent, still slightly noticeable only because she has little to no hair haha. Thought I would pass this on incase some of you are like me and didn’t think of that being a thing that happens.
Well there you go guys, our story and a few tips on how we got baby Mads to sleep. Now, this is only my first baby so, God willing, I am able to have another baby I will apply the same tips and see if the outcome will be the same or if it’ll be different. I will say we are pretty lucky to have such an easygoing baby, so happy, so carefree.. only takes a smile for a smile even when cranky. Also all of our baby must-haves are linked in our Shop page for you.
I’d love to hear from any of you who have gone through this already or are soon to be going through this and how the experience has been for you and your family!
