SLEEP TRAINING
Grab yourself a cuppa and take a seat, it’s a long one 😉
From the get go, I always knew I wanted to establish a routine with Eevie. Firstly, because I felt I would be able to manage my days better and I thought it would be beneficial to her to not feel so all over the place and it would allow her body clock to acknowledge when it was time for sleep, feed and play.
When Eevie was born, I had many people say to me “She is a baby, why would you even consider doing this” and believe me, I received it a lot. The answer? Because I was not coping well with the lack of sleep. Lack of sleep meant less attention I could pay to her and the less patience I had of a night. I get it, it’s the good ol’ 4th trimester that hardly gets spoken about, but ladies.. this was the trimester where I knew I had to put in the hard yards to GET SLEEP.
My first go to was a book suggested to me called Save my Sleep- Tizzie Hall. This book basically hands you a routine and that was wonderful for me because hey, I didn’t have to think or plan a single thing! This book, yeah its pretty amazing.. the problem? I found myself constantly looking at the clock.. “oh, its 11am, time to wake up Eevie” “crap, its time to put her for a sleep”. This consumed my LIFE! But I admit, it worked a treat, Thanks, Tizzie. Eevie’s routines looked a tad like this:
7am- wake up and feed
8.30- put E down for sleep
11: wake E and feed. Play
12.30: sleep
3: wake, feed and play.
4.30: nap
5.30: bath, feed, play
7: bed for the night.
As you can see, super established but so controlled.. Eevie was sleeping so much during the day that during the night, I was simply getting jack shit sleep. At this point, Eevie was in the bassinet in my room. My next problem? My baby would not allow herself to sleep in the bassinet, in fact, she cried black and blue as soon as you put her down. So now we have the sleep deprivation and frustration mixed into one. You look over at your partner who is sleeping ever so peacefully wishing you were receiving the same amount of rest and you give him the glare.. boy oh boy did Corey receive the glare, and even better, boy did he hear about it in the morning. The days at this point were beginning to roll into one and I knew I had to do something. Eevie was relying on me for the comfort and whilst that’s all good for now, I needed to be proactive for the future. The first thing I thought was “Maybe she can still sense that I’m around”. I tried moving the bassinet to a different spot rather than next to my bed, nope, nothing.. and I knew that I did NOT want to co-sleep. Although this seemed like a beautiful bonding experience, I didn’t really feel like sharing my space with my children, especially when it’s the only space Corey and I got to share together. It was from here I said “Okay, tomorrow she is going into her cot". The next night, i did just that and we got longer stents of sleep out of Eevie. Initially, it took me longer to get her to sleep as she did not really know her surroundings but I used music as a sleep aid. I went through different lullabies, instruments and songs but nothing was working.. until I read about the good ol’ white noise and guess what worked? A FREAKING TUMBLE DRYER! (all you mums struggling to get the baby to settle, try the app Sleepy Sounds). It was now I realised that maybe I was on to something.. I mean, I moved her location, had found a technique to settle her and now all I needed to do was figure out how to keep her asleep. This led me to create my own set of rules that have gotten myself and Eevie to where we are now:
1. Find ways to soothe your baby that can be done in the cot. Think about it; rocking WORKS and is an absolute treat, but the last thing I wanted was for Eevie to become RELIANT on the rocking, and do you really want your baby to become heavy and reliant on you rocking them?. But soon enough once you put her down in her cot she will wake and realise:
a) Wait, where’s mum
b) Why aren’t I rocking anymore
c) WHERE AM I (Think about it, this is not where your baby remembers falling asleep)
If rocking works for you and you’re happy to continue doing it, then by all mean., KUDOS TO YOU!
Your baby notices where they have fallen asleep and this leads me to rule number 2:
2. Put them in the cot when they are HEAVY EYED and not ASLEEP! Give your baby a cuddle to help the initial process. I usually do this as I wrap Eevie and give her a small kiss on the cheek and tell her it’s now time to go to sleep. Your baby will then acknowledge where there are going to sleep, know that mum has put me down and they will have the ability when they wake up to self-soothe as they are aware of their surroundings.
3. If your baby goes down heavy eyed and a few moments later you hear them start to stir, leave them. Notice the difference between your baby CRYING and having a WHINGE. Studies have proven that babies use whinging sounds to self soothe. If your baby has simply dropped their dummy, I will go back and put it back in Eevies mouth a total of 3 times before I notice its just a clever way to get me to keep coming back. In this case, I’ll let Eevie have a little whinge and let her sort it out herself. I feel this lets her associate the cot with sleep time and the majority of the time it works.
(Try techniques such as patting your baby and "shooshing" at the same time)
NOTE: When Eevie begins to CRY, I will intervene. Your baby generally wants comfort, especially if they have been changed and fed. In this case, I start the process again. I generally don’t leave Eevie in her room to ball her poor little eyes out, because how am I meant to establish trust if I’m not there for her when she really needs me?
If you feel like your baby is not going to go to sleep, don’t stress. They will sleep at some point. When this happens to Eevie, I just change up her routine as follows:
Initial routine:
9-11: sleep
11: feed
Changed:
9-11: awake. Feed Eevie at 11.
11: After feed, put Eevie to sleep.
This is simply just doing the opposite, and I find she will sleep easier on the full tummy especially if she has previously fought it. I will then let her sleep until she is ready to wake up, or ill wake her at 3 so she doesn’t miss a feed. If Eevie did not take any of her morning nap, I am happy to consolidate her naps, so instead of having two 2 hour naps during the day, she can have one long one in the afternoon and that tends to work really well for us. It also ensures that when it comes to bath time, she isn’t so exhausted that she lacks energy to drink her bottle leading to waking up earlier in the night from hunger (this will mean she will wake for more feeds).
So now, my main target is to just make sure that Eevie is fed at the times she needs to be, and in the time between if she wants to sleep, she can sleep.. if she wants to play, she can play. For Eevie, I noticed that controlling her sleep during the day allowed her to have a better, more deeper sleep of a night and allowed her to sleep past her 40 minute sleep cycle.
For those of you who don’t know what that is, babies have what is called a 40 minute sleep regression. This is a part of the first initial stage of sleep and is usually the lightest stage. At this time, your baby will either stir and wake his/herself up and you will have a really hard time trying to reverse this (I tend to find if Eevie doesn’t make it past this regression, she is up for good. At this stage I will get her up if she seems super awake because it becomes a stressful battle for both mum and baby to try and get her back to sleep) or they will sleep past it and you will generally get a really good stent from them. If you notice your baby starting to stir around this time, it is okay to try and intervene. In this time, I like to get Eevie's dummy and just run it along her bottom lip. She will either happily take it and comfort suck through the regression, or she will be deep enough that the sense of touch will keep her asleep.
The most important thing for me to remember was to just enjoy my baby. I found myself so distracted by the clock and trying to get it right that the first 12 weeks of her life just flew past, but at the same time, I wouldn’t be where I am with Eevie now and for that, I’m glad.
This is Eevies current routine:
7am (8 if im lucky): Eevie wakes up. I will give her a bottle and dress her for the day. This separates morning from night and allows her to acknowledge that its not time to go back to bed
9-9.30: I will offer Eevie sleep. If she takes it, awesome. If she doesn’t, I’m not going to fight it, I’ll just try again after 11.
11: Eevie will usually wake up. I give her a bottle and will play with her. Around 1 she will start to become tired
1: I’ll once again offer Eevie sleep. If she doesn’t take it, I’ll offer it again at 3 after her next feed.
3: Eevie will wake up and feed and play.
(Do you start to see the pattern? Sleep, eat, play, repeat?)
4.30: I offer Eevie a 1 hour nap. This will tie her through to 7pm when she is offered her bedtime.
5.30 Wake Eevie up. Give her a bath, offer tummy time and entertain her. Use this time to have heaps of cuddles and encourage cognitive development.
6:15-6:30- feed
7pm: BEDTIME.
If Eevie shows no interest in bed, I keep her up until around 8. From here, I will top her up with an extra 30mls so she has a full tummy and I will put her to bed.
From this routine, Eevie does not wake to feed until around 3.30 in the morning and occasionally I get a full night. When she does wake, I only change her nappy, feed her and put her back into her cot where she falls asleep independently (I try keep the lights dull and make minimal interaction to avoid over stimulating her). I wont usually hear from her again until 7 or 8am. This was a massive difference for me because before I started to sleep train Eevie, she was waking every 1.5-3 hours each night.
NOW.. I do need to disclaim that this is simply what I have done with my baby. I ensured that she was still receiving the appropriate amount of feeds during the day and still maintained the recommended amount of sleep she should be getting during the day for her age. This is not a guide on how to get your baby to sleep, but it sure did work for me. If you feel like giving it a go and it works, let me know! But please feel free to comment and share this out because there truly is a light at the end of the tunnel so don’t give up!
- Sarah.
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