Getting baby to sleep

I've read every book on sleep. I've listed the best below in case you want to read them too. But if you're sleep-deprived and desperate, I've also summarized what you actually need to know here:

1. Newborns need to eat every two hours, so you can't expect them to sleep "through the night" for months. You just have to get used to this and do your best to catch a bit of sleep whenever you can. If anyone asks you what they can do to help you, tell them to help you take a nap!
2. Newborns (0-3 months) feel most comfortable when their circumstances mimic the womb. Swaddling, warmth, a little rocking or gentle jostling, all make a baby feel safe and secure.
3. Once sleep starts to "consolidate", and babies can go longer without eating (3-4 hours by 4 months), you can hope for longer stretches of sleep. Look for this shift to begin between 6-10 weeks.
4. Babies' sleep cycles last 40-45 minutes. At the end of every cycle they come up to light sleep and (as we all do) check their surroundings. If they find anything disturbing, they wake fully up.
5. Babies can generally only stay awake about 90 minutes at a time in the early months, so you can start developing a routine of naps and bedtime somewhere between 6-10 weeks of age by helping them to sleep at the end of the 90 minutes.

1. Track his sleep patterns
2. Anticipate his next sleep need
3. Make it easy for him to fall asleep
4. Connect sleep and food
5. Create a bedtime ritual
6. Keep him from waking up
7. Put him back to sleep when he wakes up
8. Facilitate good naps
9. Handle aberrations and disturbances
10. Sleep training

This may sound like another difficult chore in an already busy day, but keeping a sleep log actually saved my life. I only wish I'd started it sooner. I waited until Jax was 3 months old when I could have started at 6-8 weeks!

All you have to do is start watching your baby (which you're doing anyway, right?). When he starts to get at all sleepy (yawns, rubs his eyes), get him swaddled up and put him down for a nap. But note the time first! Then note the time that he wakes up (even if it is 10 minutes later). Keep doing this for a couple of days.

it didn't take me long to figure out that Jax was a textbook baby who got really tired after being awake only 90 minutes. Then, if I created the right sleep environment, he'd sleep for at least one sleep cycle (his last 40 min). Finally, I could predict when a nap would happen!! And I'd have at least 40 min to nap myself or get something done.

As you become expert in reading the cues, you'll find it easier and easier to put your baby down at just the right moment. If his little head is touching the bed just when he is at his sleepiest, he'll go down without a fuss. Too early and he'll look at you quizzically or just get mad. Too late and he may be overtired, which can make him really wired.

Get him up as soon as you know he's fully awake so that he doesn't associate his bed with frustration or other negative emotions. Come in smiling and happy after he's had his sleep. Make him feel that that nap/night sleep was the best thing he could have done. He won't know what you're saying, but he'll pick up on the intent.

Once your baby's sleep has started to consolidate and he can sleep for hours at a time, it's important to have predictable routines and markers of sleep. He should sleep in the same place for naps and nighttime whenever possible. Car or stroller naps are fine too, but not too often.

Here's what I've learned:
1. Darkness - the room should be dark (~80% dark - I have blackout curtains and use two small nightlights that give off soft, diffuse light).
2. Temperature - when Jax was really little (under 4 months), we kept the room at about 72degrees. Now that he's older, we keep it at about 69-70.
3. Covers - we use footie pajamas on all but the hottest days and then a sleep sack (wearable blanket). The sleep sacks come in heavier and lighter fabrics. They are great because blankets can be dangerous and the baby may kick them off and get cold.
4. Sound - white noise is great for helping babies sleep. It can be soothing and also drown out other noises. We use an ocean wave sound. Just hearing it through the monitor makes me sleepy too!
5. Diapering - a wet diaper doesn't usually wake a baby up, but a cold wet diaper will. You need a diaper that is super absorbent. Then double it, so the outer diaper keeps the inner one warmer. You can generally re-use the outer one (better for the environment). When in doubt, go with a higher size. This prevents leakage and shouldn't bother the baby since he'll be sleeping soundly. Slather him up with diaper cream first to create a barrier between his skin and the nighttime pee. We started out trying to only use earth-conscious products, but sadly ended up finding that Huggies overnights were the best ones. For those using cloth diapers, I've heard there is a wool diaper cover that helps keep things warm.
6. Lovey - start using a lovey (stuffed animal or blanket) with your baby as early as possible. Since you can't put it in the bed with the baby right until 5-7months (ask your doctor), you can at least have it nearby when you're nursing or feeding him. That way it will smell and feel like love and mommy and food and all things good. Then, once you can put it in his bed with him, he'll have a friend there. It helps a lot when they wake up at night. We use Bun-bun and even have a second Bun-bun in the car for when he needs to nap in his car seat.
7. Last - Put him down awake but drowsy. That way he'll learn to fall asleep on his own. Try and find that perfect moment when he's really ready for sleep. We used to rock Jax until that moment, then slowly take him over to his crib and lay him down. Now that he's a bit older, we read him a story and then put him down. Trial and error helps here!

It sounds obvious, doesn't it? Babies sleep better on a full stomach. And they wake up less often in the night to feed if they've had more during the day. Let's say your baby needs 24oz of milk a day (for example - again, check with your doctor for actual amounts). If he gets about 20oz (breast or bottle) between 7am and 7pm, he would only need to wake up once during the 12 hours between 7pm and 7am to feed to get his full 24oz. You can find out how much he's getting during a nursing by weighing him before and after - that was pretty cool when I did that!

Jax started sleeping 10-12 hours once we started "tanking him up" during the day, at about 4 months of age. We also started giving him a "dream feed" at 4 months. This is a technique described by the Baby Whisperer (see books list below), where you quietly give him a bottle before you go to bed (can be breast, but works best with bottle because they don't wake up as much). He doesn't actually really wake up, but you give him a sort of pre-emptive feeding at about 10pm or so. Read the Baby Whisperer for all the details. It worked well for us for a couple of months until Jax didn't need the extra feeding anymore (I think we stopped it at about 61/2 or 7 months). Some people are really against the dream feed, but I think if you only use it as a crutch for a couple of months, it is fine. And then you can go to sleep at 10:30pm knowing that your baby is likely to sleep for 5-8 hours! What a great feeling!!

The experts warn against creating a negative "sleep association" with food if you always feed a baby before sleep, but I've found it to be an easy habit to break (if it was ever actually a habit for Jax, which I think it wasn't). Just slowly add a little more time between the last feeding and putting him down. And Jax often doesn't get a feeding before his nap (the timing isn't always right) and he goes to sleep just fine.

Our ritual is: bath, diapering, pjs, final feeding (used to be nursing, now a bottle), toothbrush (done in the glider - see great toothbrush below), story and sleep. We play soft lullabies and then switch to the white noise just before putting him down. He knows what to expect next and goes down like a dream.

There are many possible bedtime routines, but the important things to remember are:
1. Pick a routine that others can do (grandparents, babysitters, etc)
2. Don't make it too long (ours is 15-20 minutes)
3. Make sure it can be portable (you can do it in a hotel room or someone else's house)
4. Be consistent!
5. Evolve it over time (Jax now enjoys a real story rather than just a few pictures in a board book, even if he doesn't know what all the words mean)

We love bedtime now!

A note on tooth brushing: my pediatrician's assistant made me feel like a terrible mother because I wasn't brushing his TWO teeth after every meal. Okay, I don't even brush two of my own teeth after every meal, but I wasn't going to tell her that! So I started using bits of wet gauze to wipe his (then) 3 teeth, but he hated it and it messed up our peaceful bedtime routine. Finally I found this baby toothbrush thing that he loves to gnaw on. I keep it by the bed in a bit of water, and "brush" his teeth with it when he finishes his bottle. He usually likes to hold on to it and chew on it for a bit after, during his story. Works out great!

You can't make your baby sleep for hours and hours, but at least you can remove minor irritants or problems that might wake your baby up (and keep him from falling right back to sleep).

1. Temperature - keep it fairly steady throughout the night. We used a small space heater that had its own thermostat in his room (it also helped save on heating the whole house). We kept his room at 72 degrees during his first 3-4 months (and it was winter then), now at 69-70 degrees.
2. Pain - if he's teething or sick, give him infant tylenol or whatever your doctor recommends. Pain makes it hard to sleep.
3. Hunger - make sure he's eaten all his calories (or ounces of milk) during the day, ending with a large intake just before bed.
4. Quiet - the house doesn't have to be silent, and the white noise machine should help mask normal noises, but be careful about every 40-45 minutes that you don't have a loud noise during his lightest part of the sleep cycle.
5. Location - don't move your baby after he's fallen asleep unless you absolutely have to. During his next light part of the sleep cycle, he'll sense that he's somewhere else and wake up fully to investigate

Many things wake a baby up and you can't do anything about them. Many babies wake up a lot when they are reaching developmental milestones, like rolling over, crawling or standing. They'll even practice in bed. I remember when Jax had learned to roll over but not back again and I had to go in to turn him back over once or twice a night for a week or so.

The best thing that a baby can learn is how to naturally fall right back to sleep when he wakes up in the night (as we all do). If he cries at night and you know he's not hungry or in pain, try letting him be for 5 minutes and see if he'll fall back asleep on his own. The more he learns to do that, the better he'll get at it and the more sleep you'll get!

Sometimes a baby wakes up at night and isn't hungry or cold or poopy (poopy diapers always need to be changed right away, while pee can wait). If there is something irritating him, you can obviously fix it. But, if not, your best bet is to try and get him back to sleep as soon as possible. The longer he stays awake, the harder it is to teach him to fall back asleep easily on his own over the long run.

Don't:
1. Turn the lights on (only what you need. Dimmer switches are great for this!)
2. Make a lot of noise, talk to him, or talk to each other
3. Play with him (he needs to know that night is for sleeping, not playing)
4. Feed him (assuming he's older than a few months and has had enough during the day)

Once he is older than 4 months, I recommend waiting for 5 minutes before going to him to see if he goes back to sleep on his own. Only go to him if he sounds really distressed. Then do, as my pediatrician says, "as little as possible." If that means you rub his back but don't pick him up, that's fine. Or pick him up and rock for a couple of minutes, but don't talk to him. You have to find what you're comfortable with and what works for you. But the less you do, the less he'll expect you to do going forward.

Don't be afraid of putting him back down, even if he cries. Often Jax will cry for a minute or two when I put him back down, but then fall back to sleep quickly. Worse case scenario, we "back him out" and re-do part of the bedtime ritual (turn the lullabies on, low light, story, a bottle with water in it, rocking in the glider chair), and then put him down when he looks sleepy again.

If you have major problems with putting your baby down or getting your baby back to sleep, consider sleep training and see the section below on this. There are many methods of sleep training, from the softest with the least tears to the harshest with more tears. The harsher ones are for those who like pulling a bandaid off quickly. Some people get there after they've tried the other, gentler methods. The main thing is, do what you think works for you and don't judge others. We all do what we can.

I've found this to be mostly true. The exception is the nap too late in the day (too close to bedtime), or that lasts too long (for Jax that's any nap over 3 hours).

We suffered from short-nap syndrome until about 6 months of age. Jax would nap for only 45 minutes at a time, never making it past his first sleep cycle. And he would frequently wake up at night after being down only 40-45 minutes too. I tried the Baby Whisperer methods for extending naps, but they didn't work at all for us. This eventually improved when he started rolling and crawling more. He tired himself out. Tummy time helps tire out younger babies too. All good things come from tummy time.

But at least with the sleep pattern worked out, he had a more or less predictable routine every day, even if the naps were short. Later the naps lengthened and we had only two longer naps a day.

The important things to do with naps:
1. Follow an abbreviated version of your bedtime ritual (maybe just lullabies and rocking, no bath, for example). It helps to calm the baby and lets him know what to expect next.
2. Put him down for naps in the same place he sleeps at night (when possible).
3. Time the nap so his head hits the bed when he is good and sleepy, but not overtired or overstimulated (wind-down with the shortened bedtime ritual helps).
4. Full stomach and dry diaper
5. Comfortable clothes/covers. I use a sleep sack for naps and make sure he's wearing something without buckles or big buttons).
6. White noise, dark room, etc. All the same conditions that you use at night.
7. Don't let him nap too close to bedtime or wake him up if he naps too long in the evening.

Then take a nap yourself!!

House guests, travel, sickness, teething, thunderstorms, power outages, aliens from outer space parking their spaceship next to the house. It could be anything. But you can be sure that, even if your baby is sleeping like, well, a baby, he'll stop. Then what do you do?

First, don't panic. One or two bad nights won't destroy all your hard work. You just have to re-establish your routines and rituals as much as you can and as quickly as you can. When we travel, we bring white noise and lullabies (on the iPod), his lovey (aka Bun-bun), and his favorite books. When Jax is teething really badly, we give him tylenol and have teething rings frozen and ready to use in the middle of the night. With house guests and other visitors, we extend his bedtime ritual away from the guests so that he has time to unwind from the excitement of new people. We got him his own seat on the plane recently and brought his car seat and he slept like, well, like a baby.

Stick to your routine and, after a few nights you'll all be back on track!

1. Dr. Sears - Attachment parenting - get your child to sleep by whatever means necessary, don't feel guilty about it. Letting a baby cry alone at night makes his cortisol rise and that makes it harder to sleep.
2. Elizabeth Pantley - No Cry - basically comfort your baby in whatever way works until he is almost asleep, then put him down. Don't let a child cry alone in the dark at night.
3. Tracey Hogg (aka The Baby Whisperer) - Pick up / Put down - when your child cries, pick him up only until he stops crying then put him down again right away. He'll learn that getting picked up isn't worth it. Don't let a child cry alone in the dark at night.
4. Richard Ferber - Intervals of intervention (aka Ferberizing) - when your child cries, go in in ever-increasing intervals, but don't pick up. Leave quickly. Crying won't hurt the baby and he learns that there isn't any up-side to continuing to cry. Takes 3-7 nights but baby learns to put himself to sleep.
5. Marc Weissbluth - Extinction (aka Crying it out) - go cold turkey and let the baby cry until he falls asleep. Supposed to be faster than Ferber.

The one that I've heard you should stay away from is Babywise (Ezzo/Bucknam). Their methodologies are so harsh that they've been associated with babies failing to thrive. No need to mess around with that!

There are plenty of pros and cons to each of these and hundreds of opinions about them. You just have to pick one that you're comfortable with. And know that your feelings about them may evolve over time. I listed them loosely in the order of "harshness", ie how much crying your may have to endure. We used to have a terrible time listening to Jax cry and I ran to him at the first moment. Then I learned that if I just waited 5 minutes, he'd be back asleep half the time.

It is still hard to hear him cry, but not nearly as much as in the beginning, especially when we know he's basically okay and just wants company. You learn to understand the different cries that your baby makes.

Ultimately, we haven't had to follow any one of these too religiously, but would probably choose to Ferberize if needed (and we still may need to some day). I like that he would see us regularly during it and know he wasn't abandoned.

Jax is getting to the age when he's beginning to learn that people respond to him and care about his wishes. This is a wonderful thing, but also opens the door for what people used to call "spoiling" and "manipulation". I can't really apply those words to a 10 month-old, but can see that we may take a firmer route in the future when it comes to setting limits than we've had to thus far.

Long story short, you all have to find your path in this. And please try and do it without guilt! If you love your baby (and you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't), you're doing fine. From what I have seen, there are many roads that lead to a good night's sleep and none of the ones outlined here have done anyone any harm (except Babywise). Once you've gotten some sleep, please let me know what has worked for you!