This is not one of those blog posts where I’ll say “Bastian is the perfect baby and has been sleeping through the night since 6 weeks! #blessed”. No, that’s not the story here. Bastian is a very good baby, but a great sleeper is not something he’s always been. When he was a newborn he slept pretty well, I think. I don’t have a lot to compare it to, as he’s our first baby. With few exceptions, Bastian would get up 2-4 times a night while still a newborn. It got less and less, and then we hit the four month sleep regression. I thought we’d never get our baby to sleep through the night. He was up, crying, for what felt like hours at a time. We felt like zombies. Was this what it was like to be a “real parent”?!
Thankfully, it didn’t last forever. As soon as the sleep regression began to subside, we started sleep training. And it took us a long time. Maybe we were too lenient. I think there is no “one way” to sleep train, or to get your baby to sleep through the night. We had to try a few things before we found what worked for us. The key is, once you find what works for you, to stick to it.
Baby Wise
I’ve mentioned before that we loosely based our sleep training off of the book, “On becoming baby wise“. We liked the book, and it was really helpful. We tried a few things from the book, and then modified them to what we felt comfortable with. The most important thing that I gained from reading that book, was that their sleep schedule needs to be consistent. Not just at night, but throughout the day, too. So, the first step we took, was to set a routine for his naps. We set intervals for when he’d nap(every hour of waketime would be followed by a nap, for example). We’ve had to modify this as he’s gotten older, but we try to keep it consistent day to day. Once he was comfortable sleeping during the day, we moved on to sleep training at night. It only took us a few days to get his napping schedule regulated.
Why we chose not to cry it out
I know a lot of people who have done the cry it out method, but it wasn’t for us. Simply because, Bastian will exhaust himself but not fall asleep. We do, however, let him cry if it’s a soft cry. If it becomes scared or a more harsh cry in anyway, we head in and get him immediately. Otherwise, we’ll let him soft cry for about 5 minutes, before going in to soothe him. If he’s whimpering or fussy but not actually crying(a good indicator for us is if he’s standing up, he generally won’t go to sleep unless we go lay him back down), we leave him until he falls asleep. And once we implemented this, letting him self soothe himself to sleep, that’s when we really started to make progress with getting him to sleep through the night.
Night weaning
The next step for us, after setting up a sleep schedule, was to night wean him. Aside from letting him gently learn to self soothe, this was the most important thing to get him to sleep through the night! My baby used to wake up at about 2:30 every morning to eat. It took him a few days to catch on, but it was hard. Essentially, every time he woke up after midnight, for about a week, Seth went in. Bastian would cry and scream when it wasn’t me, and it was a hard week for all three of us. After a few nights, he stopped being so dramatic when he realized it wasn’t me, and within a week, he was sleeping through his 2:30 feeding.
Getting him to finally sleep through the night
Bastian sleeping through the night was a gradual process. It wasn’t like, bam, after one simple week of sleep training, he didn’t get up at night anymore. It was a slow and gradual process over a few months. Partially because we wanted to be gentle, and partially because traveling and teething kept ruining it. We would get to a good spot, and he’d be sleeping all night, and then another tooth would cut through and we’d have to do some of the hard work again. The holidays kind of ruined things for about a month, where he stopped sleeping through the night. But I’m happy to say that within a week of returning from Christmas, he was back on a schedule and sleeping through the night.
Structure
I think the key to getting your baby to sleep through the night is structure! Things will change and get in the way and set you back. But as long as there’s a routine in place, to provide structure, your baby should bounce back relatively quickly and you’ll all start sleeping again. We found it was really helpful to have a set routine every night! Bath, lotion, storytime, and then I nurse him for a few minutes before laying him down(awake) and then leave the room. He’s 10 months old now and has been sleeping through the night for about 4 months, with a few small hiccups dispersed throughout those 4 months.