How I got my babies to sleep through the night - lessons learnt from two very different sleepers (what worked and what didn't)
My firstborn sleeping in his cot
"We were watching football together but she got tired and had to take a nap. I miss her. Can't wait till naptime is over." This is a quote from an Instagram caption back in 2017. Serena Williams was referring to her baby daughter who was a few months old at the time.
I was a rookie parent back then - my eldest son was about the same age as Williams' daughter. I remember reading this while my son slept in my arms (the only place he would sleep for any considerable amount of time). I thought: “good for you Serena Williams, my baby doesn't sleep long enough for me to miss him!”
I've often felt like getting a baby to sleep and stay asleep is like performing some sort of rain dance ceremony to the gods. There's a whole hoo-ha of rituals ("he must be rocked precisely 30 times or you'll have to start again", "if he moves you need to wait another 2 minutes before removing your hand").
Then there's the finger-crossing trepidation afterwards: I would wish to myself as I crept out of the room: "Please, please, please stay asleep! Mummy just needs half an hour to herself..." I would hold my breath as I finally reached the doorway and closed the door slowly - no cries (hooray!). I would fist pump the air behind the now closed door. But then, 2 seconds later, just as I'd be thinking about heading to the kitchen and collecting that hard won drink and piece of chocolate: the shriek of alarm would come from inside the room. Then I would start crying as I felt my life being sucked away....
My first son was (and still is sometimes at 3.5 years old) a horrendously bad sleeper. Both getting to sleep and sleeping through. I could probably count on one hand the times he slept through the night in the first 18 months of his life. At its worst (when he was around 5 or 6 months) he was waking up every 40 minutes to 1 hour, and taking about 30 mins to get back to sleep each time. I was in a depressive fog of exhaustion and unable to enact a plan to improve the situation. I needed sleep, especially after going back to my work as a biomedical researcher when he was 9 months old.
Can you relate to this?
Coffee, and lots of it, was an absolute necessity in order to function with very little sleep
I'm guessing that if you can, you've come here for some answers about how to get your baby to sleep. I am no sleep expert, but during those torturous, sleep-deprived first 18 months of my eldest son's life, I READ A LOT about baby sleep, I TRIED various tactics, and I DID (eventually) get him to the point where he could fall asleep by himself, in his own bed, and then sleep through the night.
Then, last February I had my second son, who has turned out to have the complete opposite sleeping personality compared to my firstborn. Sure, we experienced the usual newborn wake ups and he fed to sleep in those first few months. By five months old, however, he was self-soothing and putting himself to sleep in his own bed. Most miraculous of all: he was sleeping though the night (for 11 to 12 house that is!). An achievement my first son didn't reach until he was 16 months old.
So, you see, I have had 2 babies at complete opposite ends of the sleeping spectrum. How did this come to be? And how can you improve your babies sleep based on my experiences?
In what follows I'm going to give you a case study of each of my two babies in regard to their sleep: including the approaches we took with each, what didn't work, and, most importantly, what ended up working.
Mistakes we made with our firstborn
Looking back now with an experienced eye, I see that we made a lot of mistakes with our first son (that may or may not have contributed to his sleep difficulties).
Conditions in which he fell asleep
Nursing
I primarily nursed him to sleep for the first 16 months of his life (ie the entire time he was nursing). For the first 8 months, he was fed to sleep for most sleep (naps and nighttime sleep). For the second 8 months (after he began childcare) he was only fed to sleep for his nighttime sleep.
Rocking
On the few occasions he wasn't fed to sleep at home (eg on the weekend when my husband was around), the only other way to get him to sleep was to rock him: for up to 20 minutes!
But what about at childcare?
At childcare he would fall asleep on his own in his bed, with one of the carers sitting next to him for about 5 minutes. I asked and asked them for details, but could never seem to replicate this at home!
The careful transfer to his bed
After feeding, I would hold him for about 20 mins until he was in a deep sleep and then I would carefully transfer him into his bed, being sure not to wake him up (this was on the recommendation of Dr Sears from “The Baby Sleep Book”).
Or, I would continue holding him
If I wanted to ensure that he napped for longer than about 30 mins, I would hold him for his entire nap. He would easily stay asleep for 2h if either my husband or I was holding him.
What resulted from this?
Because he never fell asleep on his own in his bed, he ended up with a number of external sleep requirements (eg nursing, holding, and rocking). He came to rely on these, so that any time he woke up in the middle of the night, he would cry for me or my husband to put him back to sleep (using one of these methods).
Timing and routines
Bedtime
In retrospect, his bedtime was too late - often he was going to bed for the night at 8 - 9pm or even later, and then re-waking 30min-1h after bedtime. I think he was overtired.
Nap routine
I became obsessive about instilling one when he was 7 months old and I knew he would soon be starting daycare, but it never really worked: his wake-up times, and therefore nap times, were all over the place - varying wildly from day to day. He was often up for 5 hours at a time (even at 7 months) because I couldn't seem to read his sleepy signals and I (mistakenly) thought that he would be more tired if he had longer awake times.
Sleep environment
I was carrying him around in the Ergo baby carrier a lot (instead of using the stroller). I think he got used to falling asleep on me for these naps, and associated a lot of his daytime sleep with my body heat.
For naps up until he was about 14 months old, he was napping in our bedroom with the blind open. I should have probably made his sleep environment darker (for daytime naps) once he started distinguishing day from night (most experts say this occurs around 6 weeks to 3 months).
How we ended up succeeding in improving our first son’s sleep
By the time our firstborn son was 16 months old, we had begun to teach him how to fall asleep by himself in his bed, and we were starting to see some positive results - he was sporadically sleeping for stretches of 10 h without waking us up - HUGE PROGRESS!
So, how did we achieve this?
Our firstborn’s feet pocking out from his blanket
My husband and I alternated nights on-duty for getting him to sleep (one night me, one night him etc).
We stopped nursing: I don't think this was a requirement for this tactic to work, but it was time for him to wean anyway.
We would begin with his usual pre-bed routine (minus nursing):
Nappy change
Story
Kisses
New step: the person on-duty would take him to his (already dark) room while he was still awake and then put him in his cot (crib).
That person would then lay him on his stomach (by this age he was a clear stomach sleeper) and would stroke and jiggle his back.
If he resisted and started crying: we would jiggle more and make "shh" sounds or buzzing type sounds under our breath.
When we first started this, he would take on average about 30 mins to fall asleep. We would stay with him the whole time it took for him to go to sleep. We gradually started easing off our involvement over weeks (and months). For example: we would stop making the sound, then stop stroking (but still touch), then stop touching, then just sit next to the bed, then move slowly away from the bed, then stand at the door, then close the door etc. If he woke up during any of these transitions, we would go back to the step before. Eventually we got to the point where we could put him in bed, stroke his back a couple of times, and then walk out of the room straightaway (leaving him to fall asleep by himself).
This took a long time to ingrain in him (a couple of months). It was probably because he was already quite old when we started this process. Perhaps it would work more quickly for a younger baby. We did see sporadic results a couple of weeks in, but didn't see consistent results until after 2 months. But it did (eventually) work: we managed to convert a toddler who was addicted to external sleep cues and who woke up multiple times during the night, into a boy who could fall asleep on his own in his bed and stay asleep!
What we did the second time round that may have contributed to better sleep
Sleepy but awake and falling asleep in bed
I think this is the most important tactic that we used in contributing to our second son's ability to become the world's best baby sleeper! If you read no other section, read this!
I balked at this idea with my first son. I had read it over and over in all the sleep books and on all the baby sleep websites: "baby needs to go into be sleepy but awake." This had just seemed impossible with our first son - "he will never do it," I thought, "he'll just start screaming." But then, seeing how our firstborn son's sleep had so dramatically changed after he was able to put himself to sleep, we were keen to try to instil this much earlier with our second son.
I kind of ended up naturally doing it with my second son. Everything felt easier and more intuitive the second time around. In the early days (let's say up until about 3 months), he would nurse to sleep. After he fell asleep and finished nursing, I would hold him upright for 10-15 minutes. By that stage he was fast asleep. Instead of trying to carefully place him in his bed without waking him up (like I did with my first son), I would rouse him a little after I put him down. Just enough so that he registered that he was slightly awake and now in his bed. Then I would rub his chest until he settled back into sleep. And it worked! He was still such a sleepy newborn that it was pretty easy for him to fall back to sleep in his bed after rousing.
Now all those ideas I'd read in the sleep books started making sense:
For instance, Elizabeth Pantley suggests to "[l]et your newborn baby suck until she is sleepy but not totally asleep. As often as you can...let her finish falling asleep without something in her mouth". But because I couldn't seem to stop my son from falling asleep, I followed Dr Sears' advice of rousing him as I placed him in bed.
Pantley also suggests to put "your baby in his bed when he is sleepy instead of sleeping" as often as you can, from the newborn age and before any habits or associations could be ingrained.
Beyond 3 months (ie once he stopped feeding to sleep): I would take him into the dark bedroom and rock him for about 10 seconds (seconds, not minutes!) near his bed. This meant that I was calming him down before sleep but putting him into his bed while he was still awake. Because he'd been used to falling asleep in his bed all along, he didn't really resist this too much. Sometimes he would cry - in those cases I would rub his chest until he settled, while avoiding eye contact. Around this time he naturally started sleeping sporadically (not every single night) for good stretches of time: 4-6 h. I would generally only need to wake up once per night to nurse him.
We treated all wake ups after his designated bedtime (eg 7:30pm) as night time wake ups (this stopped happening altogether at about 4-5 months): but, if he did wake up, we would make sure to dim the lights, use quiet voices, avoid stimulation, and try to avoid talking to him. We simply dealt with his needs (whether that be a cuddle, feeding, change of nappy) quickly and calmly.
Once my 2nd baby was a little older (around 4-6 months), I would go through a hierarchical process to deal with night wake ups:
Rub his back and shh
Pick him up and rock him gently
Check nappy
Feed
Around 4-5 months he started finding his finger and sucking on that to soothe himself (he would always do this once he was getting tired; note: we have never used a pacifier for either of our sons - they just never took to them). Sometimes he did this while he was playing underneath his baby gym and put himself to sleep there during the day! But this was a next-level game changer for his sleep: he consistently stopped waking up for a nightly feed and started sleeping for 11-13h stretches without waking us up! I would hear him sometimes during the night find his finger and start sucking on it instead of crying.
Timing and routines
Although I think the key to our second son's sleep success was our early fostering of his ability to self-sooth and put himself to sleep in his own bed, there were a few other things that we did differently with our second son compared to our first.
Earlier bed time
We instilled a much earlier bedtime for our second son from about 3 months onwards (before 3 months, he was going to sleep for the night at about 9 - 9:30, after cluster feeding). Since around 3 months, his usual bedtime has been between 7 - 8pm.
We don't schedule naps
I (simply) put him to sleep when he's been awake for about 2 h or is showing sleepy signals (fussing slightly, yawning, rubbing his eyes, sucking on his finger). I've been following this since he was about 4 months old, and I'm still basically doing the same thing now at 10 months old. Even now, he's only generally awake for about 2-3 hours at a time during the day. He often takes marathon naps (think: 3 - 5 hrs), but since he has been sleeping so consistently at night, I don't mess with this. These kind of naps would have been unheard of for my first son.
Sears delves into a lot of detail about knowing your baby's tired signals and suggests that there's a small window (10-15mins) from their first signal in which it's relatively easy to get your baby to sleep. From my experience, I've found this to be true. I try to get my second son in bed asap after I see the first hint of a yawn or tired eyes.
Sleep environment
While we (I) were still carrying our first son around in the Ergo baby carrier until he was about 14 months old (after which time my back gave in, and I could no longer do it), we transitioned our second son from the Ergo to the pram at about 6 months. This meant that the - breaking association of sleep with me and body heat
Our first son went straight into his cot (crib) from day 1, but we used a basinet for the first few months of our second son's life. This has a little rocking mechanism (you could rock it by hand slightly), which helped in the early days to "rock" him without him being in anyone's arms).
For the first couple of weeks we tried swaddling, but then quickly switched to a cosy sleeping bag (he didn't seem to be woken up by his Moro reflex.
How we handled the 8-9 month sleep regression with our 2nd son
While our second son has been an A+ sleeper on most accounts, he has still had his share of struggles. After sleeping consistently well from about 5 months, once he reached 8 months he started struggling to get himself to sleep. Then he stopped sleeping through the night: waking up and then taking a while to calm down and get back to sleep. I think this was mainly due to the fact that he was teething and going through some major developmental changes (learning to crawl, for instance).
Since we didn't want to introduce any bad habits, we decided that we would allow for a little crying. Not too much - we would go into the room every few minutes or so if he sounded like he was having problems. Sometimes it took about an hour to get him to sleep, but this only lasted for about 2 weeks and then he was back to his usual sleeping patterns. I think the key is not to get perturbed: even the best sleeper can (and will) have problems sometimes (whether that's due to teething, sickness, developmental leaps, or something completely left of field). I'm glad that we suffered through a bit of crying and didn't resort to more parent-involved methods during this time.
Additional Notes
Traditional sleep techniques / equipment we didn’t use for either of our sons (but may still be helpful to others)
Swaddling
We tried it in both cases for the first couple of weeks, but quickly converted to sleeping bags.
White noise
We didn't use it at all for our first son. With our second, we used it for about the first month. It, however, didn't seem to make any difference whether we used it or not, so we stopped (my husband was being kept awake by the white noise!).
Pacifiers / dummies
Neither of our sons took to them and we didn't force the issue, thinking it was better not to have a reliance on them anyway. But our second son does like to suck his finger as a self-soothing mechanism.
General advice that I think is useful to keep in mind
Keep the 2 hours before bedtime screen-free and dim (Sarah Ockwell-Smith).
Make sure that your baby gets some exposure to outside natural light every day (Sarah Ockwell-Smith).
Having a simple pre-sleep routine that you always stick to: eg feed, nappy change, story (Sarah Ockwell-Smith).
Never let your baby do a longer stretch of sleep during the day than what they do at night (I heard this on the What Fresh Hell podcast). My 2nd son routinely takes 3-5h naps, but he sleeps for 12-13h at night, so I let him do this.
Recommended sleep books and resources
Conclusion: self-soothing is the key to cultivating an independent sleeper
You might say that I was just extremely unlucky with my first son and extremely lucky with my second: two different babies with two different temperaments and sleep personalities. I would argue, however, that we did enough different things between our two boys that we cannot put their different sleep abilities simply down to personality alone.
I think the thing our first son struggled with was being able to put himself to sleep in his bed. On the other hand (because we encouraged it from the outset) our second son developed this ability much earlier and more readily. I think this was the key to his excellent sleep: if he would wake up during the night, he could put himself back to sleep because that's how he went to sleep in the first place.
Take home message: try to (in whatever way possible to you) teach your baby to fall asleep independently in their bed.
I hope this article has been helpful to any of you out there who are exhausted and fed up. I hope that my detailed story inspires you to keep on trying to improve your baby's sleep, and offers some reassurance that you're not alone.
Tell me: does your baby sleep easily or is it a struggle? What are some methods you've used to improve your baby's sleep? Leave all your thoughts down in the comments and open up the discussion!
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