We have been very lucky to have a baby that is a great sleeper. I’m convinced that we did help her get to this point… but I do think some babies are easier than others. I will say at 5 weeks we questioned if we would ever sleep again… but I’m happy to share Rowen is now sleeping from 8pm to 8am with no intervention from us!
DISCLAIMER #1 : This applies to babies 8 weeks and older… unfortunately before then you just have to survive. We had a lot of nights where Rowen slept on our chest in the recliner and unfortunately I don’t have a magic spell to tell you… just know IT GETS BETTER and the sleepless nights do end!
DISCLAIMER #2: What worked for us may not work for your baby… but I know what it’s like to be up at 4am googling “how to get my baby to sleep” so I figured I would share what I believe helped us!
TIP #1 : stick to your age appropriate wake windows
Whenever I googled “how to get my baby to sleep” every article talked about wake windows. I kept Rowen up for what I thought was the appropriate amount of time, but until I got the premium version (Sweetspot) of the Huckleberry app, she was never ready for a nap. She was always over or under tired! Now I don’t recommend buying a ton of apps, but this one is worth it! You input your baby’s sleep and it will predict the right nap time. The upgrade (sweetspot generator) is only available once your baby is 2 months!
When Rowen was 2 months old she was taking 4ish naps a day. Her wake windows were : 1h 15m + 1h 30m + 1h 30m + 1h 40m + 1h 40m. Now that Rowen is 5 months she has 3 naps and wake windows of : 1h 45m + 2h + 2h 15m + 2h 30m.
We cap all naps at 2 hours with the last nap only being 30 min! She usually wakes up at 8am and is down at night around 8pm. Of course we are flexible and this changes based on her sleep during the day, but overall it tends to fall right around there!
TIP #2 : get the calories in during the day
Rowen naturally transitioned out of eating at night so I can’t attest to having to figure that out… but I do believe this helped! Once we started feeding Rowen more during the day, she naturally stopped needing bottles at night! When she was younger I made sure to feed her every 2ish hours. Now she can go 3.5 hours, but we are also feeding her more at each feeding. At 2 months, Rowen was getting 29-32oz a day ALL DURING THE DAY!
TIP #3 : good sleep environment
I’m sure you have read this before but I do think this helps! Rowen prefers it to be on the cooler side at night, between 68 and 69 degrees. She sleeps in a onesie and Kyte sleepsack with a Hatch sound machine and black out curtains. Her sound machine is currently playing on the tv sound with no light and she sleeps like a baby. Literally.
tip #4 : move them out of your room
We moved Rowen to our closet around 2 months and to her nursery/crib around 3 months. Babies are super noisy sleepers and it can be hard to tell if they are still asleep or awake when they make loud noises. By moving Rowen out of our room, not only did she not wake up every time we or the dogs moved, but we also didn’t wake up every time she made a little sound! I believe we would get her and wake her up thinking she was already awake, when she wasn’t, just because we would hear her moving or making sounds.
Her nursery is on a different level than our bedroom so moving her to our master closet first gave us some piece of mind until we were ready. AND, it is pitch black in there so that was perfect!
TIP #5 : get on a schedule
Rowen now thrives on her schedule. When she was 2 months old she ate every 2-2.5 hours and we were very strict with putting her down for a nap when the Huckleberry app said to! Her bedtime changed depending on her naps but it usually fell between 8-9pm and her morning started around 7:30-8am every morning. We still had to be flexible with her schedule since her naps were still inconsistent, but no matter what, we tried to stick to her wake windows and the eat, play, sleep schedule.
Of course we weren’t perfect all the time and sometimes she would be tired before her scheduled nap time, or she would fall asleep at the bottle so I would let her sleep, but for the most part we tried to stick to this. Now she sleeps for 2 hours at her naps and eats every 3.5ish hours. As soon as it’s nap time, she is ready to go to sleep!
TIP #6 : sleep train!
VERY CONTROVERSIAL! *we started when Rowen was 3.5 months old!
THE BEST THING WE EVER DID. I hate that some moms get mom shamed for doing this… but I’m just going to come out and say it. Sleep training saved our sanity and it was the best thing we could have ever done. Yes, it was hard to hear Rowen cry… and yes, I was nervous to start but I wholeheartedly believe this is the major reason Rowen is such a great sleeper!
About a week before we started sleep training, I started putting Rowen down awake for naps. 90% of the time she would cry and not stop so I would have to go in and help her get to sleep… but the other 10% she would cry for a second then go to sleep, so we knew she was capable of self soothing. That was my only reservation about sleep training, was she at an age where she could self soothe? She showed us she was already capable it was just a matter of her doing it!
After 2-3 nights of Rowen waking every 2 hours at 3.5 months old (aka the dreaded sleep regression)… we decided to start the Ferber method. I have a YouTube video of our experience that you can watch here. I’m not going to go into what the Ferber method is, so if you are curious you can read about it here, but after 2 days of using it for bedtime and naps, Rowen was putting herself to sleep! The longest she ever cried was at bedtime for 15 minutes one night! We now lay her down fully awake and she puts herself to sleep within 5 minutes with minimal to no crying! If she wakes up in the middle of the night she has the ability to put herself back to sleep, so we haven’t had to get out of bed in weeks! Her naps have also increased drastically. She went from 30 min naps to 2 hour long naps! BEST DECISION EVER!
If you don’t agree with sleep training I respect your decision and you can use the other tips!
BABY SLEEP INSTAGRAM PAGES :
I hope these tips help you and your little one get better sleep! Please feel free to DM me on Instagram if you have any questions!
As always, all opinions and text are my own.
