What I’ve learned About Baby Sleep
Babies are confusing. But what’s even more confusing is the millions of people telling you how, where, when and how long they should be sleeping for and that whatever you’re doing is wrong.
Here’s what I’ve learnt so far…
You must not sleep with the baby.
In order for the baby to sleep, you must sleep with them.
Never fall asleep with the baby.
Never fall asleep.
A newborn baby should never sleep through the night.
A newborn baby should sleep through the night.
Never feed the baby to sleep.
Never feed the baby when they’re awake.
Never look at your baby in the eye when you’re trying to get them to sleep.
Look your baby in the eye otherwise they will never sleep.
Put your baby down in a cold dark room with no toys and let them cry alone until they go to sleep.
Do not touch the baby.
Touch the baby.
Never ever comfort the baby.
Comfort the baby.
Do not give the baby a comforter.
Give the baby a comforter.
Do not give the baby any stimulation. Especially not a cot mobile.
Give the baby a cot mobile.
Bed share if you want to bond with your baby.
Never ever bed share with your baby, you will squash them.
Never pick your baby up when they cry.
Never put your baby down when they cry.
Never give your baby a dummy it will ruin their non existent teeth.
Give your baby a dummy.
The list goes on.
And all that’s coupled with the added pressure of your baby supposedly being able to sleep for an increasing number of hours each night as they get older.
“We need to talk about sleep.” Said a friend whose opinion I hadn’t asked for when she saw the baby snoozing on the boob during a video call when she was six weeks old. I was pretty happy with that set up and didn’t see why it was wrong. Until I was not so kindly informed that I was making a rod for my own back by letting my six-week-old child sleep on me. After cluelessly admitting I always fed the baby to sleep, she proceeded to scoff and tell me judgmentally that as soon as the baby was physiologically ready, it was imperative that she learn to self soothe. That I needed to leave her to cry herself to sleep so I could have an evening to myself/get a babysitter and go for dinner with my husband/be ready to go back to work/raise an independent child.
A few months later I was telling another mum I met on Zoom this story (who’d wanted a chat to compare our babies 😒) and her response was; “well physiologically I can go without food for three days but it doesn’t mean I’m going to.”
Round of applause for Zoom mum.
The first eight weeks or so is a total shit show. While the baby is still tiny you’re supposed to feed roughly every two hours day and night and it almost broke me. But I wasn’t in a hurry to make the baby cry herself to sleep just so I could have a conversation with my husband and fall asleep in front of the TV. But each to their own.
People seem to fall into two camps. The gentle sleep method and the sleep training/cry it out method. And before you make a decision you spend just as much time crying as the baby does because you don’t know which is right for you.
Or maybe that was just me.
From my understanding the training/cry it out method is leaving the baby to cry themselves to sleep with little or no intervention from the parents, meaning that after a few days the baby, in theory will go straight to sleep when put in their cot. There’s no feeding/rocking/shushing or comforting so the baby gets used to going straight to sleep irrespective of whether they need their parent. The gentle method means the baby’s needs are met each time they cry.
A lot of parents need to get their baby into a routine for their eventual return to work so there’s that added pressure too. Most sleep training methods I’ve learnt so far involve some form of crying it out. And there are sleep consultants that charge £400+ to teach you to do that. I tried it for one night and realised very quickly as I stood in the doorway of my bedroom watching a brand new human scream for me for ten minutes that it was absolutely not for me. So I did it what some might call the hard way, by meeting the baby’s needs every time she cried for me because that’s what felt natural to me, especially as she was constantly going through developmental changes that often were uncomfortable or painful for her. I still kept questioning my instincts though because a handful of people kept repeatedly telling me that as soon as she turned twelve weeks, she’d be too stuck in her ways to teach her anything different.
After the first few weeks she slept well…until she was four months old. Miraculously I was getting eight hours uninterrupted consistently after feeding her to sleep and didn’t know what people were talking about. I felt like a new woman. It could sometimes be difficult to get her to sleep swapping her from boob to boob, willing the next let down to come quickly but once she was away, I was too. She was still in our room in her bedside cot and I was convinced I’d defied all odds and that my baby wasn’t going to go through the four month sleep regression that blindsided me a couple of weeks later. It hit me so hard I started hallucinating and all of a sudden she started waking up every two hours again.
I had been warned.
I finally understood sleep training. But I still resisted. For the next six weeks I fed her every two hours overnight again. By this point she was robust enough that I felt comfortable lying down in our bed, feeding her and then sliding her back into her cot. It wasn’t too bad (it was but I’m trying to convince myself otherwise).
My husband lay still every night like a dead body. The only reason I knew he was alive was because of his snoring.
The sleep didn’t get better (spoiler alert, she’s almost one and I’m still feeding her every two or three hours most nights) and just to add to the fun she outgrew her cot and couldn’t sleep comfortably, so eventually at six months I reluctantly transitioned her to her own cot in her bedroom. I’d put her down for naps in there so she was used to the space and at first she seemed to love it because she had so much more room to thrash around. She’d only ever sleep for 30 minutes/one sleep cycle at a time during her naps which was tough given it could take me an hour to get her to sleep. She was often cranky and irritable and for a while I didn’t realise she still needed more sleep and had separation anxiety. Cue mum guilt.
Sometimes at night I’d spend up to three hours getting her to sleep. And it was torture. And then she’d be awake every two hours and sometimes more because she was alone. I’d be trundling down to her room bleary eyed 3/4/5 times a night sitting rocking her back to sleep in the darkness, willing her to stay that way, gingerly putting her back in her cot so I didn’t wake her.
I wasn’t always successful.
Slowly I started bringing her back into our room and putting her in our bed. Hoping my husband wouldn’t notice that it was getting earlier and earlier every night as I became more and more unhinged. I’d be lured into a false sense of security when she occasionally slept for a longer stint but wake up panicking that she’d stopped breathing.
We went away and it got worse. We stayed in three different places over a ten day period and understandably she resisted the travel cot, was scared being in unfamiliar places and after struggling for a few hours on the first night, I wanted to come home.
Then we put her in our bed. And the rest is history.
We got home and every night since, she has slept in our bed spread eagled and none of us could be happier. And to give credit where credit’s due (don’t tell him), it was my husband that told me for my own sanity and to prevent traumatising the baby to bring her in with us.
I felt ashamed that I was too weak to sleep train. I felt even more ashamed to admit that my baby wasn’t sleeping for eight hours a night but I was mostly ashamed to admit that she was sleeping in our bed. I felt like I’d failed. Until I discovered a whole new world online of co-sleeping parents who wouldn’t consider anything else and I finally realised that’s its completely normal and that what isn’t normal to a lot of those parents is sleep training. I finally admit to co-sleeping proudly (depending on who I’m talking to).
The baby now has one nap a day and it’s a contact nap, meaning I lie with her. And it’s bliss. I mean she dicks around for 30 minutes and threatens to yank my nipple off feeding upside down and wavng her bum in the air but with me next to her she sleeps for up to two hours. The has slept in various different places too, (the car, in the sling, in the pushchair) but now the majority of her naps are in our bed. At bed-time she sleeps in her own bed for her first sleep cycle so she’s used to it when she’s eventually ready to sleep on her own. And then I put her in our bed. It works just fine, she’s a much happier baby and I’m a much happier mother. Apart from when a courier bangs on the door like he’s trying to get the attention of a hard of hearing pensioner in a mansion, in which case I lose my shit.
Don’t get me started on the dog barking at nothing.
A brief overview of my daily routine…
6.15am -7.30am - At some point during this time the baby wakes up, exposes my boobs, stands on my face, laughs hysterically and is excited that a new day has arrived. My husband changes her nappy and occupies her while I try and get my shit together
8am-10.30am – I prepare breakfast, empty/reload the dishwasher, have a shower, take the dog for a poo and voice note friends while I’m out. Fun fact; I hate voice notes but needs must. I throw an affectionate glance in my husband’s direction then prep lunch. I bake if it’s Sunday.
10.30am - 11am - Boobs out, white noise on (I have a love hate relationship with white noise. I ditched it for alpha music, which was more bearable but did not shut out the noise. Now I play brown noise, which is a frequency I can just about tolerate). I always feed to sleep which can take a while as the babe does often think it’s party time. I indulge her often because she’s cute. She falls asleep happy.
11am-1.00pm - She sleeps anywhere between forty minutes and two hours. I do things on my phone, usually Instagram. Occasionally listen to a podcast. Sometimes I sleep.
1.00pm-1.30pm - I prep lunch with the baby strapped to my back. I dance to irritating nursery rhymes.
1.30pm - 2.15pm - We eat lunch as a family. The dog hovers under the table mouth wide open.
2.30pm-5pm – A walk/play/stare at all the things that need to be done that I have no time for/Endless episodes of Hey Duggee.
5pm - 6pm Dinner for the babe. My husband usually does this so I can lie on a yoga mat and stare at the ceiling. I’ve already prepared and cooked it, mind.
6pm - 6.30pm - Bath/book
6.30-7pm - Feed to sleep and put her down in her room.
7-7.30pm - Put cushions on the floor all round our bed. Place pillows around the perimeter of the bed so she hopefully doesn’t meet the cushions like on those two occasions when I wasn’t prepared. Bring the baby to our room when she hollers and feed her to sleep again.
8-9pm - Try and keep my eyes open to watch TV with my husband. Maybe another feed.
9.30pm - Bed. Meditation. Breathe.
10.30pm - 6.15am - Release a boob every two hours and pray the baby goes back to sleep, which is most times. Except last night when she wanted to play. I did not want to play.
And then it starts all over again. At any point the routine will shift as her needs change. I’m trying to slowly get her to nap later and give her lunch before. But this is what’s working at the moment.
I am very fortunate to be taking an extended maternity leave (code for, trying to avoid going back to work for now) so I have the time to do all this. Lots of people have to do things differently for different reasons and that is ok. We need to shut out all the noise and judgement and listen to our instincts more. Which is what I keep promising myself, because I’m a lot happier when I do, even if I am bloody knackered.
I just need to gain the courage to tell my judgemental friend to piss off.
Some resources that helped me when I was losing the plot…
An interesting article on the BBC about how westerners raise our kids.
Claire Davis - Holistic Sleep Coach
Kerry Secker - Sleep Consultant (without the crying) https://www.careitout.com/
Sarah Ockwell-Smith - Fountain of all baby related knowledge and author of the book that made me cry tears of relief.
Lynsey Hookway - Holistic sleep coach