Sleep Tips
Below, you will find many valuable tips and advice concerning your baby’s sleep. The first 6 months bring tons of growth, milestones, and learning. What follows is for babies developmentally under six months of age. If your baby has sleep challenges beyond 6 months, it may well be that they’ve learned what they’ve been taught surrounding sleep. Here’s how to prevent that.
Feeding
In the first 4-6 months, eating and sleeping are pretty co-dependent. A well-fed baby will sleep better, and a well-slept baby will feed better. This is not to say that feeding the baby to sleep is what works for most babies. In most cases, feeding to sleep actually reduces the amount of calories taken and will impact the quality of your sleep as well as your baby’s. I recommend feeding within 30 minutes of them waking. This helps to ensure a full and purposeful meal and that burps and spit-ups will likely be less of an issue when baby falls asleep. In my experience, snack feeds ensure snack naps (crap naps)
After 6 months of age, babies who are gaining and feeding appropriately (doubled birth weight) no longer wake because they’re hungry. They may wake out of habit and think, feeding made me sleepy so since I want to go back to sleep, I should eat. This is a feed to sleep association and will continue well after first birthday if the cycle continues.
Fools Rush In - But Wait, There's More!
In the first 12 weeks, your baby only has 2 versions of sleep. Deep sleep is when it’s easiest to transfer baby who fell asleep in your arms to their crib/bassinet. You lift their hand to check to see how asleep, and it’s a very relaxed arm. Active sleep is when you see those heart-melting, dreamy smiles and they make their little puppy noises and move a bit. But wait! There’s more! And by that- I mean sleep.
At this time, your baby, in active sleep will also cry out, squirm, and even open their eyes. Don’t be tempted to rush in! In no time, you have run in and interrupted their nap and awakened them. This dedication to being a present and attentive parent is actually setting your little one up to become accustomed to waking mid-sleep cycle. These noises usually last 1-2 minutes. You may even notice that it’s not sounding exactly like a hungry cry or even fussy. That’s because they likely aren’t awake. By giving that extra couple of minutes to transition back to deep sleep, you’ve just helped your baby build a foundation for connecting their own sleep cycles, which is the organic path and key to longer stretches of uninterrupted sleep.
Day and Night
The best way to get your newborn on the right side of day and night confusion is LIGHT! Let the sunshine in. Open the curtains, go for a walk, be outside or very well lit during the day. At night, things should be more dimly lit and relaxing. For night waking/feeds I always recommend not leaving the sleep space room. This means, don’t go downstairs/to the kitchen or couch and turn on TV and make a snack with baby in your arms… that’s a daytime activity! If you have your bottle warmer, or nursing pillow and some diapers and an extra set of PJs set up before bedtime, it will help. Use as little light in the room at night as absolutely necessary for the task at hand. As soon as all business is taken care of, begin to move your baby back to sleep space and help soothe them to sleep. Their little brain will catch on in no time.
Wake Windows for the WIN
Newborn sleep is so easy the first few weeks. Your little one eats, and falls asleep in your arms. That milk-drunk and put down can absolutely spoil you both into thinking your baby is perfect, and sleeping so well. Truth is, it’s leftover hormones from being on the inside. They gradually diminish and you get the baby who can’t fall asleep and stay asleep for the life of you. Pay attention to sleepy cues and look at the clock. Take them to a sleep space and change them, get them snug and safe in a bassinet or crib and shush and sway them to sleep. If you’ve found their sweet spot and they aren’t overtired, they will fall asleep with your help within 10 minutes and you won’t get nap-trapped. 60-90 minutes awake at a time is about the best you can hope for the first 3 months. Much longer leads to HOURS of overtired, hard to settle, hard to feed, cortisol induced screaming.
Never wake a sleeping baby….UNLESS
You need your sleep and so does your baby. As I said before, the sleep and feed cycle is biological and important. If you allow your newborn baby to sleep more than a couple of hours without a feed, they will wake starving. Too hungry to get a full feed, maybe. Feeding every 2-3 hours during the day is recommended universally, whether you’re breastfeeding or bottle feeding. However… and this is where I stray from the universally, once your little one has regained birthweight, it’s okay to feed on demand, but if you let them sleep too long during the day, this robs them of night sleep drive. Feeding every 2-3 hours during the day 7am-10pm (waking when it oversleeps a feed, and starting a new wake window) means you don’t have to wake them for feeds 10pm-7am. They will let you know they’re hungry.
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Pro Tip:
“Let me just say, it’s not selfish to want sleep. It’s not heroic to spend the first years of parenting sleep-deprived and starved for some peace and predictability in your life. Furthermore, it’s a greater gift to your relationship with your baby – and the bond you’re building, to show up as the best parent you can be. Learning to sleep will do more for your bond with your little one than you ever imagined possible.”