How I Got My Baby To Sleep Through The Night With No Tears

One of the biggest challenges for me as a new mom was dealing with sleep deprivation. Our son wasn’t a good sleeper from the start. He woke up every 1 and half hours and needed to drink milk to go back to sleep. After months of nursing him back to sleep I was completely exhausted. I set out on a mission to help him sleep better and develop healthy sleep habits. I read many books on infant sleep and talked to many parents to get ideas and suggestions. What I found was 2 extremes in my view, one was the ‘cry it out approach’ advocated in many books and the other was no sleep training at all and enduring disturbed sleep for years. I figured there must be a middle ground between these extreme approaches.Here is a brief summary of what I learned and what worked for our baby. However this is by no means an exhaustive outline of sleep training methods. Each baby is so different and there is no one size fits all solution to sleep problems. Cultural and personal values as well as parenting philosophies also play a role in how parents may choose to sleep train their children.

Infants have sleep cycles that are 90 minutes long and they need to learn to stitch together these cycles so they can sleep a longer stretch. Adults have longer sleep cycles and have mastered the transition from one sleep cycle to the next such that they don’t even remember waking. Infants on the other hand don’t know how to do that right off the bat, it’s something that must be learned. Babies also rely on ‘sleep crutches’ often which are things that require your presence like pacifiers, being rocked, car rides, singing, nursing etc. Babies also develop sleep associations that is things baby associates sleep with like turning off lights, bedtime routine, bed, blankies etc.The key is to ultimately phase out sleep crutches and introduce sleep associations that don’t involve your intervention.

Birth till 4 months:

At this age, it’s normal for babies to feed and sleep every 2–3 hours round the clock so there is not much to be done in terms of sleep training. However, the following helps:

The pause- The famous ‘Le pause’ from the book ‘Bringing up Bebe’ by Pamela Druckerman. This involves waiting for a minute or two prior to rushing and picking up your baby at the first cry or whimper. It’s common for babies to cry and make noises in their sleep and you don’t want to pick up and wake your sleeping baby. Sometimes babies will wake and go back to sleep on their own.

Swaddle- Swaddling really helped our son sleep better in the first few months till he rolled over after which it wasn’t safe anymore. Because babies have the Morro or the startle reflex, they startle and wake up. Swaddling gives them the effect of being cocooned almost like in the womb and their hands are bound so they don’t get jolted awake by their startle reflex.

We particularly like the ‘Swaddle me’ velcro swaddles.

Cluster feeds- it also helps when babies cluster feed in the night. Our son would drink more than his usual amount towards his night bed time and that would help him sleep a 4 hour stretch.

Night vs. Day- it helps to have baby be exposed to daylight so he/she can start differentiating day vs. night. It helps to make the room dark at night with less lights and noise.

Gas/Colic- Breastfeeding moms, it helps to avoid gassy foods like lentils, beans etc. that could cause your baby to get gassy and colicky and unable to sleep.

4–8 months:

At 4 months, our baby began waking every hour throughout the night. We were experiencing the ‘4 month sleep regression’. Our pediatrician suggested it was a good time to sleep train our baby. He advised moving him to a different room, letting him cry if he wakes and refraining from soothing him. This is what is called the ‘Cry it out’ method which is becoming increasingly popular. However, we could not go through with this approach as it didn’t seem natural to us and we wanted to follow attachment parenting practices of co-sleeping, belief in the language value of baby’s cry and nursing on demand.

So we moved our son into our bed and nursed him to sleep on demand after taking all the safety measures outlined by the APA for this period. This was the most difficult period for me in terms of sleep. Our baby ended up developing a strong sleep association with nursing. Things that helped in this period were:

Solids- At 6 months, we began feeding him some solid food. It helped to give him some rice cereal at dinner time to help keep him full longer.

Co-sleeping- Co-sleeping was a lifesaver at this point because I could easily reach out to him when he woke and soothe him back to sleep without getting up. Bed-sharing is also one of the principles of attachment parenting.

8 months and beyond:

This is the timeframe when I started implementing some of the ‘no cry’ or natural sleep training solutions. At this point baby should be capable of sleeping longer stretches (around 4–8 hours realistically)

More milk and food in the day time- Try to feed baby more milk and solid food in the day time.

Dress baby comfortably- Dress Baby to ensure he is not too cold or too hot. Sleep sacks or sleep bags are helpful.

Day time naps- Ensure baby gets 2 good naps a day totaling 3 hours. If Baby gets over tired then it is hard for them to shut down later at bedtime. Put baby back to sleep if baby wakes too early. Well rested babies actually sleep better at night. The opposite is also bad. Napping more than 3 hours in the day may interfere with nighttime sleep. So it’s a delicate balance.

Develop a bedtime routine- Developing a bedtime routine helped a lot. A bedtime routine helps baby know that it’s time for bed. An example of a bedtime routine can be a warm bath or wipe down, read a story, pray, lights off and drink milk.

Early bed time- Babies need 12–14 hours sleep at this age and babies who sleep earlier tend to sleep longer and better.

NAPs method- Polly Moore, a sleep researcher created the N.A.P.S. program and it involves recognizing baby’s body’s biorhythms, determining the best time to nap based on the fact that during sleep, babies have ninety-minute sleep cycles consisting REM and non-REM sleep.)

This involves the following:

1. Note the time when the baby wakes up.
2. Add ninety minutes.
3. Play, feed or do other things.
4. Soothe baby back to sleep when ninety minutes are up.

Following the above combined with the next point can help baby go to sleep faster and sleep more sound as it’s in tune with baby’s natural cycle.

Watch for signs of fatigue- It’s helpful to put baby to sleep when baby is showing signs of fatigue and readiness to sleep eg. decreasing activity, quieting down , losing interest in people toys, fussing, yawning , rubbing eyes etc.

Pantley Pull out method — This method works but over a long time. This is what ended up working for me. Also, things may get worse before it gets better when you first start following this method.

It helps when your baby is waking very often and wanting to nurse back to sleep even though baby isn’t necessarily hungry. It involves allowing your baby to nurse till drowsy and then pulling out and letting baby fall asleep on his/her own. If baby cries when you pull out for more than a minute allow him to nurse again for a shorter time and then pull out. Each day reduce to the nursing time as well. Eventually baby will learn to sleep without having to nurse.

Breaking the Vicious cycle — We were in vicious cycle where baby was drinking milk all night and then not eating in the day and not pooping as often as he should as result which in turn disturbed his sleep at night. After a period of trying the pantley pull out method, baby was ready to be weaned off of nighttime feeds. I stopped allowing baby to nurse after his bedtime feed at 9pm. I made sure that he had a good meal and that he wouldn’t be hungry in the night. The first day was a little hard with baby tossing and turning for an hour an half. The second night he did a lot better and went back to sleep in 5 mins. By the third night he learned to go back to sleep on his own and stitched his sleep cycles together. Hurray!

Consequently he also was hungry enough to eat proper meals during the day and drink water which in turn helped him have a bowel movement.

General tips:

There are times when babies even if sleep trained will wake and need attention.

Babies may wake when they are teething and in pain. It may help to massage gums with a warm cloth or offer a frozen teething ring. Soothing gels like orajel are not recommended by pediatricians anymore.

Babies need lot more attention and TLC when they are sick. They may have wake up several times and have disturbed sleep.

Travel also affects sleep patterns so you may have to re-train baby after a long trip.
Getting a decent night’s rest made a world of difference allowing me to be more happy and engage in more activities with my baby, be more productive and increased my overall well being.

References:

1. The no-cry sleep solution by Elizabeth Pantley
2. The natural baby sleep solution by Polly More
3. Baby and toddler sleep solutions for dummies By Arthur Lavin and Susan B. Glaser
4. Attachment parenting by William and Martha Sears
5. Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting by Pamela Druckerman