How Charlotte slept through the night from week seven
Note: I wrote this page when our daughter was 3 or 4 months old. She’s now 1 year old and her sleep has been consistent since I wrote this piece. I can count on one hand the number of nights where she woke up and needed our attention.
My partner and I weren’t blessed with the sleep gene. We both need at least 8 hours of sleep to feel rested and think clearly. According to research, not sleeping enough is strongly linked to lower life satisfaction in new parents. We want to be satisfied with life, so we decided to do something about our sleep.
Starting in the third trimester, we spent time researching and thinking about how we could help our daughter sleep through the night as soon as possible. In the end, we worked out a method that’s been very effective for us.
Our daughter, Charlotte, has been sleeping through the night consistently for 8-10 hours through the night since week 7. It made me so happy when this happened the first week that I decided to take notes to share with my friends expecting their first baby.
(Obvious disclaimer: All babies are different. This is just our experience. It may not work for everyone. You should confirm safety practices with your pediatrician.)
Getting the basics right
Much of the following comes from The Sensational Baby Sleep Plan, which I would recommend reading. Much of it is common sense, but we found it useful to have it all written in one place.
1. Maintain a consistent daily rhythm: we woke Charlotte up at the same time every day and offered a feed every three hours to ensure she got enough food during the day. We chose to start the day at 7am so we’d typically wake her up then and then every three hours after that.
At first, it felt unnatural to wake her up after a short night or during a nap. But after a few weeks, she was getting more used to the routine and she would start waking up at these times on her own.
2. Have a consistent bedtime routine. It helps our daughter relax, it marks the end of the day, and it signals to her it’s time to go to bed. At home, the bedtime routine consists of a bath (from the day her umbilical cord dropped), while listening to relaxing music, changing into night clothes, reading a bedtime story, and cuddling to fall asleep. We feed her before or after the bath depending on how hungry she is.
The bedtime routine has been very effective for us. During her first month, it took more than 1h30 to put her to sleep. Now at 3+ months, Charlotte falls asleep within 5-15 minutes after her bath.
3. Ensure the baby doesn’t stay awake for too long between naps. Newborns should only stay awake 30-60 minutes at a time, otherwise their cortisol level rises and it becomes harder to put them back to sleep. 60min is actually quite a short time to do everything (change the nappy, feed them, burp them, and put them back to sleep), so you have to be quick.
Use assistive technology to help her fall asleep
Some books recommend against using aids to help babies fall asleep. Kids can become dependent on them and transitioning out can be painful. During the first few weeks, making her fall asleep was so tedious that we decided to use them anyway.
Swaddle. We use this one that lets our daughter have her arms up. She appears very comfortable in it. Some babies prefer having their arms down. Try to observe your baby’s preferences to see what their natural tendency is.
Pacifier. We use Philips Avent.
Rockit, a portable vibration device that we strapped to a bar of her bassinet. It’s much cheaper than the Snoo. And, big advantage, you can travel with it.
Brown noise machine. We use this portable one.
At 3+ months, we moved Charlotte from a bassinet to a crib and the Rockit isn’t powerful enough to shake it. Transitioning out of using it hasn’t been a problem.
Treat day and night differently
That is another concept we learned from The Sensational Baby Sleep Plan: treat day and night differently so that the baby can learn the difference (and that night is time to sleep).
When it’s time for Charlotte to go to bed, we close the blinds and activate the brown noise machine. When it’s time to wake her up in the morning, we open the curtains, turn off the brown noise machine, and wake her up gently (or go say hi if she’s already awake).
When she woke up at night for feeding, we’d keep interactions to a minimum: we’d pick her up, feed her, and put her back to her bassinet. We’d try to limit cuddles and not to change her nappy unless absolutely necessary.
We used bottle feeding for evening and night feeds. Bottle feeding (expressed or formula) had two advantages for us: 1) it helped ensure our daughter would get enough milk during that feed and hence limit the number of times she’d have to wake up, and 2) it meant that the non-breastfeeding partner (i.e. me) could also feed the baby.
We also considered using formula for the last feed of the day as well as for night feeds. Babies take twice as long to digest formula (3-4 hours vs. 1.5-2 hours), so it should, in theory, reduce the need for night feeds. We didn’t do this in the end but it could be worth considering.
Very gentle sleep training
We followed the protocol described above from the day we came back from the hospital. From around 3 weeks, Charlotte’s sleep pattern became more regular. She’d fall asleep easily at around 7.30pm but she would still wake up once or twice to feed during the night. When she’d wake up, she would eat and go back to sleep within 30min and without crying.
After 6 weeks, there was still not much improvement on the number of wake-ups, so we decided to try a method we called “very gentle sleep training”. (Very gentle in opposition to the typical sleep training method - the Ferber method - which can start at around 4 months).
The main idea is to delay the time of the first night feed by 30 minutes every day, by gentle means, and before the baby starts crying. Here’s what we did:
Watch for signs that she’s about to wake up. Typically, she’d start moving and making noises. That would be enough to wake us up, but she wouldn’t be fully awake yet.
Before she’d wake up fully, we’d put the pacifier in her mouth and activate the Rockit. With these, she’d stay in a half asleep state for longer and potentially even fall back asleep.
Note that it’s very important to do this before she’s fully awake. Otherwise, it’s game over. She’d cry because she’s too hungry. If you reach that point, there’s no point in delaying feeding.
The hard bit is that, often, the pacifier would fall and she would start waking up again. So we’d stand by her bassinet to put the pacifier back in her mouth as soon as possible.
With this method, we managed to delay feeding by about 30min every day. Some nights, it just took 30min. Others, 1h30. These nights were hard. Standing around your baby’s bassinet to put the pacifier back in her mouth when you are sleep deprived is not the most joyful experience. But it worked. And the first time she slept through the night, it felt magical.
When we started at 6 weeks, our daughter would wake up at around 2am and 5am. After 10 days, she’d sleep through the night until 7am. And it’s now been consistent for more than a month and a half.
Miscellaneous related tips
We used separate bedrooms and did shifts.
From week 1 until week 6, we split the night into 2. Our daughter would sleep in my bedroom until 3am. At around 3am (depending on when she’d wake up), I’d move her crib to my partner’s bedroom. This ensured we’d both get 6-7 hours of sleep. We had this bassinet from IKEA with wheels that made it easy to move her around during her sleep.
From 6 weeks onwards, we switched to full-night shifts. I’d do the full night one night so my wife could rest, and she’d do the following night so I can rest.
Owlet. The first time I slept in the same bedroom as our baby, I was struck by the amount of noise a newborn makes when they sleep. During the first 2 weeks, I couldn’t really sleep. I felt the noise she made could be a sign of distress, and I would stand up many times a night to check she was breathing. We decided to buy an Owlet to see if it would help. It really did. It monitors the baby’s heart rate and oxygen level, and it alerts you if the measurements fall below a threshold. It’s overpriced, but we’ve been sleeping much better since.
Feeding with cold milk. From week 1, we fed Charlotte with a mix of breastfeeding and expressed milk in a bottle. When giving her the bottle, we never reheated the milk and she was always happy to drink it cold. It’s made our life much easier. No need to warm up the milk in the middle of the night and ensure it’s not too hot. And when we’re on the go, we simply have to bring a bottle in a cooler bag.
A year later
I wrote this page when our daughter was 3 or 4 months old. She’s now 1 year and 3 weeks old. She’s been sleeping consistently. We travelled abroad and in different timezones, and she has always slept well.
There have been nights where she’d wake up and cry for 20 seconds and then fall back asleep very quickly. There have been a handful of evenings where she didn’t want to go to bed, when visiting a new place or when she was teething. There’s also been a few nightmares. But overall, I can count on my two hands the number of nights where she woke up and needed our attention. When that happened, we went to her bedroom to comfort her but always tried to keep her in her crib. Sometimes, she’d only be calm with us there so we’d sit on the floor next to her bed reading our kindles while she fell back asleep.
These days, the night routine is much simpler. We bathe her, put her in a sleeveless swaddle, and offer her milk. Once she’s done, she nods no and asks for a pacifier. We give one to her and place 2 others in the bed as back ups and put her to bed. There, she finds her bunny that she cuddles to sleep. We then close the door of her bedroom and know she’ll be sound asleep for 11 hours.