Getting My Newborn On A Sleep Schedule
We need help getting into the same sleep schedule!
For the past week or two, my five week old has been extending his nightly sleep stretches bit by bit. We started out consistently feeding every two hours round the clock. Two hours occasionally became three, and last week we had three five hour stretch nights in a row!
Last night we hit the jackpot of newborn sleep – a glorious 8.5 hours of blissful sleep! The only problem? My son went to sleep around 7:30pm, while I didn’t go to bed until well after ten. So even though he slept for over 8 hours, he woke up rested and ready for food at…3:30am? How do I get us onto a similar schedule?
Obviously I don’t expect a baby to be going to bed at 10pm, but I’m hoping there is a way to keep him awake long enough to move his last feeding until a bit later.
As it is now, his last feeding is around 6:30 or 7pm, and then we play for a bit before swaddling and going through the bedtime routine. I know I could nurse him right before bed, but I’m also trying to teach him to go to sleep on his own and avoid nursing him to sleep. Is there any way to get a long stretch of sleep, but also avoid getting up in the middle of the night with him?
Honestly, if I end up having to do one mid-night feeding with him, and the rest of our sleep is uninterrupted and deep – I’ll take it. It’s such a relief from the early days of waking six times each night. Can any experienced moms weigh in with advice on bedtime routines and extending newborn sleep? We are new at this. I know as soon as I figure something out it will all change again, but in the meantime I’d love to know what works for others!
At that age, in a similar situation, I always woke my kiddos up and fed them right before I went to sleep. My kids all nursed to sleep though and co-slept so it was easy for me.
My son nursed every 3 hours until he was 10.5 months old. You are very lucky that he is sleeping as well as he is! Every class I took and book I read said they would wake every 3 hours for the first 3 months (the 4th trimester). I think you are doing great!
If you want more information on a month-by-month basis, read “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child”. I read it when he was 9 months old and it was too late. Now, he sleeps 12 hours at night and naps for 3 hours a day!
Just keep following your instincts
Sounds like a complicated math problem. I don’t really have an educated solution. Are you doing BabyWise? I just read it.
I did something very similar with my babies but as long as they aren’t nursing before each nap it is fine to nurse right before bed. That’s exactly what I did and both mine had no problem putting them selves to sleep. The stretch you got last night is great. Unless you want to do a dream feed (rouse back up at 10 ish, feed then right back to sleep) getting up once a night is great for his age. I’d expect him to continue to stretch and you might have a few hiccups down the road and then it all depends if you want to do some form of CIO. That’s one you have to figure out on your own to see what you are comfortable with/can handle. My second slept much better at night so I would even wake up and pump a little to relieve the pain. It was a nice way of building up my milk stash Good luck! Sleep is so nice!
I would do a “dream feed” just before I went to bed. Try to wake baby up just enough to feed, don’t turn on the lights (I just used a nightlight), and put him right back to bed after feeding, don’t change his diaper. This worked for us.
First, put your baby down between 6 and 7pm every night, regardless of how much he eats during the day. Sleep begets sleep as Weissbluth says. Second, make sure your middle of the night feed is as dark as possible, don’t talk to baby, don’t make eye contact, feed and get the hell outta there. Third, read “12 Hours by 12 Weeks” – it has advice on extending sleep from 8 weeks old.
I’m not sure, but DON’T try to keep him up later, it will backfire when he gets overtired and starts sleeping less instead of more! (We are still recovering from the end of Daylight’s Savings.) You could try waking him like Angela suggests. I could never figure out whether that was actually helping or not, and my baby continued to wake up for the second feeding (between 2 and 3 am) when I got him up to feed at 11, and it was usually hard to get him “up” enough to eat much since he had determined that was him time to eat. I will say though that his sleep has gotten much more predictable now… he’s 6 months. He does still wake around 5 am every other night or so, but he usually goes back down until 7 or so. I’m still not getting enough sleep, but its because I haven’t managed to get myself to sleep before midnight yet.
Definitely do not try to keep him up later, if anything put him to bed earlier. I didn’t get an 8 hour stretch until my daughter was 2 months old, so you’re lucky already. I really recommend reading Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Once we implemented an earlier bed time, the stretches got longer and longer.
I have no advice because I have no baby yet, but I have a question. When it was every two hours, were you setting an alarm for every two hours throughout the night and waking him, or was he just consistently waking up every 2 hours on his own?
Ditto about the “dream feeding!!” My daughter is 6 months old now but we started this about a month ago, she goes to bed at 7pm, I nurse her again at 10pm and then go to bed, and she’s been sleeping through the night (most nights) ever since. I wish I would have done it sooner.
ahh, healthy sleep habits, happy child. agree with other commenters – the earlier we put her down, the longer stretches she slept. wish i’d read it sooner – she’s five months and goes to bed at 6P and sleeps until 6A. it’s GLOOOOORIOUS.
oh, and who cares if you’re feeding baby to sleep? i promise they’ll figure out eventually that food doesn’t equal sleep. it’s so so natural for a baby to fall asleep at bottle or breast. don’t stress! do what you think is right – i promise, whatever you decide is the right thing.
From early on, our pediatrician suggested that my husband give Maya a bottle or expressed breast milk around 9-10pm. She was on a every 2.5-3 hour feeding pattern, so if she nursed around 6-7pm, we played, bathed her, and she fell asleep, we woke her for the bottle around 9-10pm (sometimes she woke on her own). Up until she was 8 weeks old, she would wake like clockwork at 2am and 5am to be nursed. I stressed myself out over Maya’s sleep habits when she was about 6 weeks old, trying to get her to sleep longer stretches during the night, in anticipation of going back to work soon. I spent countless hours scouring blogs, internet articles, reading books like “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child”, and “Babywise” (which give conflicting information!) I was also exclusively nursing at the time, other than the one bottle of expressed milk at night.
I went back to work when she was 8 weeks old, and therefore she was given a bottle for all of her daytime feedings. Well, wouldn’t you know, that very first night she slept right past her 2am feeding and didn’t wake up till 4am to be fed, and then slept again until about 6:30/7am. She consolidated those two night time feedings on her own, and has done so ever since (she is now 11.5 weeks old). All that stressing for nothing–it happened naturally! Big sigh of relief, because I was really not thrilled over the idea of sleep training her–especially at such a young age. Right now, we are working on gradually getting her to drink more from the bottles during the day, and just have a short feeding when she wakes at 4am, to hopefully wean her off that middle-of-the-night feeding. We’ll see what happens.
Bottom line is that what worked for us was giving her bottles of breast milk during the day–perhaps it was easier for her to drink, and therefore she took in more food, and did not need to feed as much at night. Good luck!
Jen
In my opinion, if you are breastfeeding then you should feed you newborn on demand until they are 4 months old. i know that seems crazy but the baby does not know how to get on a schedule earlier than that. the breast milk goes through them like crazy and they are hungry again. you are not supposed to do ferber/baby wise, etc until the baby is 4 months old because you should not let your baby cry it out until 4 months once an attachment has been formed with you. this is just my opinion. i know it is rough. my baby didnt start sleeping through the night until almost 6 months. i fed him every time he was hungry and then at 6 mos i stopped going in his room at night no matter how many times he cried. now he sleeps 630pm -630 am. without waking up
I find it easier to conform to the babies’ schedules than try to figure out how to make them conform to mine. For me, sleep gets way better around 2-3 mo when we figure out how to nurse side-lying. After that I can sleep right through feedings.
I agree with adding in the “dream feed”, I’ve been doing this with my baby since he was five weeks old, down for bed at 7 and a dream feed in dim lighting around 1030 or 11. He’s four months now and rarely wakes through the night.
We always put them down late 10-11 so they would sleep the strech we did…it just made sense to us. Especially since I was retuning to work! We always had our kids taking an early evening nap and waking around or just after dinner time (Which also allowed us to make and enjoy dinner!) Then they would wake 6:30-7:00, feed and then they would play. We would then start the bed time around 9:30-10:00. I would feed one more time, and then put the baby down for the night. Each week, we put them down a half hour earlier. This way by 8-9 weeks, they were sleeping 8ish to 6ish! You want to work backwards. It works to let them take a late afternoon nap, and then keep them up till 10ish…the next week, try feeding at 9:00 and putting him down at 9:30, and the next week back up the routine by a half-hour. Eventually at 4 or 5 months they are going to bed at 7:30, you are putting them down drowsy but not asleep and they sleep 10-12 hrs. My ped. always said that it was ok to feed/rock/coddle to sleep when they are newborns….but then they should be put to bed sleepy but awake somewhere in the 4-5 mo. range. This worked very well for us! Good Luck, and you will figure out what works for you and your little man!
Five week old? Sleep schedule? Ha, good luck. We had the long stretches when ours was a newborn as well. Don’t get used to them. Between month 3 and 4 they switch over to more adult sleep patterns and everything goes to hell while baby readjusts. It’ll suck for a little while, but it will even out eventually. After that you might find he puts himself on a specific schedule that is more amenable to your situation!
We are unique I guess. I didn’t start much of a pattern til 2 mos but I have kept both kids up later. With E my hours at CiN were til at least 6. And I wanted to nurse her twice after I got home. She stayed up til 10 for her 2nd one and by 3 mos would sleep til 6 when I got up to feed her again then usually go back to sleep for a couple hours. As a working mom this is the only way I get to spend time with my kids! Ii just went back to work with M but I feed him at 6 when I get home and he will play and doze for a few hours downstairs. I’m working towards a 9 pm feed and do jammies before and feed him in his dark room and he’s been slleeping til 5:30 when I have to get up then he goes right back to sleep til around 9 when he gets a bottle. I’ve never read a sleep book, never fed on demand and never do middle of the night feeds to a baby older than 3 months. It works for us.
I have a 20 month old son….his sleep schedule is screwed up and he wakes up about every 4 hours to be comforted back to sleep…he did okay there for a while after I let him cry it out a few times at 9 months old, but then my husband got a new job and he would ask me to go get the baby anytime he woke up in the middle of the night so that my husband could have plenty of sleep for work….it was all downhill from there….now here I am a zombie most days, pregnant with my second child and just wishing I had realized I needed to do some sort of sleep schedule sooner, but because I didn’t my son gets up, crawls out of his crib and comes into our room demanding I get up…I’m so lost of what to do and how to fix everything….I wish someone had told me to start doing a sleep schedule sooner than what they had…I just never realized because all of my friends kids had done it all on their own, by 3 months they were sleeping through the night and taking regular naps….I did ask for advice on a website and was told to keep going to him that he would grow out of it before he was a year old…..I was lied to….
There is some great advice here. The reality is, newborns equal no sleep! Definitely don’t let your baby cry it out – babies naturally need the closeness of their mommies until at least 2 years of age. They will sleep soundly the more secure they feel, knowing you are near. It won’t take long for that bond to be made! Hang in there.
Jennifer @ iChooseChange.com
Just a thought an infant this young should never be put on a feeding or sleep schedule. Something learned in my Early Childhood Education classes. They should eat and sleep according to their own schedule. And before any B.S. starts I have 3 boys, ages 11 and 5 years and 3 months today. Not one was put on a schedule until much older. Oh and it may seem like baby is on a schedule now but that will most likely change as all children do throughout their young lives.
We listen to their schedule more than our convenience. Neither of my kids made it through the night until about ten months. But with one feed at around 3, and then going back to bed, it worked for us. Your baby is still so young, I am sure that the schedule will change. My youngest was sleeping long until about 19 weeks and then all of a sudden started getting up again several times at night. I don’t believe in waking babies so they can be fed, I want their tummies to tell them when they are hungry and not the fact that a breast or bottle is waved in front of them.
Baby wise by growing families. It’s amazing and they offer classes as well. My 15 week old has been sleeping through the nite since he was 8 weeks old, it also helps mother’s who breastfeed I have never had a problem w lactation. Feed wake sleep, my son never crys unless he is sick and thats not often.
On a second note at 5 weeks old it’s not healthy for your baby to sleep through the night they still need that every three to four our feeding to keep their blood sugar levels up and stay healthy*
Just check out the website gfi.org. If you want to use a feed, wake, sleep system. It really works and makes for a very happy baby!
Five words: “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child.” Read it. Love it.
5 weeks is WAY too young for a sleep schedule. In fact, I think most peds would recommend waking your baby (don’t let him go for 8 hours) at the 4 hour mark to feed, even if it’s a dream feed. I know the 8 hours is so delicious you can hardly make yourself do that, but really, his little tummy is soooo tiny at this point, that’s a pretty long stretch without food.
Our son is now nearly 5 months, and we’ve started training with the SleepEasy Solution (it’s basically the same as Ferber, but much more emotionally supportive), and that’s been really successful. But they advocate (as does every other parenting book I’ve read) not starting before your child is 4 months or 14 pounds. Before that, on demand is the way to go, challenging as it may be. I’ve written about our sleep training experiences here:
http://shouldbethebeginning.com/2011/11/22/waaaaait-a-minute-is-this-like-a-thing/, and here http://shouldbethebeginning.com/2011/11/28/sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep/. And about the SleepEasy Method here: http://shouldbethebeginning.com/2011/11/29/parenting-101-1-go-the-eff-to-sleep-training/