Ahhh sleep. It is the most dreaded aspect of the newborn bubble. It was definitely for me.
Sleep is important, period. It is important for your health, physically as well as mentally. Sleep depravation constitute one of the main factors towards postpartum depression.
Since the moment I went into labor, it was no sleep time. After spending two days in the hospital, we come home with a newborn, as first time parents, with no idea what we are doing. My baby would sleep 2 to 3 hours at the time and wake up for feedings and dipper change. We were barely surviving.
When he was 3 weeks old, I was like, okay, I need to do something, so I did some research and we bought the “Taking Cara Babies” class for newborn. The class was very helpful, the baby was falling asleep on his own and sleeping 5 to 8 hour stretches. Then the four month sleep regression hit like a huge wave. He started waking up at least 2 to 3 times at night.
When he was 6 months, I had a conversation with another mom and she mentioned the Ferber Method, which had worked for both of her kids. I inmediatly looked it up and got the book from the library. It consists on letting the baby self-soothe so he learns to fall asleep on is own. My husband and I were not comfortable with just letting our baby cry, but we did some sort of sleep training on our own way. This is what we did:
- First, as the baby was 6 months, was started giving him one meal of solid food, in addition to his regular feedings.
- We got a good quality, comfortable sleep sack.
- We kept the bedroom temperature on 72 degrees all night
- We stablished a bedtime routine, and followed the same routine every single day. It consisted of feeding, bath, diaper, lotion, pjs, and read the same book every night.
- We putting him down around the same time every night
- We did our own version of the Ferber Method for a few days, were after bedtime routine, we would say good night and leaving the baby in the crib to self soothe. If he was crying, every few minutes we would go and check on him, rock him or touch his chest to help him fall asleep.
After 3 days, our baby started sleeping through the night.
I would say that our success was due to a combination of things. Having the right environment, bedtime routine, consistency and letting him self soothe was right for us.