Sleep is important. I know, shocking revelation, right?
I am a horrible person when I don’t get enough sleep. The father I want to be is patient, loving and engaged – all if which are really, really tough when I haven’t gotten enough sleep.
My girls are also more pleasant with more sleep. Maybe they get that from dad, but I expect this is the same the world over. One of the Parenting / Fatherhood books I read (I don’t recall which one) said “Sleep begets sleep.” The more your child sleeps, the more they’ll want to sleep… the result, in my experience, is a well-rested and happy kid.
This is why I consider sleeping through the night to be “Parenting Holy-Grail #1.” It is the first super-critical item that you can do to improve your (and therefore, your child’s) quality of life.
What does “sleeping through the night” actually mean?
Okay, this may seem obvious to some. To me, it was not. Also, I found when talking to other parents I would hear things like “Oh yes, Dexter sleeps through the night. He just wakes up three times for his bottle.”
With parenting, there are a lot of choices and not a lot “wrong” answers, so you are welcome to define the phrase “sleeping though the night” how you like. Here’s how I define it: Your child goes to bed at their bedtime and gets up in the morning at breakfast time. That’s it.
Sleep is good!
Okay then, how do you get from feeding every three hours to sleeping through the night?!
First off, realize that sleeping at night is important to a child being healthy, the same as food is. Once your child is showing proper weight gain, they are physically capable of going through the night (even 12 to 14 hours!) without meals. Talk to your pediatrician about this during your well-baby visits to get an adequate comfort level on this concept.
Second, it is helpful to think of babies as “real people, only smaller.” If you are used to having breakfast every day then run out without breakfast one morning – you’re going to be hungry (and probably cranky). If you skip breakfast every day for a week, your body adapts to this as the new norm and waits until lunchtime to start feeling hungry. This is true for babies as well. If bedtime is 7PM and they are used to getting up every three hours to feed, this is their norm and they will wake up hungry and cranky.
Now the hard part: Cutting out feedings.
This is going to involve some crying (as your baby doesn’t have any other way of communicating). She isn’t hurt, you aren’t starving her to death (even though she might cry you are). She’s telling you that she’s hungry and she doesn’t like it.
If bedtime is 7P and you’ve been doing feedings every three hours, 24-hours-a-day, your feedings will likely be:
7P – 10P – 1A – 4A – 7A (breakfast)
Here’s my recommended process:
- Cut out the 1A feeding first and as soon as possible (probably around the five week mark, after discussing with your pediatrician at your one-month well-baby). This will be tough. I waited until my wife was working three overnight shifts in a row to start this. The first night, she cried and screamed for well over an hour before going back to sleep. By night four (when my wife was back from her stretch of night shifts), this was closer to ten minutes. By the end of the first week, she was sleeping straight through from 10P to 4A. Six hours sleep is A-MAZ-ING. New feeding pattern: 7P – 10P – 4A -7A (breakfast).
- Shift her 10P feeding to your bedtime. If you go to bed at 9:30P, wake her up at 9:30P – if you go to bed at 11P, wake her up then. You’ll need to be consistent, but this will improve your quality of life as well. For our purposes, let’s call this 9:30P. Now you’re close to 6.5 hours sleep – you probably won’t even want to go back to bed after the 4A feeding you’ll be so well rested! New feeding pattern: 7P – 9:30P – 4A -7A (breakfast).
- Streeeetch the 4A feeding. You’ll want to start this as soon as you feel comfortable that your child has adapted to the changes in Steps 1 & 2. If she wakes up at 4A on the dot, let her cry for five minutes before feeding her. After a few weeks, those five minutes add up! New feeding pattern: 7P – 9:30P – ~5A – 7A (breakfast).
- You’re child is probably closing in on 3 months old at this point and while she is not yet “sleeping through the night,” you are getting a lot more sleep than you used to. As that second feeding in the night closes in on 5AM, it’s time to cut that one as well. This will not be easy, but it won’t be as bad as cutting out the 1AM feeding was at 5 weeks. In less than a week you should be the envy of all your fellow parents- YOU are now sleeping through the night. New feeding pattern: 7p – 9:30P – 7A (breakfast).
- The only thing keeping your child from sleeping through the night is the one feeding after they go to bed that doesn’t interrupt your sleep. As soon as you’re comfortable (for us it was after one more chat with the pediatrician at the 4-month well-baby), cut this one cold-turkey the same as the rest. Sleeping through the night: Accomplished.
For bonus points you can use the streeeetch method in Step 3 to move out breakfast time if you wish as well. Our oldest daughter settled into a routine of a 6:30P bedtime and breakfast at 8A – 13 hours of sleep (you could set your watch by her waking up for breakfast).
Rested child = happy child.
That’s it. Just five steps. Not complicated. What makes it difficult is overcoming the feeling that you are somehow the worst parent ever, torturing your child by depriving them of food while they cry their eyes out. It is very hard to get through those times – even five minutes feels like an eternity when your baby is crying. Change is hard and your baby has no other way of communicating their dislike for it than to cry it out.
What do you think? Were you able to get your child to sleep through the night? How did you do it? Comment below!