Sanity-saving sleep schedules: birth to three months
Reentering the baby stratosphere has been a wild ride. Some things have changed since we first had babies eleven years ago... You can buy a pouch of organic baby food that's a blend of mango, apple, carrot, and kale? However, some things have not changed—chiefly among them, healthy sleep habits for healthy, happy babies.
What I'm not going to do here is promise a prescription for magical sleep before your baby (or babies) may be developmentally ready to sleep all night. You're tired—I'm tired—a miracle cure would be nice. But what we need to be focused on with our babies is that this is a stage—a sweet stage—that will pass in due time, and in their first weeks and months our job is to love on them and merely start laying the groundwork for them to have consistent naps and to sleep through the night.
If you were hoping for a quick-fix, make my baby sleep through the night by twelve weeks solution, the following statement may disappoint you—or it may be a relief to read that it's totally normal for your little one to be a ways away from achieving that coveted all-night sleep: You can do everything "right," and still have a baby who's not sleeping through the night at three, five, or even eight months of age.
I totally used to believe that if you followed the prescription for good naps during the day, a predictable sleep routine, and consistent bedtimes and wake times, you'd have a baby sleeping through the night by about three or four months of age. To say that I was disappointed when that didn't happen five months ago would be a huge understatement. Add disillusioned and second-guessing everything I was so sure I knew about babies, and you're partway there. Top it off with sleep deprivation—a well-known tool for torturing prisoners of war—and you can imagine that I've had some moments of being more than a bit of a mess.
The biggest challenge to my sanity has been second-guessing what I knew to be true, particularly when I started searching the blogosphere and looking at new books that have been published in the past few years (ahem, I do realize that I am part of that category), setting myself up with unrealistic expectations that my baby should be sleeping 12 hours through the night by 12 weeks. As my sister pointed out, the reason those types of books sell gajillions of copies is that we're all desperate for a miracle cure that will make our babies sleep through the night much sooner than any of us should reasonably expect them to do so.
Finally, I found myself opening up my own book. Was I a fraud? What had I done with our twins that had worked so well? Was I doing that with our baby this time around? Was I following my own advice? (which, by the way, was the advice of other friends whose babies slept well, our pediatricians, and other trusted sources)
I had listened to noise instead of listening to what I knew to be right. I had listened to too much "you shouldn't do that" paranoia talk instead of listening to my instincts. And I had just about driven myself crazy in the process. (Someone once said that being a "sane mama" was more important than just about anything else. Oh wait—that was me.)
When I returned to what had worked for our girls, something amazing happened: It worked for our baby boy, too. When I ignored the fear-inducing "no-no's" and snuggled up from time to time with my baby at night—when I'd had a hunch from day one that that's what he needed (and knowing my own sleep habits and that there's zero chance I'd roll over on him), we both got some sleep. When I started following the schedules that had worked for our girls—the ones that prompted me to write Twin Sanity—he started napping consistently and waking up happy. Our days became more predictable, and I became more sane.
He's still not sleeping 12 hours through the night. I know he'll get there. Do I still have moments (around 2 am) that I feel a little nuts? You betcha. But I'm not blaming myself anymore. Perhaps all my kids are snuggly sleepers, and our girls slept better because they were sleeping together—and baby boy needed some middle-of-the-night snuggles, too. Or perhaps God said, "You have twins. I'm gonna cut you some slack and let you get some sleep at night a littler sooner than when you have a singleton." For a while, I thought it was because I'd gone soft in my older age, that it was because I'd fudged his schedule every now and again because I had the luxury to do so with "only one" baby this time. Maybe it's simply that he has a different personality than our girls do. I don't know. What I do know is that the following nap schedule works better than anything else I tried this go around, and that even if our nights still involve some wake-ups, our days [generally] run like clock-work.
The Newborn Nap Schedule
The most important thing to keep in mind is that these babies are NEW. They are new to the planet, new to life outside the womb, new to your home, new to your family. Do not expect them to follow a schedule when they are a few days old or even a few weeks old. Just don't. They sleep a ton—so much, in fact, that you will have to wake them to feed them and sometimes stimulate them to keep them awake while you feed them. Really, the newborn nap schedule is not a schedule at all, but what you're hoping to trend towards by the time they're three months old. With our full-term baby boy, I felt that things didn't really start to gel until he was about three months old. That's when his naps solidified into more obvious waking and sleeping times and became more predictable.
Nursing gets MUCH easier at about the three-month mark, as well, so if you're struggling in that department (another post for another time), hang in there—it will get easier. One thing that you can (and in my opinion should) schedule are their feeding times. Unless you're dealing with a baby with health issues, generally feedings every three hours are sufficient for their nutritional needs, will get your body accustomed to producing enough milk to sustain your baby (or babies), and will get you moving in the right direction to having them on a predictable and healthy sleep schedule in due time. The three-hour feeding schedule was what our preemie twins were put on in the neonatal intensive care unit when they needed to fatten up after being born six weeks early at about four-and-a-half pounds apiece. If it was good enough for them, it is probably good enough for healthy, full-term babies, too.
7:00 am Wake/Feed
(It really helps to wake baby at 7:00 and not fudge this if they're still sleeping.)
8:30 am-10:00 am Nap
10:00 am Wake/Feed
11:30 am -1:00 pm Nap
1:00 pm Wake/Feed
2:30 pm-4:00 pm Nap
4:00 pm Wake/Feed
5:30 pm Nap—this may be a shorter nap, and you may choose to start incorporating a bath time somewhere in this block.
7:00 pm Wake/Feed/Back to sleep as soon as possible*
10:00 pm Wake/Feed/Back to sleep as soon as possible
(1:00 am** Wake/Feed/Back to sleep as soon as possible)
(4:00 am** Wake/Feed/Back to sleep as soon as possible)
* 7:00 pm is what you're hoping will eventually become bedtime. Eventually. Like around the time they're six months old. Do not be surprised if they're wide awake and not ready to go to sleep until 8:30, keeping with the daytime routine. It's okay—don't stress about this. But when/if they're ready to go right back to sleep after the 7:00 feeding, go with it.
** Ideally, you're aiming to not feed them any more often than this in the middle of the night. Unless your pediatrician insists that your baby needs to eat every three hours all night (or your maternal instinct tells you this is necessary), you can probably let your baby sleep for longer stretches at night if he or she will do it. Our 8 lb. 10 oz. baby boy probably did not need these frequent feedings overnight, and I regret having woken him when his little clock was allowing him to {miraculously} sleep longer at night. {This is one of those times I wish I'd listened to my intuition instead of letting bad advice make me paranoid that our little sausage roll wouldn't get enough to eat.} Many babies, however, will wake up a bunch at night—again, they're new and need us to teach them when it's time to be awake and when it's time to sleep. That's okay, too!
I have been reminded of just how hard the newborn phase is—but I have also been reminded of how sweet it is and how very quickly it passes. The days can be long, but the months (and years) are fast. Hang in there, try not to sweat the small stuff, and enjoy this time with your precious little one(s)!
Love,
