The Art of Sleeping: How I Taught Harrison Sleep

Introduction:

I know what you're thinking. "How you taught your baby to sleep?" Yes. My son did not know how to sleep. He would fight his drowsy feelings all day to stay awake, would become overly stimulated and would finally sleep at night out of pure exhaustion. Then, once asleep, he wouldn't stay asleep for very long because his buzzing, over stimulated little brain would wake him up. I needed to step in and help him sleep during the day so he could sleep at night and become the happy, healthy baby he deserved to be.

When I first brought Harrison home from the hospital when he was just 2 days old, I thought I would just react to what Harrison wanted. If he cried, I would change his diaper, feed him, burp him, or hold him. If he wanted to stay awake, then it was right for him to stay awake. If he fell asleep, then it was right for him to go to sleep at that moment. I mean, he was a baby. They sleep when they want, right? Wrong! At least for Harrison. What ended up happening? I had a newborn who would sleep for 3 hours at night, and then maybe 1 hour sometime during the day on a good napping day. Of course it was exhausting for us but it was extremely exhausting for Harrison. He just did NOT want to sleep. Or so I thought....

About a week and a half of this later, I read online that newborns need about 16 hours of sleep which is crucial for health and brain development. I freaked. My little man wasn't sleeping anywhere near 16 hours! I thought maybe as he got older he would want to sleep more...but when it comes to precious sleep for a rapidly developing newborn brain, waiting around was just not going to happen. 

During this time, Harrison went from being a happy baby in the first few days of his life to a very unhappy baby. He would cry a lot, even when just changing his diaper. And I mean cry. I could tell he would get tired sometimes and I would try to get him to sleep but he would frantically chew and suck on his pacifier and would groan and cry like he was in pain. One day Harrison cried for 3 hours straight and so DH and I assumed it was gas or reflux since he seemed like he was in pain. We researched different ways to get rid of gas and minimize reflux and implemented everything we could. We propped his mattress up to help keep milk down while he slept, we bought special bottles to use when feeding him expressed breast milk that claimed to reduce gas (which we found out later was just a gimmick and did not matter at all, at least for us), we burped him frequently during a feeding and doubled the amount of each burping session to make sure all gas bubbles escaped before becoming painful in the intestines, we even tried to take his pacifier away since he seemed to swallow a lot of air while sucking. We kept him propped up at least 15 minutes after eating and we even bought Gripe Water (which was an even bigger gimmick) and that actually appeared to work, but 10 minutes later he would be right back to discomfort. We have chalked up his momentary relief to him being distracted by the weird new flavor that just filled his mouth because the relief never lasted. (I researched it later and it is bogus. Don't buy it!) We didn't know what we were doing wrong and just thought we would wait and see if he grew out of it. He didn't fit all of the colic symptoms because his crying never lasted 3 hours or more (except for that one awful time) and he still had many moments of happiness and quietness. He still was a bundle of joy and even though we were tired, we thought "Well, this is what babies do. They cry." But something just seemed off to me...

On Becoming Babywise
Finally, around 3 and half weeks I began reading, for the second time, On Becoming Babywise that I had downloaded to my Kindle. My principal at work recommended this title to me. He and his wife had twins and he told me after they implemented this book with their twin girls, they were completely different babies. So I began reading it again and that's when I read about scheduling. Babywise has a lot to offer, and there are many different topics covered in this book, many of which I don't use. But the main theme you will find in this book is implementing certain techniques that will get your baby on a predictable and structured eating and sleeping schedule. The schedules in the book are cyclical, where each cycle is 2.5 to 3 hours of waking, eating, and sleeping. The example schedules offered in the book are down to the minute. I read that some moms actually do have their children on timed schedules. For example, the first wake, eat, sleep cycle starts at 7. The next at 10, the next at 1, and so forth. This means at 7am, baby wakes to eat. Baby is then awake "waketime" then goes to sleep, and then wakes back up to eat. So the time from the early morning eating time to the mid morning eating time is 2.5 to 3 hours. Although I did initially try this out, I quickly realized that this wouldn't work. We needed something much more flexible for our lifestyle, plus my baby wasn't even sleeping so it's kind of hard to implement a wake, eat, sleep schedule. That's when I downloaded another book...

After coming across Valerie Plowman's "Chronicles of a Babywise Mom" I read about this fabulous book that helps with sleep training. Even though there is some controversy over sleep training, there is one thing I knew: sleep is crucial for optimal brain function and development in a newborn and my baby wasn't sleeping...not even for 4 hours. Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth M.D. (which I talk about below) was just what I needed to begin "helping" Harrison sleep. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book and highly recommend it. The only things I took from Babywise were the idea of cycles and the idea that once baby is taking 4 to 5 naps a day he will start sleeping through the night (Harrison did, right at 5 weeks). However, I took almost everything from HSHHC.

After being more educated on sleep training and feeling a bit more prepared, I decided I wanted him on a cycle, not a schedule. And even though he wasn't sleeping yet, I still wanted him getting used to this rhythm. The reason I don't use the word schedule to describe what I did with Harrison is because I don't have him on an exact timed schedule as what is proposed in Babywise. He doesn't eat at the same times of the day and he also doesn't go down for a nap at the same times every day. What he DOES do, however, is wake, feed, and sleep, and he does have a pretty consistent bedtime. After he wakes up from his nap or from his night time sleep he nurses, then he is awake and we play or read or just have quiet time, then he goes to sleep. When he wakes the whole cycle starts all over again. His cycle, right now, is about 3 hours, but can be as quick as 2 or as long as 4. Like I said, we aren't concerned about the exact timing. We just want him cycling through his activities. This cycling works much better for us considering we are really never home on the weekends. My family lives 40 minutes away from us and between us wanting to spend time with them AND my DH's family, we aren't really ever home. Even when we are home on the weekends, we are running all over town grocery shopping, running errands, and home improving. As long as Harrison is eating, playing, and sleeping in this same order, he is predictable. What I mean about being predictable, for example, is knowing that even though we are at Home Depot, I know Harrison's upcoming activity will be napping since he has been awake and playing for a certain amount of time. I can then do things to help him sleep since I know nap time is approaching, like pull the canopy over on his stroller if we are out and about. This predictability makes it very easy to make sure he is getting what he needs even when we aren't at home. When he is ready to nap, he naps. It doesn't matter if he is at home in my arms, in his crib, in his stroller, or in someone else's arms. It's to the point now where it doesn't even matter if you're trying to play with him. He will get drowsy and pass out. Restaurants, familys' homes, stores, it doesn't matter. He has a rhythm and enjoys his naps now so he will nap wherever we are. It is SO great!

Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth M.D.
This book ROCKED! No, I didn't use everything in this book, but I used almost everything. There are a several very important ideas in this book regarding healthy sleep habits but the most important ones, to me, had to do with sleep regularity and sleep cues. Once Harrison was napping regularly and taking decent naps, he was a completely different baby! He was a happy, content baby. He was the baby that constantly received compliments on his content, easy-going demeanor, and he still is at 4 1/2 months. And as if that wasn't already great, he began sleeping through the night less than a week after implementing these techniques at a mere 5 weeks. I was one happy mama! So how did I get him to start napping? For Harrison and I, it was all about the sleep cues!

Weissbluth's Sleep Cues
In Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child (HSHHC) Weissbluth teaches you that not all babies sleep when they should sleep. As I read this book, and as I also read many other articles and topics online, I learned that many babies try to stay awake because they want to be awake with you and many are irritated at the "drowsy" feeling and fight it with all of their might. They become overtired and cranky because they feel funky and just don't know why. This was Harrison. Weissbluth teaches you that it is your responsibility to work on getting your baby to sleep when they should even if they don't seem to want to, just as you should work on getting your baby to eat vegetables even if they grimace. Why force something they don't seem to want? Because you're the parent and you know better. When you know your baby is becoming tired, it is your responsibility to "help" them sleep. How do you know when your baby is becoming tired? You will see his sleep cues.

Looking for and acting on sleep cues are crucial in order to begin teaching your baby to sleep on a regular basis. Weissbluth lists the sleep cues to look for that tell you your baby is entering that period of time where he should be going to sleep. This list is found on page 63 and page 71 in Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child:

• Decreased activity
• Slower motions
• Less vocal
• Sucking is weaker or slower
• Quieter
• Calmer
• Appears disinterested
• Eyes less focused 
• Eyelids drooping
• Yawning
• Less social (smiling less and a lack of engaging you)

Signs your child is overly tired:

• Fussing
• Rubbing eyes
• Irritable
• Cranky

For Harrison, there are certain sleep cues that are present every single time he is getting ready to nap. He gets quieter and calmer, he stares at something or stares off without blinking much (eyes less focused) and when he does blink, it's very slow. His under eye area becomes reddish pink, and he yawns several times. When he begins exhibiting these sleep cues, I know it's time to wind down and help him relax and within minutes he's asleep. At this point I can either hold him while he sleeps (which I love doing) or I lay him down in his crib for nap (what I do most of the time) and that could be anywhere from 30 min to an hour. But this is post-sleep training. It was not always this easy or even possible. In the beginning, before he was such an easy napper, he would fight sleep with all of his tiny might, and would squirm, cry, and become overstimulated and over tired. After reading both books, plus a little bit about the 5 S's from Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvy Karp M.D. this was my plan.

#1 Watch for sleep cues
#2 Create and stick to a sleepy time routine
#3 Lay him down to sleep (and cross my fingers)

Here is each step in more detail:

#1 Watch for sleep cues This is the easiest of my action plan steps. After Harrison ate and we began to play, I would watch for these sleep cues like a hawk! Sure enough, the very moment I began looking for these sleep cues they appeared, clear as day. There was a lull in alertness, eyes got tired, and then the yawns. One yawn, two yawns, three yawns, yep! He's ready for a nap. I would scoop him up in my ams and get to work on #2, the hardest of my action plan steps.

#2 Create and stick to a sleepy time schedule This was by far the hardest. But first, the simple part; creating the routine. For Harrison's sleepy time routine, I would

• take him to his room
• draw his drapes
• only whisper
• swaddle him in a SwaddleMe by Summer (I began swaddling to keep Harrison's newborn startle reflexes from waking him. At 4 months I stopped swaddling because he was no longer waking himself up AND he began rolling over, but at 4 months his sleep habits were already so well established it wasn't necessary anyway).
• Sit with him in our glider
• Sing and sometimes rock in the glider but rocking was rare because too much motion can over stimulate a tired baby trying to sleep.
• When he was drowsy enough, I would lay him in his crib.

Harrison would fight going to sleep in the beginning. He would kick so incredibly hard, squirm, arch his back, and grumble and groan away. He would "kind of" cry (a cry Harrison does when he isn't upset enough to break out into tears but is just irritated). Sometimes this would last half an hour, sometimes this would only last a few minutes. The important thing was to stay consistent. Eventually, regardless of how long this period of squirminess and fighting would last, he would nod off. I would say that this period of fighting and squirming for half an hour before finally falling asleep lasted about a week to a week and a half. After that he fought it less and less and it was at this time (around 5 weeks) that he began to take 4 to 5 naps a day, each ranging from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Hallelujah! Even though the durations were so inconsistent, it didn't matter. My little man that hated sleep and was only getting  few hours of sleep a day was now sleeping 5 to 6 times a day (including night time sleep) and was getting between 10 and 16 hours a day. At this time Harrison's middle-of-the-night feeding vanished and he was officially sleeping through the night at just 5 weeks old! Before this time, from about two weeks old he would sleep for 4 hours at night, wake to eat around 3am, then would sleep for 3 more hours. What an amazing accomplishment for both Harrison and I! 

#3 Lay him down to sleep (and cross my fingers)
Quite often Harrison would start fidgeting and fighting sleep again as soon as I laid him in his crib. Sometimes he would babble and then fall asleep, and other times he would cry. This is where CIO comes in.

My thoughts on CIO (Cry It Out)
CIO is a method of just letting your baby cry without running to their rescue in an attempt to get them to put themselves to sleep once they realize you aren't going to come. The theory behind this is that babies can be innocently manipulative and will learn early on that all they have to do is cry if they want you.

My opinion? This is garbage! It is NOT necessary to get your baby to sleep. The only thing it will do is exhaust and stress out your baby and will make you want to cry.I am not an expert but I personally do not think babies cry as a tool to manipulate their parents, and this is why I loved Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Child so much. They cry when they need something. In Harrison's case, he would cry because he was drowsy and uncomfortable and couldn't fall asleep. He would cry because he needed me. I would pick him up and help him fall asleep, and then he would sleep. Now he never cries when going to sleep because I have helped him and taught him how to fall asleep and I did NOT have to implement the CIO method. I tried CIO for one day and it was AWFUL! It is not natural for a mother to sit and hear her baby scream or have to fight every urge inside of her to go run in and scoop up her baby. It just isn't. It's not what nature intended. I cried the whole time I tried CIO and hated it and I regret I ever tried it. When Harrison cries, I still go in and get him. And guess what? He has been sleeping through the night since 5 weeks, has been napping splendidly, and is still the happiest baby on the block. CIO is not worth it and I have very strong opinions against it. This was another topic in Babywise that I did not like or use.

Let me point out, though, that there are different cries. A grumbling or whining cry is different than a full-blown cry. If Harrison is just grumbling in his crib (as DH and I call "complaining") we don't get him and 9 times out of 10 he goes back to sleep. If Harrison is actually balling his eyes out, THAT is not okay. Something is wrong. 

So this is it! This is how I taught Harrison how to sleep. I watched for his natural sleep cues, helped sooth him with sleepy time routines, and did NOT utilize CIO. Now I have a happy, easy-going baby boy who loves his sleep, naps and all!