When I wrote about sleep issues for young children several months, a number of you requested that I write more specifics about the topic of sleep and infants. It’s taken me a while to get around to this; as I mentioned then, this is a topic that I tend to avoid because I don’t like to be taken out of context. In this post I’ll try to give a basic explanation of how I approach this with my young infants, and then respond to several specific questions that were asked.
Firstly I have to explain that I never set out to develop an approach to get my babies to sleep through the night. There are things that I’m structured about but this wasn’t one of them! I don’t mind if babies wake up once or even twice a night; my concern was more about helping my infants get the amount of sleep they needed. And it works out quite nicely that in doing the best thing for them, it makes for better rested parents, too!
The easiest thing to do is to establish healthy sleep habits from the beginning. In order to do this, you need to learn to read your baby’s cues and respond to them in a timely manner. The problem is that most of us recognize only the most obvious signs of exhaustion, way after the signs of being tired first appear! Learn to recognize the signs that your baby is winding down; they start to look droopy and less alert. If you’re holding him, he’ll often put his head on your shoulder and rest it there. This is the time to put them to sleep – not when they are rubbing their eyes and starting to cry from tiredness. There’s a window of opportunity when putting your child to sleep is very easy – he is generally relaxed and mellow, ready to sleep and not yet at the point of being overwrought from crying. Whatever stage you’re at with your baby, start paying attention to these cues and responding – don’t think it’s too late if you haven’t done this since birth!
How does a baby learn to fall asleep? I like to put a baby down when he is in the tired and in the ready state that I described above, very relaxed but still awake. (Remember that you’re putting him to sleep when he needs it, not when it’s convenient for you!) I think a big part of the problem most parents have is that they get their baby to sleep (nursing, rocking, holding) and then he pops right up when he gets put down. It’s like those few minutes of sleep refreshed him enough to keep him awake for a while longer! And he suddenly finds himself in bed, very alert and totally not ready for sleep. It’s much easier on him if he has the chance to gently drift to sleep on his own.
There seems to be the view that either you let your baby ‘cry it out’ and neglect him emotionally, leaving him with psychic scars that will last forever, or you’re a nurturing parent and you hold twenty five hours a day so that he never whimpers. 
Just exaggerating a little to make a point. 
There’s actually a possibility between those two extremes that is nurturing and loving towards both the baby and parent that many mothers are unaware of.
By putting my babies down when they’re ready to sleep, I’ve found that they don’t cry a lot. They’re not being left in a crib to scream for long periods of time until they fall asleep exhausted. Occasionally my baby will cry for a few minutes after he’s put in (about 2- 4 minutes), but usually he snuggles right down and falls asleep within a few minutes with no crying at all. If he cries more than a few minutes, I know that I misread his sleep cues and he’s not really ready to go to sleep and I take him out.
Not only does he not cry a lot when he’s put down for a nap or for the night, but he doesn’t cry a lot when he’s awake. Part of that is certainly temperament, but a very, very large part of it is that a well rested infant is a happy infant!
What about nursing a baby to sleep? Remember, every time a baby cries, he isn’t asking to be nursed! Sometimes he’s crying from exhaustion, and learning to read his cues will help you to respond appropriately to what he’s telling you. That being said, I think nursing babies to sleep is fine. My only caution is that when a mother does this all the time, the baby becomes dependent on her to fall asleep instead of developing his ability to fall asleep. I usually nurse my baby until he was almost asleep, and put him in his crib when he was still awake but on the verge of sleep. At this point I can nurse him to sleep fully and put him to bed afterwards and he hardly stirs.
If you’re past the stage of being able to do this from the beginning, don’t worry, you can fairly quickly get your child used to a new routine. A friend told me several months ago about this book and was happy to find it was something I’d recommend. It’s similar in many ways to what we do. He has a moderate approach and is able to give more specific and structured suggestions than I am, since I’m just not structured in that way regarding bedtimes. For me, our babies sleeping schedules have naturally evolved from being in tune to them and respecting their needs.
Something I found interesting was the author’s explanation that infants reach the ability to sleep through the night at about age six weeks from the original due date. This was especially interesting to me since my current baby slept through the night way earlier than any of his siblings. Many of you may remember way back eight months ago to when he was born, that he was three weeks overdue; all the rest of my kids were born on the earlier side of the due date. He slept for seven hours at night at the age of three weeks, something the others didn’t do until 7 or 8 weeks. All of them lined up with the six weeks from the due date guideline, though I didn’t learn of it until he was two or three months old. Interesting, isn’t it?
In case you’re wondering more about my baby’s current sleep schedule, at about age 5 – 6 months he began waking up once or twice a night. That was when he was teething, and then he went back to sleeping through the night. He generally goes to sleep around 9 – 10pm and sleeps until about 7 am. He takes a long nap in the mid morning, and another long nap in the afternoon. This is his general routine, but it’s not something I schedule and I can’t give you a specific time this happens every day because it goes according to him, not the clock.
As far as bedtimes for both my other littles, ds2 (29 months) and ds3.5 (46 months) go to sleep around 8 pm and wake up around 7 – 7:30am. They both take a nap mid day, around 1 pm. Ds2 goes in a little earlier and sleeps longer than ds3.5. Ds2 sleeps around 2 – 3 hours, and ds3 sleeps around 1 – 1.5 hours.
Now for a few questions:
>> How do you put them down into a pack and play without them waking? I can barely reach down into one, let alone gently deposit a sleeping baby (I’m very short).<<
Since they’re usually not sleeping when I put them down, this isn’t generally a problem! Sometimes my baby does fall asleep when nursing, and I don’t worry about if he wakes up when I put him in bed since he’s learned how to fall back asleep on his own. I actually assume they will often wake up somewhat. But if they are basically ready for sleep, they will settle back down to sleep within a couple of minutes. If you make it a point to handle your babies very gingerly when you put them down, they become overly sensitized to movement and it gets to be almost impossible not to do something to disturb them. I don’t take any special pains to keep from making noise or moving and very often transfer my almost asleep baby from me to an older child to take upstairs to bed.
As far as height, I’m guessing my dd9 is probably shorter than anyone reading here! She routinely puts the baby down (and was eight when she started doing it several months ago), and now ds7 is also starting to put the baby in for the night. They’re tall for their ages but not that tall!
>>Oh, and I’m curious how you arrange naps around your other kids outings? You have older kids, so maybe they stay home and babysit, or take the younger kids to their activities… <<
When my babies are little up through the age of about 2 or 2.5, I don’t mess around with their napping schedule. I think it’s very important that they get to sleep when they are tired, just like I think they need to be fed when they’re hungry. That means that activities are scheduled around their nap times. Everyone is much happier when the baby and young children in the home are well rested so this isn’t much of a sacrifice!
>>With nightmares, teething, taking to bathroom in the middle of the night, illnesses, etc., with so many kids, Avivah, I cannot imagine how you get any sleep, since with two I barely seem to.<<
I should get to sleep earlier than I do, but my sleep limitations are because I choose to spend too long online (like writing posts for my blog 
) than because of my kids. As you see from above, the baby/young child part of the equation is fine! My husband and I unofficially split the nighttime responsibilities years ago; I take care of the nursing baby, he takes care of anyone else that needs it. He doesn’t have to get up very often, though! They don’t usually need much once they’re in bed for the night – sometimes someone isn’t feeling well or wakes up suddenly crying, but that’s not common. And now that they have older siblings they share rooms with, usually a sibling will hear them and help them before we get to them. He also helps out with the baby in the night if there’s a need, like changing the baby if it’s necessary.
I hope this was helpful! If I didn’t address a concern that you have or something was unclear, please feel free to share questions in the comments sections below.
(This post is part of Works for Me Wednesdays.)
Avivah
i do just like you do and many people think i’m nuts and dependent on my child… glad to see i’m not alone
It just goes to show that you have to do what is right for you and your family and not worry about what anyone else thinks, since you can never please everyone!
This is off topic, but on the chance that any of your other readers don’t keep kosher, it’s worth pointing out that Trader Joe’s has excellent raw milk baby swiss and cheddar cheeses, for a fairly reasonable price, as these things go. It’s very nice stuff and it’s also the only place in my area I’ve been able to affordable source raw cheese.
Hi, Meg, thanks for pointing this out; there are a lot of readers who don’t keep kosher who will appreciate this info.
I’ve seen TJ’s raw milk cheese and it’s SOOO much cheaper than kosher raw milk cheese. I’ll add the info about TJ’s cheese into the raw cheese post (http://oceansofjoy.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/kosher-raw-milk-cheese/) so anyone browsing there will be aware of this.
Just found your blog. Your family is beautiful!
Hi, Bonni, welcome and thank you! I hope you stick around. 🙂
Avivah, I love your balanced approach to just about everything. This is the most sane thing I’ve read on infant sleep. Usually people are very political — either advocate CIO, or equate AP with never putting baby down, and condemn everyone who does differently.
Question — when you say that you plan your outings around your babies’ sleep, how would that work with scheduled activities, like classes that are only available at certain times? Or, even if you have a choice of times, your baby’s sleep schedule changes as he gets older.
Just yesterday, I had to put off a sleepy baby’s nap twice — to pick up dd from her chumash tutor, and later, to take her to her gymnastics class.
At this point in my homeschooling, I’ve come to the conclusion that less is unmistakably more. I don’t do a lot of outside activities anymore; I’ve done tons of classes/group activities in the past and found it very hard to keep our home life balanced.
When I do go out, I prefer to go in the morning before ds2 and ds3 need to nap, or after they finish their naps around 3 or 4 pm. The baby is easier to be flexible with since I usually wear him in a mei tai when we’re out and it makes it easy for him to fall asleep when he’s tired. Not the same as a long nap in bed, but it’s okay. He usually takes a long nap when we get home to offset the shorter nap when being worn.
If the outing needs to be midday, I’ll try to put the littles in for a short nap before I go. If there’s a long drive, I know the littles will all sleep either on the way there or back, or both. Then they go to sleep earlier at night so that they’ll still get their regular amount of sleep.
It sounds like you’re talking about regularly scheduled lessons that you don’t want to cut out. So I’d try to adjust my baby’s sleeping schedule to accomodate this.
I like your explanations better than Weisbluth’s. However, how is it that you stop your baby nursing to put him down before he’s truly asleep, but this doesn’t upset him? Whenever I tried this with my babies they freaked out, having gone fron a blissful state to anger at being stopped. Maybe I did not try this when they were young enough?
I’m not sure what that means, that they freaked out. They cried intensely for a long period of time?
Sometimes my baby isn’t quite ready to stop and then I nurse him a little more until he’s really ready. But he’s not usually being nursed to sleep so it’s not really a major concern for me. And honestly, if he cries for two minutes and then falls asleep it doesn’t bother me.
Maybe you need to wait a little more until your baby is deeply relaxed? If you have done that already and the transition is unsettling for them, you might need to be willing to let him/her cry for a few minutes if you know that they’re really tired and need to sleep.
I think some of this has to do with temperament, because both my children did not respond the way you describe. My babies don’t get into that relaxed state before getting to the state of rubbing their eyes. And they also won’t unlatch unless they are completely asleep, and I have to do it a special way. I tried when they were newborns, and later on. It just didn’t work. My second, though, is mellower, and I can gently lower him into a playpen and shush him back to sleep, but he hates it after a few sleeps. I think you’re advice is great for those who might not realize their baby is giving them cues! Its like ECing. Some babies give clear cues, or follow timing, or respond to signals… and others just don’t.
Shira, temperament is highly overrated in every area of parenting. I can’t tell you how many times and how many areas I’ve been told I must have very easy kids – if they listen to me, if they don’t have tantrums, if they get along with their siblings, if they help out, if they do their academic work without me nagging, if they eat what I serve without complaint, etc – it must all be because they’re easy kids. Believe me, the likelihood of having nine easy going and placid children is statistically insignificant, and I didn’t beat the odds! So if it’s not temperament, what is it? It’s something I’m doing consistently with all of them that produces similar results in very different children.
Your baby is unique so his cues will be a little different, and his response will be a little different. But every single baby has cues, and they all have a mid point between very alert and very tired. That’s what you’re looking for, the in between zone for your baby. Your baby probably won’t respond for the first couple of weeks the way I described; they have to get used to something new. I’d strongly suggest you get a hold of the book I mentioned and see if his more detailed instructions are helpful to you.
I cannot agree with you on this and I read the book twice, the second time was before my dd was born, to avoid all the mistakes I thought I might have made with ds.
My dd cried many hours a day and night everday from 6 weeks to almost nine months. She slept over the amount that Dr. Weisluth reccommends during all of these stages. From 6 weeks on it was impossible to drive for anymore than a 10 minute trip because she would scream at the top of her lungs the entire time. She did the same thing in the stroller. I wore her most of the time, but I never though at 6 weeks she was being manipulative so I assumed it was her temperment because we had had medical evaluations and she seemed fine. I changed many things in my diet (this was before we started a more nourishing diet, but still pretty healthy) took her to a chiropractor, for saniocracial work, etc.
I also had to unltach like Shira descrbes, and my children never showed obvious signs of tiredness either (they still don’t), it was more useful for me to follow a clock.
If it I didn’t believe in temperment, then I guess you’d just say I’m a total failure with sleep and while I am far from good at that aspect of parenting, I’m more inclined to believe you were incredibly lucky nine times.
I meant craniosacral-my keyboard isbrokenand the spacebar is missing, so I am sorry for the zillion typos!
I’m wondering if you have any advice for me. Right now, my eight week old baby seems to be jet lagged. She sleeps for longer stretches during the day (3-4 hours), but is awake during the night. I’ve tried to shorten her naps during the day, but she’s half awake and falls back asleep. To be precise, she’s miserable and makes the rest of us miserable until we leave her alone and let her go back to sleep. She’s been doing this since she’s been born.
Also, what do you do when your baby wakes up during the night? As you’ve mentioned, sometimes baby’s arent hungry, they just need to learn to fall back asleep. What do you do if they’re crying? Do you let them just wake up everyone else in the house?
It sounds like your baby has reversed her day and night cycles, and you’ll have to gradually help her reset her sense of time. Don’t try to all of a sudden get her to change; it will have to be in steady increments each day. Bit by bit cut back on her nap times, so that they get shorter and shorter. Stretch her waking times. You’ll have the be the judge of just how long she can stay up and how frequently you are waking her; I can’t give exact guidelines since I’m not in your house! I know how unpleasant cranky babies can be, but you’ll have to suffer some discomfort to help her sort this out. I’ve traveled internationally several times with infants, and each time we had to spend a week getting them back to their regular schedule when we got home.
It will also be good to make sure the room she’s napping in has lots of sunlight coming in; don’t draw the shades or do anything to create an artificial sense of darkness. When night comes, minimize any lights or outside noises. The body is sensitive to light and dark, and you can use that to help her regulate her sleep schedule.
Good luck!
I have 4 children ages 4 months up to 8 years. I understand what Dina and Shira are saying I think. My oldest would scream until she threw up if I put her in her crib. She couldn’t sleep without nursing either. Turns out she had major food sensitivities (about 20). My second was much better and would fall asleep pretty well. The third was difficult but not as bad as the first. She also started having major allergic reactions and at age 1 landed in the hospital with hives and then reacted to the Benadryl too. Then baby #4 came along and he screamed incessantly no matter what. After what I’d already been through with the others’ allergies, I eliminated dairy and all things corn from my diet (because he’s nursing). Almost instantly he became a whole new baby and now sleeps exactly as Avivah has described.
So, I agree with Avivah that babies should be able to sleep well and easily rather early on. However the reasons they might not be doing it are varied and may include unknown food allergies/sensitivities. It’s not just that you’re doing it wrong or something, the baby may be in some sort of distress, not just overtired.
I’ve read the sleep book you mentioned too, but I didn’t think much of it. Your post sums it up much better!
Hi, Cori, welcome!
Thank you for bringing up the point about food sensitivities/allergies. When writing this I considered addressing this possibility, but I felt it would be way too long to get into it in one post. I wasn’t thinking about the question asked from this perspective, though. You’re correct that babies who have a physical challenge like this often aren’t going to sleep as described until the underlying irritant is removed. Often just dealing with the allergy, even without making any other changes, is enough for a mother to see a sudden and drastic change in her baby’s sleeping schedule.
Dina, do you really think I’d say someone was a total failure with anything just because they disagreed with me and didn’t have the same results I did?!? 🙁 After reading here for months, I would really hope you know me better than that by now.
The reality of parenting is that everyone will have a different experience because every child is an individual, and as I’ve said before on a number of occasions, just because something works for one parent doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. My sharing of my experience shouldn’t leave anyone thinking she’s inadequate in my eyes or in their own eyes, just because we don’t have the same results. It’s just my experience.
I had two children who cried most of their waking hours, one until the age of 9 months, one until the age of 12 months, at which point they both seemingly overnight became a lot easier. Fortunately they still slept well for naps and at night. But no one would have called them easy children (actually, neighbors used to tell me they’d go crazy if they were me because they saw my baby screaming every single time they saw me!). Looking back I suspect that something was going on with their digestion; they both had projectile spitting up, screamed (not cried) for long periods of time – knowing what I do now, I think they were probably in pain and would pay a lot more attention to things I wouldn’t have even known to look at then. I suspect there were underlying allergens in my diet that they were sensitive to, and would look at eliminating those. A good diet is often not enough for the sensitive baby since he still might react to wheat, corn, soy, dairy, or other things that have a place in a typical healthy diet.
Just a few days ago I was in contact with someone in this situation (baby screaming most of the day, not sleeping more than 2 hours at a stretch at night); she told me she cut out things she suspected were allergens and he suddenly started sleeping long stretches at night and long naps during the day. But physiologically he couldn’t do that until the allergens were removed from his mother’s diet.
I agree 100 percent with your method of putting your babies to sleep. I *only* have four kids… I’m so impressed that you have nine!
My newborn is the first one though to have a major reflux problem. This has kind of thrown me for a loop because she is much fussier than the others were.
This week, I have been eliminating a few things from my diet, giving her less milk at each nursing and we also started giving her Zantac, which seems to be helping!
Avivah, I have been reading for you almost 2 years, not just months, LOL!!!! My opinion of you couldn’t really be any higher.
I think this is probably a very raw issue for me still. I have had a heck of a four years. I know I don’t have to qualify how much I love my kids to you, but the only issue I have with having a large family (besides difficult pregnanices) is sleep issues. I think that may sound strange to people, but, I am probably the one jugding myself b/c I feel I haven’t done a good job with either of my children.
My daughter at 21 months is still difficult, but I try to realize that this is who she is. When she’s around just people she knows very well, she is delightful, but she is terrified around strangers, being in crowded places, being in the car for longer than 20 minutes. My son, on the other hand does not have any of these issues, never did.
I do suspect something was going on and I have a hunch. I had a tremendously hard time with nursing her for the first two months. She would scream, have tremendous difficulty latching
on. I saw LC’s, had also been through this with my son. I was given an SNS and used this for four months before being able to nurse him without. Nursed him till 21 months he self-weaned when I was a few months pregnant. Part of this is my anatomy (flat), but I thought my daughter and now think my son had tongue-tie. My pediatrician poo pooed this and I didn’t have the strength at the time to investigate this further. At nine months, we had seen a new dr. after we moved. I thought she might have had an ear infection. the first thing the dr. said to me was , “your daughter is tongue-tied”
BTW, I had cut wheat and dairy for four months with her and didn’t eat soy anyways. I feel horrible, but I suspect she was hungry.
I think we moms hold on to a lot of guilt when we look back and see things we wish we would have done differently. I’ve felt this in so many areas – the more I learn, the more things I see I could have done better and I sometimes feel badly that my kids didn’t have the benefit of my current knowledge then. It’s not helpful, though, is it?!
I recently asked my mentor about the place of guilt, and she said to ask myself two questions:
1) If I knew then what I know now, would I have done things differently? If the answer is yes, then ask yourself:
2) Can I forgive myself for not doing something then that I didn’t know I was doing?
Knowing what you know now, you’d do something different about your baby, wouldn’t you? You’re a loving and devoted mother; can you let go of blaming yourself for not knowing what you know now, and accept you did the best you could?
I am trying to let go…I’ve made being hard on myself into a profession, lol!
I just found your blog and I will definitely be back. I need to re-read this post and the responses when I am not so tired! We have the book you linked to and my little one has definitely followed his developmental stages right on schedule. She was born 3 weeks early, so at 9 weeks she was doing what he said a 6 week old would do. Very interesting to me.
I am guilty of feeding her until she is deep asleep. This is my 3rd, I should know better but I keep choosing the easier path (but harder in the long run).
Anyway, thanks for this post! I’ll be back.
Hi, Amy, welcome! I also found it very interesting about how the stages line up with the six week old ‘age’. I’m glad you enjoyed the post and I’m glad you’ll be visiting again. 🙂