Every baby is different but here are my tips for helping to get your infant sleep through the night! While I think a large portion is pure luck, I believe what we did really contributed to our son sleeping a solid 8-10 hours at night as early as 8 weeks old.
1. Get a routine down and stick to it!
- By the time Declan was 5-6 weeks old I started paying much closer attention to how long he went between naps and feedings comfortably. He eventually kind of picked his own napping schedule and I just went with it. Around 6 weeks old we really enacted a stricter bedtime routine. We would *try* to not let him nap past 5 PM but that all depended on how he napped earlier in the day. Starting around 6:45 PM we start a bath, dim down most of the lights in the house, followed by lotion/massage, book and bottle. This time stays very strict whether it's a weekday or weekend. We put him down when he was tired but not asleep. He always falls asleep to some kind of noise, whether it be a sound machine, fan or background TV noise. I never wanted him to only fall asleep to silence because our neighbors homes are fairly close and especially in the summertime you can hear kids playing outside until 9 or 10 PM.
2. Overnight diapers!
- I know most overnight diapers aren't available in a smaller size than 3 but Declan was a special case. He was 9 lb and 21" at birth and actually went home in a 0-3 mo outfit. He was in size 3 diapers by the time he was 8 weeks old and being able to use overnight diapers and keep him comfortable throughout the night I also think was important.
3. Don't overstimulate too late in the day!
- This is one our families still have trouble grasping it seems. If we are invited to a family get together we always try to leave by 3:30. People call us rigid but it is what it is. The few times we've stayed places up until we needed to start his bedtime routine he struggled a great deal to settle for the evening and it just isn't worth the extra stress for us and disruption in his sleeping.
4. Ferber method...altered!
- I am not a believer in letting an infant cry it out but I heard a lot of success stories with the Ferber method. I wasn't comfortable following it exactly, so I altered it to what I wanted. If after we put Declan down for the night he woke up within an hour or two and we knew he didn't fill his diaper and wasn't hungry, we would let him fuss (not cry) for no more than one minute. If he didn't self soothe, we would go in, put our hand on him, let him know we were there and try to soothe him back to sleep and leave the room again. If he began fussing again we would increase the interval to maybe a minute and a half and so on. We would increase the intervals every few nights, never going more than 5 minutes. Again, I want to clear, this was only fussing - NOT crying or screaming.
5. Room sharing!
- Declan is now just over 9 months old and we are still room sharing. I like having him close and truly believe he sleeps better knowing we are close as well.
6. Sleep sack!
- Declan could weasel his way out of the tightest swaddle blankets at just a few weeks old so for his safety we transitioned him to the Halo sleep sacks and though he NEVER liked his arms being restrained at night, having the little velcro wrap around his mid section I think made him feel a lot more secure and contributed to a longer, better quality sleep.
Like I mentioned, every baby is different but I always have people asking what our "secret" is. To be honest, when my husband was a baby, he slept through the night at two weeks old and I was two months old. Maybe it's just in our genes! Hopefully some or all of these tips can help you!
