Sleeping Well Without Sleep Training

When you have your first baby nothing will have prepared you for the havoc that baby will wreak on your sleep. People talk all the time about how little sleep parents of newborns get. People say silly things like, "Sleep extra now while you can" or "Store up lots of sleep before the baby gets here." If you are expecting a baby, you will be warned many times about the sleep deprivation in your future, but you won't be prepared. Nothing can really prepare you for not sleeping, and nothing can really fix the fact that you will go through those first few months with hardly any sleep to fall back on.

Of course, it does get better. But  while I'm guessing that no other phase is quite like the first couple months, parenthood in general is not a time of carefree, plentiful sleep.

Almost four months ago I wrote this post: Sleep Training - Yes or No? Four months ago I had a sweet little baby who was capable of sleeping for 7 hours at a time, (or going 7 hours without nursing), but could not put herself to sleep at all. Every single time she woke up during the night she cried, and either my husband or I would have to get up and help lull her back to sleep. Then when she did fall back asleep, about 90% of the time, if you set her down in her crib she would wake up and continue to cry.

It was hard. We talked about sleep training daily, but we didn't want to do it. Like I discussed in my post, it didn't feel right for us and it didn't feel right for her. We ended up coming up with a somewhat awkward co-sleeping arrangement involving the couch, my husband and I not sleeping in the same bed for a while, and our daughter essentially being held all night long while she slept. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't get her to sleep in her crib.

I felt guilty if I let her cry, and I felt silly when I talked to other parents about the fact that I couldn't let her cry. I felt guilty that my husband was spending so much time sleeping on the couch. I felt silly for not just embracing bed-sharing straight out, because then everyone would have been happy. I just felt guilty, silly, and embarrassed about the whole situation. This was just a few months ago, but I already look back and wish I hadn't felt so apologetic about the whole thing. 

I wasn't alone. My husband felt the same way about not wanting to sleep train. He would be there before I was most of the time to pick her up when she started fussing. (He is such a softy - I love him for it.) He agreed with me that neither of us were comfortable with her sleeping in our bed at that point (she was just so tiny and small, and our bed is fairly soft, and the risks seemed too great). We talked about what we were willing to do and about how we wanted to parent, and we made those decisions together. I should not have felt embarrassed about that.

So for about three months we were in a challenging time where our baby refused to sleep in her crib, we didn't want to put her in our bed, and it was just very awkward. But we decided that we valued sleep. We valued it for ourselves and for her and we didn't want to spend 40 minutes every two hours lulling a baby back to sleep. In the end we came up with an arrangement that we felt was safe for her and that allowed all three of us to sleep all night long. We were well-rested, safe, and happy. And she wasn't sleep trained at all. 

Around the time our little one turned 7 months, the school year ended for my husband. He started working full time and I stopped going into the office for my job. Our schedule was completely regulated, and it gave us an opportunity to really work on a schedule for Baby Girl. I started paying attention to when she got tired every night, and we discovered that by 8pm she was "done" consistently without fail. So we started beginning her bedtime routine at 7:45 every night. She and I have a routine during the day too, and now we have a baby who naps in the morning and in the afternoon around the same time each day and always goes to bed by 8. As she has gotten older these past few months her ability to put herself to sleep on her own is slowly growing. We still have to help her when she's very tired, but during her afternoon naps she routinely wakes up and then settles back down without help. And we didn't have to sleep train her for her to learn that skill either. It comes naturally to her as she gets older and feels safe and secure. We are a very happy, well-rested family with an 8-month-old who is not sleep trained, and we are okay with that. 

Yes, I nurse her to sleep. For every nap and at night, and then sometimes in the middle of the night if she wakes up. I want to do that. It makes her happy and it makes me happy, and I think that it's good for her emotionally and physically. And yes, sometimes we let her sleep in bed with us. She's much bigger now, rolls very easily, moves around a lot while sleeping, and we have no fears of anything bad happening. I've decided that I'm not apologetic for my choices and I'm not going to be embarrassed about that span of 3 months either. Our baby is not a "good sleeper" in the typical sense, but she does get to sleep well and we get to sleep well, and the methods we use to make that happen feel safe, right, and healthy for us.

I'm writing this post to encourage moms out there that it's okay to not follow conventional wisdom about sleep training. The important thing is for your child to be healthy, both emotionally and physically, and for you to be healthy as well. That means that everyone needs to get sleep, but what that looks like will be different for each family and each kid. This is just the first 8 months of my story, from someone who always thought she would sleep train, but got there and then decided she didn't want to do it. Who knows what will happen in the next 8 months? We plan to move Little Girl into her own room after we move next month, so that will be interesting. We are committed to playing this sleeping and sleep training thing  by ear and just taking each month and developmental stage as it comes.