This is the first in an occasional series I’m starting where I talk about my own parenting experiences. This is my way to showcase things that worked for me…or didn’t. I get lots of first time parents who come to the studio. Often when I see them again for the hand-delivery of their artwork, they are feeling overwhelmed and aren’t sleeping. They have the same looks on their faces as I did for the first four months of my third son’s life. Here’s where we start our sleep journey as parents of three kids.
My sweet Matthew had bad acid reflux in his early months and we fell into lots of bad habits around sleep hygiene – holding him for all naps and nighttime sleep, nursing him to sleep and not following any substantial routine. He ran the show and we were just two exhausted parents along for the ride.
At a certain point, I went back to work and began commiserating with every client who came across my path during that time about my sleep. Before every meeting and at least once in every session I’d casually reference the poor sleep I was getting. Eventually I mentioned it to my client Cristina, who said to me “I know someone who can help!” Let me tell you – boy did she ever.
To back up a little – there are lots of different sleep training techniques. I’ve heard of a few: Sleep Lady Shuffle, the Ferber method, and Taking Cara Babies. Some are “cry it out” (or CIO) methods, others are less strict. Sleep training, no matter which technique you choose, is hard. I have two older boys who I sleep trained using a book called Sleep Easy Solution. It is a modified cry it out technique that saved our bacon.
As infants both boys developed a few sleep crutches – only going to sleep when rocked, nursed or simply held. They would do stretches of sleep in their crib, but by 6 and 7 months of age were still getting up 2-4 times a night. 4 times a night of wake-ups to nurse will drain the life out of any sane person. As such we committed to sleep training them and with a pair of noise canceling headphones, a supportive group of mom friends, and the sleep training book we did it.
Cut to our third baby boy, born in early November, who really gave us a run for our money. We rented the Snoo and gave that a try. It didn’t work. We tried all the swaddling, rocking and shushing we could. Matty had none of it. He was happiest and we got the most sleep when he was sleeping on our chest. Lay him down? Forget it – he’d wake instantly and cry and/or spit up vigorously. While we were trying to wrap our heads about this, there were two older boys, 6 and 4 to consider. We went into survival mode.
At about the 3 month mark is when I casually mentioned our terrible habits to my client Cristina. She said she hired a sleep consultant for her second baby and that it helped her tremendously. I’ll admit, at first I thought sleep consultants weren’t for me. I thought they were for people who didn’t follow an established technique or whose sleep problems were worse than mine. However, I thought again about how I was holding Matty all night and the back pain I was in. I had no idea how to get myself out of the pickle I’d found myself in.
Sleep training Matty via the old trusty book seemed overwhelming and impossible. It didn’t really have a chapter on breaking the specific cycle I had found myself in. I couldn’t even put the baby down, much less let him just cry in his crib. Finally, I’d waited to sleep train my older boys until they started solids. My reasoning at the time was that at least I knew for sure they were eating plenty and wouldn’t have to worry if they cried during sleep training that they were hungry. This was around the 3-4 month mark of Matty’s life – “way too soon” in my worried mind. But I also knew I couldn’t continue as I was. Cristina put me in touch with Meg, who’s sleep consulting business is called A Restful Night.
She met with us a couple of times initially and listened when I worried about letting my baby cry and whether I’d even be successful. Then she checked in with us regularly and answered all of my panicked “well he slept for 30 minutes and started crying what do I do” kind of messages. Before I knew it, we’d gotten into a solid routine and Matty was fully sleeping 12 hours a night PLUS NAPS. I cannot ever really explain how life changing this development was. I was sleeping fully lying down! No more worrying about the terrible risks of holding a baby while you sleep. And the quality sleep everyone was getting! It made me a better mom to all of the kids and person in general.
An unintended but valuable benefit was that Matty was much better in the car. All of my boys are those random weirdo babies who scream in the car the entire ride. Giving Matty the chance to learn to soothe himself also helped him employ that in other areas.
After this experience, I can’t identify what actions I could have changed in those first 3 months but boy I wouldn’t change anything we didn’t at 5 months! Using the sleep training book might have gotten me to the same place, but I think I probably would have caved and gone back to old habits without the guidance and one on one help from someone. The sleep consultant served as an accountability partner and cheerleader.
Finally – I always worried that I was damaging the parent-child bond when sleep training my first baby. He’s almost 7 now as I write this and I can confidently say my husband and I are his very favorite people still. It didn’t damage anything. If you need advice or tips, I am happy to answer questions about my experience. Go ahead and follow Meg on Instagram too. She posts helpful tips about sleep on her account. I hope today’s post helped you think about sleep training!
