Sleep routine

 

Today’s newsletter is my second Q&A, sent to me by a dear colleague whose little one is just around 4 months.

 

Hey Rachel, what’s your opinion about sleep training?

 

I love this question. My husband is absolutely convinced that our early days of strict routine paved the way for the amazing sleep hound our son has become at the age of 5. We were lucky to never have endured long, drawn out bedtimes. We never had to sleep in the bed with him for comfort. He’s pretty much been a lights-out-and-see-you-in-the-morning type of guy. And evidence does support the view that establishing day-time routines early on, along with bed time routines after 3 months, mitigates many of the sleeping challenges parents face later when children move into their toddler and beyond phases (if you get Emily Oster's newsletter you will have read her one on this recently. Check out her website).

 

So what exactly did we do? Well, turns out memories have faded on this one and it took me a few days, some reading again, and prompting my husband, to recall.

 

In The Little A to Z, I mention two books which really helped us from Day 1: Secrets of the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg and The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. Though I skimmed these while pregnant, I didn’t really connect clearly with the books’ messaging until we were home from the hospital. I say this to assure you that it is never too late to read them. 

 

In the very early early weeks and months, we pretty much followed the advice of these two books to the letter. The baby’s routine is governed by 4 actions: eat, poop, play and sleep. Your day, by consequence, is just that: broken up in intervals of about 2 hours at a stretch, then slowly increasing in awake time as the first months go by. Sleep routine is pretty non-existence until about 3-months but routine in general isn’t. And I found that the structure suggested in both these books was helpful not only for our son but also for me as a mother. Mothers get stuck when home on maternity —away from offices and public life. Having a routine, even if quite simple with your baby, helps to alleviate some of the stress and anxiety of being a new parent. So think of routines as building blocks that can be added onto.

 

When your baby’s day starts getting a little bit longer and your sleep intervals at night as well this is where adding onto your day routine with a bedtime one really helps navigate the perils of evening. Everyone recalls that dreaded witching hour when nothing seems to keep your baby settled. Getting through this 5pm hump is critical so you can get the baby fed and asleep. Having a bedtime routine, no matter how simple, signals to your baby that the day is winding down and prepares them mentally for sleep.

 

Ours always started with a bath. As my husband would joke, “He isn’t dirty, Rachel” to which I always responded, “Not the point.” After bath time, came diapers, pajamas and a book followed by a last feed. I tucked him in his sleep sack (love the Halo ones) and put him in his crib. Other elements of the routine which helped enormously was Sheepie, his musical sheep.

 

There is one website that I leant on heavily throughout our son’s first 2 years: www.weebeedreaming.com. Imagine my surprise when I landed on this site to discover it was run by a woman up in Grand Prairie, Alberta (my home province). Her sample routine sheets per age category are blueprints to parental sanity, and her plethora of articles on different sleep challenges are nuggets of wisdom. Between the early advice on routinizing your day around the 4 key actions and Weebeedreaming’s sample routines, I didn’t feel I needed much else.

 

Except perhaps, the last big sleep challenge: how to cut out that last nighttime feed. I’ll never forget the visit to our pediatrician that set the wheels in motion for eliminating the nighttime feed. It was our son’t 9-month check-up. A long weekend was on the horizon. We asked the pediatrician how to eliminate it. She said in a very matter-of-fact way: “Lock your wife in one room. Give her earplugs. You sleep in another room near your son. Let him cry for two nights. Then it will be done.” We went home and steeled ourselves. Would you know? After one night, he was done. And we were all enjoying peaceful nights after that.

 

Here’s to some happy ZZZZs.