A few weeks ago, we decided that we needed to start transitioning Finn from sleeping in the Rock n’ Play, which was next to our bed, to sleeping in his crib.
There were a few things that necessitated this move: First, my wife returned to work a week ago. She wakes at 4:30AM to get ready for her day, and we knew that, with Finn in our room, she wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep. Also, we’d heard horror stories about babies getting “too accustomed” to the Rock n’ Play and flat-out refusing to sleep in their cribs. And, of course, we just knew, instinctively, that Finn was ready to sleep in his own room. (He was WAY more ready than we were, as it turned out.)
To prepare for the transition, we’d been having Finn take at least one nap each day in his crib. That went on for a week or two, and he was doing just fine. So, one night a week before Sona’s maternity leave ended, we decided to give it a go.
The first two nights, he only lasted 3 hours in his crib. At that point, he was still sleeping in 3-4 hour stretches, and we brought him into our room after he’d successfully slept the first stretch in the crib. This was both for our comfort and for his (or at least that’s how we justified it).
The third night, we decided to go cold turkey. We put him down in the crib, and we committed to leave him in there for the full night. He slept pretty well, but he didn’t sleep as restfully as he normally does.
I did what I always do: I took to Google. After reading lots of blogs and forum posts, I’d learned that we should make his crib as Rock N’ Play-like as possible to help with the transition.
Specifically, we did three things: 1. We put books under one side of the crib, making it incline slightly, just as the Rock N’ Play does. 2. We rolled a quilt (a bolster pillow would work, too), and put it at his feet. That way, he feels some resistance when he stretches and kicks. 3. We used a beach towel to make a nest under the crib sheet. I have no doubt that this has been the most effective tip, as Finn seems to really like feeling snug, and he sleeps more peacefully when he doesn’t have a big, empty mattress around him.
You can kind of see the nest in this photo (pardon his scowl–momma was waking him up by taking photos):
You’ll also see that I’ve taped some black and white art images inside of the crib. This has been really helpful, too. When Finn is awake, drifting off to sleep, they give him something to focus on. They also keep him quiet when he first wakes up. Instead of immediately crying, he spends some time looking at the pictures. (They are from this great book, which was a gift from friends. Finn LOVES the high contrast images.)
Since we did these tricks, Finn has been sleeping like a champ. In fact, not only does he sleep more soundly (less grunting and moving), but he also has started significantly extending his stretches of sleep.
This all started about a week and a half ago. We hadn’t consciously made any effort to “sleep train” him, yet. Though, we were starting to feel the pressure. It seemed like every book we saw, and every online post we read, was pushing us in that direction.
We both felt a little uncomfortable with the concept. Don’t get me wrong, we make a conscious effort not to respond immediately each time Finn cries; we want him to learn that he has to wait before his mommies run to him. We’re trying to teach him patience, and we want him to self-soothe (which is an ability that develops a little later, we know).
But the American parenting approach to baby sleep is, to me, so rigid. We aren’t rigid parents, really. We’re pretty flexible about a lot of things, and we want Finn to be flexible, too. So, while we have worked to establish a routine, we haven’t been obsessive about bedtime.
Finn seems to like a later bedtime, actually. He goes to sleep between 9-10:30 each night. And, for a long while, we thought we were bad parents for allowing him to stay up that late. Most parenting books and blogs recommend a bedtime closer to 7:00. But yesterday, at his 2 month check-up, his pediatrician said that she actually recommends a 10:00-11:00 bedtime for babies Finn’s age. She said it more naturally fits with their own inherent sleep rhythms.
That explains A LOT, as Finn fights going to bed any earlier, and now we know why.
She also told us that, as he gets older, he’ll begin scaling back his bedtime naturally, landing at around 7:00 by the time he is 6 months old.
I really appreciated her saying that. She didn’t say we should force him to bed. She didn’t say we should watch the clock obsessively. She said we should just let it happen naturally.
Turns out, that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. We’ve been watching Finn’s cues and following them as best we can, trying not to worry too much about whether or not he’s sleeping long enough or at the right times or according to the 1,298 parenting philosophies floating around.
And guess what? It’s working! Look at this graph, showing Finn’s daily eating, changing, and sleeping patterns:
As this shows, starting right at the 8-week mark, Finn started sleeping longer and longer each night. His sleep stretches increased nearly a full hour every single day. He started that week sleeping 5-6 hours at a time, and he ended it having slept 10 and 11 hour stretches.
We didn’t really do anything, actively, to encourage this; we just got out of his way.
Of course, the first few nights that he slept long stretches, we watched the monitor like crazy ladies. And when I woke up one morning to find that he was still sleeping after 9.5 hours, I went to check that he was breathing. (Don’t judge.)
But, so far, it seems like Finn is settling into his own sleep patterns. He still wakes up at around 6:30 sometimes. When he does, it takes about 15 minutes to give him a bottle, change his diaper, and put him back in bed (awake). He’ll fall asleep, on his own, a few minutes later.
Most days, he wakes up between 10-10:30. We have our mornings together, listening to music, watching The Chew, playing, and then he’ll go down for a nap around noon.
Things aren’t all so easy. As the day goes on, he resists naps more and more. He hates his 5:30-6:30 nap, and he usually sleeps pretty restlessly during that time.
And, though he’s super easy to put back to sleep if he wakes during the night, getting him down that first time is pretty tough. That’s the one time when we can’t put him in his crib awake, expecting him to fall asleep on his own. It’s like he knows it’s bedtime, and it’s his life mission to resist it.
Sona usually nurses him until he falls asleep. Then, she puts him in his crib and sneaks out of the room. Half of the time he stays asleep. Half of the time he wakes, screaming, 5 minutes later. On the nights when he wakes, it’s usually an hour-long battle to get him to fall asleep.
But–we’re getting there. I’d forgotten what 8-hour stretches of sleep felt like, and it makes our lives a lot easier now that he’s sleeping through the night. The pediatrician warned us that, with sleeping, it’s “a few steps forward, a couple of steps back.” Still, I’m glad that Finn is leading the way.