For the first few months of my oldest child’s life, I was sure he barely slept at all. I spent countless hours hunched over books and websites, tears in my eyes, trying to figure out how to get him to sleep. My desperation for him to sleep more and better led to anxiety and worry about his perceived sleep problem, thus making it even harder for me to sleep when I had a chance. What I realized later, after I emerged from that dark and tired place, was that he was sleeping quite a bit. He just wasn’t sleeping on the same schedule that I was accustomed to. After a few years of good hindsight and much research into biological infant sleep norms, I have come to learn that newborns and infants simply aren’t biologically designed to sleep on the same schedule as adults (why wasn’t this research easy to find when I was in the depths of despair?!). Their little bellies need to be filled often to accomplish the important task of growing fast, thus requiring them to wake up every couple of hours, day and night, in order to survive. Newborns’ sleep cycles are also different than adults’ and vital brain development happens during this simpler cycles.
Proof that he slept!
So, when my next baby was born 2 years later, I took a different approach. Armed with an understanding of normal newborn sleep, I was able to adjust my life in those first few weeks in a way that I could prioritize my own sleep over almost everything else. This was a huge shift in perspective. Instead of working hard to get my baby to sleep better, I worked hard to maximize my opportunities to get enough sleep. In other words, I focused on my own sleep instead of my baby’s. Here’s what I did:
- I brought my baby to bed with me often in the early days. My sleeping space was set up for safe co-sleeping and we spent a great deal of time there, day and night. I found that if I was lying down to nurse him, we would both often fall asleep and sleep well for a couple solid hours at a time. I was getting all this daytime sleep that I never had with my first! And when the baby had a bout of crying in the middle of the night, I was able to cope with it better because of all the sleep I’d banked and knew I would bank the next day.
- I carved out time for relaxing self-care to help quiet my mind and help me wind down in the evenings. I used my family support system by asking my husband, mother, or father-in-law to hold the baby for 30 minutes so that I could take a warm, relaxing bath. I made sure that they knew they could interrupt me if he became hungry because I was unable to relax if I needed to worry that they would push back a feeding in hopes of preserving my relaxation time.
- I went to bed with him when he was ready for his first chunk of sleep at night. We would often be in bed from 7pm until 9am the next morning. While we weren’t asleep this whole time, just being in bed and staying rested maximized my sleep time.
- I accepted help. I never would have been able to stay in bed with my baby until 9am if I hadn’t accepted help. I had a toddler and my husband had to go to work. My father-in-law stayed with us for weeks after my second was born and he got up early every morning to be with my toddler. Was it hard to accept this help? For me it was. I felt a little guilty and struggled with feelings that I should be taking care of my toddler in the early morning. But I was able to remind myself that my father-in-law was so happy to help and that I was well rested enough to give my toddler the best of me for the rest of the day.
I felt such a sense of peace this time around. It was a complete 180 from my experience with my first. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, and there were days that were still a little tougher and days that I felt more tired. But I know that this approach saved me much heartache and agony. It was so hard to ask for and accept help at first. And it was hard to truly let go of some of my other daily duties in order to prioritize my sleep. But the newborn period is short and fleeting, and I had the opportunity to enjoy it so much more because I was well rested.