Sleep for Newborns - 6 Weeks Old

I think some parents might find it relieving to know that it's okay if you don't want to start sleep training right away.  Maybe you feel like some crying is inevitable, but you aren't comfortable with letting your newborn, 6 week old, or even 4 month old do that just yet.  I hope that if do you feel this way, it will be encouraging to know that you can take your time and still gently ease your baby into good sleeping habits by taking advantage of the brain development milestones that occur naturally.

Less than 6 weeks old
Babies typically fall asleep at night very late and do not sleep very long during the day or night.  They have no circadian rhythms at this point so you can't set your baby to clock time yet.  Try to soothe him to sleep during the day or night before he gets overtired.  Always respond to the baby and avoid the overtired state.

After 6 weeks 
80% of babies become more settled and start sleeping longer at night (this is because of increasing brain maturity), and begin to get drowsy for bedtime at an earlier hour.  Try to start soothing earlier to facilitate this when you start to notice it.  You're still not sleep training at this point, so if you still want to go to your baby when he cries, follow your instinct.  Begin taking advantage of opportunities to put your baby down drowsy but awake.  It doesn't have to happen every nap and every night, but you will notice that sometimes it is easy to put him down and let him fall asleep on his own.  The more you can do this, the more comfortable your baby will get with falling asleep on his own in his bed.
20% of the babies who do not start settling into better sleep at night should still be soothed early, but more time should be allowed for lengthy soothing sessions.

In my opinion, a mom should not feel guilty about feeding or rocking her baby to sleep especially at this very young age.  It's natural for a baby to fall asleep while eating, so don't feel inclined to wake your baby up before putting him to bed.  Realize how important complete sleep cycles are to the developing brain, and focus on still, quiet sleep as much as possible.  Avoid waking or keeping the baby up longer than 1-2 hours.  Ideally you are able to always have the baby sleeping in his bed in a still, quiet room (this matters more and more the older they get as newborns sleep through anything!) You're not training yet, you're setting a foundation for a well-rested baby who will be better prepared for sleep training later.

Tips to set a good foundation:

• Respect and protect your baby's need to sleep.
• Anticipate and prepare for when your baby will need to sleep, the same way that you anticipate a feeding.
• Maintain brief intervals of wakefulness, a 1-2 hour max window (baby needs to be asleep by the 2 hour mark)
• Watch for drowsy cues and respond with soothing immediately.
• Start developing a bedtime routine that you can replicate in whole every night (i.e. bathtime, story, feeding, soothing, bed).
• Remember timing is key.  For those 80% of babies who start settling at 6 weeks, perfect timing produces no crying.

All this info, except what I specified as my own opinion, is paraphrased from the book Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Dr. Marc Weissbluth.

Giving Him the First Year, My Practice of Mothering

Click to read others' practices in Sarah's Practices of Parenting Carnival on Monday, February 6.

Sarah at Emerging Mummy asked her readers to share their practices of mothering.  She has a really awesome series on her own practices.  I loved the idea, but I didn't think I would submit anything myself.  It came to me today.  Ryan, my husband, was reminding me of a principle my great-grandmother talked to him about over Christmas: give them the first year.  My great-grandmother (My 7 1/2 month old son Declan's great-great at 89 years old!) was a little bit of an entrepreneur.  She had consignment shops, a house cleaning service, and she was involved at church over the years.  When she was a young mother, though, she put these things on hold to focus on her babies. 

I think about this principle whenever I feel outside pressure to compromise Declan's schedule.  For our family, giving him the first year translates to staying home a lot.  Babies need more sleep than most people (Americans?) think.  His feeding, nap, and bedtime routines are very important to me in order to maintain his comfort and sense of security.  I want to rock him in his nursery and for him to be able to sleep in his own bed, still and quiet and clean in a fresh diaper with his blanket and his white noise; I want him to know where he is when he wakes; I want him to know that I'll come to him with big smiles when he finishes a good nap.  These things are his to rely on and he can feel that all is safe and normal.

There are things that Ryan and I miss out on because of our dedication (some may call it obsession) to our son's routine.  We do make allowances for specific occasions and on Sundays for church (our service meets in the evening).  Although it would be nice to have more flexibility to run errands, have dinner parties with friends, or do other evening church functions, we believe we are doing something more important.  I don't know many other people with young babies that give up their pre-baby lifestyle.  I understand that decision and sadly I think it's a strong aspect of Western culture, but I can't honestly say I support it (even though it's none of my business).  My husband and I believe that through this temporary sacrifice (which, let's face it, is just the beginning -- you're a parent by the way!), he will grow into a healthier, happier, smarter, and self-controlled child.

7 Months Old: All But Crawl

We're 7 months into this deal.  In case you haven't noticed, I've been making an effort to note the developmental advances he's made and record some of the things I want to remember about him at each monthly milestone.  It's already fun and eye-opening to look back at how he has changed.  I don't have a real baby book, so I'm sure one day I'll find some way to preserve these entries.

At 7 months old, he's not quite crawling.  Since the week before Christmas he has been experimenting with getting up on his knees and rocking back and forth.  More recently he spends most of his tummy time like this, whereas before it was pretty infrequent.  As of last Friday, I saw him go from this position to sitting.  I wasn't expecting this to happen before crawling, but I'm so glad because most of the time he prefers to sit instead of be on his tummy.  So now he has the ability to do it without my help (c: 

In addition to that skill, he's shown a lot of interest in pulling up.  He tries to pull up on our dining room chairs, the couch, his crib, dresser, or changing table, and of course reaches for our kneecaps when we get close enough.  He's gaining strength and confidence to make his limbs do what he wants them to.



Vocally, he's still a chatterbox when he gets going.  He likes to repeat, "RaRaRaRaRa" among other things.  He has taken to squealing/screaming/screeching/chirping really loud.  So loud and repeatedly I sometimes want to apologize to our downstairs neighbors who have two babies.  Usually the outbursts are with joy, but he sometimes uses them to express frustration.  Like if he's sitting in his high chair while I get his food ready and he's getting impatient.  One of the funniest things he does is clench his gums, open his eyes really wide and raise his eyebrows, and hold his breath while he turns red and clenches his fists.  I have no idea what this is about... I think he just likes the look of bewilderment on my face when he does it.

Over Christmas I transitioned him back to 2 solids feedings a day.  I know that what time of day he eats what doesn't matter to him, but I like giving him fruit and cereal in the morning and veggies in the evening (c: The fruits he has tried are just bananas and plain applesauce.  He usually eats those with blended up oatmeal.  It has taken longer than I thought it would, but he has come to love these.  The veggies he has tried are carrots, green peas, green beans, acorn squash, broccoli, spinach, and most recently, avocado.  I have some yellow squash in the fridge that he'll try next.  When he tries something new, it's always with a grimace and a gag, at least on the first few bites.  The only exception has been spinach.  Surprisingly, he took to that like it was his everyday favorite from the first bite.  He'll eat it cold, too (ew!).

This month I have finally managed to make myself stick to a schedule (mostly, anyway) when it comes to his sleep.  I would have thought, knowing myself and how I like to make lists and schedules, that this would have happened on its own long ago.  The problem is that even if things are going good, I have to wonder if a change would make it even better, so I change it up.  And we get thrown off.  So the past few weeks this is the schedule I've been keeping.

6:30-7am - His wakeup.  If he wakes up earlier he has to stay in bed til then.  If he is still asleep past 7:15 or so I wake him up.  The vast majority of mornings he wakes around 7am though.  I give him his medicine first thing.

8:00am - Nurse

8:30am - Fruit and Cereal

9:00am - Nap#1.  Finally these are stretching out to be an hour or more.

11:30am - Nurse

1pm - Nap#2.  Ideally, an hour or more.  Unfortunately though this one is still often short (30min).  I have been letting him cry for up to an hour.  Once he went back to sleep for another 45 min.  It's really frustrating when this one is short because a third nap comes at a really awkward time and can interfere with his bedtime.

3:00pm - Nurse

4pm - Variable Nap#3

6:00pm - Medicine

6:30pm - Nurse

7:00pm - Veggies

7:15pm - Bath

7:45pm - Nurse

8:00pm - Bedtime

Then he'll usually wake up around 2 or 3am for another feeding.


There are still improvements to be made.  His naps are still too short, and his bedtime is still too late.  This isn't just my opinion - short naps are indicative of over tiredness.  His bedtime was earlier - we tried for over 2 weeks to get him to go to bed at 7.  The problem was not getting him to sleep, it was getting him to stay asleep.  But I know that those wakeups that came after the earlier bedtime are also an indication of not getting enough sleep.  I know it sounds crazy.  But babies his age need at least 14 hours of sleep, and he's only getting about 13 on good days.  It doesn't sound like a big gap, but that hour or more that he doesn't get every day is what is causing the problems that we're having.  Most people don't realize how much sleep babies actually need.

I found a Godsend, Weissbluth has a blog.  While he can't answer all of the questions himself, there are a lot of moms on there who are extremely helpful. 

Babies Declan's age who are successfully on the Weissbluth method go to bed before 6pm, have 1 or 2 wake ups for night feedings, sleep until 6-7am, and take 2-3 solid (1-2hr) naps per day.  The bedtime is early, and yes, it does limit what we can do in the evenings a lot.  Our church meets at night.  We had determined a long time ago that Sunday nights would be an exception, a night where he could stay up later.  But now I'm wanting to get back into doing the Women's Bible Study on Wednesday nights, as well as Zumba on Thursday nights.  So it is a conflict.

I am having to remember a few principles.  One is that it is important to protect the sleep schedule.  Now that he's older, I don't have to be home all the time.  The time between his 2nd nap (once he drops the 3rd nap) and bedtime will be a great time to get him out of the house, but we'll need to be back in time to get him in bed.  The second principle is one that my Great Grandmother taught me - to give them the first year.  As a mom, you really give them more than that, but it is helpful for staying strong and justifying your "strange behavior" to others when they don't understand why you don't want to go out after 6pm.  I have been accused of "not living."  That's not it at all.  It's just that I am giving Declan the first year.  I'm trying to set him up to be well-rested, comfortable, secure.  I'm trying to give him good sleeping and eating habits that he will hopefully carry for the rest of his life. 

Anyway, I have a small soapbox for this.  Maybe I'll express myself fully in another entry.  For now, my little boy is asleep and I should be too.  Goodnight (c:

Crashing... Part II

A great book on the biology of baby sleep.

I may have been kind of insensitive in my previous post about crashing.  I don't mean to imply at all that new parents don't want the very best for their babies.  I know they'd sacrifice night after night without sleep if it meant their child got good sleep.

I just want to share the "sleep gospel" - the more the child sleeps, the better quality of sleep he gets.  It sounded too good to be true, but it does make sense.

One happy day when Declan was about 6 weeks old, we were at Goodwill in San Antonio and my mom found this book while we were actually looking for another book that had been recommended to me a lot, On Becoming Babywise.  We couldn't find a copy of Babywise, but after thumbing through Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, I decided I would probably learn something worth $0.99 from it. 

To be honest, initially I didn't like the book.  It was difficult to read and follow.  Admittedly, Weissbluth may not be the most talented writer, but I was intrigued with the actual hard facts he had from his years of research.  He was talking about the biology of baby sleep.  It was refreshing and comforting to know that most non-colicky babies are very similar in their needs for sleep and even the time of day and night that they most naturally grow drowsy.  It was like he knew my kid!  This information is invaluable!  It's like gold!  I started referencing the book for specific problems we were having and I've ended up going back and reading through Declan's age range.  I still return to it if we have a specific problem pop up and it is always helpful.

My main issues at the time were Declan's daytime naps.  I had no idea how much daytime sleep he needed.  I just put him down when I thought he seemed tired.  It was usually after I had nursed him and he fell asleep, because I really hadn't figured out the best way to soothe him yet.  I'd put him down completely zonked and without fail he'd wake up 5 minutes later.  I cringe when I think about how I got him up and just assumed he wasn't tired, or he had cat-napped long enough while eating that he was rested.

I was exhausted and stressed.  I was trying to carry on a part-time job at home, take care of our apartment, and have supper ready when Ryan got home.  I was so far away from that expectation I had for myself that I didn't see how anyone did it.  Little did I know, Declan was tired, too.  Over-exhausted, in fact.  And that's why he wasn't sleeping.

The most revolutionary thing I learned was that infants his age should have a wake time of between 1 and 2 hours.  Weissbluth said to be mindful of the clock, but mostly watch your baby closely.  The first yawn or eye-rubbing, slow blink, or slow down in activity -- that was my cue.  I picked him up from his play - because these cues often occurred while he was still very happily playing - changed his diaper, turned out the lights in his room, swaddled him, and started rocking and singing to him.  Sometimes there was a little crying, but I was surprised at how easily he fell asleep.  My confidence grew and I took it a step further and practiced putting him down drowsy.  This helped him get familiar with falling asleep in his crib.

The next amazing thing that I learned was how to help him to sleep through the night.  Now I have your attention, don't I?  At around 6 weeks, most non-colicky babies are mature enough to sleep 8-10 hours, maybe even 12, with no night waking.  We had been trying to start his bedtime routine at around 9.  Thus began a wake-fest that lasted til 11pm on good nights and 2am on bad nights.  We had been keeping him up - going to Walmart, out for walks -- whatever we could do to try and keep him awake in the early evening hours - and of course he wasn't napping well during the day, so he was hard to keep awake by that time of day.  I remember one time sitting down in the nursery with him.  I propped him on a pillow in my lap, turned to grab an exciting book to read to him in hopes of keeping him awake just a little bit longer, and when I turned back he was OUT. 

When Weissbluth described what our evenings looked like, his book became a page-turner for me.  He talked about babies crashing at around 11pm and 2am.  Ours was a common problem!  His suggestion was to move the bedtime earlier - to about 9.  So we started the routine at 7:30.  Leisurely bath, long nursing, then more rocking and singing til he fell asleep a little before 9.

The first night we tried this, my little boy slept for 10 hours.  Asleep at 9pm, awake at 7am.  No wakings.  This continued virtually without flaw for 5 weeks, when unfortunately the acid reflux came and stole our nights back.

But apparently we might have run into more night wakings around that time anyway.  Three to four month olds get a lot more social and distracted during the day.  They don't eat enough because they're too busy looking around and talking at EVERYTHING, real or imaginary (yes, it's adorable).  So they get hungrier at night.  If this was the only thing we were dealing with, I would have done what Weissbluth suggested: roll with it.  If you realize it's just a phase that will last a few weeks, it gets easier to get up once or twice a night to feed.  Declan has done that the past week or two, and in comparison to the reflux waking him every 3 hours, it was great.  Plus he has blessed me with the way he will lay quietly in his crib after these feedings - even if wide awake.  He puts himself back to sleep, and I probably fall back to sleep before he does most nights (c:


Today we're in a pretty good place with sleep.  Up until recently he has had only 30-45 minute naps.  I felt like there was something wrong with that, but when I read more about 4-5 month olds I learned that their brain matures at this age and enables them to start napping longer.  At almost 5 months old, Declan usually has two or three 1 1/2 hour naps a day.  What a relief!  He still has days where all his naps are short, but those are fading out.

His bedtime the past couple of nights has been 7:45.  He always wakes up again between 8:15 or 8:30, but it's just to be burped one last time and rocked for a few minutes more.  Then he's good to go until around 5am when I feed him again and he goes back to sleep with no soothing until 7:30 or 8.  Weissbluth describes this as a healthy sleep pattern for this age, and says to expect it to last until around 9 months when he'll go back to sleeping through the night.

I should mention that Weissbluth does not recommend using the cry-it-out method until 4 months of age.  That was one thing that kept me reading.  This is sleep training without the heart break.  In truth, we didn't even want to do the cry-it-out that he suggests at 4 months.  We couldn't take it (we did try it a night or two).  And Declan is still a good sleeper, so I am confident that you can do it without letting your baby cry it out, if that's what you want.  I think the important things are having a solid foundation of a good sleep routine (we've had basically the same ritual since he was 6 weeks old), plus having an already well-rested child.

So, if you're feeling like you have to let your baby wail in the crib to learn how to sleep, don't.  Don't think you have to do something that goes against your instincts and breaks your heart.  I'm not against the crying method - it does work for so many, and I'm sure it would have worked for us - but it was way too painful to me!!

I hope you can have the same blessing of sleep that we have had.