My Experience with sleep training Part 3: We survived the four month sleep regression

Like every mom to be, I dreamed of having a child who peacefully closed their eyes and slipped into an angelic slumber of at least several hours at a time from the first day of their birth. Or better yet, one of those magical babies that sleep through the night the day they come home from the hospital. The first night, even there in the hospital, my daughter woke up every twenty minutes. She would nurse for roughly two minutes, fall asleep while nursing, and be awake and screaming again twenty minutes later. All. Night. Long.

No, my daughter is not one of those magical babies. Honestly, I think babies who sleep through the night are really changelings left by faeries or leprechauns. My daughter has still never slept all the way through the night. We got pretty close once, I think she woke up at 5 am and I was pretty excited. Four months in, I am not sleep deprived. I love to sleep, I get pretty grumpy if I don't get enough, but the fact that Sirenita still has night time feedings isn't a big deal, because there is no fuss to the feedings.

I'm not going to pretend that I have it all together and can give you the magic spell to make your baby sleep (or the phone number for the leprechauns who change babies for sleeping changelings). It has been a journey to get here, but my little Sirenita sleeps like a teenager now. (I'd say "like a baby" but whoever used that to say that someone sleeps well must never have had children.)  I do, however, feel that every parent is intitled to the same help that I scrapped together from dozens of sources.

1)White Noise
Our first week home, my husband and I were up and down all night. Change, feed, soothe, rock, slowly lower, aaaaand.... blast, she's awake. Repeat. The Accountant hadn't been at his job long enough to have paternity leave. I learned pretty quick that at that point there wasn't much he could do when she woke up at night, it was me she needed. Mama the milk machine. So then it was just me, up and down all night.

I spent two horrible, miserable nights in the nursery, walking, singing every song I knew out of desperation, nursing... Me, the boppy, and the baby. She wouldn't sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. Shortly before day break, as the birds began to sing, she would fall asleep. Oh, the desperation. I felt depressed even walking down the hall towards the nursery that I had so carefully and lovingly designed. I dreaded bedtime. At night, we would get Sirenita to sleep, and within 10 minutes of our shutting off the lights and crawling into bed she would be screaming like a banshee. We tried everything we knew to get her back to sleep. Nothing worked. Enter hours of sleeplessness. One night, The Accountant was so frustrated he walked into the living room and began to play the piano, while I continued to pace the bedroom with our beet red banshee baby screaming her lungs out.

 We have vaulted ceilings, open concept, and wood floor under the piano. When you play piano in our living room, the entire house fills with music. As soon as he started to play, Sirenita calmed down and went to sleep in my arms.  I remember praying for God to show us what to do, not one of those pious, "Oh, thou mighty God, grant me the ability to..." prayers. It was more like a desperate cry for help. Suddenly, I had a "light bulb" moment. She seemed to be terrified of the dark and silence.

All day long we rattled around making noise like we'd been told. Vacuum around her, so she can sleep through anything, they said. Make noise, so you won't have to tip toe around her. No one told us that babies need noise. When The Accountant finished playing piano, Sirenita was asleep in her bed.
We turned on a small lamp, and played instrumental music all night long. I really hated the instrumental music. I felt like I was sleeping in an elevator with the light and music. But Sirenita went to sleep, and began to sleep for 2 or 3 hours at a time.

I did some research. I found out that the noise a baby experiences in the mother's womb is as loud as a vacuum cleaner. Silence, therefore, is a terrifying thing to them. If you want to sleep well at night, baby needs to know there is still a world out there. We slept with instrumental music on for a few weeks till I saw something that recommended White Noise. I ended up looking up white noise on YouTube. We used Ocean sounds, waterfall, rain, vacuum, fan, blow drier... Use what works for you. I switched it up for a while there, till the Accountant downloaded an 8 hour loop of rain. The first night we used it Sirenita slept for 6 hours straight.

I don't recommend music, though you can use it if you want. We realized that the differences in tones, the fast and slow songs, the few seconds between the songs, etc, caused her to wake up more frequently than constant white noise did. Certain songs seemed to wake her up more than others... So now they make me think of 4 AM. Ugg. We also downloaded a free white noise app that we would use on our cellphones to calm her when we were out. White noise is amazing.

2) The Baby K.I.S.S. principle 
You may have heard of the "K.I.S.S." principle - keep it simple stupid. The baby version is slightly different. K.I.S.S. - Keep It Sleepy Stupid.

Once we moved our bedroom into the elevator, Sirenita began to sleep for two hours, sometimes 3 hours at a shot. The problem now was getting her back to sleep when she woke up. Each time she woke up, I would change her diaper prior to feeding her, then have to spend an hour or two getting her back to sleep. Ugg. No bueno.  I had read to always change the diaper prior to feeding, so that baby is ready to go back down if they fall asleep eating. We had been living in the elevator for several weeks when I got fed up with my reverse naps - being up 2 hours at a shot several times a night. I started looking into how to get Sirenita to sleep better. The recommendations I found were revolutionary to me. Life changing. And made so much sense. Don't wake baby.

Imagine that you are asleep. You wake up at 3am and are hungry. So you get up, turn on all the lights, chat with some people around you, go to the bathroom, listen to some music, take a shower, and finally, have a snack and go back to bed. Are you sleepy? Maybe. Doubtful. You're probably wide awake.

So why do we expect different from our infants? Sirenita cried because she was hungry. I would get up, change her diaper in the full light of the LED lamp we left on for her, talk to her, unswaddle her, feed her, reswaddle her, and hope she went back to sleep. Obviously, it didn't work. I was ruining her sleepiness.  Until I found those revolutionary techniques. Keep it as sleepy as possible.  Here are some "Don'ts" for those late night feedings.

Don't change the diaper unless absolutely necessary.
As terrible as I felt at first, this really helped. I went from four changers at night to maybe two. This may or may not work on a newborn, they tend to poop more often. But by the time Sirenita was 6 weeks old, we were down to one, or sometimes no diaper change at night. That's considering night as 10 or 11pm to 6am. I felt like a monster at first. But then, if I had one of those sleep through the night changeling babies, I sure wouldn't have been waking it to change it's diaper in the middle of the night.

Don't turn on the lights!
I don't like sleeping with a light on. Turns out it was unnecessary for Sirenita, as well. We quickly moved to a night light instead of a full lamp. (That was miraculous!) We can see to change her if need be, to pick her up.. Basically to do whatever we need to, but it's not like sleeping with the light of day.  A night light is more than sufficient. We have a little LED light that can be pointed in whatever direction you want, and it's got a sensor on it so it comes on as it gets dark.

Don't talk to the baby.
Oh, so incredibly mean! Don't talk to that sweet baby at 4am? Monster!
It took me a while to get used to this one. Even though I didn't particularly want to speak at 4am, I was used to "hush," "It's ok," or singing a song. The effect of speaking to a baby at 4am is like holding a conversation at 4am; It wakes you up. Ever slept in the same room with someone who talks in their sleep? They aren't even awake and it wakes you up. Sometimes it scares the snot out of you and takes forever to get back to sleep. Don't talk to the baby if you want them to go back to sleep quickly. Don't sing lullabies at 4am. They don't need it. They don't need their entire nap/bed time routine again, either.

Don't look baby in the eyes.
We called this the "Medusa baby" stage. Don't look her in the eye or she will turn you into stone - or worse yet, not go to sleep! This seemed strange to me, at first, but I understand it better now that Sirenita is older. When you look a drowsy baby in the eye, they get excited to see what you are going to say or do. My daughter absolutely loves eye contact. I know that if Sirenita is laying in bed, going to sleep and I happen to catch her eye, she lights up, smiles, and goodbye drowsiness! We have to start from scratch.

 I remember my sister saying, "but what about the affirmation they need?!" It's ok.
 Baby gets lots of affirmation during the day. That's the time for eye contact. Not at 4am. It felt really mean at first, but within a few days Sirenita learned she didn't have to fully wake up for feedings at night. She cries but generally doesn't open her eyes unless I leave her cry for a long time. So long as I hear her and get her before she reaches a frensied banshee pitch, she doesn't open her eyes during night feedings. Seems she doesn't want to wake in the middle of the night any more than I do. I have noticed during the day sometimes she wants to catch my eye while she's eating before a nap, and as soon as she does she will go to sleep. There's the affirmation she needed.

I read a recommendation that you look at the baby's belly, so you can keep an eye on them without catching the Medusa gaze. Sirenita learned fast, so it wasn't too much of an issue with us.

If you're nursing, here's one more that may help. Learn to feed baby while laying down.
I started doing this because I had an issue with an over supply of milk, which sounds good, unless you've ever had to deal with an angry baby on a nursing strike because they're being drowned in milk! The best position for Sirenita was a side laying position. That helped the whole sleepy feel - especially for me! I don't have to worry about falling asleep in the middle of the night and dropping her. When I feed her on the outside of the bed I wedge pillows up as a barrier so there is no way she could fall out, but I generally wake up if she moves anyhow.  I have found the "vibes" I give off affect my daughter hugely... Especially if I'm nursing her. If I'm in a hurry, she doesn't go to sleep. If I am tense because I'm trying to stay awake, it inhibits her sleepiness. If I lay down beside her, close my eyes and breathe deeply, she will relax and go to sleep.

That is how I get my daughter back to sleep at night. We haven't had problems getting back to sleep since she was 6 weeks old or so. I'll be posting soon about no hassle bed/nap times, and how we get Sirenita to sleep without a fuss at four months old. I will say this now... Although I don't have anything against the "cry it out" strategy, I didn't have to use it. Stay tuned for part 2, and remember, White Noise, and baby KISS!