Infant Sleep Guide

Greetings, fellow moms! I put this baby sleep cheat sheet together because so many of my friends have inquired about raising good sleepers. I didn't have a sleep plan with my first son, and he slept in my bed until he was four. Big mistake. Before I had my next two kids, I absorbed every word of the phenomenal book, “Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child," and applied those principles to Harper and Ashton with excellent results. Adjust the following advice as you see fit for you and your baby’s needs. 

Birth through six weeks: 

The first six weeks is a “grace period” when it comes to sleep training. This time is primarily to bond with your baby and establish your milk supply if you are nursing. In this six week period, you should respond quickly to your baby’s cries to help her feel safe and secure. At this point, your baby has no distinction between day and night so sleep is sporadic and unpredictable. Here are some things to remember in this time period:

• Try to sleep when your baby sleeps.
• Turn your phone on silent and put out of reach when nursing. This is the time to watch and learn about your baby and get to know her natural rhythm.
• Do whatever feels natural for soothing your baby. Don’t worry about spoiling or creating bad habits in the first six weeks. Don’t worry that nursing your baby to sleep will create a bad habit.
• Do ignore soft vocalizations during sleep that are not crying. Babies make noises when they sleep and you don’t need to pick them up for every sound. You should, however, respond to crying immediately.
• Use the 5 S’s from The Happiest Baby on the Block – Swaddle, shush, swing, suck, side/stomach. I particularly believe in swaddling, shushing, and sucking. “Side/stomach” (holding them on their side or stomach) is just for comfort not sleep since babies should always sleep on their back.
• Practice putting your baby to bed “sleepy but awake.” Some babies will fall asleep if you put them down at the magic moment when they are tired but not asleep. If they don’t, don’t worry. 
• Fussiness peaks at six weeks. Don’t take crying personally and remember it’s part of being a baby.
• Use as many hands as you have access to. Enlist the help of loved ones to cook, clean, and help with the baby.

6-12 Weeks: 

Birth through three months is what is often referred to as the “fourth trimester.” Simulate the womb by keeping the baby snug in a swaddle. Use white noise for sleep because babies hate quiet. Actually, use white noise their whole baby and toddlerhood. It’s magic. Sleep starts to organize a little bit in weeks 6-12, but generally your baby still sleeps when they want. Don’t try to keep her on a schedule yet. Naps will be irregular and bedtimes tend to be later in the beginning (between 9 and 11 pm), but start moving bedtime earlier as you get closer to three months. “Bedtime” just means when they aren’t awake for long stretches. You will probably still be nursing several times a night.

• Night sleep starts organizing around six week. What this means is sleep begins to be more consolidated at night, even if you are still up several times a night
• Keep the room dark and quiet after bedtime. No playing, just quiet nursing. Start signaling to your baby that night is time for sleep and day is time for play.
• Don’t let your baby stay awake longer than two hours. In the beginning, she will never be awake this long anyway. After six weeks, she will start staying awake for longer periods, and you want to make sure you never allow her to become over tired. Sometimes, you will see early signs of tiredness at one hour or 90 minutes, but babies cannot comfortably be awake more than two hours. At almost two hours (or less) start a soothing process to put them back to sleep before they are overly tired.  Babies fall asleep easily and without protest if you pay attention to their natural rhythms and don’t allow them to become overly tired.
• Motionless sleep. Babies in this age range are very portable, but try not to make a habit of having all naps in strollers or cars. Try to get her used to taking naps in her crib or bassinet.
• Consistency of soothing style. Put your baby to sleep the same way every time. For me, this meant darkening the room, turning on white noise, swaddling, rocking, and nursing quietly for a few minutes. My au pairs do the same thing but use a pacifier instead of nursing. Doing the same thing every time signals to your baby that it’s time for sleep.
• As you move towards 3 months, early bedtimes. I believe in early bedtimes. It is really hard because I work all day and wish I had more playtime, but I choose to give my babies the gift of sleep which is linked to better health, mental acuity, and positive dispositions.  Bedtimes for babies over three months and toddlers should be between 6 pm and 8 pm. 7 pm is the ideal in our home for our 2 year old and 8 month old.
• After six weeks, but before three months, you might choose to let your baby cry for 5 or 10 minutes when you know they are tired but having a hard time falling asleep after soothing. I don’t let babies under three months cry for more than ten minutes if it’s soft crying or five minutes if it’s hard crying. But sometimes, you know your baby is exhausted (this is usually if they have gone past the 2 hour mark) and letting then cry for a few minutes is what puts them to sleep. Before 3 months though, this is the exception, not the rule.

3-8 months:

Before three months, I consider my sleep training “no cry or very little cry.” I focus more on sleep guidelines like consistency of soothing style, starting bedtime soothing within two hours (or less) of their last wakeup time, and motionless sleep (avoiding stroller or car seat naps). After 3-4 months, you may start to consider more proactive sleep training, especially if your baby’s naps and night sleep isn’t stretching out and becoming more regular. This is so hard and nothing feels more unnatural than not responding to a baby’s cries. This also may not be your style. That’s fine. But if you are considering some form of sleep training, this way my sleep training method.

Night Sleep

• For the beginning of night sleep, put baby down sleepy but awake, and allow them to fall asleep on their own. If you’ve been practicing sleepy but awake since birth, this is easy. If you’ve never let your baby fall asleep on their own (i.e. without rocking and nursing them to sleep), this is a lot harder. The most important thing is to be consistent. Do not go “rescue” them after 20 minutes and nurse them to sleep or else the 20 minutes of crying is for nothing. Some moms choose to go in and pat (not pick up) the baby every few minutes to reassure them that mom is close by. Some moms think that just prolongs the crying and makes the baby wonder why mom isn’t picking them up. Personally, when I choose to start sleep training, I do my normal, loving soothing routine, kiss them, tell them I love them, put them down sleepy but awake, and leave the room. For Ashton and Harper, they cried almost an hour the first night, about 20 minutes the second night, and 5 minutes or less the third night. To this day, I can kiss my babies, tell them I love them, and put them to bed sleepy but awake. It is amazing, compared to Aidan who I literally had to lay with and sing to sleep until he was 4 years old because he didn’t learn to fall asleep on his own.
• For the rest of the night, there are different methods depending on your preferences. Some moms have a rule they won’t return until morning. While I’m sure it’s very effective for getting your baby to sleep through the night, it feels a little draconian. Plus, many babies still need night feedings until they are 6-9 months of age. I worry my little ones foot will get caught in the crib slats or something too so it breaks my heart to think of not checking on them to make sure they are okay. What I do is choose two times in the night I will feed the baby and other than that, I won’t pick them up. I might go in and make sure they are okay, but they only get picked up 2 times. You may decide to do something different. That’s okay. We all have to do what works for us, just make sure whatever you do is consistent. With Ashton at 8 months, I will go in once before midnight and once after 4:00 am. Sometimes he doesn’t wake up twice, sometimes he just wakes up once at 4 or 5 am, and I feed him quickly and quietly then. You may want to investigate different methods and pick one that works for you.

Naps

Around three months, babies start staying up for longer stretches more consistently and forming regular naps. Respect babies naps, and try to let them take their naps in cribs as much as possible. Try to avoid “junk naps” where they fall asleep in the car for 15 minutes and miss their real nap. Anything shorter than 45 minutes is not a real nap. From 4-8 months, your baby should take three naps a day: a midmorning nap, a midday nap, and an afternoon nap. You don’t look at a clock for these naps, just watch your baby and respect that they will be tired within two hours of waking up. Plan your errands and trips out of the house around naps and try to be home before the next nap so they don’t fall asleep in the car. Sometimes you’ll blow it. That’s okay, just try to do better next time.  

• Within 2 hours of waking up (or less for babies on the younger side), start your soothing routine for nap time. That means if your baby wakes at 6:30 am, start your soothing routine by 8:00 or 8:30 am for first nap.
• When your baby wakes, always note what time it is. I actually write it down and have my au pairs do the same. Whatever time they wake up, know the next nap should start within 2 hours. If your baby’s first nap is 8:30-9:30, the next nap should start by 11:30. If they then sleep from 11:30-1:00, the third nap is at 3:00 pm. Remember you are not following a strict nap schedule, you are watching your baby and respecting the fact that most babies are ready for a nap after two hours of wakefulness.
• If third nap ends after 4:00, the next sleep is bedtime. If third nap ended at 4:30, for example, bedtime will be about 6:30 pm.
• Side note: Some 3-4 month olds still take 4 naps sometimes. Some 6-8 month olds only take 2 naps. This is totally fine, especially if they take great, long naps. Usually if Ashton (8 months) only takes 2 naps, his bedtime will be closer to 6:00 pm than 7:00 or 7:30 pm.
• Nap sleep training is a little different than night sleep training. I recommend only training one nap at a time, starting with the midmorning nap and then the midday nap. This is when you put them down sleepy but awake, and let them cry up to one hour (but hopefully a lot less!). You may not have to do this. Ashton has fallen into good naps on his own so we never did nap sleep training. See how your baby does. If, however, she is fighting naps or taking short, junky naps after 3-4 months (again, anything less than 45 minutes is a junk nap), you might want to consider nap training.  My general rule of thumb is that a small amount of crying for a short period of time is worth it to have a good sleeper. At almost 3 years, Harper still takes a 2 hour nap every day and sleeps from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am every night. Trust me, it’s worth it.

A word on sleep training. Remember that you are not making your baby cry, you are letting them cry so they can learn the valuable skill of putting themselves back to sleep. This may be the first time you are saying “no” to your child, but it won’t be the last. At some point they will want candy or juice and you’ll say no because they need good food. When you let your baby cry (intentionally, with a plan, and for the right reasons) you are saying to your baby, “I love you enough to give you the gift of sleep.” It is one of the hardest things you will ever do, but studies show there is no damage done by sleep training and in fact, babies who sleep train have lower cortisol levels because they sleep better, which is good for their overall health for the rest of their life.

9 – 12 months:

At 7-9 months, most babies stop the late afternoon nap and drop to 2 naps a day, the midmorning nap and the midday nap. Hopefully both naps are still at least one hour each and add up to about 3 hours of naps a day. After 8 months, most babies can stay awake longer than 2 hours at a time, but you will still use the 2 hour rule as a guide to start looking for signs of tiredness.

1 year to 5 years:

If you are lucky, your baby will take one afternoon nap a day until they go to kindergarten. More likely, they will stop taking an afternoon nap at 3-4 years. After 1 year, I stop nursing at night or taking them out of the crib for any reason. Instead, if they cry, I just go in and pat them in their crib without picking them up. Some people stop earlier like 9 months when they technically don’t have to nurse at night anymore. I usually stop nursing a little after a year so it tends to coincide with that. Again, do what’s right for you and your baby.

Most babies drop their midmorning nap around 15 months. That’s when life actually gets pretty easy because you can have morning and afternoon excursions before and after nap time. Most babies sleep from 12-2 at this time. Again, respect nap time. Try to be home by 11:30 so you can give them lunch and go through your soothing routine. Kiss them, put them down, and say bye. Once you say bye and close the door, do not come back until they wake up.  Same goes for bedtime. Go through your bath time, brush teeth, books, songs, water bottle, big kisses, bed routine and do not return. Hopefully by the time they are one, you’ve gotten them used to falling asleep on their own. If you didn’t do that at 4 months, I’ve heard 9 months is another good time to get them in that habit.

This is my accrued sleep wisdom from raising three little ones. Just remember, no one has all the answers and at the end of the day, you have to do what’s best for you and your baby!