Newborn Sleep & Nursery Tour

All About Newborn Sleep/ Nursery Tour

I will start this post with a disclaimer: I am in no way a sleep expert (obviously), and I do not think that any of the methods I'm about to talk about are the "right way" or the "only way" to do things. This is what has worked for my family, and I get so excited about this topic because it has made our life so easy. If any other method of sleep training (or no sleep training) has worked for you, great. I don't judge anyone who doesn't follow these methods, we're all just doing our best and what we think is best for our families.

I figured since we are talking about sleep this week I should also turn this into a nursery tour! Dean has slept in his nursery since he was 3 weeks old; that's early, I know, and I will explain that later. Some things are missing in this tour from when he was a newborn being that he is now almost 7 months old. A few items that we have stored away are the Dock a Tot, liners for the changing table (boy mom probs), and the Swaddle Me swaddles.

My fascination with getting a child to sleep through the night early on started when I found out that I was pregnant. As long as I can remember people have told me that once you have a baby you will be severely sleep deprived, but that it's worth it. It was made to seem as an inevitability that I wouldn't be able to escape. It was also something that women talked about as if it were a badge of honor. Most parents would seem to brag about the sleep deprivation. This scared the shit out of me. I am a 7 hours of sleep per night kinda girl. MINIMUM. There is no way that I could proudly announce to someone that "I don't sleep." The following steps are the order in which I did my research and applied it to our lifestyle, and I'm proud to say that for the most part I have gotten 8 hours of sleep per night since he was 6 weeks old.

1. One of my clients mentioned to me that she had read a book called Bringing Up Bebe, which talks about French parenting. The main point of the book is that the French, Parisians specifically, manage to have their babies sleeping through the night by 4 weeks old. If someone mentions that their month old baby isn't sleeping they ask "well, what's wrong with him?" That's right, a whole entire group of people are part of this normality where sleep deprivation with a newborn is practically unheard of. This blew my mind, and so my determination to have a similar situation began. 

• The most important thing that I took away from this book was "le pause." What I didn't know was that babies cry out in their sleep, even if they are not awake. It is part of their natural sleep cycle. French women tend to wait a couple of minutes before rushing to soothe their newborn. What do American women typically do? We immediately jump up at the first sign of distress and feed them. We automatically assume that they are hungry or need our comfort. The reality is that we end up creating a bad habit, excessive dependence, and do more harm than good. This book has so many intriguing outlooks on French culture vs. American culture when raising children and if this is even remotely interesting to you definitely give it a read or a listen. I tend to listen to books on Audible now instead of reading a hard copy because I don't have as much free time as I used to.

2. Babywise was the next stop on my research journey. I have always heard good things about this method so I downloaded it on Audible. This is how I learned the pattern throughout the day that new parents are supposed to follow in order to teach their newborn structure and to prepare them for overnight success. My mom used this with both my sister and me, and she said it gave her some decent guidance. 

• This book was a tremendous success for me in some ways and a disaster in others. I love that it taught me the pattern of wake, eat, play, sleep. This way Dean learned how to soothe himself to sleep without needing to be fed to sleep. The negative was that I took this book and its schedules literally. When he was first born I would consider myself failing if Dean didn't wake up exactly according to the Babywise sample schedules. I know now that it's impossible to follow a minute by minute schedule, and I wish I could have avoided that guilt from the beginning. Now, when I talk about a schedule, it's more about keeping consistent feeding and nap windows that are appropriate for their age. That being said, they do have some amazing tips for first time mamas. 

3. Pinterest research GALORE. I found so many great articles on Pinterest where mamas shared their tips on how they got their babies to distinguish day from night. Another fact that I didn't know before all of this research: sleep patterns are established in the womb. When our babes are in our tummies our constant movement during the daytime rocks them to sleep. When we finally lay down to sleep at night, they are awake and active. It makes so much sense that when they are born their internal clocks are backwards- this is all they have known! This article that I found on Pinterest was incredibly helpful and is very similar to what we ended up doing. 

• What I learned here is that babies love schedules. They like predictability. This means feeding them full meals at regular intervals, giving them naps at regular intervals, and giving them playtime and attention regularly. It is also essential that nap time is very different from bedtime at first. When he was a newborn we had Dean napping and hanging out in the living room during the day, blinds open, with the tv on. At night the lights were down, it was quiet, the sound machine was on, etc. This is one of the reasons that we moved him into his own room at 3 weeks old. He would go down for bed around 7:00 at night in the bassinet in our bedroom. Because it was so early we would watch tv, and we started to notice that the lights and sound from the tv, from us talking or even just turning over would wake him up. Moving him into his own room was a game changer. Now that he's older he takes his 3 naps in his nursery.

4. The fourth, last, and most important point of all of this is Taking Cara Babies. Ah, where do I begin? I did all of this research for 9 months. I read, read, and read. I was confident, I'm not going to lie. In all reality, nothing can prepare you for newborn life. It wasn't miserable, in fact it's still possibly my favorite stage of motherhood so far, but it wasn't as cut and dry as I thought it would be. Dean was not naturally a good sleeper. For the first two weeks (give or take) he woke up every two hours on the dot without fail. He had a great schedule, I did everything "right", and he still woke up every two hours to eat. He would eat and immediately go back to sleep but it was still hard. By the 5 week mark he was only waking up once a night to eat, which is great, I'm aware! Regardless of that quick progress I still couldn't get the damn French out of my head. I had seen several bloggers promoting the @TakingCaraBabies Instagram and just assumed that she had paid them to do so. One of them posted one day that she actually had paid for the class and that Cara refuses to give her class away for free to anyone because she wants everyone to know it's the real deal. That got my attention.

I linked her website at the beginning of this step, and if you are pregnant, have a baby, or plan on being pregnant in the near future do yourself a favor and read her blog. This is how my obsession with her started and I will forever be grateful. Like, if I see her in person I will hug her. I scoured her blog, which is free, and every tip that she gave I applied. Every tip helped. Because of the success that we had just from her blog tips I decided to finally pay for her class. That was the game changer. After watching her videos all day long and applying them to our schedule, Dean slept his first 10 hour stretch. That night. It was amazing! I know not everyone has this level of success right away, but we did and I am still so happy to report that he has not woken up for a meal since he was 6 weeks old.

• If I had to choose to only take away one thing from Cara's class it would be her method for soothing an overtired baby. It's impossible to describe in in writing, but basically she has you swaddle, bobble their head a little (to mimic the walking motion that they felt in the womb), use a sound machine or shush them, and use a pacificier. It sounds so simple but the way she has you do it works like magic. We thought Dean had colic until we took this class. I had no idea that babies being "over tired" was a thing, and that it caused them to cry and be inconsolable as if they had colic. All of his "colic" symptoms went away once we took her class.

***All natural baby products courtesy of @arbonne.with.roslyn, thank you Roslyn! Our little man has sensitive skin and any Johnson & Johnson products make him break out in a rash. We love Arbonne, Burts Bee's, and Honest. 

Honestly guys, I have so much more that I could say about this topic because of all of the research I've done and because it's such a process, but I think I've covered the basics. If you have any questions feel free to ask on here or Instagram! I can talk about it all day haha. Also, if you have any decor questions let me know and I'll be happy to let you know where everything is from! Most items are from Target or Home Goods. 

Before I end this, here's a little realness for you LOL. Our little man is such a good napper but he has major FOMO and gets sad when he knows he's about to nap. Sorry buddy! haha

As always, thank you SO MUCH for reading!

lovelovelove,

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