From the very beginning, I was determined to get my sleep. After 4.5 years in the Navy and almost 2 years in law school, I knew what a lack of sleep did to me and it wasn’t pretty. So I did my research and came up with a plan, and it worked. Within Ellie’s first two weeks, she was sleeping on a regular schedule and woke at night only to eat and then immediately fell back to sleep.
1. Create a Nighttime Routine
I would argue that creating a routine is the most important thing to do. The thing that I thought was most important within that routine was for Ellie to be able to distinguish nap time from bedtime, so I made different cues.
A. NAPPING
When it was time for naps, I typically allowed her to sleep wherever she passed out at. That could have been in her swing, her rocker, or even on her play mat. I played classical music to ease her to sleep and I used the same classical music playlist every time. This made it so that all I had to do was turn on the music and her brain automatically associated those songs to sleep.
When Ellie was younger, she took two naps during the day. (I believe that she took more when she was first born, but I don’t really remember too well.) I wasn’t too strict on the time that she would take a nap. It was within a 30 minute time frame when she was taking two naps a day.
When she switched to one nap a day, I kept it within a 60 minute timeframe . This prevents the bedtime routine from being disrupted.
B. BEDTIME
At bedtime, it was completely different. Ellie was only permitted to sleep in her crib. If she fell asleep while in the car or while I was feeding her, I just placed her in her crib afterwards. Her bedtime was 6:30pm. So at 6:00pm we:
- Went into her room.
- Turned on a red light (After sunset on Naval ships we only use red lights in the hallways. I always thought that this helped our eyes to better adjust to the darkness. While standing watch, turns out it is a way to make us sleepy).
- Turned on the sound of rain.
- We sat down together and I read her a book.
- Following one book, I sang her a song
(You’ll Be In My Heart) as I nursed and burped her, and she passed out immediately afterwards every time. (The burping is important. I learned early on that sometimes she would fall asleep without burping, but she still needed to be burped. If she wasn’t, she would wake up about 10-15 minutes later screaming.)
Young babies don’t need baths everyday, but on the days that Ellie got a bath, I began her bedtime routine 30 minutes earlier so that she wasn’t staying awake passed 6:30pm.
2. No extravagant activities during nighttime wake-ups
When Ellie woke up in the middle of the night (only once most nights), I:
- Changed her.
- Fed her
- Put her right back into her crib.
When she was really young, I needed some light in order to see what I was doing, so I bought a small red plug-in nightlight and turned it on when she woke up. I did this because I thought that the lamp light that I used at bedtime was too bright. As Ellie got older, I became accustomed to changing her without light, unless I smelled poop.
The most important thing at this time was not talking to her. I didn’t want her to think that it was time to get up and play. I wanted her to know that it was still sleep time.
3. Don’t get your baby accustomed to sleeping in silence.
Adults have been trained that babies need complete silence in order to sleep. This is not true. Newborns are used to being in a very loud environment. The best thing that you can do for yourself is to keep them accustomed to this. This prevents your baby from waking up from a sneeze, cough, or you name the random sound.
I made sure that both the classical music and the rain were on very loudly whenever she slept.
Results
Up until the day that I left for deployment, Ellie and I kept the same routine with minor changes. I no longer nursed her, her bedtime changed to 7:00pm, I sang to her as she drank her cup of milk or immediately afterwards, and I added a second song (I Don’t Want to Miss A Thing). Typically, she would finish her milk, roll over onto her stomach, and I would pat her back as I sang to her. Ellie didn’t always fall asleep immediately after finished singing, but if she didn’t I would just leave her in there or hold her hand for a little while then leave and she would fall asleep on her own.
I’m not sure what she does now to fall asleep. I know that my cousin still reads her a book, but I think that he stopped playing the rain and definitely doesn’t sing for her. I recorded myself singing her songs before I left, but he doesn’t play them for her anymore. At one point during my deployment, hearing the songs made very sad and she asked him not to play them, so he stopped. Whenever she and I are on the phone at nighttime, she still asks me to sing them to her.
Regrets
Later I learned that I should not have let Ellie fall asleep while I fed her or while she was being burped. Doing these things make babies need milk in order to fall asleep and need to be held in order to fall asleep. Had I known these things in advance, I may have tried to keep Ellie awake during feedings, but I don’t think that I would have been successful. Her pediatrician used to call it milk drunk, but she literally passed out at night after being fed when she was really young. There was nothing that I could have done to keep her awake. It is recommended to keep your baby awake and lay them into their crib when they are on the cusp of sleeping.
I’ll write another post about how I broke those habits, spoiler alert, IT WASN’T FUN!
