Why does my baby hate sleep?
If you’ve googled “When will my baby sleep?” “Why does my baby cry at night?” “How can I sleep train without leaving my baby to cry?” “Why does my baby hate sleep?” “Does my baby hate me?!” “How long should I let my baby scream so loud I’m sure my neighbors are going to call CPS…” you aren’t alone!
Let me start by saying: I KNEW I wouldn’t be getting sleep as a mama. Whenever new parent friends were confused about their kid not sleeping I always wondered if they even knew what they were getting into before getting pregnant. It’s common knowledge that when you have a baby…you do not sleep. And even being prepared for that with over a decade of child and infant care under my belt…that doesn’t eliminate the desperation that takes a hold of you after weeks of sleeplessness! Sleep deprivation is a torture technique for a reason. And if you’ve stumbled across this blog looking for the magic answer to get your babe to start sleeping all night and at every nap all the time and never cry again: you’re not going to find that here…because that’s…not a thing. Sorry.
EVERY BABY IS DIFFERENT and even more importantly: What every parent is emotionally comfortable doing is different.
Here is a cliff notes version of EVERY FREAKING article you will read, plus any calls you have with sleep specialists:
Keep the room so pitch black that you can’t even find your baby
Get a white noise machine
Keep the room a cool 68-72 degrees
Then you’ll also read this:
Babies go through sleep regressions at 4 months: but it could happen before or after.
Babies go through sleep regressions at 6 months: but it could happen before or after.
Babies go through sleep regressions at 8 months: but it could happen before or after.
Babies go through sleep regressions at 12 months, but it could happen at 10 or 11 months.
Babies go through sleep regressions at 18 months: but it could happen before or after.
Babies go through sleep regressions at 2 years: but it could happen before or after.
You’ll also read:
Sleep training doesn’t work.
Do the Ferber Method.
Do the Happy Sleeper Method.
Use a pacifier.
Don’t use a pacifier.
Comfort nurse.
Do NOT comfort nurse.
Sleep training will work, until your baby goes through a regression.
You don’t have to let them cry it out.
You HAVE to let them cry it out.
DO NOT TOUCH YOUR BABY.
Comfort your baby.
Don’t feed your baby at night.
If you don’t feed your baby between 1-3am, your supply will drop…
Put them in the (enter sleep suit/swaddle name here).
Any take-aways from all that? Because my head spins reading all that when it’s day time and I’ve had a nap…so you can only imagine how it feels to be searching and reading that stuff at 2:45am when your child is hysterical and you haven’t slept more than a 3hour stint in over 5 weeks.
I am writing this post because I want you to know: You are not alone in your struggle. You are NOT doing anything wrong. Your baby is a perfect, wonderful, amazing baby. Sleep, just like every aspect of parenthood, will take a lot of trial and error to find what works for your baby and you, and then after all that…it will change again.
I have gotten so many different sleep suits and swaddles, I’ve not fed him at night, I’ve tried to trick him with water, I have nursed him at night, I have let him cry it out, I haven’t let him cry it out… We went from a baby that all by himself at 7 weeks old started sleeping 11hrs at night to a switch flipping at 5 months old and him waking up anywhere from every 30min to every 3hrs for 4 weeks before I finally decided I needed to do something.
I have friends who did one night of training and their child legit never woke them again at night, I have friends who co-sleep and after a week their baby was down to sleep at night in her crib, friends that never dealt with this because they hired a night nurse, friends who plan to co-sleep til their baby decides it’s weird because he’s 14…any and every experience and take on what works.
The thing I keep coming back to is: follow your gut. I have to trust my instincts. It’s good to know all the tips and tricks, read all the conflicting information, talk to all your friends who did it differently, get the sleep outfits, buy the delicious sleepy essential oils…TAKE IT ALL IN, and then LET IT ALL GO.
I have found with Luke, I have to just trust what feels right in that moment. We are infinitely more successful when I do that, than when I don’t. Is it 100%? No. But, just like I had to be patient and trust my instincts with getting him back on the breast, I am finding the more I use my instincts, the more successful we are getting with sleep. We are so connected, I often wake up 5 min before him KNOWING he is about to wake up. For me, at this point in time I never wait less than 3 minutes to make a choice on how to proceed. Which a week ago, I couldn’t even go 3 minutes: my husband literally laid on top of me and pinned me down to prevent me from getting Luke.
The second he cries I grab my phone and set a timer…and my god time has never moved so slow. I’ll SWEAR it’s been over 5 minutes…and it’s been barely 90 seconds. And as we have tried everything under the sun, I have become acutely aware if he will need assistance or not in under 3 minutes. I also have zero issue assisting my son in sleeping. In 3 minutes I can gauge what’s going to happen with 99% accuracy. By that point I’ll know if waiting another 2 minutes to just say “You’re okay” or whatever fucking script we are supposed to recite won’t work and he will need to be held and soothed. There are other times that I can tell he is desperately working to self-soothe and because I KNOW he CAN, and does self-soothe daily, I can wait a little longer to let him work it out, or go over to him to gently pat his side and shush without picking him up. I also know if he’s breastfed less that day so feeding him at midnight makes sense, or if he is definitely full and it’s his gums killing him. This is all SO MUCH EASIER to execute during the day, because…it’s the day. But when it’s dark and you and your partner are in bed asleep, the ability to wait 3 minutes becomes as easy as giving yourself a shot…HARD AF. My husband finally decided the other night to go sleep on the couch, and it makes it a lot easier for me to give myself permission to wait those 2-3minutes and let Luke self-soothe. I carry a LOT of anxiety about Anthony not getting rest, I need at least one of us to be rested for the sake of our marriage and my health (Anth does all the house work, and feeds me), and if I hit a wall with Luke all I have to do is ask Anthony to handle it and he does. So, having him in a different room has given me the ability to relax a bit more and let Luke work things out. Currently, it’s also evident if Luke wakes and soothes himself to sleep, only to wake again 5-10min later: something is up and he needs help. And so I go to him, I go help my baby feel safe and know he is okay. This has not resulted in me getting more than 3hours of sleep at night yet: BUT it has resulted in him waking up at 3am, and not needing to be held. It has resulted in him waking up from his nap 45 minutes in, and putting himself back to sleep for another hour. Neither of those things ever seemed possible 10 days ago, I kid you not!
The other thing that holds true for us are his “wake windows.” Since he doesn’t sleep through the night, we never are awake more than 2.5 hours, and that is pushing it. I also make sure the third nap of the day lasts only 45min in. He often wakes himself at that point, but if he doesn’t… I hate myself as I open the door and turn the sound machine down. This way I’ve pulled back bed time which was at 11pm/12am to 8/9pm, which has already made a big difference for my mental health.
Do we have a routine? Yes. Is it EXACTLY the same every time? Hell no. Sometimes he wakes up and doesn’t want to eat, so that messes things up. And I don’t give him a bath every night because babies are prone to dry skin, and y’know…he’s a baby. He’s not like running around outside and stuff. What we do, is about 90minutes into being awake I offer breast, then I change his diaper. Then we read the same two books…sometimes he lets me know in a few seconds we are NOT getting through 2 books, so we improvise. Then we go into our dark bedroom (we room share), and I start to sing the same song to him. He’ll begin to get a little upset with me, and as we turn on the sound machine he knows what’s up…and he starts to wimper. He’ll start to cry and rub his eyes. I lay him down to put his sleep suit on, and that’s when the “my mom is torturing me” cry occurs. Then I pick him up and I sing to him. After a few rounds of the song, I will hold him in a cradle hold and fade out the singing to humming, then to shushing, and then I say “Okay it’s time for night night.” I kiss him a bunch because he’s delicious, and I lay him down.
There are some days I have to work harder to settle him down, and there are times where I can tell nothing will calm him and I just have to lay him down and let it happen. Most of the time he is in the process of falling asleep so that as he touches his mattress one of three things happens: his eyes open and he is excited and awake and wants to party, he freaks out and cries, or he stays asleep. If he is crying, I’ll offer a pacifier, rock his little booty for about 30 seconds, then do what I do for all three responses: tell him I love him and kiss him. And I leave. Then, I wait. And in under 3 minutes-if he is crying, I’ll know if I’m able to push it longer or if I should go help him out.
For me the whole “Put your baby down awake and let them cry for 10 minutes then go in and say something and leave” and repeat…that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for my heart, and it doesn’t work for my child. I also am blessed enough to work from home, so I have the ability to take a nap when he takes a nap. I have the freedom to work with him this way because I don’t have to wake up and go into work. While that doesn’t make the extreme sleep deprivation any easier, it isn’t “imperative” for like the safety of others that I get him “trained.”
That’s why I say this is a process, and whatever YOU choose to do has to work for YOU and your baby: and no matter what, you aren’t doing it wrong. You are doing amazing. And this is hard. It’s hard not sleeping, it’s even harder hearing your baby upset. But I will say, once I started messing with these techniques and navigating them all from instinct instead of by the “rules,” things have gotten easier. I fall short a lot and fall into yet again feeling like I need to follow the rules that some “expert” posted because I doubt myself, and then I’ll get a knot in my stomach wanting to grab my son…and guess what? Those are the nights that are THE WORST, the nights he can’t go to sleep, the nights even my husband can’t settle him down. We had that last night, after I wrote this blog. Luke was up crying almost non-stop for over 3 hours, nothing we did worked…I just about walked out of the house at 3am. Where was I going to go? I didn't know but the exhaustion and emotional distress of him refusing to sleep and cry constantly absolutely destroyed me. He took 35minutes to take his morning nap today: kid is tired. Something is up with him, and so today I have to work EXTRA hard to give myself, and Luke, grace. I am not an expert. I do not have the answers. I am totally freaked out that we undid all the self soothing work by holding him last night. And so I need this blog more than anyone right now.
My advice here is: play around with all of the things, know it’s not going to work right away probably,, most likely won’t last when it does work, and be okay with that.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: Give yourself grace. Be empathetic towards yourself, and also…have empathy for your baby. I remind myself all the time: Luke is a baby. Babies are biologically designed for survival, and for them being in physical contact with their parent is how they know they are safe. DUH: they can’t do anything on their own. So it is completely normal for them to want to be held by us, to sleep on us, to be with us every second. There’s nothing wrong with or “needy” about your baby. That’s a smart baby. And if it makes you feel any better, my husband came out to tell me he found an article on “6 Signs Your Baby is a Genius” or whatever…and one of those signs is: Your baby won’t sleep.
So here’s to us, and our GENIUS PRODIGY SLEEP-HATING BABIES!
Feel free to post comments below on things you’ve done to help, because again, all the tips are appreciated: we should have a full arsenal of options to choose from! A full toolbox if you will.