Getting Baby to Sleep

I'm not glad that I paid $200 for antenatal classes that turned out to be entirely useless. They didn't prepare me for the reality of what I experienced in giving birth, nor did they prepare me for the reality of what comes next.

We were told babies follow a routine of feed-play-sleep (or simply feed-sleep for newborns). However, Jude did not care for supposed routines. From week 4 to week 8 he flat out refused to sleep during the day, thus making it impossible for me to do anything (like eat lunch or get dressed) during the day.

It was incredibly frustrating. Yes, some babies do follow by-the-book routines but some babies don't and it's unfair to disarm expectant mothers by pretending otherwise. I was completely oblivious to how severely my life would be turned upside down and dumped on its head by having a baby that didn't nap during the day, and by day I mean from 8am until 11 o'clock at night.

Almost all babies start off life waking every 3 or 4 hours (some every 2 hours) through the night. For me this meant that Jude feeds at 10pm, then 2am, then 5am, then 8am and I try to sleep in between. Some babies grow out of this pattern and start skipping one of those night-time feeds. According to one of my baby bibles (which I rushed out to buy as soon as I realised the antenatal classes had been a flat-out waste of money), babies can't really sustain themselves overnight until they're about 5kgs because their stomach is too small prior to that.

Jude was born smaller than average and at nearly 10 weeks of age he still hasn't reached 5kgs. Many babies will reach 5kgs as early as 6 weeks of age. This means that while all those mums with babies the same age as Jude are complaining they can only sleep from 8pm until 7am (what?), I am still getting up twice in the middle of the night to feed Jude and I leap with joy on the rare occasion that I get 5 hours in a row of beautiful, blissful, uninterrupted sleep.

Note: Not all babies start skipping night feeds once they reach the golden weight of 5kgs. Some babies still wake for feeds at 1 year of age or even older.

Happily, Jude has started sleeping more during the day allowing me time to catch up on much needed tasks like cleaning my bathroom (which was a bit skanky after 8 weeks of mold cultivation). I'm not sure if we've done anything to encourage the sleeping or Jude's doing it on his own, but we have tried very hard by putting him to bed when we think he's tired. There are supposed to be clear signs that a baby is tired, but Jude's signs are subtle and we function on guess work.

I've learned through trial and error that Jude likes it when I sit by his bassinet and read him a story. He's not interested in the pictures and I'm sure he has no idea what I'm saying, but a reading voice is different from a conversation voice, there's a certain rhythm to the written word that helps calm Jude and lull him towards sleep. My aim is simply to quieten him to a state of peace so he can put himself to sleep when I leave the room.

Jeremy's technique is to sing him a medley of songs with the same tune, like the ABC and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

It's been a long, confusing and exhausting journey to help Jude sleep. The scary part is, what works today might suddenly stop working tomorrow. With babies you just never know. As my GP said, as soon as you think there's a routine developing something happens and everything changes.