Mom Talk: Kids and Sleep Training

Back with another Mom Talk post with some of my favorite bloggers!

I’m teaming up Liz from Hello Adams Family, Julia from Lemon Stripes, Kelly from Kelly In The City, Eva from Happily Eva After, Liz from Pure Joy Home, and Danielle from Danielle-Moss to chat all things motherhood, and today’s topic is all about something in life that’s hugely important, but as mothers we don’t get enough of. Sleep. Or, should we say….lack thereof? 😉

Sleep is such a huge topic because it really is so important! You don’t realize just how much you need and function on sleep until you’re sleep deprived. I also found it to be one of the more confusing areas for parenting, because especially with Grace, I had no idea what I was doing! Every baby is different, every parent’s advice was different, and in general a new parent’s life is far from routine. With all that in mind, it’s hard to know what “normal” is.

“Don’t babies just sleep when they’re tired?!” I thought.

Yes and no. You need to help them learn, which was honestly a learning curve for me.

Before I share our experiences with sleep and sleep training, let’s dive into what the experts say. (Which is what I heavily relied on with my said learning curve above!)

How Much Sleep Is The Right Amount For Your Kid?

I found a great blog – Baby Sleep Science – all about babies and sleep. Here’s a quick run down on the amount of sleep kids 5 and under need per day, broken down by age range. (Source: Baby Sleep Science)

• Infants 4–12 months: 12–16 hours total in 24 hours
• Children 1–2 years: 11–14 hours total in 24 hours
• Children 3–5 years: 10–13 hours total in 24 hours

I reference sleep charts a lot below, so to help give context, here’s an AMAZING nap chat chart to save as reference for if you need it, and here is one for night sleeping! These are seriously so helpful, so be sure to bookmark them!

Alright, now for our personal experiences with sleep and sleep training. I have found that with babies and sleep training, it goes in phases. (For them, and as a result, for you!) Here are the phases of sleep training that we’ve been through, honest thoughts about each, and how we approached sleep training with our girls during these phases.

I will sum up my experience with sleep training with one key word: Consistency. In any stage of sleep training, consistency is key.

Our Experiences With Sleep & Sleep Training

The Newborn Phase (0 – 3 months)

With Grace and Jo, the first newborn phase (and HARDEST part) was all about surviving. It’s on demand napping, being up a lot at night, and sneaking in a little sleep whenever you can. It’s messy hair, unbrushed teeth, and feeling like you haven’t seen sunlight in days. I found this to be the most difficult time with both Grace and Jo because of all the newborn adjustments, of which sleep is such an integral part! However, I will say that because I’d been through it before with Grace, I knew more of what to expect with Josephine so it seemed to go by a bit easier the second time around. (Though still hard, mind you!)

Honestly, there’s no “sleep training” in this phase. There’s just ways to help them sleep better. Things that worked for us were:

• Leveraging the Rock and Play. We used this frequently at first but then started to do it just during day time naps, because we didn’t want them to become reliant on the motion in order to sleep. But honestly, for the first month, this was a LIFESAVER and helped to give us a few hours straight fairly consistently.
• When on the go, wearing the girls in our Baby Bjorn. Because of on demand sleeping, this was so helpful while we were out and about!
• Am I the only one who found it impossible to tie a swaddle?! That’s a topic for another day. But seriously, I loved swaddles with velcro because they were “Emily proof” (Ha), but more importantly, with normal swaddles I was always a worried mess about the potential for them to kick out of the swaddles and have loose blankets in their bassinet.
• Both girls have a Dohm White Noise Machine in their room. These are magical!

The “Nap During The Day” Phase (4 months – 15 months)

Ahh these were the days. I loved this phase because after the very draining newborn phase, the start of a routine and multiple naps were so heavenly!

We basically followed a sleep chart and would plan naps based off of when they got up. (So for example, at 6 months they’re supposed to have 2 – 2.5 hours between naps. So if Grace got up at 6am, we’d put her down for a nap between 8 and 8:30am.) These times fluctuated based on the age, so I definitely recommend checking out a sleep chart! But I will say that following this was beyond helpful for us because it gave us a good idea of what to plan around.

For us, the biggest thing in this phase for sleep training was consistency. Just like with any training, practice makes perfect!

One note is that both of my girls woke up about once a night until around 9 months. For the earlier months, it was to eat. But as we neared toward a year, it became clear that it was more for comfort. I will be the first to admit, in hindsight, that I played into this. I went back to work full time when both girls were 3 months, so I welcomed those little night time moments where it was just us two. However at around 9 months for each, I knew I needed to let that go because it became clear that they were becoming reliant on that night time comfort as opposed to learning to sleep all the way through.

(TEAR) SO at that point, if they woke up, we’d quickly go in, make sure all was okay, and then let them fall back to sleep on their own. (As opposed to rocking them.) This seemed to work well as both girls have been sleeping 10 – 12 hours a night since around 9 months!

For night sleeping, one thing that worked for us during the 4 – 6 month phase was having the girls sleep in the Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit at night. This was AMAZING and I swear helped them to sleep longer! We didn’t use this during day time naps because they were at day care, and also because we wanted them to get used to also sleeping without the sleep suit, which I will say did help us when we transitioned them out of it!

One Long Nap A Day + Full Night Sleep (15 months+)

Right now, we’re on a really lovely schedule. Grace is 3 and Josephine will be 2 next months, so both girls take one long nap during the day, and will sleep from 10 – 12 hours at night! It’s so nice because during the day that long nap time allows for us to get lots done, and at night we can consistently rely on the girls being asleep by about 8 pm.

However, there are a few regressions happening now that our kids are full on toddlers that we’re working through.

Regressions We’re Currently Working Through

Grace, who is 3, has been getting up in between 3 am and 4 am and coming into our bed to cuddle/sleep for the rest of the night. It started when the four of us were sharing a room for four months in my mom’s basement, while waiting for our home renovation to be completed. (Oh my gosh I have anxiety just thinking of that!)

At first I welcomed it, because there was so much transition happening and I figured Grace just needed some comfort. Also, who doesn’t love cuddles?! But once we moved into our new home, and it continued every night, we knew we had an issue because it was clearly starting to become habit. What we did to help alleviate this was to get a Kid’s Stop Light Alarm Clock. Basically, Grace isn’t supposed to leave her bed until 7 am, when the light turns “Green”. It has *generally* been effective, but there’s still some nights when she appears. We’ve been trying to just consistently bring her back to bed, and the more we do that, the more it does seem to stick.

There’s also a slight regression with Josephine, who will be turning 2 next month, and started to climb out of her crib. There were a few mornings when we’d hear little footsteps walking around and find her wandering. Talk about a jarring feeling! We tried everything to combat this and were even considering transitioning her to a “Big Girl Bed” soon, but what worked was actually to simply turn her crib around so that the long side was facing forward, and the shorter side was facing the wall. It’s worked so far! But, she’s a smart cookie and I’m sure will start trying to climb out of the side soon. I’m hoping the crib turn will buy us a few months!

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Are your kids good sleepers? What has been helpful for you with sleep training?

I always find it helpful to read other parent’s experiences and insights! Be sure to swing by the below blogs to read and learn from them, too! These women are amazing and I know will have to many wonderful insights to share.

Lemon Stripes

Hello Adams Family

Pure Joy Home

Kelly In The City

Danielle Moss

Happily Eva After

PS – Our first “Mom Talk” post, which was all about Screen Time + My Favorite Newborn Products + What Have You Learned From Your Kids?