This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #VTechParentGuide #CollectiveBias
One of my very best friends from childhood had just thrown me my first baby shower. After the food was eaten, the gifts were opened and the guests were gone, I lingered so we could talk. She told me that she had two friends who had recently become first-time moms and how one was always tired and the other was not.
I said, “Call your friend and then tell me her secret.” She did—a fairly simple sleep training system.
About five weeks after having my baby, the sleep deprivation started getting to me. So, my husband and I adopted our friend’s method. I know sleep training can be a hot topic, but here’s the thing: you have to teach your child how to do everything, why wouldn’t sleep be added to that list?
We have done this system with all three of our babies and all of them slept through the night before they were 12 weeks old!
Add peace of mind into the process by investing in VTech VM4261 4.3” Digital Video Baby Monitor with Pan & Tilt Camera, Wide-Angle Lens and Standard Lens. The VTech VM4261 allows you to have convenient, real-time access, and the ability to see your child and their entire nursery with close-ups, to a wide 170-degree panoramic coverage all times of the day. The VTech VM4261 will also transition with your baby through all stages from infancy, to crawling, to walking—giving you the convenience you need and the peace of mind you want.
Here is my first-time-parent guidebook on how to get your baby to sleep through the night.
Pin It:
Space Out Day Time Feedings:
Around 6 weeks of age, start to space out your baby’s feeds. The goal is to get them to four separate daytime feedings a day, every four hours. So, an example schedule would be, 7, 11, 3, and 7. Another girlfriend of mine who exclusively breastfed said she had to add an extra 5th feeding right before putting the baby down for the night.
Daytime sleep schedule:
Newborns sleep so much. If you want your baby to sleep through the night, you’ll need to get your baby to have longer periods of wake time. This part we were a little bit more lax with, but we tried to only allow the baby to sleep for a maximum of four hours during the day—ideally one hour in the morning and two in the afternoon.
Establish a Nighttime Routine:
Establish a nighttime routine. Pick out 3-5 things you want to do with your baby every night, so she knows it’s time to go to sleep. Here is our nighttime routine: bath, lotion, song, prayer, sound machine. Then, this is the most important part: put the baby in the crib awake. The point is to teach her how to fall asleep on her own. This doesn’t mean you have to give up rocking, you can add that into your nighttime routine, but you want to make sure she is placed in her crib awake so that she learns how to fall asleep on her own.
Pin It:
Gradually Step Down Nighttime feedings:
So, now you have gotten your baby down to four or possibly five daytime feeds. So, what do you do for nighttime feeds? You gradually step them down. Let’s say your baby is waking up consistently at 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. You try to start stretching out those feeds. So, the next night, try to get your baby to last until 1:15 and 4:15. You also want to roll back the amount you’re feeding them. So, if your baby eats 3 ounces per wake up or a set amount of minutes if you’re breastfeeding, then the next night, step both feeds down to 2.5 ounces or fewer minutes. The next night step it down to 2 ounces or fewer minutes. And so on. Here’s the other part of it, once your baby eliminates a feeding (so, one night they wake up only at 2 a.m. and not 4 a.m.) try to eliminate that feeding all together. The baby has proven they can make it through that part of the night without feeding, so don’t go backward. You roll back the time and the amount of ounces they are consuming and do this until there are no more feedings left.
Nighttime Soothing:
This brings in the question, what about crying? We never let it go more than 10 minutes. We soothe by rubbing the baby’s back and singing songs, but we don’t pick up the baby. Honestly, there’s not that much crying involved. By starting this process early, the baby learns how to fall asleep on her own.
The VTech VM4261 monitor is particularly helpful for soothing because you can use the two-way, talk back intercom to soothe your baby without entering the room. You can do this!
