I am writing this as my 18-month-old has a midday snooze. I was promising myself that I would write a blog about how we got our baby to sleep through the night for a while. However. every time I went to write it, there followed a night of unsettled sleep. So I sort of thought I was jinxing myself. That being said, I’m going to bite the bullet and put down how we did it. I’ll worry about the consequences later.
I hope when reading this it doesn’t come across as all-knowing and smug, because I’m really not. And I hope if you are having sleep problems, this goes a little way to explaining where we were before we started the process.
Do we have a baby who sleeps through the night every night?
The short answer is ‘no’. But my goodness it is better than it used to be. And 90% of the time, we now have a small toddler who settles happily, sleeps through the night and wakes in the morning quite contented. She also tends to get about an hour and a half of sleep every day around lunchtime. But it wasn’t always like this.
In this blog post, I’ll go through a little of what we’ve done and how we’ve done it. How we went from a very unsettled baby to a baby who now mostly sleeps through the night. I will also put a couple of links to any products we chose to buy during our journey and would genuinely recommend to a friend. Any links to Amazon are affiliate links where I would receive a small financial reward if you buy them, but please be aware that that is not the reason I’m popping them in here.
I have no affiliate or paid link with the Daddy Sleep Coach who we chose to use. I paid the full price for the course and would do so again to support his small business.
With all that being said, let’s jump into how we now have a peaceful nights sleep, most of the time.
Is everyone in the same sleepless boat?
I think baby sleep is one of those topics, a bit like weight loss and sex. When you’re having loads of it or doing really well, you hear everyone talking about it. When it’s not going well, it’s radio silence.
Out of my ‘parent friends’ of children of a similar age, there is a real mixed bag with sleep. I’m really lucky that everyone is pretty open about it and of course, it’s a really hot topic when you have a baby. Charlotte wasn’t born with anything we needed to worry about (my birth story is here if you fancy a read) and she didn’t have any health issues like colic or reflux.
As soon as you have a newborn, people jump on the ‘how are they sleeping?’ question. Which of course is completely normal. But what does get annoying is the expectation that by 6 weeks, they should be basically making themselves their own cup of tea and tucking down with an episode of Heartbeat on a Sunday night for a full 12 hours of sleep.
We all know that isn’t how it goes.
According to the sleepfoundation.org most babies will start sleeping through by 6 months, with only 28% of babies NOT sleeping through by 12 months (out of the people they surveyed, study size unknown).
We were definitely in the 28%.
Our Baby sleep problems
Like every new parent, the lack of sleep at the start is a complete shock to the system. The sound of your baby crying at 2 am is heart-wrenching. You worry about waking the neighbours. You worry if there’s something wrong with them. It’s all a very terrifying time.
I read a lot before my daughter arrived about the 4th trimester and how the feeling to stay close is completely normal. We practised safe sleeping and set up a Snuzpod next to our bed. This worked well for us in the first few months. It was hard to begin with as all Charlotte wanted to do was lie on my chest to sleep. We knew how unsafe this was in case she slid off (so easily done when you’re sleep deprived already). We used the Ergo 360 baby carrier for daytime naps (of which there are so many in the beginning) and of course, the pram. Queue endless walks up and down the street come rain or shine for a few moments of peace with a podcast.
At around 5 months, we decided that Charlotte was ready for her own bedroom. She was starting to outgrow the pod and although she was still waking up regularly, we were unsure if she just wanted her own space. The transition went OK. I rocked and fed her to sleep every night on the chair in her room and then gently lowered her into her crib.
About a month later, the problems started.
Constant Wakings
About 45 minutes after lowering Charlotte into her crib, she would wake up screaming. Utterly petrified as to where I was.
This was usually when we had just sat down for dinner and it became almost routine.
We started trying the tips that we got from various YouTube, podcasts and sleep books (some of which were beyond terrible).
When you’re hunting desperately for a solution because you’re exhausted, the most annoying thing people can say is ‘it’s just a phase, it will pass ‘ . Mainly because it’s true. But WHEN will it pass? Because when you’re beyond tired, it’s the pits. It affects everything. Your relationships, hygiene, ability to function. And it makes you frustrated.
Deep down you know that this very vulnerable, tiny human is going through HUGE changes in their world. A lot of the sleep issues we had were around teething and big developmental leaps, particularly when learning to walk. And all you want to do is love them and look after them and cuddle them to sleep. But you also need 5 minutes to do something with your arms.
It all came to a bit of a head when Charlotte was waking up really frequently wanting to be rocked back to sleep. She refused her Dad putting her to sleep or comfort her which was upsetting on all parts as my husband really wanted to get involved and help. But she would push him away and demand me to hold her every hour of the night.
When this all became a bit impossible, we started to let Charlotte come into our bed as long as it was after midnight. Everyone said this was making a rod for our own back and I’m sure that’s true. But we finally got some sleep. Then she grew and our bed isn’t that big. We needed help.
Asking for sleep consultant help
In May 2021 I started looking around for help. Friends of ours had hired a sleep consultant on a 1 to 1 basis and had great success with their child. After doing a lot of research, I came across an account on Instagram called The Daddy Sleep Consultant.
I watched a few of his Instagram stories and saw a few of his testimonials. Whilst he did do 1 to 1 consultations, he also sold a course for £39. What appealed to me was how gentle his approach was. Our current sleep routine was very nurturing, with lots of cuddles and co-sleeping. It seemed wrong to suddenly swap that for some kind of ‘cry it out’ method (this method, however, has been used by a lot of my friends to varying degrees of success, mostly the positive kind)
I also liked that it used stages to essentially wean your child from co-sleeping. On the first night, we placed Charlotte in her cot. I then lay next to her, stroking her hand and repeating a ‘sleepy phrase’ to remind her it was time to go to sleep.
Having some guidance really reassured me that it would work and sure enough, after about an hour of gentle grizzling, standing up and lying down, she went to sleep. When she awoke, we repeated the process.
It wasn’t an overnight success, but we worked at it and continued to the point we are at today.
5 months after the sleep consultant course
We still offer a drink in the night but rather than milk, it’s usually water, unless she seems particularly hungry. She still sleeps with a dummy, despite the course suggesting that it does cause some sleep disturbances. Charlotte doesn’t seem particularly fussed if it falls out and finds it again in the night if she wants it
Since May, we haven’t co-slept. I haven’t rocked her to sleep and her Dad now does the majority of the bedtime settling.
Like I’ve said before, it’s not that she sleeps through the night all the time, but do any of us even as adults? If she wakes, she seems so much more aware of where she is and isn’t panicking like before.
I’m not saying this is the solution for everyone, far from it, but the technique really worked for us and has even proved quite successful during testing times of sickness or teething.
Best buys that we have made
I’ve seen sleep consultants have mixed reviews about white noise machines, but we have found ours to be our best sleep-related buy. I think the idea is you don’t want your child getting too reliant on it. But ours is on really quietly and essentially just keeps a gentle hum over background noise. We have neighbours and my husband works shifts, so it sometimes means unexpected bangs and creaks early or late at night that used to wake her up. I’ve linked the one that we bought and have used since.
We also use a star projector lamp when settling for the night. Sometimes we’ll leave it on and I’ll catch Charlotte watching the pattern on the ceiling to settle down (it also comes with an ‘under the sea’ dome)
I also bought a few 0.5 tog sleeping bags which we use so much during the summer months. I’ve tried just popping a loose sheet over but she kicks these off with ease. It seems that the really light sleeping bags stop her from getting warm but give her the comfort of feeling a bit snuggly.
I hope this post goes a little way to explaining our story and where we are at now. This is how we are at 18 months, but I hear there is a sleep regression around age 2 as well. Eek. If you’ve enjoyed reading this, I’ve also written a post about my current bedtime story favourites which we now enjoy as part of the routine.
Thank you for taking the time to read. I would love to hear about your experience with toddler and baby bedtimes so feel free to comment or message me xx
