Sleep Strategies for the New Parent: Months 1-2
Let me guess: You spent nine months becoming an expert on pregnancy and childbirth but forgot to read up on how to care for your newborn? The adrenaline and pain killers have worn off and a few sleepless nights have made you realize that so much of parenting revolves around sleep? This series will use the lens of sleep to guide you through the early days of motherhood. Grab some goals along the way so you can emerge unscathed from the fog of new parenthood.
MONTHS 1-2 Goal: Correct Night vs. Day Confusion
When I was pregnant, my growing babies seemed so much more active at night. Just as I was settling in for a good night’s sleep, my precious little peanuts would wake up and launch into a session of water aerobics. That’s because a pregnant belly bopping along with the ordinary movement of the day made for a lulling place for a fetus to sleep. When you stop moving in the evening, the growing fetus wakes up ready to kick and flip! This continues past birth; motion can also send older children off to dreamland. Notice how they will often doze in the car, stroller, carrier, swing, or even shopping cart.
Motion-induced naps were a handy tool to have up my sleeve those first few months. If my infant was cranky but wouldn’t settle down enough to fall asleep in her crib, I found that a mobile nap was easy to achieve and better than no nap at all. Sleep begets sleep. In other words, a well-rested child will sleep better on the following sleep opportunity than an overtired one. So, if a morning nap had to be in a carrier, stroller, or car, I could try again later for a stationary sleep and expect it to be solid.
Thanks to all the evening gymnastics a fetus engages in, babies are often born with their wake and sleep patterns opposite their parents. They snooze the day away, waking only to eat, and then when nighttime comes, they are ready to party. Not so helpful when you are trying to drift off to sleep!
When my newborn twins turned one month old, I said to them, “Enough of this swapping day for night. It’s time to show you the sunshine. When the sun is up, we wake up. When the sun goes down, it’s time to sleep.” And so I made preparations for us to greet the sun with an early-morning walk.
As soon as I woke up each day, I would immediately change from p.j.s into yoga pants, T-shirt, and nursing bra so I could be ready to roll the moment a window of morning wakefulness opened up. I would also pack the diaper bag the night before to make the morning exit as smooth as possible.
The first moment of the day when both the sun and a baby were awake, I would whisk both twins into the stroller, slip on some flip-flops, grab my glasses, sling my purse onto the handlebar, and set off for a quick stroll. Breakfast could wait until after we saw the sun and officially started the day. I probably looked crazy, sporting wild hair and talking to my babies as if they could already understand me. “Look, there is the sun! Good morning, sun. It’s daytime. We are awake!”
We kept it brief–just 5 to 10 minutes around the block to resent our internal clocks. The sunshine combined with the motion of the stroller would tire the babies out in a matter of minutes. Then home straight away for their naps while I either dozed with them (because my contacts were conveniently still out) or got fully ready for the day.
Another strategy for teaching your newborn the difference between night and day is to not let baby sleep for more than three hours at a time while the sun is out. You want baby to save those longer stretches of sleep for nighttime. Plus, daytime is eating time. The more calories baby consumes during the day, the less he’ll need to consume at night. As baby eats more during the day, he’ll start to drop a night feeding.
Night wakings are a natural part of a newborn’s existence. Infants grow so rapidly, they need to eat frequently–even at night when mom and dad would really rather be sleeping. When baby wakes, check how long it’s been since the previous feeding began. If it’s been two to three hours, then it’s probably a hunger cry.
To help teach that nighttime is meant for sleep, keep your interactions with baby to what is necessary: a clean diaper and milk. Get down to business, and avoid stimulation. Keep lights low, the TV off, and voices at a whisper. The environment should feel different than the day, when you enthusiastically engage with your infant through conversation, eye contact, songs, outfit changes, and outings.
Using a wet wipe along with a pre-feeding change is actually a great way to wake up a sleepy baby who needs to be alert enough to eat efficiently and with gusto in the middle of the night. If the household has already woken up for the purpose of getting nutrients into a growing baby, you might as well make the most of it and accomplish a full feeding rather than letting baby nod back off after a few comforting sips of milk.
Change the diaper before nighttime feedings so that you don’t necessarily need to change it after (which could break the spell of milk-drunk grogginess that lends itself so nicely to baby drifting back off to sleep post feeding). Of course, if baby dirties her diaper during the feeding, you would change it before re-swaddling baby and placing her back into her bassinet or crib.
If you haven’t yet discovered diapers with a wetness indicator strip, try them out. The line on the diaper changes color when the diaper is wet, indicating it’s time for a change. You will also learn to detect the warmth and heaviness of a full diaper. To check for poop without fully opening the diaper and disturbing a groggy baby, stretch the elastic of the leg hole to peek in around the back side for signs of number two. Swaddles that unzip from the bottom work well for this as you don’t have to fully unbundle baby to do a final diaper check before returning to sleep.
It’s also worth re-thinking your own bedtime. Infants often take their longest stretch of sleep between 7 p.m. and midnight. While you might be tempted to use that chunk of time to continue on with patterns from your pre-kid lifestyle (going out to dinner, working on your computer, reconnecting with your spouse, working out, reading, or watching TV), consider prioritizing your sleep for those first few months while baby is learning to sleep through the night. While it seems like a huge chunk of time, a couple months is really just a short phase in the grand scheme of things. You’ll be back to binge-watching Netflix in no time. If baby is asleep and it’s after 8 p.m., start your own bedtime routine. While baby might wake before you actually fall asleep, at least you’ll have your teeth brushed, contacts out, and p.j.s on, ready to hit the hay the next time baby dozes off.
With some solid stretches of sleep emerging at night and longer periods of wakefulness filling the days, you and baby are well on your way to a healthy sleep routine. Next month, you’ll be able to capitalize on sleep consolidation to set up some more useful structures and habits.
Read the rest of the sleep series here:
MONTHS 0-1: Recover and Recreate Womb
MONTHS 1-2: Correct Night vs. Day Confusion
MONTHS 2-3: Establish Structure and Habits
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