Here we are, back at it with another blog about sleep. Once it seemed like we finally got sleep under control with our son, we were pregnant again! Having a toddler that just transitioned to a toddler bed (more to come on this) and a baby right around the corner, we were as prepared as we could be for more sleepless nights. While we were so excited to have a baby girl, sleep was the most difficult part with our son. To say we were a little nervous to see what our nights would be like would be an understatement.
We were obviously waking up several times a night for the first few weeks while our daughter was sleeping in the bassinet in her room. Our son HATED being swaddled, I’m talking he would break out of a swaddle day 1 in about 10 seconds. However, we tried swaddling with our daughter because we didn’t have much to lose and only our sanity to gain. We really starting swaddling her around 6 weeks and you guys the most amazing thing happened. She slept through the whole night at 7 weeks old! After a couple of nights of this it felt like we hit the jackpot!
Each night we tried to follow the same routine of getting in jammies, snuggling, getting swaddled and then feeding around 8pm. She was then sleeping around 10 hours each night. Having two kids sleeping through the night and being able to get a full nights rest before getting back to work seemed almost too good to be true. She did go through a small sleep regression around 4 months old that lasted about a week. If I’m being completely honest, I don’t know what we did to have such a drastic change between our son and our daughter sleeping as babies. There were some definite differences (formula vs. breastfeeding; small bassinet vs. larger bassinet; swaddle vs. sleeping with a blanket [don’t mom shame me]; sound machine vs. TV on; etc.) If I’ve learned anything as a behavior analyst, with so many variable changes there is no way to say what accounted for such a change in sleep.
I’ll tell you this, I don’t really care what made the difference, I’m just happy that we are here at 10 months old with a girl consistently sleeping 12 hours per night.
Want to hear the next challenge? Having a toddler waking up during the night. Yup, you heard that right. Our son is now having sleep difficulties again. Stay tunes for sleep part 3!