We didn’t sleep train our first born. Here’s what happened.

I’ve talked about our sleep journey with our now 26 month old daughter A LOT over the past two years but wanted to put the story all in one place and share where we are now with a two year old who has never been “taught to sleep.”

I was naive as they come when it came to baby sleep when Ruth was first born. I knew newborns woke often to eat but I honestly was under the impression that that phase only lasted a couple months and after that she would just start sleeping longer and longer stretches and that the need to eat or be comforted overnight would vanish pretty quickly.

lolololololololol the joke was ON ME.

NEWBORN SLEEP: was actually pretty great for us! I remember a few weeks where Ruth would sleep from 8-12 (a four hour stretch!!) and then give us a couple more 2-3 hour stretches after that. She would, however, often be up for an hour or so around 3 am. I have the best husband/parenting partner in the world who would bounce or rock her back to sleep during that hour while I slept!

The catch during this phase is that Ruth would mostly only sleep on one of us. Transfers (no matter how long or short we waited, the temp of the bed/room, whether or not she was swaddled, etc) rarely stuck. So those first few weeks she slept pretty much exclusively on our chests.

Edgar eventually got better at the transfer (I think I was always too impatient due to being tired or having to pee…again.)

From there things went up and down. Some longer stretches and easier nights and some short stretches and harder nights. Better weeks, harder weeks.

3-7 MONTH SLEEP: Over those first 6 months of life we adjusted our expectations about infant sleep A LOT. I had googled just about everything you could about baby sleep and it never made me feel any better (since Ruth NEVER fit the “normal” baby descriptions/didn’t magically start sleeping longer stretches after a couple months, etc.) I found a few sources that made me feel normal, that helped me understand that night waking was very very normal well into toddlerhood. So, letting go of that pressure/doubt/stress helped a lot!

….but, transitioning out of the swaddle around 3-4 months gave us a run for our money and things kind of just got harder and harder from there. These months were by far the hardest when it comes to her sleep patterns. We hit rock bottom during this time when she was for WEEKS/MONTHS on end she was waking every 20-45 minutes around 6 or 7 months old. It wasn’t your typical sleep progression that lasts a couple weeks and eventually you see the other side of it (these are common around 4 months, 6 months, 8-10 months, 12 months, 18 months, and 24 months.) This was nightly for a very long long time and we knew we needed help (but did NOT want to sleep train- which is of course what 99% of people were suggesting we do.

We happened to find a baby-led sleep and well-being specialist (like what I am now!) who was SOOOO helpful for us! Helped us get to some deeper health issues that were impacting Ruth’s sleep, gave us numerous strategies for adjusting sleep patterns in a way that was gentle and responsive and supportive and never ever involved leaving Ruth to cry alone/unsupported/required us to withhold eye contact/physical touch/etc. There were no timed checks, pick up/put down, etc. Just a few methods that all allowed us (and encouraged us) to trust our instincts.

So, after some trial and error and perhaps more importantly just feeling 2977934% more confident and genuinely listened to, sleep and our mental health improved greatly!

8-22 MONTH SLEEP: Ruth woke about every 2-3 hours with the occasional (rare) longer stretch most of this span. And it was pretty manageable. Again, there were a handful of harder nights with more frequent wakes than her usual 2-3 hour stretches/harder to get to sleep/etc, perhaps more than our fair share of false starts within the first 18 months, but all in all it wasn’t an issue for us.

We understood waking through the night and needing nourishment and emotional support was normal and necessary for her development. We were happy to continue bedsharing with her (which we’d pretty much always done since birth, we did have a side car for the first 5 months or so but it didn’t get much use so we put it away) which made night wakings pretty easy. She would wake to nurse and I would lay on my side and nurse her back to sleep usually within just a few minutes. Thankfully, she didn’t want to stay attached to the boob for too long.

But when Ruth was about 22 months or so, I became pregnant with our second baby! It became clear pretty quickly that something shifted in me and I could no longer handle nursing her back to sleep every 2 or so hours. It just wasn’t sustainable anymore given all that was going on in my body.

So, we decided to night wean. I’ll outline our exact night weaning in a future post but will give the general idea- we talked and read books with Ruth to prepare her for this change and starting with the first wake of the night, Edgar started to take over with night wakings. She absolutely cried and wasn’t keen on this change at first but within a few days took to it very well. Edgar held her and sang to her and talked to her and VALIDATED the strong emotions she was feeling about him responding to her instead of me/my boobs. He was there to comfort her (literally always offering physical touch/holding her/verbally soothing her/etc.) and support her during this MAJOR transition in her life.

After a few weeks he had eventually taken over all night wakings…and…much to our surprise she also started to sleep longer stretches!!! (night weaning is NOT a guaranteed ticket to longer stretches of sleep!)

Since night weaning four months ago, she has slept through the night a handful of times but typically wakes 1-3 times.

She either cuddles me back to sleep or lets Edgar pat her back back to sleep. Either way, she resettles within a few seconds/1-2 minutes max.

23-27 MONTH SLEEP:

She’ll be 27 months next week and not much has changed since night weaning, she still wakes 1-3 times a night on average and is very easy to resettle (okay occasional bad dreams that require a little more comfort from us and there have been a couple times she wakes up NEEDING something-like a stuffed animal or….change of pjs (not because she peed she just likes to change her clothes…a lot lol) BUT overall her waking and needing a little comfort back to sleep at 27 months is nothing that we’re concerned about! It’s quite normal for toddlers to wake and need support back to sleep.

aaaand, did you know:

when you look at the sleep patterns of two year olds who WERE sleep trained as infants and the sleep patterns of two year olds who WERE NOT sleep trained as infants you won’t be able to find any difference!!!!!! (so the whole “sleep training teaches a baby to sleep/helps them have better sleep/teaches them to connect sleep cycles, etc etc etc is a whole load of BS)

the only big change from month 26 to month 27 is that she’s been sleeping in her own room (for the first time ever!) We were in NO rush to get her out of our room (because for us it is not a big deal/inconvenience to have her in there-all families are different and it’s okay if you don’t want them in your room anymore but there’s also NOTHING wrong with continuing to bedshare as long as you see fit!

With our second baby due in April, we knew we either needed to move Ruth to her own room SOON so that we weren’t shipping her off to her own space right before the baby arrived. (sleeping in our bed is all Ruth has ever known and she obviously seeks comfort from us overnight and not to mention she loves sleeping by us so the LAST thing I would want is for her to feel pushed out and have the new baby suddenly getting all of our attention.) OR we needed to just make a firm decision that she would continue to sleep in our room and the new baby would and we would figure out room sharing with a toddler and a baby when the time came.

And honestly that’s kind of what I wanted because I personally didn’t quite feel ready for her to be…right across the hall. So we had kind of landed on her continuing to be in by us and moved her twin bed to our room. (so now we have a twin and a king in there)

But, over the past month or two before bed I ask her which bed/room she wants to sleep in because I do want her to know she doesn’t have to sleep in our room if she no longer wants to (and maybe having her in her own room would be easier when the new baby comes???) She would always say “mama’s and papa’s” and I never tried to coax her into changing her mind, I just respected her decision and never pushed it. But eventually she started to say her room and so we (very recently) began exploring having her sleep in her own room.

So over the past two or three weeks she’s slept in her own room (we have a full mattress in there for her and the twin is still in our bedroom) probably 75% of the time. Because this is such a new big transition (for all of us) the nights she has slept in there Edgar or myself have also slept in by her and the other one sleeps in our bedroom. Since she still needs us a couple times a night it’s also in my mind easier to just sleep near here (it has never sounded appealing to me to get out of bed to go to another room to get a baby back to sleep and then go back to my room. having her right next to us has definitely made night wakings easier to manage/real with and has gotten us more sleep.)

A FEW FINAL NOTES:

• not sleep training her has had zero negative impact on her development (this might sound absurd to some of you but many sleep trainers will try to make you believe if you don’t sleep train there’s no way your baby/toddler will learn to sleep by themselves/get enough sleep and it will damage their development. Which is one of the many many harmful and dangerous lies they tell to sell you on their programs.) Ruth is growing and learning just as she should be! Honestly, I’m not just saying this because she’s my daughter, but the girl is a WHIP. She’s incredibly precocious and her verbal communication blows my mind, you can have full blown conversations with her. So, clearly not sleep training her didn’t damage her one bit!

• not sleep training didn’t mean I was exhausted 24/7 for the past two years. Yes, there were definitely harder nights and days I felt more tired but overall I never experienced prolonged sleep deprivation.

• not sleep training her didn’t mean my marriage suffered. I won’t lie, our first year of becoming parents brought out new challenges in mine and Edgar’s marriage but it wasn’t because we were up with our baby/holding her for naps/having her sleep in our bed.

• we’ve NEVER had to worry or second guess ourselves about whether CIO had any lasting negative psychological impacts on her. I’ve never felt guilty about how we’ve responded to (or not responded to in the case of sleep training)

• all this to say, you CAN get more/better sleep and/or adjust sleep patterns without ever needing to follow any sleep training (or sleep learning as they’re starting to call it now) and I hope that brings you some amount of relief and confidence.

And if you DO need more direct support to adjust sleep patterns/night wean/etc in a responsive way, you can book a 1:1 consult with mere here!