pod ep 25 week 2 hank
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[00:00:00] Welcome to this sleep by Alex podcast. I am a certified pediatric sleep consultant and a mom of three, and I will be bringing you quick science backed sleep advice to get you and your baby or a toddler sleeping well
Hey everyone. Welcome back. Happy Tuesday.
Before we get started, I'll start with a heads up, which is probably going to be a part of this podcast for quite a while, is I do have Hank here with me right now in my arms. So if you hear any, you know, weird noises in the background, that's just him making all his little newborn silly noises and grumps.
I will probably be recording this with him in my arms for quite a while now, but I just like to start with that because I know this microphone can pick up like every little sound.
Okay, this week we are chatting the second week of sleep with Baby Hank. And as I mentioned last week, I was going to share how I got him sleeping in his bassinet for the second week. So the first week he primarily just [00:01:00] slept with me in my bed. I honestly didn't even attempt to get him at his bassinet. I was so freaking exhausted.
And when they're first born, it's really hard to put them down. But I do want to make sure that he can sleep in his bassinet at least at night. I'm perfectly fine with contact naps and snuggling during the day, but at night for my own mental sanity and my own sleep, and knowing that he's like in the safest place possible, I really wanted him sleeping in the bassinet.
So I gave him one week with me in my bed, and then I decided, okay, I'm going to rip the bandaid and get him used to sleeping in his bassinet. So I'm gonna start by sharing how exactly I did that. , honestly, in the newborn stages when it comes to independent sleep in the bassinet at night, the main tip I have for you is unfortunately.
Practice, practice. Practice and consistency. Obviously newborns are too little for us to be sleep training. If your baby is an older baby who's older than four months old, you have more options when it comes to getting them to sleep [00:02:00] on their own or transitioning out of co-sleeping because you can teach them to fall asleep independently via sleep training all at the same time.
Now with a newborn, obviously we can't do that quite yet. They're just too little. And they still need a lot of help to fall asleep and stay asleep. So when it comes to getting them to sleep in their bass night, the biggest thing you can do is stay consistent and practice babies get used to what they do every day.
So while your baby might not be used to it right away and might not sleep as well in their bassinet than they do with you in bed, with time and consistency of putting them back in there over and over again, they will definitely get the hang of it. And I will also talk about what if they don't get the hang of it.
So we'll talk about that today as well. But basically after that first week, I decided okay. Tonight, you're going to be sleeping in your bassinet at least as long as I can handle it. We need at least some hours in the bassinet before you're coming into my bed.
So of course, first I'm making [00:03:00] sure that he's fed and he's changed and he's burped.
And then before bed. I usually hold him in my bed for a little while after I feed him, until I know he's nice and asleep. You know, we'll snuggle for a good 10 to 15 minutes to sort of end the day before I swaddle him up and put him in his bassinet.
So once they're fed and changed and nice and asleep, you are gonna want to swaddle them. And this is something that some babies have to get used to. The first week or so, it didn't seem like Hank necessarily liked the swaddle. It seemed like he was trying to pull his arms out of there.
He would get fussy when I would put him in it. This is really normal sometimes. All it takes is a little bit of practice and consistency for them to start to associate it with sleeping. And when it comes to independent sleep with newborns because of how squirmy they are and their startle reflex, you're gonna have such an easier time if they are swaddled.
So. If you feel like at first your baby fights the swaddle or doesn't like it, I would stick with it for a couple weeks just to see how they react to it. Now, is swaddling [00:04:00] required? Like do you have to fight through it? Can you just decide not to swaddle your baby? Sure, of course. But you may find that they have a hard time sleeping longer stretches because they're constantly hitting themselves in the face with their hands and they're constantly waking themselves up.
So I would first try practicing, practicing, practicing, and staying consistent with it every night for at least a couple weeks before deciding, yeah, I'm gonna ditch this all together. Like I said, the first week or so, it didn't seem like Hank was super into it.
But I stayed consistent with it, especially at night. I don't necessarily swaddle him for naps right now just because I'm normally holding him for his nap, or he is in the carrier for his nap. Eventually, when I start laying him down for more naps, I will be swaddling to help him have that independent nap.
But for now, I'm mainly just swaddling at.
And like I said, I make sure he's nice and asleep. Swaddle him up, put him in his bassinet. The first night in his bassinet, you guys, he woke up every [00:05:00] single hour before that in my bed. He was sleeping like three hours, sometimes even a random four hours at a time.
And so to go from that to waking up every hour. Is not easy, right? It's not easy to change up your sleep habits, even if you know that what you're doing isn't currently working. Like I knew I didn't wanna co-sleep with him all of the time, so I knew that wasn't working. But changing up habits is hard. I also knew that I was gonna get less sleep for a little while while he got used to the bassinet.
So that very first night he woke up every hour. I try not to feed him more than every two to three hours at night. So if it only been an hour since he ate, I would pick him up, rock him, offer the pacifier. I would try and at least get him to two hours if I could. Of course, if he wasn't going back to sleep, there's nothing wrong with popping a little milk in there to help him get back down.
I just didn't want to be on this habit of then feeding him every hour. So I try and spread it out two to three hours at least. But it was a lot of ups and downs. It was a lot of putting him back in [00:06:00] there and waking up 45 minutes later, or waking up an hour later or laying him down, and a few minutes later he started crying.
It was exhausting, but I stuck with it for as long as I could physically handle it, which was until about one in the morning by one o'clock, I was like, okay, he's been in there for quite a while now. A handful of hours is great. I'm gonna bring him into my bed. We're gonna sleep the rest of the night. So that's what we did the second night already was so much better.
He didn't wake every hour. It was a little better. He woke up about every two hours. Again, waking up more than he was in my bed. Previously. We were going three to four hours in my bed, but I could already see a glimmer of hope that he was waking up every two hours instead, and we lasted with him in the bassinet until like three or four in the morning.
So now we've moved from one in the morning to three or four in the morning, which is a majority of the night. So I was super happy with that. And at three or four in the morning, I can't remember the exact time, I brought him into my [00:07:00] bed and he slept the rest of.
The third night, he slept all night in his bed, but he was waking for fades every two to three hours. So again, we went from the three to four hours to the two to three hours, but he was in his bed all night long, which was amazing. Already in the first three nights were in his bed all night long. And yes, waking up a little more frequently than we were before, but it's also normal for him to still wake up every two to three hours, being that he was a week, not even two weeks old.
So I was a okay with that. Now, since after those three nights, he now sleeps in his bassinet every night for pretty much the whole night. For the most part. So sometimes those early morning hours can be trickier, like the four or 5:00 AM hours. Instead of doing a three or four hour stretch, all of a sudden they wanna wake up after 45 minutes after an hour.
Those early mornings can be a little bit tricky, so sometimes at five in the morning, I just pull 'em in with me and we sleep until around seven. And [00:08:00] I consider that a huge win if he's gonna be in his bassinet for most of the night and then maybe sometimes come in my bed at five in the morning. That is perfectly okay with me right now.
Again, this is all what it's looking like in his second wake of life. So he's only one week old. This is from like day seven to day 14 . Um, so a lot can change week by week. I will definitely be sharing how it's going with him and his bassinet as the weeks go forward. But for now, in the second week of life, he is sleeping all night in the bassinet.
After a feed, he's getting swaddled, getting back in his bed and staying in his bed either all night or until like five in the morning, and then I'll lay him in my bed until seven or eight.
Once again, my biggest piece of advice is practice, practice, practice. It's so tiring at first, but it's worth it with consistency. If you are going towards a goal that you want to achieve. I can now already tell that he associates his swaddle with sleep and his bassinet with sleep. So instead of fighting [00:09:00] the swaddle
now after I feed him and swaddle him up, he just like knocks out. He knows that it's time to sleep, and I can plop him in his bassinet. I don't even have to be careful about it. And he's just out like he knows that that's where he sleeps. And the swaddle means sleep. And he just goes down for a couple hours and it's amazing.
So once again, keep practicing with the swaddle. If they seem to fight it after a couple of weeks of consistency, they can develop a sleep association with it, which is good. And it helps keep them asleep when they are in your arms again, 'cause they're jerky and squirmy and wiggly worms. If you feel like you are doing all of the things to practice getting them in their bassinet, right, you're being consistent.
You are swaddling them and you've tried for at least a couple weeks and you've had no success. The moment you lay them down, they wake up and start crying. They have a really hard time laying flat in their bassinet. I would look into some sort of discomfort, so I would look [00:10:00] into signs of reflux. I would look into lip izer, tongue ties, sometimes.
Babies have a really hard time laying flat. If they do have reflux, and reflux doesn't need to mean that they're spitting up a ton. They can have a sort of silent reflux that is painful and uncomfortable for them, but doesn't necessarily bring a lot of spit up, up. So. If you feel like no matter what you do, even when you're consistent for two weeks, you cannot lay them down for a moment at night in their bassinet.
Then I would look into signs of reflux, lipt, tie, tongue tie, anything that can cause some extra discomfort with your baby. If you're having a hard time laying them down during the day for naps, but they do lay in there for their nighttime sleep in their bassinet, that's pretty normal. At this age, naps are a lot harder.
I'm in the same boat as you. He does not take naps in his bassinet yet. He pretty much naps in my arms or in the carrier, or, you know, sometimes I am able to plop him on [00:11:00] my bed for a few minutes or something. But we're looking at nighttime sleep here when it comes to being consistent and looking for signs of discomfort, as if you can't get them to lay flat at night in their bassinet.
And speaking of naps, again, I kind of just mentioned right now in his second week of life, he's pretty much a Velcro baby. He only really naps on me if I lay him down. He pretty much wakes up within a few minutes and I hold him practically all day long. For now. I am okay with this. I put him in the carrier.
I have the Moby Wrap, which I absolutely love, and he will sleep in there for as long as I let him. So. I have him in that if I want to walk around or do things or get off the couch or I've just spent a lot of time resting with him on the couch, I take it as an excuse for me to rest and adjust and just chill.
Will we work on independent nap at some point? Absolutely, but now is not the time personally that I'm worried [00:12:00] about him napping on his own when he's 7, 8, 9 days old.
I actually made a note that on day 12 was the first day I was able to like set him down and he took a couple solid naps on his own. Not in the bassinet, but I just would like randomly lay him on my bed or lay him on the couch to go do something and see if he would stay asleep. And he did take like two naps that day that were.
Um, not in my arms on day 12, so it took a while for me to even be able to lay him down for a nap here and there. This is really normal for some babies. I've had babies who right away I could lay them down and they would take a nap. They're all come out a little different. So don't worry if your baby is not acting the exact same way as your best friend's baby.
They're all going to be a little bit different and they are all okay and normal. And we will get through this, I promise.
Another thing I'm noticing in this second week is cluster feeding and fussiness in the evening. So if you notice this with your newborn, no, this is really, really normal cluster [00:13:00] feeding, which is when, one time of the day, typically they feed closer together than usual. Um, often happens in the evenings, , which can be accompanied by some fussiness, sometimes called the witching hours.
If your baby is feeding more frequently at one point of the day, like I said, usually in the evenings, this is really normal. This is just cluster feeding and it will not last forever
if you're working on making sure your baby's taking full feeds in during the day and not getting like on a snacking schedule with them, which I will actually be discussing in next week's episode. So make sure that you subscribe if you wanna hear about cluster feeding and snack feeding and full feeding.
But basically, if you're working on full feeds and you're worried about these evening feeds that are really close together and more like snacks, don't worry about it. Cluster feeding is different than snack feeding. Okay? Cluster feeding is usually only limited to one time of the day. It's not all day long, so if in the evening for a couple hours, your baby feeds really [00:14:00] frequently, short, small feeds, this is normal and okay, and I've been experiencing this same thing.
With Hank, he gets fussy. I usually have to put him in the wrap if I want to help with bedtime or anything like that with the other kids because he's just super cranky.
Another thing I'm noticing as we get to the end of the second week, so like day 12, day 13, finally I'm noticing some periods of wakefulness. So the first really 10, 11 days, he did not have any like quote unquote wake windows. He was just. Practically asleep. He would wake up to eat, he would fall right back asleep, wake up to eat, fall right back asleep.
He did not really have periods of wakefulness or where he'd be awake for longer than a few minutes. Um, he's just been a sleepy guy, but day 12, day 13, now all of a sudden I'm noticing more periods of wakefulness. If he does have these, they're typically the first couple wake windows of the morning. And they're usually 45 to 60 minutes tops before he needs a nap.
So that's really [00:15:00] normal In the newborn stage. Most newborns will be awake 45 to 90 minutes at a time, and of course it's shorter the younger your baby is, so he's only, you know, one or two weeks. So that 45 to 60 minutes makes sense as he gets closer to two or three months old. It might be more like 75 minutes, 90 minutes.
But for now, when he does have those periods of wakefulness, they're usually 40 to 60 minutes. And then I notice him sort of showing some sleepy cues, staring off into the distance, um, getting really still. Sometimes he gets a little fussy and I know that he needs to go to sleep asaps, so I will rock him to sleep.
So that's basically the recap on week two. I do wanna mention two things. So next week I will talk about full feeds versus snack feeds. 'cause that's a big thing I've been working on these first few weeks and super important when it comes to sleep. So if you're interested in that, make sure you subscribe and stick around for next week's episode where I will talk about how I'm making sure that we're not on a snacking cycle and that we're [00:16:00] getting full feeds throughout the day and night.
And the other thing I will mention is I will be back to the Sleep by Alex membership next week as of November 1st. So. If you are interested in group sleep coaching, this is for anyone with babies four to 24 months old, and you are ready to either transition out of co-sleeping, stop rocking to sleep, stop feeding to sleep, you're ready to teach your baby to fall asleep independently, maybe move out of your bed into their crib.
Maybe just move away from rocking or feeding to sleep and be able to put them down a week and have them fall asleep independently. This is gonna help you cut down on night. Wake up. This is gonna help you get those one to two hour naps on a consistent schedule. If you're feeling ready for any of that, now is the time to hop into the Sleep by Alex membership because next Thursday.
November 6th, we will start the November group sleep coaching session. So how it works is you'll join [00:17:00] and you'll be able to have access to the four to 24 month sleep course, and you'll watch the whole course. And then next Thursday you will attend a live kickoff call with me to make sure that you have all your questions answered.
Before you get started, I'll help you choose which method you'd like to use. My course offers four different methods depending on how accelerated or how gradual you would like this whole process to go, and depending on your temperament and your baby's temperament, and I will walk you through the entire process through the month of November.
In the membership, you're able to send me messages every day if you want to, and I get back to you as soon as I can. Always within 24 hours, but usually much sooner than that. And I will be there to guide you every step of the way. So if you're curious about joining this next group sleep coaching session.
Now is the time to hop in. You can actually use the code podcast to get 50% off your first month, so you'll be able to join the session for only $17, and then you can cancel your membership anytime. So if [00:18:00] you only wanna stay for the month and then cancel, that's totally fine. If you wanna stay longer and have some ongoing support from me as you sort of navigate ups and downs, or sleep aggressions or nap transitions, of course you can stay as long as you want.
All of this information is linked in the show notes, so just go on and you can click the link right there. And thank you everyone for tuning in. I will see you next week.
