Week Three with Hank: Sleep, Expectations
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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
Hi. Oh my goodness. Not gonna lie. It has been a tricky day with the little one.
He is just having one of those days where he is not very happy and maybe he's happy, like while he's nursing and that's about it. And the rest of the time he's pretty ticked off and fighting his sleep and just not having an awesome day. Which days like this are to be expected with a new newborn.
Of course not every day is going to be perfect. Rainbows and butterflies. But I think I had this expectation in my head of what I wanted the day to look like. It's Monday. I wanted to go grocery shopping. I wanted to put the laundry [00:01:00] away. I wanted to record this podcast episode. And I had all of this in my head as expectations for the day.
And then of course, he, you know, had his own expectations of the day. And I think that's where life can feel hard sometimes is when the expectations in reality don't quite match up.
So I am trying to remind myself that he is a few weeks old and the days like this are gonna happen, and it's totally fine. It's more that I had all of this stuff in my head that I thought I was going to do today, and now I'm almost at, you know, two o'clock in the afternoon and I haven't done any of it, and
it is what it is, and tomorrow's gonna be a new day. And even just saying all of this out loud right now to you has made me feel exponentially better. I was on the verge of like a mental breakdown 10 minutes ago, and now all of a sudden I'm like, oh yeah, it's, it's all good. It's not a big deal.
None of that stuff I wanted to do is life or death. The laundry is not going anywhere. I have food for us to eat today [00:02:00] and we'll get the podcast done so I can send it out to you guys. 'cause of course the show must go on. But you know, we've got this.
Thank you for all the great feedback from last week's episode. It seems like a lot of you are enjoying hearing about the second week with Hank and how I've been working on him sleeping in his bassine at night.
I appreciate you all being here as part of this journey with me. It feels so much less lonely as I have like all of you going along this road with me. This week I am talking about week three with little Hank.
So basically, you know, days 14 to 21 or whatever.
I am also gonna talk a little bit about full feeds versus snack feeds versus cluster feeding. Now I do have a whole episode on the topic, so I'm not gonna dive super deep. You can always go back a few episodes and listen to that if you're more curious about some details on that. But I will address how I've been working on making sure he's getting full feeds versus on a snack feed schedule and [00:03:00] why I care so much about that.
So basically, let's start with nighttime sleep with Hank.
He's been doing really well in his bassinet at night. He's getting better and better each week and he's been able to, you know, wake up, take a feed, get down rather quickly back in his bassinet. I've been getting some nice, solid sleep in between the feeds in my own bed, which is amazing. So yes, I'm getting broken sleep, so I'm still tired.
It is not the same as continuous sleep. If you have a child, then you know what I'm talking about, but I am getting sleep, which I am just like so grateful and thankful for to get at least a couple hours at a time.
By the end of week three, he's actually gotten pretty predictable at night, for the most part. He goes to bed between like eight and nine. Now, most newborns are not going to go to bed and get a nice stretch of sleep until pretty late in the night, usually between like nine and 11:00 PM He does go to bed a little bit on the earlier end between eight and nine, but that seems to work [00:04:00] perfectly fine for him for now.
There's been a couple nights that have been closer to nine 30 or 9 45, maybe even 10, but for the most part, you know, 80% of the time he's going to sleep between eight and nine. I kind of just get my other kids down between seven 30 and eight, and then I work on getting myself ready for bed and getting Hank ready for bed, and that usually lands between eight and nine.
Then the rest of the night is pretty predictable. He usually has a feed around midnight and then he has another feed around, you know, 3, 3 30. And then usually that next stretch of sleep is a little bit shorter. He'll have another feed at like five 30. And lately I've been getting up. Feeding him at that time, getting him back to sleep, and then by the time I'm done with all that, it's probably six.
So I've been getting myself up having some coffee, making sure I can have some time to myself before all of my other kids get up, which they get up around 6 45. So that's been really nice. I can't complain about that five 30 sort of [00:05:00] feed, 'cause it, it gets me up and I'm able to put him back down and have some time without him in my arms, which is really nice.
I have some time to myself before the big kids get up and then when the big kids get up, I have a little bit of time to sit there and read with them or cook them breakfast without having to, you know, lug hang around. And then he is usually getting up between seven and eight right now. I make sure to go in and get him up by eight o'clock because we have school drop off and all of that.
For the most part, actually it's more like 7 30, 7 to 45 if I wanna make sure I feed him before we're out the door.
But you know, sometime between seven and eight, he's usually up for the day.
As far as Daytimes go, he's definitely waking up a little bit more to the world now. Before, he didn't really have any wake windows whatsoever, maybe once or twice a day. I'd notice he'd be awake for, you know, a half an hour after his feed, but then practically sleeping the whole rest of the day. Now he's definitely having more awake time during the day.
His wake windows are usually [00:06:00] about 60 minutes, including the time that he's nursing. So he usually wakes up. He takes a feed, which lately takes, you know, maybe 15, 20 minutes, and then he might be awake another 30 to 40 minutes before I notice that he's tired and needs to take a nap. So it is becoming a little bit more of a cycle in that way of the eat, sort of wake sleep cycle.
And I am noticing around that 45 to 60 minute mark awake is when he starts to show some sleepy cues, and he seems like he's ready for a nap.
I do wanna share how our first attempt at a bassinet nap went. And if you follow me on Instagram, then you already know this. But I just want to normalize what is normal as you just start to practice these little things, and as your baby is so little, sometimes we have these expectations that we're gonna be able to lay them down and they take a two hour nap on their own as we get all of this stuff done.
But that's just not the reality all the time. And like I talked about in the beginning of this episode, when our [00:07:00] expectations don't meet reality, it can be really disappointing. So I find that. The more babies I have, the more I can actually understand their sleep and set my expectations realistically
So I'm not just setting myself up for disappointment time and time again.
This mindset has helped me so much this newborn period when it comes to sleep, because I've gone into this first month knowing. It is normal for him to wake up for a feed every two to three hours at night. It is normal for him to only wanna sleep in my arms if I get an independent nap here and there.
If I get more than two to three hours between feeds at night, I'm gonna be so excited and grateful and thankful, and that's just an extra bonus
I'm going to go into this month expecting. This like normal part of newborn asleep, and if things are better than that, sometimes it will just be a pleasant surprise.
There will [00:08:00] be plenty, plenty, plenty of time for him to sleep well in his crib for nap time and to sleep 5, 6, 7 hours straight at night. We will get there.
So the first time I put him in his bassinet for a nap,
. Here's what I did. I got him all swaddled up. I rocked him completely to sleep. I put him in his bassinet. I do have a bassinet that rocks a little bit, so I rocked him in that for a few minutes and held my hand on his chest to make sure that he fell asleep, or I should say, make sure that he stayed asleep after I laid him in the bassinet and he stayed asleep.
So I left him in the bassinet for his nap. Now he. Slept for like 10 minutes probably. I think actually sleeping was about 10 minutes, and then I heard on the monitor he was stirring, so I kind of like watched him as I made myself breakfast and I noticed he was [00:09:00] definitely awake. I think it, I couldn't see his eyes, but I could just see his body moving around.
I was pretty sure he was awake and he was stirring and he was making little noises, but he wasn't crying, so I just left him for a little bit. This is such an important concept. I like to follow with him.
If he's not crying, he doesn't need anything. We don't need to change up what he's doing. We don't need to pick him up if we want to, of course we can, but if he's chilling and he's happy, there is no need to change up what he's doing. Like, for example, if I lay him down. On my bed, and he's literally just like staring at the wall in silence.
At first I may think like, oh, no one's really paying attention to him right now. He's just kind of like staring at the wall. Is he bored? Is he lonely? You know, whatever. As I'm like getting ready in the bathroom or something,
sometimes it can feel like we need to entertain our kids at all times, but [00:10:00] if he's not crying, I try and just let him chill. Like if I lay him down on the mat or he lay him down on my bed and he's just like hanging out in silence, staring at the wall, I'm not gonna feel guilty that he's not, you know?
Being chatted to or entertained, or someone's sitting with him at all times. If he's not crying, he's perfectly okay. So we're just gonna not move him until it's necessary, until he's crying and telling me like, Hey, I am over this. So I left him in the bassinet. He was not crying. He was just making little noises and hanging out in there.
I want that to be a place he's comfortable being in. So. I just let him chill out and I was making myself breakfast. I was eating, I was having coffee, I was trying to do as much as I could in that small amount of time. So he slept for about 10 minutes, and then he hung out in there for another like 15 or so minutes before he started to fuss.
So all together, he was in there for 25 minutes. Now I know you might look at that [00:11:00] and think 25 minutes in the bassinet with over half of that time awake. Like, how is that a win? But it's a win because I set my expectations realistically when I tried this.
He's literally a. Two weeks old. He's been in my belly for nine months. He's been in my arms for two weeks. This is the first time he is laying down in his bed during the day, right? He sleeps in there at night, but during the day for a nap, this is his first time going down. If he slept at all in there, I was gonna take it as a win.
And guess what? Yeah, he wasn't sleeping the whole time, but 25 minutes. To feed myself and drink coffee is amazing when you have a two week old baby. So. I took it as a complete win. It was the first time, and that is great, and a lot of the bassinet naps at the very beginning are going to look like that.
And to be honest, I've only practiced one or two more naps in the bassinet since that day. I am not starting this like daily [00:12:00] practice quite yet as we get closer to like 6, 7, 8 weeks old. Once I noticed that. He's becoming a little more stimulated by his surroundings. He's fighting asleep more during the day.
He may need to move into a dark room for a nap time. He's having a harder time falling asleep. Then I will definitely be more mindful about practicing more bassinet and crib naps to give him that quiet space for him to nap. But for now, when he is only 2, 3, 4 weeks old, I'm probably just gonna kind of have him nap wherever and whenever.
Now when he started to fuss after the 25 minutes, I didn't take it as like an end of the nap. Okay, he's up now and that's over. 'cause I knew he was still going to be tired and ideally naps are longer than that, right? So I picked him up. I rocked him back to sleep and I just held him for the rest of that nap to try and get him closer to an hour of sleeping rather than just that 10 minutes because if we have all these micro naps all day long, he's probably gonna end up [00:13:00] getting overtired and cranky by the end of the day.
So he practiced 25 minutes in his bassinet. I picked him up, I rocked him back to sleep, and I finished off the nap with a contact nap. This is an amazing way in the newborn months. To start to practice crib naps, you're gonna lay them down in their crib or bassinet, regardless of how long they sleep, you're gonna take it as a win and you can always pick them up and help them extend their nap to closer to at least an hour if you can.
Obviously that's like. A perfect world. They're at least an hour. It's not gonna happen every time, and you're not always gonna have the time or bandwidth to do this, and that's okay. It's just when you can, it's totally fine to pick them up, rock them back to sleep, finish off with a contact nap, or throw them in the carrier.
Throw them in the stroller. Whatever you need to do to help them to extend their nap, this is not going to spoil them. This is not going to ruin their ability to sleep independently in the future. If anything, you are teaching their body how long to [00:14:00] sleep and you're gonna be so thankful when you get to the age of them being able to sleep for an hour on their own that you've been helping their body do it for the first four or five months.
As far as the rest of the majority of his naps, they're usually in my arms. They're usually either in the Moby Wrap or I'm holding him on the couch, or I'm just holding him walking around the.
A majority of his naps are contact naps right now. I have noticed in this week I'm finally able to sort of. Lay him down somewhere and have him continue sleeping for a little bit. So not necessarily, you know, plan a whole independent nap in his bassinet, but more like, okay, I've been holding him. He is been sleeping for 10 minutes.
I'm gonna lay him down right here on my bed and I'm gonna go. Grab the laundry and start doing that, or I'm gonna go to the bathroom and, and he happens to stay asleep for an hour and I'm like, oh my gosh, amazing. We just had a great independent nap. So nothing really planned and nothing, you know, predictable or regular.
But I've noticed in this last week, I [00:15:00] can finally kind of lay him down randomly here and there on the couch, on the bed, and he will continue sleeping at least a couple times a day. I've been able to get a nice, solid nap. In, you know, just random places around the house, not necessarily in his bassinet, but that has been a game changer even just to be able to have, you know, some hands free time to quickly do something for myself or take care of my house or play a game with my older kids, whatever it may be, has been really, really nice this last week.
Okay, before I go, I'm just gonna touch on cluster feeding, snack feeding, and full feeding. Because what I've really been focusing on in the last few weeks is making sure that he is used to taking nice full feeds every couple hours during the day. And what I mean by that is every two to three hours he's able to take a nice feed
that keeps him satiated until the next [00:16:00] sort of to three hour mark.
To help him get a full feed. I usually undress him down to his diaper. I'm like doing what I can to keep him awake during the feed. Halfway through the feed, I'm sitting him up. I'm burping him, I'm changing his diaper. I'm putting his clothes back on. I'm sort of rousing him a little bit. Then offering the other side or the second half of the feed.
I'm just making sure that he's getting as much of a feed in as he can before he passes out. He usually likes to eat every two to two and a half hours during the day. That's amazing. If he is satisfied for that long, then he had a nice, feed.
What I want to avoid is him falling asleep two minutes into every feed and just taking these little snacks all day long After 45 minutes after 30 minutes after one hour. Although a baby on a snacking schedule may get the same amount of milk as a baby on a full feed schedule in a 24 hour period, I find time and time again.
Babies on snacking schedules often struggle with short [00:17:00] naps. Super frequent night wake up. This is just a really hard cycle to break, and it's hard for your baby to get used to sleeping longer stretches without taking a feed.
Do feeds sometimes happen more frequently. Of course, it's not perfect. Sometimes he's really cranky and I offer him a feed before the two hour mark that's going to happen. But what I'm trying not to do is rely on being on a snacking cycle 24 hours of the day. It's gonna happen here and there, and it's usually happening in the evening, which is called cluster feeding.
So if your baby's taking small snacks frequently. One time of the day, it's typically the evening. This is called cluster feeding. Cluster feeding is a hundred percent normal and okay, don't worry about your baby's feeding habits. If they're just cluster feeding one time a day, totally fine. Not gonna affect their sleep in any way.
This is normal and you can let them cluster feed. If your baby is taking snack feeds all day long, every day, [00:18:00] that's a baby. That's more on a snacking cycle., if it's just one time of the day, then don't worry about it.
This is really, really normal. Again, as I said earlier, if you wanna hear more about full feeds, snack feeds, cluster feeds, and maybe how to move away from a certain type of feeding. If you're interested in that, then go back to,
let me see what episode is.
It is episode 12, so go all the way back to episode 12 and listen to that. I break it all down in that episode.
Final thing I'll say before I go is this Thursday, November 6th, we're starting the November group sleep coaching in the sleep a Alex membership. So every month we get together with parents who have a. Four to 24 month old baby and they are ready for better naps and better nights, or they're ready to move away from co-sleeping.
They're ready to move away from rocking to sleep, move away from feeding to sleep, whatever it may be. Whatever you're struggling with, this group sleep coaching session is perfect for you. How it works is [00:19:00] before Thursday, you can join the Sleep By Alex membership. I've linked it in the show notes.
Remember, if you use the code podcast at checkout, you'll get half off your first month so you can join this group and then you can stick around for a few months, or you can cancel after this group sleep coaching session. Totally up to you. But you can join for half off with that code, and once you join, you'll gain instant access to my four to 24 month sleep course, and you'll gain access to the Sleep by Alex community.
So you'll watch the whole course, you'll come on Thursday with any questions that have come up from the course, anything you need to troubleshoot before starting a plan with your baby, and that live call on Thursday is going to be a chance to chat with me. Ask your questions. I'll help you pick a method.
If you need help picking a method, I'll help you troubleshoot your baby's daytime schedule if you need to do that before we start, whatever it is. And then you're gonna go ahead and implement whatever plan we've landed on for you and your baby. And throughout the month, [00:20:00] we're gonna have other live calls that you can come and check in face to face online.
With me and let me know how it's going and get your questions answered. Now, in between the live calls as a Sleep by Alex member, you also get to send me your questions any day, anytime. So there's like a way to send me a message and let me know how it's going, and I answer all of your questions quickly.
Always within 24 hours, but usually much faster than that. So if you're interested in joining this next group, go ahead and hop in before Thursday so you can make the live call on Thursday. If you don't make the live call, of course it will be recorded. All of the calls are recorded, so don't worry if you can't make it live.
I will also add that the Sleep by Alex membership is for. Any baby, any toddler, any age, zero to five. So if you wanna join because you have questions for me, but you're not necessarily in the sleep coaching session, that is totally fine. You can still join the membership, access all of my guides and courses and send me your questions [00:21:00] anytime for your children, zero to five years old.
Thank you so much for being here. Again, I'm gonna break down how sleep is going week by week with little Hank. If you found this podcast helpful in any way, I really, really appreciate you leaving a five star review. You subscribing, you may be sending to one of your new mom friends. Anything and everything is super helpful for me.
Thank you so much. It helps me reach more parents who need help with sleep.
I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week and we'll chat next Tuesday.
