Sleeping with a Newborn

Everyone always talks about how you are not going to get much sleep once you have a baby, and yes it is true. But it is usually not as bad as they say it is, at least not in our house. Maybe I am just blessed with good sleepers.

For the first month of Dominic’s life, sleep was pretty good. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for being able to get both my 4.5 year old and the baby down for a nap at the same time. I would have enough time to shower while they both stayed asleep!

But then the second month came around and Dominic started taking 30 minute naps which didn’t give me time for anything! I signed my eldest up for some activities during nap time so I decided to phase out his naps since I wasn’t getting a break anyway.

When the third month came around, naps got even worse. Dominic wouldn’t even let me put him down in his crib to sleep! He would only sleep on me or in his car seat, which made it impossible to get anything done.

Finally when Dominic turned 4 months, napping went better. He would sleep in his crib again and we started working on him putting himself to sleep without me rocking him. He learned to do it pretty quickly. During the week of Halloween he even started sleeping through the night without waking to eat! I had two weeks of that before the 4 month sleep regression hit.

For the next 3-4 weeks he started waking 2-3 times a night again. During some of the night wakings he would put himself back to sleep or I was able to rock him back to sleep. But sometimes I would have to go back to feeding him to sleep.

Dominic is now 5 months old and has started going back to sleeping 12 hours at night. A few nights ago I decided to move him out of my room at night and have him sleep in his crib in his room. So far he has been doing great with both night sleep and napping. Some naps are still 30-45 minutes, but we are also getting some 1.5 hour naps. And some of the shorter naps, he will also put himself back to sleep for another hour. I am starting to feel refreshed.