Helping babies to sleep through the night is a main priority for all the parents I have ever spoken to, whether they have just one newborn or two. When I had Ariana I was lucky enough to enjoy 12 months maternity leave from work so she got to enjoy my undivided attention 24 hours a day and I lavished her with it. I rocked her to sleep, fed her to sleep, let her take her naps on my lap and then wondered why she didn’t sleep through the night until she was 12 months old. When I was pregnant with Kian and Kaira, I knew that I would have to teach them to self-settle as early as possible and that’s exactly what I did.
I didn’t find it easy at first though. I remember when they were a few weeks old and I had just laid them down in their bed for a nap for the first time during the day and when I went out of the room I can remember feeling like a part of me had been ripped from my body. I felt awful leaving them alone. I just wanted to run back in and hold my babies regardless of the fact that they wouldn’t have any clean bottles or clean clothes or anything else I had to catch up on while they slept. I sat on the floor outside their bedroom door with my head in my hands sobbing down the phone to my husband as he had just returned to work after 2 weeks at home with us, the mum-guilts got me bad! The two weeks Ste spent with us on paternity leave allowed us to nurse and hold the babies all day long and there was 2 of us to share the household tasks so as soon as I found myself alone with them I knew they had to start sleeping in their own cots to allow me time to do the work on my own, which came as a shock to my system and I felt really guilty about it.
I wish I’d had another mum of a newborn or two to talk to at the time, to reassure me that my feelings were perfectly normal and that things would get easier, which is what I would like to do for you now. I would like to say that of course it does feel strange after 9 months of carrying your baby/ies around inside you, putting them down in their own beds will feel unnatural at first but it’s as important for them as it is for you to get used to that separation. Babies need to learn how to settle themselves, no parent wants to be awake all night helping their babies get back to sleep when they naturally wake from their slumber every 40 minutes or so, and it’s putting them down in their own cots for all naps (including day time) that is the start of the process.
What I still tell myself is that babies need sleep in order to grow and develop. Depriving them of their own ability to settle themselves back to sleep is not going to do anyone any favours in the long term. Babies thrive on routine and I reminded myself of that every day when I felt guilty taking them to bed and laying them down in the dark for their naps, they were happier and much more alert babies because they were well rested and getting them to bed at night was easier because they associated their bedroom with sleep.
Necessities for helping babies to self-settle:
Swaddles
I am a huge fan of swaddling. It’s something the midwives did in hospital when all 3 of our children were born and although I didn’t continue at home with Ariana, I did with the twins and I became a convert, I would highly recommend it to any parents of newborns. Some people use a cotton blanket folded into a triangle but we preferred the Miracle Blanket, which is the perfect size and shape for newborns right through to 6 months old. We purchased several from Mothercare and they significantly reduced the babies natural startle reflex, which would jerk them awake regularly if they were not tucked in so securely.
The only down side of swaddling is getting babies used to sleeping without them again. Kian and Kaira were five months old before we stopped swaddling them completely, after a weaning off period where we left one arm out of the swaddle for a couple of weeks, then went on to leaving two arms free and then out came the legs. Altogether, I think it took about a month for them to get used to sleeping without being swaddled but it was well worth it in the early days!
Dummies/pacifiers
I really recommend dummies, particularly if a baby is swaddled as their natural instinct is to suck and they can’t find their thumb if they’re swaddled. I also didn’t want my children to become thumb suckers as I knew that it would be a really difficult habit for them to break and their teeth could grow out of shape and the thought of all the germs on their little hands when they’re older really put me off. I knew with dummies, I could restrict their usage to bedtime only and they became a great sleep cue for all of our children. As soon as we popped them into bed, they grabbed their dummies and we could see their eyes closing instinctively and were asleep by the time we’d left the room some days!
Dummies have also been proven to help protect babies from cot death by regulating their heartbeat, which was all the encouragement I needed to give them to my children when I heard it! I love the ones by Avent as they are orthodontic and all come with a lid and so are much more hygienic if you want to take them out with you. I let Ariana have hers in bed until she was three years old but I’ll write about how we stopped her using it in another blog post.
Dummy clips
One of the major downsides of dummies is teaching babies to find them for themselves in the dark. There are a variety of glow in the dark options available but I find they only glow for a short period of time (not enough to get through the night) so the best option in my opinion are dummy clips. There are a variety of these on the market too, but I find the ones that stay put the most effectively are these by Mam, available at Boots. Of course, it isn’t feasible for very young babies to be able to find their own dummies for the first few months, so it is to be expected that parents may have to get out of bed to replace them if they’re lost, but this phase soon passes and children soon learn exactly how to follow their clip string to find the dummy.
Blackout blinds
I’ve mentioned the importance of making a room pitch black even in broad daylight in a previous post. We have fitted a roller blind, blackout curtains, lined curtains, pelmets and even stuff cushions up into the cracks between the pelmet and curtain rail to make the kids bedrooms dark for their day time naps. There’s loads of research done on the affect darkness has on releasing the brains chemicals to induce natural sleep patterns and as parents, we want to teach our children that bedtime is for sleeping as early as possible and a dark room for naps is the way to do it. You’ll be glad when your babies are the only ones you hear of that sleep beyond 5:00am!
Comforters
When I was pregnant with the twins, we gave Ariana a very important job to do and that was to choose their comfort blankets. She selected one blue and one pink bunny from Precious Little One and she brought them into hospital for them the very first day she met her new brother and sister and they have slept with them ever since. I place them on their left hand side whenever I put the babies in bed and they nuzzle their faces into them knowingly that it’s time for sleep. Another sleep cue that I think has worked wonders with our three.
I have to admit, there was a settling in period where we all got used to this new routine of teaching the babies to settle themselves but it was only a couple of weeks and when that breakthrough came and I had two newborns that I could put to bed awake and they would get themselves to sleep, I started to get my life back together and I felt the proudest I ever have of them and of myself!
Of course, there’s a lot more to encouraging babies to self-settle than buying the right equipment. There needs to be strength within the parent that will be at home with the child to teach this life skill and not feel guilty about not picking them up every time they cry. It takes practice to put a baby down, swaddle them, give them their comforters, turn off the light, leave the room and not feel bad about it but when you reach that magical destination known as ‘Sleeping through the Night’, you’ll be so glad that you persevered.
There will be times when they cry and you will probably cry on the other side of the door too, but it’s important to remember that this is a very short term phase that ALL families have to get through because what are the other options? It’s OK to let just one baby sleep on your lap during the day every day if that’s what you choose to do, but there just isn’t enough room for two on there and what happens at night if they can’t sleep alone during the day? Kicking my partner out of bed to make room for two babies was never an option for me and it wasn’t recommended by my Health Visitor either due to safety reasons. I was never going to be one of those parents who drive around all night to get their children to sleep either or push their pram at 3:00am just to get them to sleep. It’s not practical when you have other siblings to care for or the mountains of work you need to do when the babies sleep. Nothing would ever get done if they didn’t take their naps in their bedroom.
So as long as you know your baby or babies are well and are regularly putting on weight, there’s no reason why they can’t learn to self-settle from the first few weeks of life but my advice is only based on that from my own experience and that of other parents of multiples that I know.
I’m always answering more specific questions on Instagram and through the about page, or feel free to leave your comments below. I will talk about more specific routines that worked for us in further blog posts.
Thanks for reading.
Love from Leyla
