Baby Blog: How I Got My Baby To Sleep Through The Night

Six months, two weeks and three days.

That is how long I survived in my very own nocturnal prison sentence; my sleep suspended since 10.01am on September 10th 2014 when my baby boy was born.

However, this week – for the first time – my beloved son, Frederick Rupert William Nickell, did something truly remarkable. He slept through the night.

‘Sleeping through’ is every parent’s holy grail – something we all crave, obsess over and aspire to following our first round of night feeds.

Upon meeting a fellow parent, conversation tends to go something like this: ‘How old is he?’ closely followed by, ‘Does he sleep through the night?' It's all about the sleep.

But now I have swapped clubs. For now I am no longer in the ‘Oh, you know, he’s not THAT bad. He only wakes up at 1am… and 3am… and 5am…’ club.

Good riddance to THAT club and hello to the admittedly smug, ‘He’s a really good sleeper actually’.

And wow, it feels GOOD.

It feels so good that if I might use all the money I am going to save on coffee to fund a marvelous Gatsby-esque party which, of course, you are invited to.

It’s so fantastic that I feel like tap dancing along the pavement with I’m So Excited playing. I might get slogan T-shirts made.

Disbelief
The first time Freddy slept through I thought it must be some sort of mistake. I thought at best I had just forgotten I’d got up, at worst I’d slept through the baby alarm again.

But then it happened again. And again.

To start with, my body couldn’t believe it either and promptly woke up at all the times Freddy previously would have cried out for a feed or cuddle.

My body and I had become adjusted to our unpredictable sleep pattern of, well, no sleep. We were almost alright with the way things were, we had adapted and adjusted.

We had learnt how to feed a baby with our eyes closed – fitting in what we like to call 'micro sleep'.

But I have to admit I love that my sleep patterns are back to what they were pre-baby. Call me old fashioned, but nothing, not even the best concealer, beats an uninterrupted eight-hour long snooze.

The Theory
So how did Freddy and I do it? I hear you squeal.

Well, after things took a rather desperate turn at the beginning of what I call, ‘the teething chapter’ – I knew I had to take action.

Freddy was waking up THREE times a night – worse than when he was a newborn.

I simply had to get him to sleep if I was ever going to feel sane again. However, doing that seemed about as likely as Katie Price winning the General Election.

After reading up on the subject I meticulously tried the lot. I invested in a sound machine, installed blackout blinds and I was doing the bath, bottle and bed routine religiously.

However, after about a month nothing was changing.

In the past, I had been running to him at the slighted whimper only for him to sleepily chug a couple of ounces of milk and settle back to sleep. I blame all those attachment parenting articles convincing me that he would think he had been abandoned and thus face a life of insecurity did I not leap to attention within five seconds.

Then one night I noticed that Freddy’s eyes weren’t exactly open when he was having his bi-hourly wail.

At first I thought he was copying my micro sleep habit, but then I opened my own eyes a but wider and realised - he was crying in his sleep. I slowly realised that perhaps he wasn’t hungry and in fact, I should just leave him and soothe him without picking him up.

So the next few times I gently ‘shhhed’ him from the sidelines and left him to grumble in his cot. If the cries were increased or sounded in any way distressed I obviously planned to intervene – but they never were.

The cries slowly tapered off and back he fell into a quiet sleep. It took about three nights of repeating this routine until the cries stopped altogether.

My baby now sleeps 12 hours a night. I can't believe I'm writing that.

Maybe the sound machine did have some part to play or maybe it’s all thanks to the blackout blind. Or maybe it’s my sleep crying theory. I wish I could ask him - but sadly, babies don’t work like that.

All I do know for sure is that for now, he’s sleeping 8:30pm until 8:30am and it’s heaven.

Here's hoping it lasts.

Do you have any brilliant sleep tips? Share them in the comments below.

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