How to Transition Your Baby From Co-Sleeping to the Nursery, Sleep Training Without Cry It Out
When we decided to co-sleep with our newborn, I started doing all sorts of research on how to stop co-sleeping. That way, when the time came, I would be able to transition her to her bed with minimal struggle. I wasn't a huge fan of crying it out, and I absolutely did not believe it was right for the first few months of life, but my husband even still refuses to let his little girl fuss longer than a second without scooping her into his arms and reassuring her. In short, crying it out was out of the question, and quite frankly, I think it is for the better. So, what did we do? Well, in all my "research" about transitioning babies from their parent's bed to their own bed I came across some key things that really helped me make the transition. I want to warn you, parents, it's not necessarily the easy road. You won't one day wake up and go, "Alright, it's time for her to sleep on her own," and never bring her into your bed. It takes time, patience, and some sleepless nights on your end, but trust me, it was worth it. Our daughter sleeps so well in her own bed, she falls asleep on her own (some of the time), and I'm already missing the days when she used to cuddle in bed with us. Only now, if we bring her into our bed, she thinks it's playtime because guess where her safe sleep space is: her room. So all that being said, here's what we did to transition our little one to her own room free of tears and fuss!
1. Build Sleep Associations Early On
One of the things I had read regardless of whatever sleep methods parents choose is sleep associations. For any of you who don't know what that is, a sleep association is essentially small routines or objects or activities you do with your baby right before naptime or bedtime that help associate them with "bedtime." Even before we started "sleep training" our baby, we decided that a sleep association we wanted to build for bedtime was bathtime, and so as early as two weeks old, we bathed our little one (or simply rinsed her head under some warm water) dried her off, and fed her before laying her down for bed. At the time we tried to incorporate a couple of other things like nighttime reading, prayer, tummy massage, and diaper-free time, but almost all of those have been dropped. Instead, our little one has a bath, we dry her off and do some winding down play before bed as she "airs out" and then I nurse her to sleep and my husband and I say a quick goodnight prayer for her. Otherwise, our routine is pretty short, about thirty minutes long. But here's the thing. She has now associated that with bedtime. Every time she gets her bath, she knows it's getting close to bedtime, and typically she shifts to being more quiet and sleepy. And by keeping this bedtime routine for her since she was a newborn, it gave her some bedtime familiarity even when we started putting her down in her own bed. For naptime, I had built the association of diaper change and potty, and one more feeding. However, at this point, she pretty much just goes down for a nap. I still change her diaper and feed her, but sometimes she takes a nap on her own if she's playing in her bed and happens to have her pacifier. But what was key, is having an association to fall back onto when you start transitioning your baby from your bed to their crib/bed.
2. Play Time in Crib
This was actually a suggestion from my mother-in-law, and the reason being is some babies, if they aren't used to being placed in a crib, will freak out when you finally put them there. I don't really know why, except that maybe being placed in an oversized box with bars might be scary to a little baby. But anyway, best to avoid this situation altogether. What she said was to place some of the baby's favorite toys during playtime and sit next to the crib and let them play in it. This isn't naptime and you aren't going to have them sleep in the crib for quite a while, just play in their new environment and see that it is safe. For us, we actually didn't do this, but only because we transitioned our baby from our bed to a Montessori floor bed. Because we play on the floor all the time with her anyway, she didn't really notice the difference, however, even still we have playtime in her bed. Being in the sleep space the baby is going to be in and playing with them shows them that their environment is a safe place to be and will help when it finally comes to transitioning your baby to sleep in this space.
3. Four Months, The Magic Number
You've heard the saying, "You can't spoil a newborn" but do you know why that is? It's actually scientific. Newborns can't build habits yet, therefore any "spoiling" you do can't help build bad habits. This is why sleep experts say that you can nurse your baby to sleep all the way until four months and not have it build any sort of association at all. So what is it about four months? Around four months your baby will most likely enter a sleep regression. The reason for this regression is your baby's circadian rhythms are starting to form, and your baby begins building sleep associations. This is where the associations come in, and if you haven't been doing them until now, you will want to start incorporating some night-time routines. This is when it's really important to make sure you are putting your baby down to bed at the same time each night, that way they can help develop their internal rhythms. Some babies will want an earlier bedtime, around seven, and some babies will go to bed as late as nine or ten. It'll take a couple of trial-and-error nights to see when your baby goes down for bed the easiest. Pro-tip, if you try to put a happy baby to bed and the whole process of putting them to bed makes them fussy and angsty, you are probably trying to put them to sleep too early. On the slip side, if your baby is fussy and upset before you put them to bed, and then fights sleep, you probably waited too long to put them to sleep. If you want to adjust the time when your baby goes down for the night, try tweaking their nap schedule so that they aren't taking naps too close to bedtime. At four months we started putting our baby down for naps in her own room. This actually wasn't that big of a deal because she rarely had naps in a consistent place. For some naps, she absolutely would not sleep in her bed, and in that case, I defaulted to her norm which was napping in the carrier or the swing. For bedtime, after her bath, we set her in her bed and played with her, and did her nightly feeding in her bed. Typically she would fall asleep but then wake up an hour or so later. If she didn't go to sleep during her feeding or if she woke up, I would take her and place her in our bed for the night. No fuss, just simple baby steps towards our goal. Very quickly, she started associating her bed with her naptime and bedtime routines. She began napping in her bed full time before she transitioned to sleeping in her bed for the night, but it all happened pretty quickly. Eventually, she was sleeping in her bed for longer stretches at night, and when she woke up and fussed, I would go in, comfort her back to sleep by feeding, her pacifier, or placing my hand on her tummy and gently massaging her face (i.e. really whatever I would do to get her to fall back to sleep in her bed). And after some time, she would fall back to sleep in her bed. And on March 21st, she slept in her bed the entire night for the first time (she had turned four months old at the beginning of March).
4. Comfort, Console, and Coddle; Build a Safe Space
Now, in all that, I don't want you to think this all was smooth sailing, although I feel like it was much better than any sort f cry it out method I could have done. Even though at the end of the month, she slept in her bed all the way through, that wasn't the end of bed-sharing. We have completely stopped bed-sharing at this point (at six-seven months old) however, it took some time to get there. The point of the method we chose was to do everything as gently as we could. Therefore, there were times when co-sleeping was a must. She got sick shortly after and we had to go back to cosleeping because she was waking up almost every hour. There were times when she had a rough day, and was fighting sleep, so we let her sleep with us. The day we finally ended co-sleeping for good was the day when despite her circumstance, she slept better in her own bed, and that took some time. There were a couple of nights I slept in her bed, to comfort her and help her stay asleep (this only works because of the Montessori bed setup we have so you may want to consider that when building your baby's sleep space). There are nights I still go in there for an hour or so stretch of the night to help her sleep. Four days ago actually, she was having a really tough time of it. I'm not even quite sure what caused it, but she was up every hour of the night two nights in a row. One of those nights, I laid with her the entire night. Not necessarily purposely even, it just happened. And the other night, I went in and out of her room every time she needed me. The third night, she was already waking up less, and when she needed me, all I had to do was go in, place my hand on her, or give her back her pacifier and she was good. And last night, I woke up worried (as usual) because she only woke up once for her nightly feeding. But sure enough, she was safe in her own bed. The point is, your child must know that their sleep environment is safe. It will take some difficult nights, but you are showing them that they are safe. Some babies are going to take extra time and extra reassurance and some probably couldn't care less. But my mom always said this to new moms, "You are never going to say to yourself, 'Man, I should have just let my baby cry more' or 'Yeah I definitely should have let them deal with that themselves.' Instead, regardless of how much you cuddle them, kiss them, or cherish them, you will always say, 'I wish I could have held them more.'" So, in the same way, try not to be frustrated during this time. Remember you are your baby's guidance on how to live in this world therefore they look to you for their support and assurance in everything, even sleep. Letting them cry it out, ignoring their signs of distress, or simply letting them deal with it doesn't help build security or safety in the sleep space, and it can be done without these things. So be encouraged mama, you've got this.
5. Take It One Night at a Time
As I said, you won't one day wake up and deliver your baby an independent sleeper. Like anything we've talked about, a one-time exception is not defeat. You will likely have days you bring your baby into your bed. There will be days when you go and lay with them. All of these things are part of the process, not signs of failure. We started this process when our baby turned four months old, and now she's almost seven months old and sleeping in her own bed every night. Three months, and not even that! Have courage, dear parent, it'll go by quicker than you think. Now I'm teary-eyed thinking my little girl is closure to being one year old than she was at her birth. How time flies! But here's the thing. Like anything, you can always start again, you can always adjust, and you can always spin it from a different angle. Even if you go back to co-sleeping 100% of the time, that doesn't mean your baby will never leave your bed. You can always make adjustments and try these methods, or other methods again after some time. It may take longer or it may be a better time for you and your little one. Not every baby is the same and not every baby will transition the same. Don't feel defeated and no that one day it will come. Think about it. Even if your little one co-sleeps until they're three, how many teenagers do you know who are still sleeping with their parents? It'll end, they'll figure it out and so will you. So on that note, have patience with yourself and know that every season is just a phase: it won't last forever.
Resources
Some of the resources I used when researching helping my baby transition from our bed to her bed are listed below. Just as a note, even though some of these people are "sleep trainers" doesn't mean they condone or cry it out. I strongly believe against the whole cry-it-out thing for sleep training and the people I've tagged below do not use cry-it-out methods.
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