- Hi guys!
So today is an extremely gray day,
so excuse the lighting, but today
I'm going to tell you how I got
my baby boy to sleep through the night,
from seven to seven, and what method I used,
and how I got there in the end.
Obviously, disclaimer, this is just my baby.
This is not your baby.
Every baby is different, and if you listen to this
and you think, "Do you know what?
"I know my child, that would not work for them."
Obviously mother's instinct knows best.
This video was highly requested
after I put up my video
of my bedtime routine for my boys.
This is just what I did, and this is what worked.
I don't want any sort of controversial-ness around this,
I just wanna tell you what I did,
because it literally changed my life,
and made me enjoy being a mother a lot more.
So basically, I'll start at the beginning.
So my son, Fraser, he was a good sleeper.
He never really would settle very easily,
and in the early days I think he did have a bit of reflux.
He used to only really sleep for like two,
three hours at the most at a time,
before getting up again and it was exhausting,
because I was breastfeeding and he'd always want that,
so it would always be me getting up
to do all the nighttime stuff as well,
and I was just dead on my feet.
All the bad sleeping went on until he was
about nine months old, and then I was like enough is enough,
and I really did some research
and read some different ideas and ways to do it,
and I realized that my son had sleep association.
So although we had a really good bedtime routine,
which is key for getting your child to sleep well.
It was the same routine every night
from the age of eight weeks old.
He'd still be getting up all the time,
so I worked out he had sleep association,
because he would always fall asleep on my breast.
What sleep association is, we naturally
have different levels of sleep.
How I will explain it to you is,
if your husband ever goes away on a stag do
or a business trip or something,
and you kind of come to at 3 a.m.,
and you sort of notice that they're not there
and it kind of wakes you up 'cause they're always there.
Or if you wake up in a different place,
and you kind of wake up a bit more
because you're not at home.
That is what was happening to him.
So he would obviously fall asleep on my breast,
I'd put him in his cot, and then two hours later,
he would kind of come to this lesser level of sleep,
notice that my breast was gone, and that I was gone,
and he would panic and wake up crying,
'cause he was like "where's she gone?
I fell asleep with her."
I'd have to go in and I'd have to breastfeed him
and I'd put him back, and it was just
this whole horrible pattern that just happened nonstop.
So the only way to break that is
to teach your child the skill
of falling asleep on their own,
which is easier said than done.
I did do the Ferber Method of crying out,
and before you click off. (laughs)
I am probably one of the softest parents you will meet,
and I hate hearing my children cry,
but it got to a point where I needed to do something.
I hate it being called the crying out method,
because really you're just
teaching your child another skill.
You're teaching your child the skill
of how to fall asleep on their own.
It's something that is really good to learn.
It's something that everyone needs to learn.
When he was nine months old,
I finally got the guts to do it,
and I was like, "Right, I'm doing this."
I read the whole Ferber Method,
which I'll link if you wanna read it in more detail.
First of all, you want to be sure
that your baby does have sleep association,
and there isn't something else wrong.
You wanna make sure that they're not ill,
that they're not teething.
If they're falling asleep while they're being rocked
or fed or patted or tickled or anything like that,
and they're waking up a lot in the night,
chances are they might have sleep association,
and this method might work for your baby.
The way that I knew was if my baby would be crying
in his cot, and I'd go in and I'd pick him up,
he would instantly stop and just fall straight
to sleep on my shoulder or on me again.
So it was obvious that all he wanted was me,
and if he had been teething,
the crying wouldn't have stopped if you picked him up.
He would've stayed quite angry if he was ill.
So I was like, right, I was confident.
So you want your baby to be sleepy but awake,
so I would get Fraser sleepy,
doing the whole bedtime routine and feeding him,
but before I put him in his cot,
I would kind of wake him up.
And if he'd had a really busy day,
would physically wake him up,
like I'd maybe bring him out of the room
into a lighter room and he's come to a bit.
And then I'd take him back in
and I'd put him in his cot so he was awake,
so that he saw himself falling asleep in his bed.
This method, for me, took four or fives days,
but it can take up to a week.
And if it doesn't kind of work after a week,
you might wanna look at wny that is,
and if it's not working for both of you,
stop for a while and then try again later
when you're sort of feeling a bit braver.
Method is to put them down awake in their cot,
and you leave the room.
To begin with, he was upset.
They sort of are crying, and you wait
for three minutes before you go back in.
After three minutes, you go back in
and you sort of pat their back,
and sort of reassure them that you haven't abandoned them.
You are there.
It's time to go to sleep now.
Don't pick them up, which is the hardest part,
'cause you want to pick them up.
But you don't, just pat them on the back
and then you leave again.
And then you wait five minutes,
and then after five minutes you go back in
and you do the whole reassurance thing.
I'm still here, it's okay, shush, shush, shush.
Then I waited ten minutes.
Same thing again, go back in, and then wait 15 minutes.
And you kind of go up in five minute intervals after that.
The first night it took him 40 minutes to go to sleep,
and we both cried throughout the whole time of it,
but once he did go to sleep, he stayed asleep
for much longer than would normally do that.
And then he woke up again at 4 a.m.,
and we did the whole thing again.
But if you think that they're hungry,
obviously you do what you think is best.
And the second night, it took only 20 minutes
for him to settle, and doing this whole
5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes thing.
And then the third night, it was like 10,
and by the fourth night it was like 3 or 5 minutes,
and he kind of had got the hang of it.
This method really did work me.
It changed my life.
I was like a new person who didn't have to live on coffee,
and it really did help my mood and help me
just get back on track, and just make life a lot easier.
Hope this video was helpful.
Again, I'll put all the links down below.
Hope that you guys can get some sleep.