Sleep Strategies for New Parents

I’ve heard someone say that once they emerged through a stage of parenting, the details became blurry, and it was hard to remember everything about the previous stage. I’m finding that’s absolutely true. It’s a chaotic, happy, (not always) and intense swirl of new events, and once one area feels resolved and conquered, a new stage arrives. The time really does fly by!

Before I forget what it was like to survive with a newborn, I thought I’d sit down briefly here and detail our sleep strategy for the fourth trimester and beyond. Every family needs to find their own rhythm, but I thought that sharing what worked for Julien and I may just lead to some new ideas. (Also: every baby adjusts on their own timeline, we’re lucky that Luc took really well to sleep training.)

We approached our sleep like we would our training: it was super thought-out and methodical. Here’s how we approached it for the first year of Luc’s life…

Dividing the night into two parts

In those first few days (okay– this actually happens for weeks!), babies are sleeping in 2-3 hour chunks. There is no circadian rhythm, no nap schedule, they just need to snack very often, and don’t care that it happens to be nighttime.

Fairly quickly, we realized that we’d need to get creative to ensure we were getting enough sleep.

That’s when we decided to break the night into two distinct chunks. We’re fortunate that we have a second bedroom in our house, and it really came in handy for this period of time. Each room had an adult bed, and one of the rooms was where the baby slept (initially in a bassinet, and then we realized the crib was more comfy.) We’d go to bed at 9pm, with one parent sleeping in the baby’s room, and the other getting a separate, quiet room, which we came to lovingly call “dream sleep”. At 2am, we’d get up and trade, so the person who was “on duty” would then get to have dream sleep until 7am, and the well-slept parent got their turn in the baby’s room. This guaranteed that we each got 5 hours of uninterrupted, high-quality sleep, plus whatever you could string together when you were on duty. Most nights, we’d get 7-8 hours altogether. The best part for me was that the 5 hours of “guaranteed” dream sleep made me less anxious when it came time to be on duty. Knowing that I wasn’t desperate actually helped me sleep better, as I was more relaxed.

At first, we’d each get up twice while on duty, and over time, this reduced to being just one wake-up each. On the odd occasion, there was a delightful night when you didn’t have to get up at all while you were on duty, and that was amazing. Even on the worst nights though, you always had that 5-hour guarantee. In all honesty, there were only a handful of times that I slept 6 hours. Usually, it was 7-8 hours.

It was straightforward for us to divide and conquer like this because we were feeding Luc with formula, but this could also be possible for breastfeeding parents that can pump enough milk to have a supply for nighttime. (I also have friends that do a hybrid combination, breastfeeding during the day and feeding their baby by bottles with formula at night, and they’ve said that it works well for them.)

The main downside to this routine, is that it took a lot of discipline to be in bed at 9pm. However, it was always totally worth it, and I reminded myself that it wouldn’t be forever! (One year later, I now enjoy my 10:30pm bedtime again!)

Alternating nights

When Luc was around three months old, his nighttime wake-ups were fewer and farther between, and we were down to just one per night (most of the time!).

This was a natural time to shift to alternating nights, which was such a nice upgrade. Instead of our militant 9pm-2am and 2am-7am shifts, we alternated entire nights. Julien would be with Luc on Monday night “on duty”, while I got dream sleep, and then we’d swap the next night. During this era, dream sleep took on a whole new meaning… you got your own quiet bedroom, which happens to be the much-nicer master bedroom. It felt a bit like whisking away to a hotel, because that room also has its own ensuite, bathtub, and shower.

Whoever was on duty would still go to bed by 10pm as Luc started getting up earlier and earlier as the summer solstice (and early sunrise) approached. To help with that, we hung a comforter over the windows in Luc’s room so that it would work like blackout curtains, and that really helped him sleep a bit longer in the mornings.

I remember sometimes planning my schedule based on these nights. I was on parental leave and I wanted to take Luc camping, and I remember carefully planning the camping night so I wouldn’t lose a dream sleep… (On that note – Luc basically reverted back to newborn mode and woke up every few hours when we went camping, but it was still worth it to go, although not that often!)

Alternating bedtime routines

This system naturally progressed, and when Luc was around five months old, we let him sleep all alone in his room while we both reverted back to sleeping in our normal room. We still had a baby monitor (and still do, at 15 months), and one person was still technically on duty in case Luc needed help.

What we found though, is that he slept soundly from five months, as we were really successful with sleep training. (We are very lucky! Luc is the type of baby that won’t even wake up if he vomits all over himself…)

Before long we were sleeping normally again, and our system evolved so that instead of spending the whole night with Luc in his room, the parent on-duty became responsible for putting Luc to bed at night. We still do this today, as it’s a really nice way of ensuring that both of us get that bonding time with him, while also having some free time to see friends, or just have a break.

Hang in there!

If you’re in the thick of it now, you got this! A friend who recently had her second baby told me this really helpful statement at the beginning: “I don’t know if it will be three months, six months, or two years, but every night down is one night closer to a full, regular sleep.” 🙂

I honestly wish that I had sleep tracking for this time period using a device like an Oura ring, as it would have been really cool to look back and nerd-out on the data.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy another recent article I wrote, Fed is Best: Why I Chose Formula Over Breastfeeding. Also! I’m taking on two more athletes for coaching this spring, so if you’re considering some big athletic goals, feel free to reach out.