Life with my first newborn, almost nine years ago now, was often miserable.  

She was generally pleasant during the day but by late afternoon, all hell broke loose. She cried for hours. I felt like the worst mother in the world. And I used to be a neonatal ICU nurse! How could it be this hard to comfort my own child? 

I sat at my mother’s dining room table with a breastfeeding pillow around my waist and my shirt bunched above Calliope’s bald head, doing my best to wolf down food one-handed. 

My mom would take Calliope from time to time and bounce her repeatedly, which calmed Calliope momentarily but then she would cry even harder a few minutes later.

About the time that I was nearing my breaking point with the crying, having not left the house all day, my mother would hand the baby over and chirp cheerfully, “well, I’m getting tired, I think I’m going to go get ready for bed now.”
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I frantically swaddled and swayed and nursed and rocked Calliope in her little swing. Nothing seemed to help. I was exhausted. And as a single mother by choice, I didn’t have a partner to turn to. My mother changed diapers and burped Calliope after feedings when she could, but she was a full-time attorney and busy with her own life. 

My blog from 2011 says, 

Calliope doesn’t seem to have any comfort mechanisms besides nursing. I know they say you can’t overfeed a breastfed baby... but I don’t believe that. If she is eating for reasons other than hunger, to my mind, that’s not necessarily healthy, just like it wouldn’t be healthy at any other age.

However, I still let her nurse whenever she wants to... but when she cries and roots while the nipple is still in her mouth, I feel beyond frustrated and helpless. Clearly she isn’t hungry. But I just don’t know how to help her.

Finally she fell asleep and II left her swinging in the den. I gathered my strength to climb the stairs to my bathroom. And cried in the shower.

I don't know how I can keep going like this. I love her but I can't bear the exhaustion." 

Then my friend Catherine, another Brooklyn single mom, told me about a book called The Sleep Whisperer, by Tracy Hogg. She said it helped with her newborn son, Jack, just a few weeks older than Calliope.

I was desperate. And so tired I couldn’t imagine staying awake long enough to read a book. Desperation won out. I didn’t love the author’s tone. It was a bit too colloquial for me -- she addresses her clients as “luv.” But I forgave her for that because the information she shared changed our lives. 

I finally understood that I was keeping Calliope awake too long. At just a few weeks old, she should have been awake for only an hour at a time. She should go to bed before she even looked tired, at the first sign of a yawn. And those too-late naps were thus too-short naps... which were absolutely causing the late afternoon witching hour(s). 

My bad. 

I promptly put Calliope on Hogg’s EASY routine. EASY stands for Eat, Activity, Sleep, You. 

Eat. Rather than letting her eat all the time, and especially before sleep, I only fed her when she first woke up from a nap. I aimed for feeding every three hours. I stopped feeding her to sleep. 
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Activity. For a newborn, activity was simple. Mostly it was a few minutes lying on her activity mat but other times, it was even less. It turns out that newborns don't need all that much in the way of stimulation. As she got older, this period gradually lengthened out. 

Rest. I aimed to put her back to sleep after only an hour awake. If I saw a yawn after only forty-five minutes, I would put her down even sooner. I used four of Harvey Karp’s 5 S’s: swaddling, sucking (a pacifier), swinging and shushing (white noise). Back then, it was acceptable to let babies sleep inclined in swings. Now we know this is a risk factor for SIDS, unfortunately. All babies must be put down to sleep on their backs.

You. The part I lived for. This was time for me. To shower, exercise, call a friend, check email or (less fun) pursue the disability insurance folks. Getting a guaranteed break for myself made all the difference in the world to my emotional health. I never managed to nap but getting time off during the day meant I didn't stay up too late at night, trying to soak up some personal time. 

Within a few days of putting Calliope on this schedule, she was a different child. She literally never cried. I could figure out her needs just by glancing at the clock. 

It was hard, sometimes, to be so ruled by a schedule... but it was worlds better than hours of crying every afternoon. And I found I could compromise let her nap in the stroller occasionally without suffering the consequences at night.

And with just this routine, including the feeding schedule, Calliope was naturally sleeping 8 hours at a stretch at night without any formal sleep training by 6 weeks old. (The swing might have been an unfair advantage, though!)

I am not exagerating when I say that this schedule saved my sanity. I know I was lucky that she was a good sleeper... but I know it wasn't all luck, since she wasnt' a good sleeper before this schedule changed everything for us. 

Moreover, it saved me from having to do any hard sleep training. This method didn't involve any crying at all. (In another post, I'll talk about the sleep training method that got me to 10 hours by 10 weeks. That was even better.) 

It's never too soon to instill great sleep habits in your child. I started this schedule on our first day home from the hospital with my younger daughter. I never did any sleep training with her at all. She slept ten hours by ten weeks, too. 

If you would like to get your little one on track and aren't sure where to start, schedule a free consult with me and get your life back on track. 

Three beautiful, well-rested little ones.

I was privileged to work with C and her husband, parents of three children under three years of age (a two-year-old toddler and infant twins). They are total rock stars when it comes to sleep!

C & J changed their lives by making a few small changes in their daughters' sleep routines.

Watch C's story (it's less than 4 minutes, and is totally inspiring).

And if you are ready to change your life through better sleep, set up a free consult and get ready for stronger family bonds, better health, and a happier outlook. 

Dear Abby,

I want to sleep train my two daughters, ages 5 months old and 2.5 years old, respectively, but I have a problem. I am scared that if I let either child cry, she will wake her sister. Two children awake at the same time, especially in the middle of the night, is my personal nightmare. 

As a result, I am feeding the baby every 2-3 hours all night long, to keep her quiet, and I have to crawl into the crib with my older daughter several times each night to soothe her back to sleep. It can take up to an hour each time to get her sleeping again. 

Also, my older daughter refuses to let my husband put her to bed -- she screams if he tries to help -- and I am exclusively breastfeeding the baby, so I have to do everything myself. 

I am completely exhausted and I don’t know what to do. Please help!

Thanks,
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Leah

Fear of waking a sibling is a common theme with the parents I work with. Many of my clients live in apartments or small houses. And many of my families with twins need or want to keep their children together in one room. 

I get it. I've been there. I was in a one bedroom apartment until my older daughter was one. Then I had a two bedroom apartment until my younger daughter was two-and-a-half. And of course, my children still share a room whenever we travel. 

So we have experienced a lot of room sharing in my life as a parent. It's challenging, no doubt about it. 

Here's my advice: lean in. Embrace the pain. Don't try to keep one quiet to avoid waking the other.

Here's why: as long as you are desperate to keep one child quiet to avoid waking the other, your children are in control. And if they are a toddler or older, they undoubtedly know it. And will use it to their advantage.

Unlike new parents, children are designed to learn to sleep through their siblings' noises. There is no biological advantage to a sibling waking up to the sounds of another child, so with practice, they can learn to sleep through it. 

This is especially true for twins but also holds true for siblings with an age difference.

Here's some more specific tips: 

1. Use a white noise machine. Every time. There's no reason to make this any harder than it already is. I like this white noise machine by Homemedics. It's small, inexpensive, light-weight, and loud. Every easy to throw into even a compact diaper bag. 
   
   If you are worried about dependence on this tool, stop. It's better to have a well-rested set of children than children that are attached to this tool (but can learn to sleep without it) than a chronically exhausted family. 
   
   
2. Accept that the only way your children can learn to sleep through each others' noise is to let them practice. As long as you are dancing between them, playing bedtime-whack-a-mole, you are a prisoner. Set yourself free. Children cry sometimes. It's okay. If one is crying, reassure the other that everything is okay. And then let them be. Whatever your preferred method of sleep training is, let those babies cry. It's the fastest way to learn. It's the only way to learn. 
   
   
3. A giant exception to rule two: if one child is a good sleeper and the other is not (this comes up frequently with twins), take the good sleeper into your bedroom temporarily. Set up a travel crib or cot on the floor so you can sleep train the bad sleeper without fear. Keep the good sleeper in your room -- but not in your bed! -- for a week or two. Just long enough to train the bad sleeper. Then get them back to room sharing again. 
   
   
4. Try very, very hard to have the children on complimentary sleep schedules. Unless you are that rare parent, at least during COVID, where you crave more one-on-one time with each child. If so, rock on. But most of my parents need alone time more than one-on-one time. 
   
   So if both your children nap, wrestle with the start times until they overlap. That might mean putting one down a little earlier than you might otherwise, or putting the other down a little later than ideal. Usually the first option works better since it's much easier for a child to fall asleep before becoming overtired. It's also easier to fall asleep while your sibling is playing in her own crib than it is to stay asleep if your sibling wakes up first, since she is more sleepy at the beginning of the nap than the end. 
   
   So for example, if your two-year-old ordinarily naps at 1 pm and your 5-month-old's second nap is at 11:30 am, compromise a bit for each and put them both down at 12 pm. And maybe cap the toddler's nap so that the two children can both go to bed for the night at 7 pm. 
   
   Alternatively, if your twins roomshare and one needs more sleep than the other, you can try to put the more tired one down first, then sneak in half hour later with the lower-sleep-needs baby. Don't wait too long to bring in the second baby, no more than thirty minutes, or the first will wake more easily. 
   
   
5. And one more thing for the partnered among us: unless one of you is lactating and thus, physically required for bedtime (maybe), don't let your child decide that only one parent is allowed to put him to bed. If, like Leah, your youngster will scream at bedtime if he doesn't have Mommy... so be it. Let him scream. Be sympathetic but firm. The adults make the rules, not the children. 
   
   The reason is this is two-fold. One, each adult needs a break sometimes from -- let's face it -- the tedium of bedtime. And two, children need to know that the adults are the rule-makers. It might seem like your child will be happier when he always gets his way, but actually, limits are extremely reassuring to children. Children need to know that they can test the rules and the rules won't change, no matter how much they protest. It makes them feel safe. So don't be afraid of tantrums. Lean in. It's good for him. 
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As parents, we all want to make things easier for our children. But sometimes, making things easier -- in this case, trying to prevent one sibling from waking another -- is making things worse for everyone. Your children need you to be well-rested. And they will be so much better off when they can sleep through others' noises and get a great night of sleep without you. You are giving them a great gift, the gift of great sleep. There will just be a challenging period of adjustment to get there. You -- and they -- can survive that. 

If you would like achieving this goal, or any other sleep goal, schedule a free chat and get your family the sleep you deserve.