How to Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night

Grey slept through the night last night for the first time in-FOREVER. That's not incredibly terrible considering he is only 5 weeks old; however, the toll from not getting enough sleep was finally taking its toll and having a colicky baby was draining us. We tried everything and nothing would seem to help. It seemed that when the clock hit 9pm, he would start crying and he wouldn't sleep well until 4am. We figured the best way to get him on track is a ROUTINE. Did you know that infants thrive off of routine? We did not either!

Here is the routine that we created for our son. Please keep in mind that what works for one child may not work for the next.

First of all, we follow the "5 S's" System, which can be viewed here.

Throughout the day, I let Grey sleep for about two hours, then we play with him or have what we call "wake time" for around two hours, and repeat. 

At night when we are ready for bedtime, I start off with a bath with him. I bathe him in this amazing lavender scented baby soap and he almost always falls asleep in the bath tub.

Next is massage time! I break out the baby lotion or oil and I massage each body part, especially his tummy since he tends to be a gassy baby. He loves this!

Then I will nurse him till he falls asleep and put a diaper on him.

Next, I dress him and SWADDLE him. I dont know about most babies, but mine likes to sleep swaddled. We have found that he tends to sleep LONGER and HARDER once swaddled.

Lastly, I play white noise. I have played rain and he sleeps-but never too long. It seems that my free iPhone white noise app did the trick to him sleeping for almost 6 hours last night! It was the first night that we had actually incorporated it thanks to my fabulous sister in law who mentioned it worked like magic!

Little by little, we built this routine over the last month. It took a lot of trial and error, mixing things, moving steps around, etc. to figure out what he likes.

 It just takes time.