Nighttime Parenting - Motherly Journey

Nighttime with a newborn can be blissful or a nightmare. Some parents are blessed with that baby that constantly sleeps and they do not have to resort to looking up sleep theories on the internet. Your own baby’s sleep is not up to the experts to figure out. It really is up to you to deal with. While there are some interesting ideas out there regarding how your
baby should be, I invite you to look at your own mindset about baby sleep first and go
from there.

What are some of your ideas about babies and sleep? Are you waiting for the night in
order to get some relief? Do you think that your baby sleeping through the night is a top priority? Would you feel like you are doing something wrong if your baby is not
sleeping?

When I had a newborn I used to like to play this game in my head of “how is your child
sleeping compared to mine.” My children just do not seem to sleep at all. I was constantly on the lookout for the latest and greatest technique to get my baby to sleep through the night. Then, when they finally slept for longer than 4 hrs I was so excited but then something would happen like teething or colds that would throw them right back to square one. I finally started looking at my own thoughts about nighttime “shoulds” and throw them out the window. Nighttime parenting is part of the package. When you get your baby it is common that you will have to get up at some point in the night to take care
of them.

Step Back

When you are in the midst of the parenting grunt of constantly waking up and being sleep deprived, take a step back and reevaluate. Taking that moment to not react and head for the parenting section, to really look at your circumstances can do wonders.

Where are you currently?

• Do you have help at night?
• Is your baby just going through a stage of waking?
• Is your mind just focusing on some technique for baby sleep?

What works one night may not work the next night for nighttime parenting. Focusing on a strategy that worked before might frustrate you when it does not seem to be working anymore. Step back and be gentle to yourself. You might be stuck in a pattern and stepping back can help you gain proper wisdom to move on.

Co-Sleeping

At some point, during the frustrations of nighttime parenting, you might come across this co-sleeping idea if you have not done so already. Again, I want to ask you what is important to you? Co-Sleeping has its benefits but if you feel like someone that is not truly ok with this idea and love to have your bed to yourself then that is ok also. Most of the time co-sleeping is easier compared to getting up at nighttime to feed the baby and trying to put them back to sleep. That is something that you will have to look at realistically at different points in your life and see where you are at. As children get older they tend to start moving about and kicking around making your own sleep worse, that is another point parents step back to reevaluate.

What are your ideas about co-sleeping?

• Do you feel like you have to do it in order to have a secure relationship?
• Are you scared of what might happen at night with the baby?
• Do you resent it?

For me co-sleeping was honestly something that worked, until it didn’t. I really tried to
have my baby do all the tricks that I read about but then I never got sleep. Adding more kids to the mix, nighttime parenting just became about me getting as much sleep as possible and I was always ok with co-sleeping, until both me and baby were just done.

Then we moved on. My kids are now sleeping through the night in their own beds in their own rooms. I want to take a moment here to say something about mommy intuition. You have it in you to see what your baby really needs. Sometimes that can be really clouded by other peoples advice and opinions especially in regards to baby sleep. If you try to follow everyone else you might get a result for a little bit but then you are off on a search for new expert advice because something is not working. I urge you to trust that mama intuition. Ask yourself some deep questions. Taking a step back and getting out of that low mood (if that is where you are at) will help you see things as they are.