How Jay Started Sleeping Through The Night @ 6 Weeks

So Derek and I either have been greatly blessed, or we have awesome parenting skills. I'm personally going to give credit to choice number 1 and zero credit to choice number 2. However, a lot of people I know ask me how we got Jay to sleep so well, and I know a lot of moms who are having trouble getting their babies to sleep, and I have a lot of friends who are going to be moms in just a few months, so I figured it might be worth while to let everyone know how we got Jay to sleep.

Before I say anything more, I am going to say that YES I know that I'm NOT the best mom in the world, I know that this WILL NOT work for everyone, and I KNOW that all babies are different, I'm just saying what worked best for Derek and I, and MAYBE this could work for you as well.

So when Jay was about 5 weeks and my Mormon Mom was no longer here, and Derek's mom was no longer here, and we were officially on our own with Jay duty at night, I thought it would be a good time to try to get him to sleep on his own. Him sleeping in our bed, or even in his bassinet was just not working. If he was in our bed, he would sleep but Derek and I would not, if he was in his bassinet  he would wake up and start crying every time Derek and I rolled over in bed because he heard our crazy loud mattress. So the first thing we did was move him to his own room in his crib.

The next thing we did was master the swaddle. This was really important for us cause Jay would just flail his arms and legs when we would try to rock him to sleep, so by swaddling him we got him to calm down and hold still.

Swaddled, we would give him a nice long night time feeding, which would pretty much knock him out, and then we would put him in his crib. Then we would leave the room. For the first week though, he would cry when we left the room. So we waited 3 minutes until we would go back in. Then when we went back in, we would reswaddle him, rock him to calm him down, and then put him back in his crib. Then we would wait 5 minutes to go back, and then repeat everything, then wait 7 minutes, then repeat everything, then 10 minutes and repeat everything... But we never let it go longer then 10 minutes!

The first night it took about an hour to get him to sleep at 10pm and then he woke up at 3 to eat and then he didn't get to sleep again until about 4:30, but then he slept until 8am. Then the next night it took a little less time, and he woke up a little later in the middle of the night, then pretty much by the end of that night he was falling asleep at about 8pm every night, and then not waking up until about 7:30-8:00am in the morning. And yes, I was nursing during this time. Which is pretty much why I stopped nursing, because him sleeping so much I thought I was going to die every morning waiting for him to wake up because it hurt a lot! (ok well that's not the only reason I quit but it was one of the reasons)

Also, I'd like to add the Jay does sleep on his tummy and not on his back, and yes I know that he's supposed to sleep on his back, the doctors did tell us 1,000 times before we left the hospital, but Jay  won't sleep at all on his back so this was the only way for us. But I am in no way, shape or form telling you to tummy sleep your baby, even though when my mom had me they said to sleep babies on their stomachs, and then I would only sleep on my back, and my mom thought I was going to die in my sleep, so I guess all babies in my family are rule breakers right?

So now that this post is SUPER long, I'll be done now, and that's just how we got our baby to sleep. I know this isn't going to work for everyone, but it did work for us, so I guess if you try this out I'd be interested in knowing if it worked for you too!