Why your baby will never sleep through the night

From about month 2 of a baby's life, most moms start wondering if their little one will ever sleep through the night.

By month 4 (when the vast majority of babies go through a sleep regression), sleeping through the night can become an obsession, or a seemingly impossible dream.

The truth is, technically, your baby will never sleep through the night.  That's right. Never!

That's because none of us ever does.

All human beings sleep in cycles. We start out in Phase 1 or light sleep - the kind when you're just nodding off and it's easy for someone to wake you. Then we move into Phases 2, 3 and 4, each becoming progressively deeper. (You know when your alarm clock wakes you and it takes a minute to figure out where you are and what's happening? That's because you were woken out of stage 4 or deep sleep.)

After that, we move into dream sleep, also called rapid-eye-movement or REM sleep because of the rolling eye movements that happen while we're dreaming. If we're woken during this phase, we often remember our dreams. 

For adults, each cycle lasts about an hour and a half. But the really important point for you and your baby is what happens after we've cycled through all of these phases?

We wake up. Every time.

Remember before you had kids, when you would blissfully sleep 8 or 9 hours straight and wake up feeling refreshed? You didn't know it, but you had actually woken up about 5 times during the night; maybe you rolled over, adjusted the covers, or nudged your snoring partner. So why don't we remember all these little wake ups?

The reason is simple: we learned at a very early age how to go from one complete sleep cycle to the next with barely a conscious moment. That is the key behind the commonly used term "self soothing." When it comes to your baby's sleep, self soothing is simply the ability to go from one sleep cycle to the next without waking up fully and crying out for help to get back to sleep.

So while it may seem like your baby really wants something else, once they reach a healthy 6 or 7 months and move past the age of actually needing calories to get through the night, what they're really crying out for is more sleep!

I know, I know - your baby drains two breasts or downs an 8-ounce bottle every waking, so they must be hungry, right?

Well, yes and no. If every time you had a little trouble falling back to sleep during the night, you got up and ate a peanut butter sandwich, pretty soon your body would start waking you up at those times, expecting calories, even though you didn't need them. You would probably even feel some pangs of hunger (and you wouldn't eat as much for breakfast because your belly was still full from your night-time picnics).

So if your baby is waking up every hour or two (and let's face it, a 6-pound newborn doesn't even need to feed that often), it's because they just haven't figured out that ever-important life skill for getting the sleep their brains and bodies need: how to go from one sleep cycle to the next without help from something or someone else.

That's where sleep "training" comes in. As circus-animal as the term can make our babies sound, sleeping is actually a skill they need to learn.

The good news is, you don't have to shut the door and let your baby cry-it-out until 7 a.m. (ugh). There is a supportive, gradual way that gives your baby the chance to learn with you right there beside them, while also shifting their metabolism toward getting all their calories during the day, rather than at the all-night snack bar. (It also works for babies who wake up after every sleep cycle looking for their pacifier or Dad's arms to be rocked in.)

In fact, most moms I've worked with tell me that daytime feeding becomes way better once their babies ditch the snack-and-snooze habit at night. (They also tell me that it's like "a miracle", "amazing" and "OMG I can't believe she slept through the night!" when their little one starts knocking off 11-12 hours without a peep.)

Once your baby learns the skill of moving from one sleep cycle to the next, they start to do it with just a quiet little moment of changing position, just like we do. They'll do that new trick 6 times a night until they're actually ready for food.

And the best part is, when morning comes, everyone wakes up happy.

The right time for the toddler-bed switch

I get this question a lot: When do we switch our child from crib to toddler bed?

Thankfully, there is a pretty easy answer.

There are three basic steps to follow when seeing your child make the milestone leap from crib to the big-girl/big-boy bed.

First, solve existing sleep problems first!

A lot of parents who are struggling with their toddler’s sleep try to solve the issue by ditching the crib and buying a cool new bed. The problem with this approach is, our kids are smarter than that! It takes about a nanosecond for most kids to figure out that when they’re struggling to fall asleep at bedtime or waking up during the night, they can just hop right out and toddle into your room! So the bottom line is, take action to help your child develop great sleep habits and a healthy association with sleep before making the switch.

Secondly, wait! The older a child is when they switch to a toddler bed, the more able they are to cognitively understand the idea of an artificial boundary. Before they are two-and-a-half, “stay in bed” means, well, zilch to most kids. (My “ideal” age to make the switch is older than 3.) You can still sleep train a child in a toddler bed, but the older they are, the easier it goes. And if they’re not climbing out of their cribs and endangering themselves, it is easier to go through a sleep-training program when your child is in a crib.

Once your child is sleeping well in his or her crib, keep them in it for a while. before making the switch. If your child is still struggling to fall asleep and stay asleep, it may look like they hate their crib, but once they learn the ever-important skill of how to sleep well, kids learn to love and feel safe and secure in their place of sleep. And that is always so beautiful to see.

And third, when your child is sleeping great and old enough to keep those great sleep skills in their big-girl/big-boy bed, celebrate it! Have a little bedtime party, buy them a new toddler pillow or special blanket, or something like one of those bed-tent canopies that IKEA sells for $19. https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/sufflett-bed-tent-green-30332475/

And when the honeymoon period is over on the awesome new toddler bed, and your little one starts testing the waters with their new-found freedom, relax; getting out of their new bed at bedtime or during the night is a normal part of their boundary-pushing and development. When they do, you can gently lead them back to bed, remind them that everyone stays in their bed until morning, and know that it will pass.

What?! No more soother?!

I was talking to the parents of a 7-month-old the other day; they needed my help with their baby who was waking up several times a night and taking short naps.

They listened intently to every step of my plan, fully on board with what needed to change to help their little one learn to sleep through the night, until I said those six scary words:

"So, this means no more soother."

I could feel the tension in their silence and see the fear in their eyes.

I smiled. I had seen this time and time again when parents first imagine the impossible task of putting their baby to bed without a pacifier.

This couple knew that the fall-out-and-replace routine with their little one's pacifier was likely the culprit in their baby's frequent wakings and short naps. But after 7 months of getting up to pop it back in every time their baby woke, they couldn't imagine it any other way.

But, like everything in life, you never know until you try. The good news is, parents can lean on the experience of countless others before them. Here's what I tell every parent who just can't see the end of popping a soother back in: a pacifier is the easiest sleep prop to get rid of. Baby after baby and toddler after toddler I've worked with has forgotten all about their soother and started sleeping through the night (and taking longer naps) within a week.

As for the couple I was speaking to the other day as we walked through their baby's sleep plan, their little one slept 12 hours straight last night. "This is like magic!" the Mom said to me in our check-in call yesterday. "We just can't believe it... we feel amazing."

While a pacifier can really help with a fussy newborn, after a while, it is almost like giving your baby a job to do insead of just sleeping. When they wake up at the end of every natural sleep cycle, as is normal for all of us to do, they cry out, looking for the thing that helped them get to sleep in the first place. So we pop it back in and encourage them to suck in order to fall asleep.

Without having an internal program for how to drift off to sleep (like we all developed as babies), they will continue to wake up and need that assistance night after night, sleep cycle after sleep cycle.

All it takes is a solid plan for how to comfort your baby without getting in the way of them developing their own internal fall-asleep program, so they can simply roll over and go right back to sleep, 5 or 6 times a night. That's what "sleeping through the night" really means: the ability to go from sleep cycle to sleep cycle without fully waking up. When we get 8 hours of sleep, that's what we're actually doing.

Once a baby learns how to do that, it's a breeze for them to drift off to dreamland on their own steam and to sleep 11 -12 hours straight through the night without making a peep. And that means you get your evenings back for you and nighttime back for sleeping, not to mention being happier parents with a thriving, well-rested baby in the morning.

In no time flat, you'll be thinking "What soother? Did we ever use a soother?"

And your little one will just be dreaming.