Hallie’s sleep journey

I thought I’d share a little about what Hallie’s journey with sleep has been like.

We had a disrupted first six months of her life, my birth was pretty rough and I’d lost a lot of blood so my husband and I moved in with my parents for the first 10 days so they could help with the recovery. After that we moved home (a home we were in the process of selling). Hallie slept in a next to me and from the start we were both against co-sleeping, my husband in particular feeling it was a slippery slop he didn’t want to go down. We had the odd night where she was so unsettled she would spend hours at a time on one of our chests but for the most part we would always get her back into her next to me.

From the start she generally woke every two hours - we were lucky not to have too many nights with hourly wake ups but rarely got beyond the two hour mark.

When Hallie was three months old our house sold and we moved into my parents while we renovated the house we’d bought. My husband was trying to do lots of the renovations himself to keep costs down so he took the the house and I took the baby. This period of living at my parents was over the winter 2020 when we went into another lockdown. My sister was also living at home so it was quite a house full! There was some really lovely moments of us all being cooped up together but there were stresses from my side of worrying about Hallie waking the rest of the house up at night.

She was still waking every two hours pretty much and the second she’d wake I’d rush to her try to quieten her before she had a chance to wake everyone up. On reflection this is what was holding back our progression on sleep - babies are extremely active sleepers and I wasn’t giving her a chance to self settle. At this point we were in a good routine, I’d nailed her naps and even managed to help her link her sleep cycles so she was having two long naps and then a short cat nap at the end of the day. She was going to sleep on her own in her cot but the night wakings were still super regular. At this point she was also a lot chunkier than her peers that were sleeping through, but that’s unsurprising as she was feeding on every way so she was having a fair few more meals a day then them!

We moved into our house when Hallie was just over six months old and she was in her own room which definitely helped with us not disturbing each other and allowing me to give her a minute to self settle when she woke. We worked on cutting out comfort feeds but keeping hunger feeds and over time she dropped to just one feed a night. We reduced the amount of milk she had with this feed, kept up her day routine (by now just two long naps during the day), and kept consistent with her bedtime routine and suddenly at nine months she cracked it!

Classically she finally slept through the week before I’d got a night away booked with my best girl friend - my first night away from Hallie, we’d booked this in a moment of exhaustion, needing a full nights sleep and a night to just be me and not be Mummy. This resulted in my husband wondering what the big deal was with her sleep when she dutifully slept 7-7 for him!

Since then Hallie’s been pretty great - yes we’ve had developmental changes where she’s woken and needed more support. An example would be from 18 months for about 3 months she would wake once a night, usually between 10pm-midnight but it was just be for a cuddle. I’d go in, pick her up, she’d literally go floppy in my arms and I’d pop her back down. In this period she had become much more into me and so she’s been developing her attachment. I supported her through this and now she’s back to sleeping 11 hours straight most nights.

Hallie had silent reflux as a baby which also added to difficulties with our nights and it felt like it look a long time for her to sleep through but we were confident that we were supporting her and she did get there in the end, and by herself.

With number two on the way, there’s definitely a few things I’d have done differently, but one things’s for sure, we’ll be doing what we can to support that baby to become an independent sleeper who loves sleep.