So you have a new baby or young child and you need them to sleep more.
First, ask yourself WHY you are desperately trying to make your kid sleep. Is it for your sake or theirs? If you’re anything like me, it’s for your own sake. You’re exhausted and you don’t think you can continue like this much longer.
Second, please realize you cannot control anyone outside yourself. Read it again. Understand that “anyone” includes your children. Especially a baby. They cannot be bribed, threatened, or pleaded into obedience.
Third, I’m sorry to say you are not actually going to find baby sleep tips here. But BEFORE YOU LEAVE! Let’s get to the bottom of what you really need, mama.
You don’t need the baby to sleep 8 hours.
You need to not feel exhausted.
You need to not be at the end of your rope.
You need to be able to function better.
What you need is rest.
I’m not talking about the “sleep when baby sleeps” kinda rest, although sleep might fix what you’re feeling. Unfortunately sleep can’t be conjured right now. You can do things to encourage Baby’s sleep – routine, appropriate naps and wake times, curated sleep environment – but if you are desperate enough to be googling “How to get my baby to sleep”, you already know those things. They are probably the first thing you did and baby still won’t sleep. So let’s fix your problem another way. Let’s get you rest.
The best place to start is to stop feeling the need or the pressure, either internal or external, to bounce back. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Your job is not to bounce back. Your job is to heal and to move forward in your new life. Whether this is your first baby or your fifth, you are new and life if different. Not only do you not need to return to life as you knew it, you can’t! And you were never meant to.
New moms often feel all the pressure to keep doing everything they were before – dishes, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, and tending all the other kids – but now with a baby. And that’s just not possible for a new mom who is not getting sleep at night. Her day now includes no rest. She needs some (if not all) of those responsibilities taken off her plate. Her sleep deprived mind should be focus on one thing – her new baby. She should be responsible for only taking care of her baby. She shouldn’t even be taking care of herself. Someone else should be doing that for her. That is how humans are biologically meant to function. They are meant to parent as a village. Moms are meant to have sisters, mothers, grandmothers close by imparting their wisdom to her and giving her lots of hands on support.
How do you get this support?
Ask. It’s hard, maybe embarrassing, maybe even perceived as shameful (gag) but it shouldn’t be. Those same people that want to come over and snuggle your baby and ooh and aah over them, the same people that say, “Tell me if you need anything,” they are the ones you need to be asking for help. Ask if when they come they can pick up some more coffee or a pack of diapers to save you a trip to the store. Ask if they can bring you some dinner. Ask if, while they are here waiting for baby to finish eating and eagerly listening to your birth story, they can throw a load of laundry in the washer.
You will be incredibly surprised how many people are willing to help if they are just asked!
Often times, visitors don’t immediately jump in and do your house work or your chores because they don’t want to over step. We live in an I-can-do-it-all obsessed culture that has lead us to view accepting help as weakness. Your friends and loved ones might worry that if they start your laundry, you might think they think you are incapable. Or if they sweep your floors, they worry you think they think your house is filthy and you are a terrible house keeper. But all of that is assumptions. It’s so silly to allow yourself to drown in the pressures of new motherhood because you don’t want to be seen as weak or incapable. You just brought forth life. There is nothing more powerful than that. You just gave birth! You are the most capable person in the room! Let them do your dishes. Tell them that is the help you need. Allow them to serve you in this moment without feeling guilty. Lean on your village.
Eat to nourish all aspects of you.
When we aren’t sleeping, our body is over worked and trying to pull energy from an empty store. Because sleep can’t be cooked up and served on a platter, we need to turn to food. Eating will give us the energy we need and provide some comfort. During this time of sleepless nights, eat food that will serve you in the easiest and most efficient way possible. Foods that are warm will keep your body from expending energy on regulating its temperature. Easily digestible food can be used to serve your body more quickly. Well cooked stew, oatmeal, grits, porridge and warm puddings are going to comfort and sooth you from the inside out.
But don’t try to get up and cook yourself a full stew with a baby in tow. Ask for help. When your mother-in-law comes over, ask her to cook you some grits while you change the baby’s diaper. Then while you enjoy a warm meal, she can snuggle the baby. Make a list of stews your partner can put in the crock pot in the morning so you can enjoy a hot meal together in the evenings. Bonus points if you took the time to plan this before the baby was born! If not, call on your community to help now.
Release the mental load.
We don’t realize how much of the mental load we as the wives and mothers carry. We are the keeper of the appointments, the schedulers of activities. We remember that the bedsheets need to be change today and the plants need to be watered tomorrow. All of these things, while they aren’t physically taxing or hard to do, take up mental space and emotional energy. Energy that, now in these sleepless days, we don’t have. Release it. Let it go. Find a journal or a notebook to keep in a convenient place and write down those things that need to be addressed and then let your partner handle them. Trust him to do them. I know it’s hard to think that the plants might get over watered, or your dad might not get his birthday card on time, or your older child might be late for soccer, but right now those things are far less important than your health and your baby. You need to heal. To heal you need energy. For energy, you need rest and nourishment. And sometimes that rest comes at the expense of other things.
Some might say that having a partner who is so capable and willing is a privilege some don’t have. And while that might be true, you had this baby with someone. Another human was directly and equally responsible for the creation of this baby. If they are at all still in the picture and care about their child, they need to be caring for the mother right now. That is how a partner who can’t do the breastfeeding and doesn’t shoulder the majority of the night-wakes can be an equally responsible for their child. By taking care of the mother, you take care of the baby. Much like with your visitors, you need to ask for the help you need. No matter how incredible your partner is, they are not a mind reader. They view you as strong and capable. They might forget or not see how much help you need. Ask. Do not be embarrassed or ashamed to say that you do not have the energy to get up from your bed and carry your own broken body and the body of your sleeping newborn to the kitchen for a simple glass of water. Ask them for help.
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