Even before Max was born, I knew I would sleep train him as soon as possible. And when he was born, I became even more invested in teaching Max good sleep habits. I joined community groups, read books, and followed sleep consultants. I was determined to get him to sleep through the night as soon as possible. 

Based on what I read, Max was an average to good sleeper —not a unicorn newborn that slept 12 hours at 12 weeks or a terrible velcro baby that wakes every 1-2 hours and only co-sleeps. 

This was a living post I started writing when Max was born until he was 1.5 years old when sleep finally became consistently easier —not perfect but most nights were uninterrupted. 

Newborn, up to 12 weeks

As a newborn, I followed the five-S’s for calming and soothing him to sleep —swaddling, side-holding, shushing, swinging, and sucking. They worked most of the time but I was surprised at how much time it took us to help Max sleep. We would spend a good 20-30 minutes shushing and swinging him in our arms before he fell asleep. Then the “transfer” challenge into the bassinet would come. If the transfer failed (i.e. he woke up), we would have to restart. Sometimes, I just held him through his nap and watched his little face (or an episode of a random Netflix show). 

I practiced naps in daylight to avoid newborn day-night confusion and kept his bassinet in his room to avoid a future room transition (we just moved into his room for the nights). From day one, Max slept with white noise and I used the “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” lullaby during his night routine.

Luckily, he slept in the bassinet pretty well and had decent nights from 8pm to 7am (fed and changed diaper every 2-2.5 hours). Naps, on the other hand, were a mess. He was notorious for 15-minute naps. For 30 to 60-minute naps, we did outdoor naps, contact naps and stroller naps.

As he approached 12 weeks, I practiced “drowsy but awake” put-downs which worked 50% of the time. I’m not sure how effective they were but we tried it, hoping for good self-soothing practice. 

The biggest lesson was “You can’t spoil a newborn” and your goal is to just get them to sleep any way possible. You just need to survive as new (sleep-deprived) parents. 

~3 months

It was time to apply good sleep foundation. We applied a solid bed and nap routine, and I started to follow wake windows. I darken his nursery and once he outgrew his bassinet, I moved him to the crib, starting with 1-2 naps and then overnight.

I learned all about sleep associations and the goal is to remove the bad ones at the right age, like the pacifier, rocking, swaddle etc. I started to use them more sparingly and gradually wean them out. The toughest one was the “feed association” where Max wouldn’t even eat unless it’s right before sleep. We had to break that and apply “eat, play, sleep”. I had to put his sleep sack on as if it’s “sleep” and then after his bottle, I forced “play” a bit.

Next for bedtime, we started to practice “fuss-it-out” from the book, Precious Little Sleep. This allows babies to fuss (or even cry) for a set short period (eg. 15 minutes) and experiment if they can fall asleep with minimal sleep associations (i.e. no pacifier or rocking). It worked sometimes during bedtime but when applied after his night feeds, he would almost always fall asleep by himself since his sleep pressure is highest. It was a win.  

After a week, he was better at falling asleep independently at bedtime and since he’s proved to us he can do it… I was more stingy in helping him and gave him more time to figure it out. Around 3.5 months, he cried for 20 minutes and then he fell asleep on his own. The next two nights, it was 15 minutes and since then, he will cry about 5-10 minutes to power-down and fall asleep within 15 minutes by himself. This was a success. It broke my heart to hear him cry but taking a shower or being in a further room helped to lower the volume and intensity.

~ 4 to 5 months

I also learned that you need to sleep train separately for naps and this skill doesn’t transfer over to day sleep. I started with bedtime independent sleep because the sleep pressure is highest and now that it is established, we train his naps. His naps were still messy and he wouldn’t sleep for more than 15 minutes until it was a contact nap. I studied wake-windows and monitored his patterns intensely but I don’t know if it even helped.

We applied the fuss-it-out technique one nap at a time, starting from the first nap of the day and surprisingly after 1.5 weeks, he started to fall asleep by himself for all his naps. It gave me so much time back. 

We continued to practice falling asleep on his own. He still cries once his sleep sack is zipped up but he falls asleep usually within 10 minutes.  

I was most nervous about the 4-month sleep regression where his newborn sleep cycles mature to adult cycles. I’ve heard horror stories of waking every 2 hours and being unable to fall back asleep. Luckily, I didn’t notice a huge difference from our usual nights since we still had 2-3 feeds. So the next level was resolving the night wakings and overnight feeds. Unfortunately, these didn’t magically just disappear once he learned how to fall asleep on his own. 

Feeds & Weaning

I learned that a sleep-trained baby can still feed throughout the night and weaning feeds is a totally different thing. 

As a newborn, Max would feed every 2-2.5 hours consistently and almost always fell back asleep after his bottle. My mind is foggy on the exact timing but I think it was always around 8pm / 10pm / 12am / 2am / 4am / 6am. It was brutal even with Chi and my mom’s help on some shifts.

Around 2 months, Max dropped a feed, and on May 9 we scheduled a “dream” feed at 11pm. It was supposed to help Max have the longest stretch from 11pm onwards but it only worked sometimes. Chi would take the 11pm dream feed, Chi or I would do the next one (around 2:00am), I would do the 5:00am and my mom would take the 7:00am. 

Around 3 months, I tried to stretch the feed timing aiming for 2 overnight feeds, (the 11pm dream feed, and a 5am feed) but it was really tough to achieve. After the dream feed, the next feed first started around 1:00am when Max was under a month, then naturally stretched to 2am around 2-3 months. Next, I would try to use the pacifier to stretch this next feed window and also played with weaning the milk amount down… Sometimes, it felt like success when he would wake around 3:00 or 3:30am but other nights, he would wake around 1:30-2am again for a feed or just because. 

At 4 months, Max’s doctor said we could start to wean night feeds. They informed us that the stomach can hold 150ml-180ml and they will immediately shift those calories the next day. As an almost premature baby, I felt he was still young and would gradually wean one feed at a time, starting with the scheduled 11pm dream feed. 

We dropped it to 60ml, and then removed it to see when he would naturally wake up for his first night feed —sometimes he would wake at that time due to habit but sometimes he would last for 5 hours (sleep until 1:00am). It was unpredictable and hard to control. I kept trying to stretch it with the pacifier and also practiced 5/3/3 rule (feed if it’s been 5 hours since bedtime, or every 3 hours after that feed). Some nights felt like a doozy and didn’t always feel like progress. Maybe this was the 4-month sleep regression. 

But we had some longer stretches “4am”nights (usually ones where he had a lot of day time stimulation like his first bathtub swim or visit to University Village Mall). I kept analyzing daytime naps and tweaking wake windows to see if we could reproduce those ideal nights but it wasn’t possible. It was annoyingly hard to figure out.

Sleeping through the night

Then one magical night on July 12, 2023 (almost 5 months), he somehow slept through the night with a few wake-ups that he was able to self-soothe with some minor fussing. He did not need a feed! The very next day, like our doctor’s advice, he took larger feeds during the daytime. This was a relief as I’m always nervous he isn’t drinking enough. Then the next night and the one after… we stopped feeding him at night but offered a lot more during the day. 

Regressions and setbacks after sleep training

I was naive to think after training and weaning, he would sleep perfectly with 12 hours uninterrupted at night paired with long naps. Yes, he was able to put himself to sleep by himself most nights but we were dealing with night wakes almost every night. We would have “good” nights with random bursts of cries but eventually resettles back to sleep. We also had some of his worst nights with his first cold, big developmental skills, new teeth, and who knows why. 

Around 5-6 months, he started to roll but sometimes would get stuck and cry for us. 

Around 7 months, he picked back up 1 middle of the night feed that stuck around until 10 months! This meant at least one wake-up every night. While we didn’t want to bring back the feed, he would be inconsolable until he was fed and then easily fell back asleep. I struggled between knowing if he truly needed that feed or was just developing a bad sleep association. 

Around 8-9 months, he had some of his worst nights with screaming wake-ups that required at least 1-2 hours of soothing 1-3 times a night! It sucked because you just don’t really know what to do. You don’t want to spoil them but also don’t want to let them cry if they really need you. 

At this point, you just don’t know what else to do because he is sleep-trained without night feeds and did sleep through the night. It felt like two steps forward, then one step back. It was hard to achieve perfect sleep. For a while, he’d still cry himself to sleep for 10-15 minutes, he’d wake up too early, have a short crappy nap or just cry in the middle of the night for no reason…

Sleeping through the night (pt. 2)

Then right after his 10-month birthday, he achieved perfect day and night sleep consistently —independent easy naps, no-cry put-downs, and uninterrupted 11-hour nights. How freaking magical.

Oh, but that lasted for only 2 weeks before he got sick and had more teeth come in. He started to wake up in the middle of the night inconsolable again. We’d tried to let him soothe himself back to sleep for 15-30 mins but it wouldn’t work. So we would rock him back to sleep and offer him water for his dry throat (that was one of my symptoms so assumed he might feel it too). I wondered if I needed to “retrain” him.  Luckily, after 2 weeks… his sleep recovered and he was sleeping through the night again. 

Around 12 months, we still dealt with early wakes at 5:30am. Sleep was nearly perfect, still some crying put-downs. I knew the nap transition down to one nap per day was one of the hardest transitions. But once you get over that hump, sleep should stabilize even more. 

One-nap transition and travel (~14-18 months)

Nearing 14 months, Max was showing signs that he was ready for the one-nap transition by protesting his second nap and pushing his bedtime later and later… But I held onto this schedule since we were going to Hawaii soon which is 3 hours behind and 14 months seem early for the transition.

On our Hawaii trip, we dealt with middle-of-the-night wakes every night. He was not able to independently fall asleep and required me to sleep on the floor next to him and assist him. It was tough to go back to broken sleep and hard to say why it was happening. Was it because he was ready for one nap? Was it because of the new scenery and pack-and-play? New teeth? Or maybe he was overtired and struggling with the timezone? 

Desperate for an uninterrupted night, I tested one nap for a few days on our cruise but it was rough for him and didn’t resolve the night wakes. Luckily, when he got back, he reverted back to sleeping independently and uninterrupted through the night. Around 14.5 months, my gut (and some signs) said it was time for the one-nap transition. So I started to gradually stretch his wake windows by 15 minutes a day, to avoid overtiredness and early wakes.

We did experience some early 5am mornings and night wakes, but after 2-3 weeks, Max adjusted. It wasn’t easy and he now wakes earlier than before (around between 6-7am, compared to 7-8am on two naps). I thought his naps would lengthen to 2-3 hours but it averaged 1.5 hours… (though sometimes around 20 months, he got more than 2 hours).

At 17-18 months, Max was very stable on one nap. I thought (well, hoped) he would sleep like a champ for our Summer trips to Jamaica, Toronto, and Atlantic Canada but every night had 1-2 middle-of-the-night wakes, where Max would just cry for me! I just had to accept that he doesn’t love the pack-n-play and there will always be a travel regression. Luckily, almost the first night back home, his sleep would get back to normal.

At 18 months, Max started going to daycare, which is infamous for sickness and sleep disruptions. Luckily, he quickly adapted to taking naps at school and we have been able to maintain a consistent schedule to wake around 6-7am, naps 12:30-2 and sleep 7:00-8pm! It’s going better than I expected but winter sickness is looming. Sleep these days is easy and mostly perfect (even if I start my day at 6:30am). I can only hope, that it will only get better from here and there won’t be another regression from sickness, the toddler bed transition, the final nap drop transition, night terrors, or bedwetting. Odds are, sleep disruptions will happen but one can only hope they will be minimal. I am nervous though since I am physically unable to rock him back to sleep and transfer him back to his crib, which is now at the lowest setting. I really hope we don’t resort to co-sleeping but that might be the only way. 

For now, I can say that at 18 months, my sleep has finally been restored back to mostly uninterrupted restful nights with 7-8 hours of sleep. It’s 90% perfect since some nights he still wakes up and cries for 2-10 minutes before falling back to sleep or we deal with early mornings. 

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Final thoughts

Baby sleep is one of the hardest aspects of being a new mom. After all my sleep training effort, I’m not sure if it was my teachings, pure luck, or both. Either way, I am thankful that now at 18 months, I can plop him in the crib and he’ll quietly fall asleep uninterrupted for 10-11 hours (90% of the time). 

With the overwhelming amount of sleep resources these days, it’s a constant struggle to find the right timing or reason for imperfect sleep. You’d tweak wake windows and get critiqued that it’s too short or too long. He is undertired or overtired. And if there isn’t a clear reason, it’s because “every baby is unique”. It’s so stressful to figure out the optimal schedule for perfect sleep. Why is it such a guessing game!? But once you figure it out and are rewarded with perfect (or good enough) sleep, it’s magical. 

The only comforting words to leave is that new parents will sleep again. It might take 18 months… maybe less or more. Either way, what a tiring passage.