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Ah, baby schedules. Very few phrases instigate so much conflict amongst parents. I have seen so many hateful comments passed between moms about baby schedules and sleep, and I know I may get negative feedback for what I’m about to write as well. Before I begin I just want to point out that every parent wants the very best for her baby. Just because another mother chooses to approach her baby’s schedule, or lack thereof, differently than you does not make her a lesser mom or mean that she cares less about her baby—she is making the best decision for her family with the information she has.

And that’s what I’m doing too—I by no means want anyone to think I have it all figured out, or that my way is the right way. I’ve researched baby schedules and sleep a lot (because I’m Type-A) and have made the best decision for our family based on the information I have. So yes, I do believe that what we do is the best... for our family. It may or may not be what’s right for you. Spoiler alert: Miss F was sleeping through the night by 7 weeks, taking great naps in her crib by 10 weeks, and is thriving physically and developmentally… and we never had to do “cry-it-out” methods. If that’s intriguing to you, keep reading…

Here’s what this article is:

1. A summary of different views on infant routines and scheduling

2. The research-backed reasons we chose our approach

3. The practical steps we took to implement this approach

And here’s what this article is not:

1. An in-depth discussion on the research we used to make our decision. There are much smarter and more specialized professionals who have published this research in easy-to-understand books. I share my favorite resources where you can find this research, but I don’t rob these authors of their life’s work by rehashing it on the internet.

2. A foolproof guide for what you should do with your baby. Every baby is different, and every parent is different. Hopefully our approach gets the wheels turning and provides a starting point, but you should do your own research and choose what is best for your family.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it—this article is looooong. I tried to cut it down a hundred different ways. But at the end of the day, I knew that everything I was included was helpful to me, so I know it might be helpful to you too.

Baby scheduling background and sleep research

Here’s a short primer on the baby scheduling and sleep-training spectrum of opinions. Keep in mind that these are just three points on the scale. (P.S. Quick note on semantics—sleep-training is NOT synonymous with cry-it-out).

1. One end of the spectrum: No schedule/routine
   The philosophy behind this approach is that babies are very instinctual and that by never trying to follow a feeding or sleeping schedule, you can most closely align with what nature intended. This style holds that schedules and long stretches of sleep are unnatural and should not be encouraged.

2. Middle of the spectrum: Baby-guided scheduling
   The philosophy behind this approach is that parents must take the time to interpret a baby’s cues in order to accurately meet her needs. This view holds that babies thrive when they get both enough food and enough sleep on a predictable, but not rigid, schedule, and that parents can work with their baby’s natural rhythms to set this flexible routine.

3. Other end of the spectrum: Strict schedule/routine
   The philosophy behind this approach is that parents should set a schedule that works for them (within reasonable feeding and sleep guidelines), and only feed their baby by the clock. This creates a very predictable routine for the whole family.

One fact that continually jumped out to me during research was how crucial good quality sleep is for a baby’s brain development. The first chapter in one of my favorite books, The Happy Sleeper, explains the science and studies behind this really well. I won’t repeat everything the authors lay out here—it would not be ethical for me to take the credit for all of their hard work!—but sufficient sleep is very clearly tied to better developmental outcomes (e.g., language development), health outcomes (e.g., obesity rates), and behavioral outcomes (e.g., ADHD rates). It’s also worth noting that the impacts of good sleep (and poor sleep) have been shown to have lifelong effects. After reading study after study saying the same thing, I was convinced that helping Miss F get good sleep was one of the biggest gifts I could give her, not only in infancy but for the rest of her life.

I also learned the importance of predictability for a baby’s confidence, security, and development. Another great research-backed book is Superbaby, which devotes a chapter to summarizing the benefits, and honestly importance, of a predictable routine (note: not rigid schedule). Not only is solid sleep beneficial, but a predictable routine does everything from increasing your baby’s security and trust, to helping you respond better to your baby’s cues, to laying the groundwork for healthy discipline, to aiding both physical and mental development.

Something else I learned from my research is that while I personally did not want to do a full “extinction” cry-it-out method (i.e. put Miss F in her bed and not go back into her bedroom, no matter how much she cried), all of the research we have shows that this method actually does not have short- or long-term effects on a child. One of my favorite parenting books, Cribsheet, has a fantastic chapter about this. Here are a few summarizing points:

• Multiple studies have been conducted recently on both the short- and long-term effects of sleep-training with various degrees of cry-it-out. Sleep trained infants, even those trained with the most intense cry-it-out methods, show no loss of security, fractured attachment to caregivers, or delayed development. In fact, most if not all of these studies show an increased level of security, no loss of attachment, better daytime behavior and eating, and less irritability amongst those infants who were sleep-trained.

• The objections to sleep training are completely theoretical. While this is not to say they are invalid, no study performed to date has backed them up. One has to weigh the theoretical, unproven “dangers” of sleep-training (loss of attachment to caregivers, developmental and behavioral problems, etc.) against the studied “dangers” of foregoing sleep-training (developmental and behavioral problems, increased rates of maternal depression and its effects on child-raising, etc.).

Given this information, when Miss F was born, it was important to me to follow her cues to get into a routine and help her learn how to sleep well independently, without sacrificing any attachment or following a method I personally was not comfortable with. While there are some phenomenal resources out there, I don’t think there is one perfect one, so I picked and chose the insights that made the most sense to me. I encourage you to also do your own research and choose what is right for you and your family. I’ve shared my favorite resources in this list to help you get started..

Not surprisingly, we fell somewhere in the middle of the scheduling and sleep spectrum. Here’s what we did:

General philosophy

Always respond to your baby’s cues correctly. Feed her if she’s hungry, help her sleep if she’s tired, burp her if she’s gassy, cuddle her if she’s cold or needs comfort. An important precursor to being able to respond effectively is being able to interpret your baby’s cues. If you instantly nurse or give a bottle at your baby’s first peep, you miss an opportunity to figure out and meet your baby’s actual need. Lay a foundation for a good routine early to help your baby transition to a predictable and less stressful life outside the womb.

The first three weeks

I commonly refer to these as the “survival weeks.” Some women breeze through them, but for me they were HARD. We chose to focus on three simple goals to help ourselves meet Miss F’s needs the best we could.

1. Always follow an eat-wake-sleep (EWS) pattern, instead of feeding the baby to sleep. Newborns are very sleepy and thus have a hard time eating enough before falling asleep. This can lead to a vicious cycle of them always falling asleep before their stomachs are full, waking up a short while later to hunger pains, only being able to eat a little bit more before they fall asleep again because they didn’t sleep long before, and beginning the cycle over. Can you imagine being stuck in a pattern of constantly being starving or exhausted—not being able to sleep because you’re hungry, but not being able to eat because you’re tired? Following an eat, then awake time, then sleep pattern instead has two advantages:

   1. The baby is most alert when she first wakes up, so if she eats then, she has the best chance to fill up her stomach, which then gives her the best chance to sleep well.

   2. All humans, babies and adults alike, wake up slightly between sleep cycles. Most adults don’t even realize we do this because our bodies have learned to quickly fall back asleep and continue to the next sleep cycle. At some point we had to learn how to do this, though. Babies don’t yet know how. When a baby is fed to sleep instead of when they first wake up, they begin relying on nursing or a bottle to fall asleep. Then when they wake up 45 minutes later at the end of a sleep cycle, they aren’t able to fall back asleep without eating again. This not only keeps parents awake all day and night, but the baby quickly falls into the exhaustion/hunger cycle we mentioned previously. If the baby is used to falling asleep without food, she is much more likely to easily transition between those 45 minute sleep cycles with just a little rocking or tummy rub (and soon, without any help at all).

2. Attempt to get the baby to take a “full feeding” every time she eats. Because newborns are so sleepy, they have a tendency to eat juuuuust enough to take the edge off their hunger and then fall asleep again, launching into the exhaustion/hunger cycle mentioned previously. You’ll quickly learn how long your baby needs to nurse, or how many ounces they need to drink, to be full. Once you figure this out, do what you can to help them take this full feeding every time. We’d always change Miss F’s diaper right before feeding to wake her up a little more (a hilarious side effect was a Pavlovian reflex she developed, where she’d get super excited for diaper changes because she knew food was coming), fed her in just a diaper, tickled her feet, sang and talked to her, and generally tried to keep her alert until she was clearly not interested in eating any more. Note that we weren’t force-feeding her; when she was clearly done, we let her quit, but we did whatever we could to keep her awake so she could let us know when she was full.

3. Keep a “no longer than” schedule. During our first three weeks our routine and schedule was non-existent. However, I made sure I nursed Finley at least every 2.5-3 hours, even at night (note: if your medical professional provides different guidelines to you, please follow those! Remember I am not a medical professional). If she was hungry before that time mark, I fed her earlier and started the clock ticking again; but if she was still sleeping when the time was up, I would wake her to go “no longer than” the 2.5-3 hours. As terrible as it was to wake a sleeping baby, this ensured she was getting the calories she needed in a 24 hour period, not only allowing her to grow and thrive the way she needed to, but also laying a good foundation for a pattern her body could expect.

The slightly-easier-but-still -newborn phase (3-4 weeks to 3 months)

Generally babies aren’t developmentally ready for more scheduling until they are 4 weeks old, but every baby is different. By just following the 3 principles mentioned in the survival weeks section, we could tell that Miss F was naturally putting herself on a schedule by about 3 weeks, so this was our cue to gently guide her to a schedule we wanted and that fit her natural cues and needs. Here are the next principles we introduced:

1. Enforce a “daily wake time” (DWT), meaning choose a time in the morning to start your day, every day. Wake the baby up at this time to begin her first EWS cycle for the day, no matter how soon before that she’d been up to eat. We chose 7:00am, so even if Miss F had just been up at 6:00am, we still woke her up at 7:00am to start her day. Because during the first three weeks of her life Miss F got used to a full feeding every 2.5-3 hours throughout the day, within a few days of enforcing her DWT, she had naturally put herself on a very predictable schedule, starting at 7:00am every day. If you’re interested what our schedule looked like at this point, I’ve documented Miss F’s flexible schedules for her first year of life. Note that we weren’t rigidly enforcing a schedule—this is just what Miss F naturally fell into just based on us following our sleep principles.

2. Begin putting the baby down drowsy but still awake. As with feeding to sleep, if a baby is always rocked or held to fall asleep, she will start to rely on this to fall back asleep between sleep cycles, calling mom or dad every 45 minutes. Don’t get me wrong—holding, cuddling, rocking, and snuggling your baby is SO important and vital for their development, you just don’t have to do this until she is fully asleep. We developed a specific sleep routine of reading a book, then holding and rocking Miss F while we sang a song. We’d continue bouncing her until she was really drowsy, which didn’t take long because she was in a predictable routine so we’d time this with when we knew she’d be getting sleepy. At that point, we’d lay her down in her crib, place a hand on her, and gently rock her back and forth while “shushing.” As her eyes began to close, we’d quietly leave the room, so she ultimately was falling asleep without us. The whole routine could take 20-30 minutes, so we had to be committed to it, but soon she knew just what to expect. Then as she got older, we worked toward putting her down fully awake instead of drowsy (more on this later).

3. Begin working toward “merges.” This is a term from the book On Becoming Babywise, which I’ve included in my favorite resources list. The theory behind merges is that as a baby gets older, provided she is consuming enough calories during the day, she can begin sleeping for longer stretches at night (assuming her pediatrician clears this). The general rule of thumb is that a newborn can sleep a nighttime stretch as many hours as she is weeks old—so for example, a four-week-old can sleep a four hour stretch, a five-week-old can sleep a five hour stretch, and so on. If your baby wakes hungry sooner than that stretch, absolutely feed her, but you don’t need to be waking her up before then to eat. As a baby lengthens her longest night time stretch, she’ll need fewer feedings at night, so they’ll naturally “merge” together from probably three feeds, to two feeds, to one feed, to none.

4. Practice “The Pause.” I borrowed this term from the book Bringing Up Bebe, a hilarious first-person account by an American expat raising her daughter in Paris. The Pause describes the few seconds a parent takes before intervening when her child cries. It is NOT ignoring a child’s crying or cues, but rather taking a few seconds to interpret the cues so they can be properly responded to. Babies are especially restless sleepers and make all sorts of noises when they sleep, even cry-like whimpers. If a parent rushes to scoop up her baby the moment she makes a peep, he or she may very easily wake a sleeping baby. Can you imagine if every time you turned over or made a small noise in your sleep, your spouse grabbed you and frantically asked, “Are you ok?!”? It’s the same thing for babies when we jump to respond to them the moment they make a noise. By pausing a few seconds to listen to the noises a baby is making, a parent can better respond to them. The baby may indeed soon work up to a full cry that needs to be attended to, but she may just as easily whimper a moment before falling right back to sleep.

5. Start working on naps (more on this in the nap section below).

By continuing the survival week principles, and following the new principles introduced starting at Week 3, we followed Miss F’s cues to guide her into a predictable routine where she was well-fed, well-rested, and very happy. By 7 weeks old Miss F had merged all of her night feeds, so she was sleeping from 8:30pm to 7:00am (with a 10:30pm dream feed; if you’re unfamiliar with this concept, here’s a great explanation). Seven weeks is on the early end for this to happen, but a sleep pattern like this is typical within the first couple months for a baby whose parents follow the general principles I’ve laid out. Don’t think that Miss F was a perfect sleeper since she was seven weeks—she has definitely hit regressions and growth spurts since then—but her predictable routine has helped us always lovingly meet her needs, and then get back into a normal schedule quickly. In fact, because she is such a great sleeper, I would argue that we can actually respond to her needs better. If she wakes up during the night, we know something is actually wrong and we need to meet a need for her.

But what about naps?

One thing I have read in a variety of sleep resources is that you can choose to focus on improving night sleep or nap sleep first, but likely not both at once. Night sleep was most important to our family, so that’s what we chose.

What we found was that by following the principles I’ve laid out, Miss F took naps at predictable times, but originally needed “sleep props” to help her sleep well for them (i.e. needed to be held or rocked, which is TOTALLY normal for this age). Starting at about 4 weeks, we made the goal of getting her to start two of her naps in her crib each day. Many families do this sooner, but it’s what worked for us. For those two naps, I’d follow the sleep routine I mentioned earlier to get her to start her nap in her crib. She still would often wake up after 45 minutes, and I’d go back in to place my hand on her and rock her back and forth again. Sometimes this worked and she’d go right back to sleep, but sometimes it wouldn’t. Because night time sleep was our priority, it was really important that she not get overtired during the day, so I would hold her for the rest of her nap time until her next feeding. While many strict sleep training proponents would say this could create a bigger sleep prop that she’d need to be “weaned” from, I did not find it to be problematic. Sleep is so developmental, and in my opinion, when Miss F was so little she just wasn’t developmentally ready to sleep that much on her own and made that known to us. By following her cues, we made sure she got the rest and support she needed, and by about 8 weeks old, her naps had gotten much more predictable and had lengthened—because she was learning how to connect her own sleep cycles. By the time I went back to working from home when she was 10 weeks old, her naps were predictable enough I could schedule meetings during them.

The post-newborn phase

Around 4-5 months old, babies usually get much more alert to the world around them which can cause a sleep regression.

Here’s what happened for us...

Around 3 months old Miss F hit a growth spurt, so she started waking up once per night to eat again. A good general rule is that if your baby is waking up at the same time every night it’s mostly likely just a habit, but if your baby is waking at a different time every night, it’s most likely true hunger. Learn your baby’s cues, and you’ll be able to tell. Once she was out of her growth spurt, she hit the sleep regression and continued waking once per night. She was so alert during the day, she was an extremely distracted nurser and it became impossible to get her to take a full feeding. Thus, she wasn’t getting enough calories during the day, so she was waking up legitimately hungry at night. I was firmly committed to feeding her if she was hungry, so I just focused on getting her more calories during the day to try to prevent the night wakings. This ended up being an on-and-off battle until she was about 6 months old and started solids (we chose to wait until 6 months per the AAP’s guidelines and Miss F’s achievement of “signs of readiness”). She permanently phased out that night feeding at that point for a few reasons—the solids added some more calories, she was more used to the world around her so she nursed better again, and developmentally she was ready for it. You can take a look at all of her schedules from her first year of life if you’re curious how our schedule played out as she dropped naps and slept through the night.

Here are the few additional sleep principles we introduced:

1. Move toward putting the baby down fully awake, instead of drowsy. As a baby gets older a rocking/bouncing/shushing routine can turn into a sleep prop. As she gets more aware, whenever she slightly awakes between sleep cycles she might need the rocking/bouncing/shushing to go back to sleep. If a baby gets used to being placed in her crib (or other safe sleep environment) fully awake, she’ll have no problem falling back asleep independently throughout the night or her naps. Work toward this change gradually—slightly reduce the time you’re helping your baby get drowsy each day, until she’s fully alert when you’re placing her down. This will look different for every family, but by about 5 months we held Miss F while we prayed and sang a song, then placed her in her crib, rubbed her back while we sang another short song, and walked out while she was fully awake.

2. Implement “The Sleep Wave” from The Happy Sleeper (more on this below).

But, what if it’s just not working?

I’m the first to admit that I obsessed a little too much about Miss F’s sleep when she was young. She was a fantastic sleeper overall, but any little hiccup led me to Googling every possible cause. I wanted a foolproof formula. Of course this doesn’t exist, because every baby is different, and, as my husband very patiently often reminded me, babies are not robots. Reflecting on those months now I can see that so much more clearly, but I do think it’s helpful to have a few tools in the toolbox to try if you’re following your baby’s cues and still unable to get on a schedule or have good sleep.

When Miss F turned 5 months old we started following the approach outlined in the book The Happy Sleeper (prior to 5 months old, we also followed the Taking Cara Babies newborn course; The Happy Sleeper’s and TCB’s newborn (months 0-5) approaches are both great and very similar. While I believe it would be immoral for me to just publish all The Happy Sleeper’s tips without their consent (go support the authors and buy the book!), I’ll share a few reasons we chose this approach and how it worked for us.

1. Once Miss F was 5 months old she started to learn cause and effect relationships. Thus, she’d learn “If I want to keep playing and not fall asleep right now, I just have to cry and mom or dad will come back in my room to rub my back,” turning sleeping times into a game. We also knew her cries and cues so well at this point, we could easily tell if she was actually upset or just trying to not go to sleep. We knew her sleep protest was a cycle we couldn’t get out of without intentional thought.

2. At this age, we were ok with a little (i.e. 5 minutes) of crying, provided we knew all of Miss F’s needs had been met (she was full, had been awake long enough, had been showered with love and attention, had a dry diaper, her room was a comfortable temperature, etc.). We kept in mind that crying doesn’t always equal distress—it’s just the only way a baby has to express unhappiness with a situation. Miss F would always rather play than go to sleep, so she of course was unhappy when we’d place her in her crib. Even though the evidence shows no harm would likely be done with longer periods of crying, 5 minutes was what we were comfortable with as a family.

3. The Happy Sleeper lays out a very simple methodology it calls “The Sleep Wave” to gently guide your baby out of the habit of refusing needed sleep. It shares scientific and developmental reasoning behind the methodology, keeps parents involved, and ensures all a baby’s needs are met.

4. Once we implemented The Sleep Wave, Miss F went back to her great independent sleeping habits within a few days. Her naps were their normal length (I’d actually usually have to wake her up from them for her next feeding) and she was sleeping great at night. She has had other shorter regressions when we have had to use The Sleep Wave again, but because we were using a recognizable routine that she’d seen before (consistency is key!), those regressions lasted even less time.

The older months

A baby’s schedule continually evolves as she gets older. You’ll be adding in meals of solids, dropping nursing or bottle feedings, merging naps, and working through teething and developmental regressions. We found that once Miss F hit 5 months, the routine to handle each change was typically the same—so while change was constant, handling the change felt more and more normal. We used the same resources and tips we’d followed from birth, and to this day have yet to hit a regression that threw us for too much of a loop (except the 2-to-1 nap transition… that one was a doozy!).

Whew, that was a lot! Here’s a quick summary of what we did to encourage Miss F’s great sleep:

1. Follow an EWS pattern (don’t feed baby to sleep), but always feed a hungry baby

2. Encourage full feedings

3. Follow a baby-guided schedule to ensure enough calories during the day

4. Enforce a DWT around 3-4 weeks

5. Stretch sleep at night to equate to weeks old (e.g. 5 hour stretch at 5 weeks)

6. Put baby down drowsy in the early months, and fully awake once a little older

7. Develop consistent nap and night routines

8. Practice “The Pause” (from Bringing up Bebe)

9. Implement “The Sleep Wave” at 5 months (from The Happy Sleeper)