Our newborn daughter, as cute as she is, has a major issue with sleeping at night… Which means we have a major issue with sleeping at night. So we’ve started down the path of baby sleep training in hopes we can all start getting a semi decent night of sleep sometime soon! (Preferably by the time my maternity leave ends early next month.)

Basically, sleep training is trying to keep your baby awake in the daytime for longer periods of time so they get used to the idea that they should be sleeping at night. I’m not trying to get results immediately, and I’m totally aware our little girl was only 10 days old when we started on this journey… But man I’d love to get her to understand nights are for 4 hr chunks of sleep.

So this is our sleep training journey – I’ll try to update this post as we progress and let you know how it’s working out!

Day 1: Sleep training FAIL. We ended up running errands today, so any hope of keeping Joy awake in the daylight hours were shot to heck by parents in the front seat, and an infant in the car seat… Which is basically a recipe for Joy to conk out immediately. I told myself to calm down, I still had a month plus five days to get a handle on this before getting back in the office.

Day 2: Morning success! Little girl was awake from 7am to 9am this morning… I’m not sure if we had anything to do with it, but she usually passes right back out after her 7am feeding, so this feels like progress. But then… Its only day 2 of sleep training and with Josh going back to work tomorrow, there’s more errands to run today. Not going to expect any more progress today, keeping expectations realistic.

Checking in later in the day – no errands today, and second sleep wake cycle went off without a hitch. Joy actually fought sleep in the daytime for once! Then this afternoon, little girl totally snuggled up to her dad while we all hung out in the backyard, and it was so cute all thoughts of keeping her awake went right out the window.

Joy went to bed an hour earlier, at 9pm, but was up again at 11pm for a feeding, and then around 4am for a long chunk of party time. I wrangled the 4am feeding, and an hour and a half later had to bring Josh in tag team style to rock her some more so I could get a tiny bit more sleep.

Day 3: Coffee next door on mom in law Carole’s back porch this morning. Joy snuggled up to grandma, and I continued to wonder if sleep training was a futile endeavor, and if it was even worth it to keep trying. Joy’s so happy to snuggle, and we’re obviously happy to oblige.

The rest of the morning has been lots of naps for this girl, and lots of thinking about ways to wrangle the work schedule next month if her nocturnal lifestyle continues that long.

Day 4: Yesterday, I was ready to give up on sleep training for our newborn. But then night fell, and brought one of the most ridiculous nights yet. Joy nursed from 7-8:30pm, almost continuously. Then she fought sleep until 10:30pm. Josh and I had made plans to share dessert and a glass of wine when she went to bed at 7, but by the time she finally went down we both were so wiped out we just fell into bed. She woke up again at 2am for a couple of hours. And again around 6am.

And on top of that, little boy Phil had a major tantrum night. Yikes.

We have got to make the days and nights switch. We. Have. Got. To.

Thankfully, Joy’s been pretty awake in the daylight hours today without too much work… I’m hopeful.

Day 5: Had Joy’s 2 week well baby doctor visit this morning, and we used it as an opportunity to ask her about the days/nights mixup and her thoughts on sleep training. Overall, she said there’s not a whole lot we can do, and given her age it’s not like we can really control this… Something we kind of knew already.

Her recommendation was to keep on keeping on with trying to show her the distinct differences between daytime and nighttime. That means lights on, loud noises, talking to her in the daytime hours. And when she’s up nights, keep the lights dim, the sounds quiet, and the interactions not as engaging.

The light at the end of the tunnel? Our pediatrician did say most babies work it out by 6 weeks I think.

I hope.

So that’s that, sleep training for us is kind of over in a sense. We’ll keep going with the flow and try to encourage being awake in the daytime, but we won’t force it.

Have you tried baby sleep training?

How did it work out for you? I’d love to see your comments on it!

Update: Day 6 Pray for us – Joy got up at 5:30am today, and it’s 9:30am right now, and she’s been awake almost the whole time!!!