Night Feeds & Teaching Sleep

Hey everyone!

Today we’re going to answer the question: Can you teach your baby to sleep independently while still needing night feeds?

This is a question that a lot of new moms ask me. And absolutely you can teach them. It is possible that your baby has great sleep skills, while also waking up for the feeds that they need. 

Newborns still need those nutrients during the night, and we shouldn’t deprive them of that. But when they have independent sleep skills, they’ll naturally drop those on their own. They won’t be relying on your feed to get them to sleep. 

What does it look like when they have independent sleep skills? You get them up after hearing them, you would feed them on the bottle or breast, and then you put them down to sleep absolutely awake. They then put themselves back to sleep, no problem.

I remember when I learned to do this with my little one. I watched her on the monitor thinking, She’s just laying there, awake! She didn’t make a peep. She just learned to fall asleep all on her own. It made night feeds so much more special because I wasn’t stressed about getting her back to sleep. 

So, when I work with clients with newborns, a lot of them are prenatal clients.  I meet with them before the baby even arrives, and we start off on the best foot possible. This means that baby understands the routine and has a good rhythm going, mom and dad understand the goals that we’re trying to achieve, and from there we are able to develop some really good independent sleep skills.

I also have newborn clients, where the client comes to me when their baby is a newborn, and we work on helping baby to sleep longer stretches. It’s a really tough time having a newborn. Sleep deprivation is hard. Your brain is not working, you’re physically recovering from childbirth or the adoption process, and so getting quality sleep is really important. 

We all come out of the womb needing to learn skills. People often think that sleep is one of those skills that babies know how to do naturally, but that’s not true. We need to teach babies how to sleep, just like we would teach them how to ride a bike, or walk and talk.

Intentionally teaching sleep early on does not mean that we drop the night feed. In fact, it just makes the night feed way more pleasant. It also means that when baby is ready to drop that feed, it is not stressful. We’re able to get longer stretches of sleep because they understand how they are falling asleep, they have those internal skills, and they’re not relying on the parent every 45 minutes or 2 hours to get back to sleep. Instead, they are calling for mum when they are actually hungry. 

If you have a newborn or are pregnant and wanting to start sleep off on the right foot, feel free to message me and we can make sure that your baby is sleeping independently but still getting all of the nutrients they need.

And why not check out my Free Newborn Sleep Class!