My Sleep Story

Hi everyone! I’m Arden, mom of three tiny humans, Landen (5), Joey (3.5) and Graham (15 months), and a certified pediatric sleep consultant through the Collective for Family Rest and Wellness. I just wanted to introduce myself and tell you a little bit about my sleep journey and what brought me here.

My sleep journey was a little bit different than many of the sleep consultants that I follow or have met through my program. Most often, you hear “I became a sleep consultant because (insert name of first child) struggled so much with sleep. I wanted to help other parents going through what I went through!” Sleep consultants find themselves here because of sleep issues they had with a new baby, and they either did a ton of research to try to perfect their baby’s sleep, OR they hired a sleep consultant themselves and ended up learning a ton about baby sleep. Sleep deprivation is NO JOKE. It can truly impact every aspect of your life, and it is a major cause of PPA and PPD. It can really spiral into something dangerous for the parents and the baby.

My story would be different, because I did all the research…

Fortunately, this is NOT my story. In fact, I was honestly obsessed with sleep and doing everything I could to make sure my kids slept through the night as early as possible from the second I found out I was pregnant with Landen. I read everything there was to read about infant sleep. I took advice from all of the other moms I knew about sleep. I got stories from my own parents about how their beloved baby nurse helped them get all three kids sleeping “through the night” (around 11PM-6/7AM) by two weeks old. We can talk about how “sleeping through the night” can mean so many different things another time, and I didn’t fully understand what this meant at the time but I knew I was going to make it happen for my kids. 

I decided that I would not be breastfeeding simply because as a new mom I did not think I would be able to focus on both feeding and sleep, and sleep was my priority (both my own and my baby’s). I remember going to a breastfeeding class at the hospital when I was pregnant with Landen and still considering it. I walked out of that class and threw the pamphlets in the trash because I really felt like it would interfere with my own sleep and my sleep training.

I consider myself lucky to have had both a great support system and confidence, which together helped me feel secure in my decision to formula feed when society was telling me to breastfeed. This may seem irrelevant, but feeding and sleep are so completely intertwined in those newborn days, that you really can’t consider one without the other.

So anyway, I knew how I was going to feed this baby, and more importantly I knew when I would feed because this kid was going to be on a schedule from day one if I had anything to say about it. I went into this motherhood thing “prepared” to get my baby sleeping through the night right away just as my own parents had. Or so I thought.

Landen’s Story

Landen was born 6 weeks early. He was on a feeding tube in the beginning, and then an IV for nutrients while he was learning to eat on his own. He could not be discharged from the NICU until he was able to take 8 1oz bottles over a 24 hour period with both the feeding tube and IV gone. This was HARD.

The delivery nurse at NYU after Landen was born immediately taught me how to hand express my milk just seconds after my preemie was whisked away to the NICU, and the nurse in the recovery room brought me a pump and told me I must pump every 2 hours to keep up my supply to feed my preemie and get him off the feeding tube. Nobody asked me if I had planned to breastfeed or not. They all just started instructing me, and I was a brand new mom in a hospital that was not my own in a city that I wasn’t supposed to give birth in, and I was overwhelmed so I just listened. Nobody even taught me how to use the pump, and on day two I tore skin off while removing the pump.

A lactation consultant did not come to my room until I was leaving, when there should have been one there immediately to show me what to do if they were set on pushing breastfeeding so hard. However, Landen was premature, and breast milk was “better” than formula (according to society and all of the nurses and signs in the hospital), so my plan to formula feed would have to be put on hold.

I left my baby in the hospital and went to my parents apartment and I pumped every 2 hours around the clock while Eric ran back and forth to NYU to drop off the minuscule amount of milk I was getting to supplement the mostly formula and IV fluids he was being fed to literally survive. And then on day 10 he was discharged from the NICU and I threw away all of that pumping stuff and did not look back. I was going to sleep and so was my baby and breastfeeding was not part of that plan.

But guess what you can’t do. You can’t get a preemie with a tiny belly to eat enough calories in a day unless he is fed every 2-3 hours, even if he’s fed formula, and even overnight. He had to eat and he had to grow so despite all my research and preparation, sleep had to come second to feeding for my little preemie. By this I do not mean that he did not sleep, I mean that pushing him to give me those extra hours overnight was not an option in the early days. However, I STILL made sure to keep his feeding and sleeping on a “schedule” to make sure I had control over his sleep training process (a process that CAN begin at birth!). 

The only reason that I was physically and mentally able to do this was because of the support system that I had. Before Landen left the NICU, I was lucky to have Eric and my parents by my side letting me heal and supporting whatever feeding decisions I made. For the first two weeks after Landen was home, I was fortunate enough to have an amazing baby nurse who was helping us take care of Landen around the clock. Once the nurse left, Eric took on most of the overnight feedings allowing me to rest and recover, and Landen had four grandparents eager and willing to give us both a break. It was because of all of this support that I was able to focus on my plan and my routine.

Landen did sleep through the night pretty early on, but it obviously wasn’t after two weeks. To this day, at five years old, he still has pretty great sleep habits and yet, there are still so many things I didn’t know or maybe wish I had done differently (actively trying not to wish this or dwell on any of it, but I think that’s a story for another day). 

Joey’s Story

The good news is that I had the chance to do things differently, because after Landen came Joey. Joey was tiny. In fact, when she was born I thought something was wrong with her because she looked so much like Landen, and Landen was premature. It turns out she was just tiny and it turns out tinier babies have tinier bellies and take tinier bottles, at least early on. However, tinier babies also just need tinier bottles, so she was my easiest as an infant and was definitely “sleeping through the night” the earliest. I think by about 5 weeks old we got around 7 hours from her.

Easy babies demand the least attention, so easy babies, especially with brothers 18 months older, get the least attention, therefore rendering difficult toddlers. Admittedly, I didn’t have the time or energy to focus on her sleep, and she was so independent that I thought I didn’t need to. I was so wrong, and currently, she gives me more trouble around sleep than either of the boys. I had learned so much MORE about sleep once again, as Joey’s sleep habits were so incredibly different than Landen’s, but I honestly don’t think I fully understood Joey’s sleep until I completed my certification course. And again I look back knowing there were so many things I could’ve done differently (yes, while actively trying not to wish this). But I also know that once again, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my support system.

Graham’s Story

And after Joey came Graham. Graham was my biggest baby at a whopping 6 lb 12 oz. I already knew a TON about sleep and he was closer to being big enough to not need as many overnight feedings. He was going to be my super easy sleep through the night super early kid.

And then it was dirty diaper after dirty diaper (literally 16-20 a day), formula change after formula change, and the pediatrician followed by the gastro after 1 month of no weight gain. Little man had a milk protein allergy so guess what. Feeding had to be a priority, at least until he caught up. 

And once again, it was support and resources that helped me get through this time with him. Graham had to be on special formula which was HARD to get. You couldn’t find it in stores anywhere, and it was a process to get it from insurance. Once the insurance debacle was settled, they did send me a case every month, but not before I spent hundreds of dollars to get the most expensive formula on the market from Amazon (and the only option that he was able to tolerate).

I couldn’t control everything, even though I desperately wanted to.

Despite all of this, each of my three kids slept through the night relatively early on, and each of my three kids dropped all night feeds at about 5 months. And yet, each of my three kids are completely different sleepers. I’ll come back here and tell you each of their sleep stories and how I managed, and still continue to manage, their daily needs. But for now this is about how I came to where I am and how each of their little differences taught me so much.

Through this process of sleep training my own three kids, I learned more about sleep than I ever thought possible, and I became even more obsessed than I was before. You may even say I had “sleep perfectionism” (I am still recovering from this). But this process taught me that you can only control what you can control, something that I like to remind myself when I feel like everything is out of control (basically every night at bedtime), and something that I hope to be able to convince other parents of as well. My hope with this blog and this new journey is to help teach what I know to as many parents as possible and help create great sleep habits for your little ones, and maybe provide the support you may not be able to get elsewhere.