Baby Sleep Training - Weeks 9-12

Suzy Giordano Baxter: Hi! I'm Suzy Giordano Baxter also known as the Baby Coach. I'm here today to guide you into teaching your baby how to sleep through the night. By now at week eight, your baby should be getting close to reaching the right weight, be eating the right amount of food to start your sleep training. At this point, get yourself ready to decide what is the best schedule for your baby and your family. Once you peek-a-block of 12 hours, remember, every morning you get a chance to start all over again. So be kind to yourself. At this point, your baby should be ready and able to go four hours in between feedings. Make sure to keep that schedule as strict as possible between the day hours. Be flexible during the night hours. Remember, with this method you will work with your baby's natural tendencies. At this point, your log is going to be your best friend. It's going to enable you to make sure the baby is getting the nutritional and caloric needs met during the day. That way you will be able to start deceasing the amount of food they have in the middle of the night. You will do the decrease of the feeding, half an ounce, one ounce at a time depending on your baby. You have two ways of eliminating those feedings. One, you can decrease the amount; the second, you can stretch the feedings. Whatever you will choose, it will depend on your baby's personality. So if you have become easy to handle baby, you should start stretching the baby by going in, soothing, patting, shushing in the middle of the night. If you have a demanding baby, you might go towards decreasing the feeding, half an ounce at a time. Making sure that, that half an ounce or an ounce that you eliminated from the night goes in some feedings during the day. Babies are like adults. Remember, they are just little human beings. They will have preferred times of eating. So use those feedings. Once again, referring to your log, you will be able to see that they do have a preferred time. Once you decide what that was, those are the feedings that you want to encourage your baby to eat. Remember, you don't want to force your baby to eat; you want to encourage it to eat. This is a baby step program; you are going to do it one step at a time and it's the positive results of each step that's going to empower you to stay with it. So be patient, have a plan of action. Between week eight and twelve, you are going to be able to get your baby on a four-hour schedule as well as eliminate the feedings and sleep train your baby. So a lot is going to be happening between those four weeks. As you notice that your baby is going comfortably through the feedings during the day time, you are going to notice as well that your baby seems less interested in eating in the middle of the night. That's your green signal to move forward. Start decreasing the feedings or discouraging the feedings. If you are nursing your baby, you should monitor how many minutes the baby is nursing in the middle of the night. Decrease it by a minute. If you are bottle feeding your baby, decrease by half an ounce to an ounce depending on your baby. Once the baby has the ability to go through the night without feeding, you might find yourself going back and forth to the nursery trying to soothe your baby. Now it's time to start sleep training. These are the basic rules to follow between weeks eight through twelve. Next, Baby Boot Camp. Let's start sleep training.