Life with a newborn and establishing the day-night circadian rhythm

During pregnancy, I read/ listened to every book I could find about- Montessori, RIE, Forest school, Attachment parenting, Unconditional parenting, Conscious Parenting and off course all the years as a teacher I was suppose to ace this from Day.1! But during the first 3 weeks, I often found myself googling “when does it get easier with a newborn.” The general consensus was 3 months! Well, I must say it gets easier as soon as the sleep is KIND OF sorted!

SLEEP…Luckily it only took us 3 weeks for Anika to work out the day and night circadian rhythm. Here are some things that worked for us:

• Form bedtime routines- we had a massage, bath, reading, feeding as our night time routine.
• Set the environment- Anika slept in the sunlit rooms (or in my sling) with noise during the day and night was silent and dark except the himalayan salt lamp that she loved looking at.
• Understanding the signs for hunger- Anika would root (open mouth move head from left to right) every 2 hours in sleep when hungry. If not feed within 2 minutes of this she would start crying and be wide awake for an hour after. Since we co-slept, any movement she did would automatically wake me up. I would immediately feed her and thus she never really woke up.
• Nappy changing- was done on my lap (not ideal, I know but anything for sleep!) or the startle reflex would wake her up from her half sleep to fully awake. I used changing cloths on my lap as cover, dressed her in night gowns to make it easy for me and kept lots of sanitizer and the nappy bin handy.
• If awake- I would only use whispering voices and try and put her to bed immediately. No mobiles and no playtime was encouraged.

After week.3 she still woke up every 2 hours to feed but mostly went back to sleep right away. The only drawback to above was she would not burp in her sleep so was more prone to being gassy early in the morning. But a tummy massage fixed that for us. We all do it differently. While I dont feel like a mama zombie anymore, we still have a long way to go for our day sleep rhythm. This is what worked for us and hope it helps you. Would love to hear how you did this…