Sleep in a Small Apartment
Theo sleeping through a photoshoot with the lights on.
Photo Cred: Blue Window Creative
Sleep has been on my mind lately...
One of my biggest fears of having another baby is the lack of sleep that I know is unavoidable. This fear has me going over again what worked in our small space with one baby's sleep habits. Theo is a great sleeper, though we still had our share of sleepless, teething and sick nights. I'm not sure if Theo is just a naturally good sleeper or if some of our efforts toward his sleep paid off. We received great advice from friends before he was born that we listened to intensely and followed. Their advice was to train our baby to fall asleep with background noise and in different places so that we can still travel, visit friends and host people in our space.
I'm no baby sleep expert but here are the tips/techniques that made living in our small space with a baby that much more enjoyable*:
- Have background noise when you put your baby down. We always had music or the TV on when Theo went to sleep so that we could carry on talking in normal voices once we was asleep.
- Don't make their room completely dark. This isn't really an option in our house as the sliding doors for Theo's room have glass panels. But we found this was also helpful for stroller naps and naps at family or friends where you can't make the rooms perfectly dark.
- Fall asleep at different places. We made a habit of keeping our pack 'n play in the car and staying late at friends' so Theo would learn to fall asleep in strange rooms. Sometimes this didn't work out but in the end we found most times he would fall asleep eventually and this made travel much easier.
- Crib Sleeping. Co-sleeping looks lovely and I totally get why people do it. But in our small space we are never more than a few steps from each other at any given moment. So we made the choice early on to keep Theo in his bed and out of ours (except for morning cuddles of course!). We put him in his mini crib right away and stayed strong on him sleeping in his bed through some teary nights (mostly mine).
* Disclaimer: These techniques only worked with one child. We hope to try them again with baby #2. I totally get that every kid is different and these might not work for you. Just trying to share what worked for us in the small chance it might work for you and for us... again
**Disclaimer 2: While sleep training was relatively smooth for us. Potty training is going terribly. I wonder if there is a correlation ;)