chasing sleep: ongoing quest to “train” our toddler

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

"You should try (insert suggestions here) and see if that helps."

"Well all my children were sleeping through the night at (insert unrealistic age in months here)."

"It's just a temporary phase, give him a little more time. (Insert eye roll here.)"

Yes, I am definitely new to this sleep “training” thing— if you couldn't already tell! I have a dozen nieces and nephews and it always seemed so easy for their parents to get them sleeping through the night. And I don't mean like 6-8 hour stretches, I mean a solid 10-12 hours! But here we are still trying to figure out what the heck to do next. Are we doing something wrong? Is there something we are missing with our little one? Did we screw up somewhere months ago and are now paying for it?

I read my fair share of blogs and books and listened to multiple podcasts so you can’t tell me I didn’t try. All the suggestions that came out of that content were put to the test multiple times. There were lots of frustrations on our part— rules and expectations were always changing because someone somewhere suggested something new.

Yes, we are still breastfeeding so I hear it all the time that "once he is off the boob, he will sleep better!" Not true. We tested formula on him and it did nothing but cause digestive issues. We gave bottled breastmilk and no changes to date. We tried all the sleep sacks. We turned the sound machine off and on again. We darkened his room, then tried a nightlight. We gave him water at night in place of the beloved boobie. We established a routine but he didn’t care!

I am not at all saying that these things will not work for you and your little one. I am simply stating that it was not very helpful for us. Maybe it was the timing of when we tried incorporating these things. Or the fact that he seemed to be teething every other week. Or we were too loose with our expectations early on. Who knows. Because I certainly do not have a clue.

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But maybe it’s time we normalize the fact that not ALL kids sleep well by “3-6 months.” I have a small handful of friends who say their kiddos were closer to age 2 before they slept BETTER-- but still not through the night! Just think about the olden days when there were no resources for new mothers! Somehow kids still made it out alive and there is not a massive sleeping problem in this day and age— as far as I‘m aware anyways.

So what might you ask did I learn from all this? For staters, there are literally no two mother-child relationships that are exactly the same. Whatever might have worked for your first is not guaranteed to work for the following. Most of my friends, coworkers, family members, even random acquaintances, seemed to have completely opposing suggestions on what the problem might be and how to go about fixing it.

I also learned to have a lot more patience (most days)! And how to survive on barely any sleep (pretty much every day)! It was after the reality set in that I would be running on little sleep for who knew how long that I stopped obsessing over it and let nature takes its course. And only then did he finally seem to slowly get better. No special interventions required.

So in all honesty, I guess I am saying that sometimes you just have to let your child take the lead and go from there. Learn to be flexible. And patient! Listen to your gut and don’t let anyone else try to tell you how to do things “correctly” in your own home. Expect that sometimes your child just might not be “normal” by others standards— which is more than okay with me! Our little one is so healthy and strong and smart that I am not willing to worry about it a second longer.

I'm sure I will do an updated post in a few months once we settle into some kind of consistency but until then,

cheers to being nurtured by friendships and naumi flavors!

Ayla