How We Got Our Baby To Sleep Through The Night By *6 Weeks Old*!

Nothing beats the first time that your baby sleeps through the night!! ..and the sooner, the better! 
8+ hours of uninterrupted sleep, with a 6 week old baby.... glorious! Here's how we did it!

Gavin was pretty easy on us and was an amazing sleeper! Every night since the day he was born, he would at least have a 5 hour stretch between feedings! During the nights he would pretty much wake up, eat, and go right back to sleep. Although, usually it was more like wake up, eat, and fall asleep while still eating (kid likes his sleep just like his mommy & daddy!).
But, even though he was naturally a good sleeper, there's still a lot that we did to make sure that his love for sleeping didn't change ;)

Here's how we had our baby boy sleeping through the night by a sweet, 6 weeks old!!

Cluster Feeding
Night Feed in a Dimly Lit Room
Diaper Change
Right Back to Bed

Read more about how we did each below.

CLUSTER FEEDING

The one thing I swear by, and I honestly think really helped us get more sleep during the nights, was cluster feeding!! It was recommended to me by some other mama's, and in one of my baby books (Tracy Hogg's, "The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems") she uses the cluster feeding approach as well.

So what is cluster feeding? 

Pretty much exactly that. You feed them in clusters in the evenings leading up to bedtime. Essentially, you are just trying to "tank" them up, so they will sleep a longer stretch for you at night.  One of the best things I took out of one of my baby books was this idea: Babies need a certain amount of calories per 24 hours- they don't care if they get them during the day or the night! That is so true, the baby could care less if they wake up at midnight, 2, 4 and 6 am every night to eat... but we, the parents, CARE! The more your baby gets during the daytime, the less they need during the night! We were extremely lucky with Gavin, and since day 1 he would always have at least about a 5 hour stretch between feedings every night. BUT, I also started from the get go, with cluster feeding him at night. If he was going 3 hours between every feeding during the day, then his last few feedings in the evening would be only 2 hours apart.  So here's a sample schedule with cluster feeding: 

8am - Feed

11am - Feed

2pm - Feed

5pm - Feed

7pm - Feed

9pm - Feed & BED!

For Gavin, by 6 weeks he was having his last feeding around 9pm, we would lay him down right after that, and he would sleep until about 5am! 8 GLORIOUS hours of sleep!! We would feed him at 5am, and he would go right back to sleep for another couple hours! (and so would we!) 

*I highly recommend looking into cluster feeding, and trying it out!

Night Feed in a Dimly Lit Room

Before Gavin was sleeping through the night, for his night time feedings I would feed him right in our bed, with the bedroom as dark as possible! All we would do is turn on our hallway light right outside of our bedroom, and crack our door just enough so that I could see to feed him (I always fed him right in our bed, and he slept in his bassinet right beside our bed). If it's too light in your room, baby gets distracted looking at all of the cool things in the room and then decides they'd rather just stay awake instead of go back to sleep (no thank you!).

Diaper Change

As soon as I was done feeding Gavin- we changed his diaper (what baby wants to go back to sleep in a wet diaper..??). For some babies, getting their diaper changed (and getting their little butt wiped with a cold wipe) wakes them up too much, but for us it never seemed to cause a problem. 

Right Back to Bed!

After Gavin was in a nice clean diaper, we swaddled him back up, and laid him right back down! Half the time he was already back to sleep (a lot of times he would sleep right through his diaper change even!) but if he was awake, we still just laid him down in his bassinet. The majority of the time he would fall back to sleep all on his own. If he would start to fuss, and wasn't showing any signs of going back to sleep..we would go rock him for a little while, and that usually did the trick :)
(rocking a baby at 3 am, is somehow just as precious as any other time during the day!)

Hopefully this helps you!!! It worked for us, but every sweet baby is different!

:)