Our little one, Lionetta, is two and a half months old.  We’ve been using the SNOO by Happiest Baby since her first week at home and it has been such a blessing.  Read below for Lionetta’s newborn week-by-week sleep hour count and my newborn sleep tips and review of the SNOO.

Lionetta’s Sleep Hours with the SNOO:

Week 1: 2-3 hrs
Week 2: 2-3 1/2 hrs
Week 3: up to 4 hrs
Week 4: up to 5 hrs
Week 5: up to 5 1/2 hrs
Week 6: up to 5 1/2 hrs
Week 7: up to 7 hrs
Week 8: up to 7 1/2 hrs
Week 9: up to 8 hrs
Week 10: up to 8 1/2 hrs
Week 11: up to 9 1/2 hrs

We use the Hatch Baby app to track Lionetta’s feedings, sleep, diaper changes, and weight.  I went back through her sleep history on the app to document her sleep hours over the past 11 weeks; it’s interesting to see her sleep hours increase gradually week-by-week.  The first month to month and a half, her sleeping hours would vary.  (This is probably due to her beginning to differentiate day from night and simply figuring out her new life on earth!)  It’s important to realize that the SNOO cannot change the size of your newborn’s tiny stomach.  Your little one has to feed often, especially in the first 6 weeks, because her stomach is so small – from my understanding, it’s actually not a good thing for a newborn to sleep too long until her stomach size is bigger (around the 2-3 month mark).

About The SNOO: The SNOO was created by Dr. Harvey Karp (the pediatrician of the 5 S’s method and The Happiest Baby on The Block book).  The SNOO is a bassinet with built-in white noise and rocking movement to help calm your baby – and according to their website, it is the safest crib on the market.  As first time parents, bringing a baby home from the hospital and being solely responsible for another human life was incredibly overwhelming.  Knowing that she sleeps in the safest crib has definitely been a huge peace of mind for us – and thus allowed us to catch some extra (and much needed) zzz’s!

The Functions of the SNOO: Basically, you use a swaddle made for the SNOO (each SNOO comes with a size small, medium, and large swaddle) and you clip it into the actual bassinet so your little one always stays safely on her back.  The SNOO has four levels of white noise paired with a rocking motion to help soothe your baby.  When your little one is calm, the first level is a soft white noise with gentle rocking.  If your baby wakes up in the middle of a sleep session, the SNOO automatically ups the levels to increase the white noise and rocking motion.  You can also manually increase the level through an app on your phone or button on the bassinet.  (Yes, this means when your little one is crying in the middle of the night, you basically have a remote on your phone to try to calm her down.)  This is especially helpful for newborns who are learning to connect their sleep cycles – refer to “the pause” method from Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman.

We Had to Replace Our First SNOO: We are actually on our second SNOO because our first SNOO broke.  Around day 45 of using the SNOO it started to squeak, eventually jerk in motion, and finally totally shut down.  We worked with the Happiest Baby customer service to troubleshoot issues and eventually replace our SNOO.  We’ve had the new SNOO for several weeks now and it has been working fine so far.  We went about a week without having any white noise (we used a white noise machine as backup) and rocking motion.  However, thankfully our little one still slept well.  Now that we have our fresh SNOO, things have been working well and her sleeping through the night is priceless.

Our Baby is Sleeping Through The Night: I give much credit to the SNOO for my little one sleeping 8 to 9 hours at night by two and a half months.  I actually had to wake her the other morning because she had slept 9 and a half hours and I was so engorged I couldn’t wait any longer to feed her.  We asked our pediatrician if this is safe for her to sleep that long at night and he said it is “abnormal” and we should go to church and thank God!  Joking aside, he said it is totally safe because our baby is gaining weight and healthy.

Overall, I give credit to our little one’s sleep for the following:

• Helping her differentiate day and night:
  • During the day:
    • not trying to be too quiet, (i.e., allowing the dog to bark)
    • plenty of light
    • lots of playtime and stimulation (refer to the book Eat, Play, Sleep by Luiza DeSouza)
    • healthy 2 hour naps (unless she wakes up hungry before the 2 hour mark)
  • During the night:
    • dark room
    • little to no noise
    • not talking to her or playing with her during night feedings and diaper changes
• Doing “the pause” (observing her when she cries to see if she actually needs something from me or if she is connecting a sleep cycle)
• Feeding her plenty during the day, so she isn’t too hungry at night
• Baby-led newborn schedule
• Tracking her feeding, sleep, diapers, and weight with the Hatch Baby smart changing pad and app
• The SNOO

Each Baby is Unique: Our little one still cries often and has endless cranky moments.  Each moment is different and we are just taking everything day by day.  To hear from our pediatrician that her night sleeping is “abnormal” but in a good way, I wanted to share what we’ve learned to hopefully help other parents trying to learn from their new, fresh tiny human.  I hope sharing what we’ve learned helps you and your little one get some rest!

 

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