“How to get a newborn to sleep in a bassinet/crib without crying?”
Sweet newborn sleeping while properly swaddled.
You have been home for 3 days with your sweet newborn now. It’s 3:00 AM again and you just finished nursing (or feeding) them. It took an hour and a half for them to finally stop eating and fall asleep. Now you can’t sleep and you’re terrified of moving and waking them right back up. Your back’s taking the worst of it all and it’s really starting to hurt, your eyes feel like they’re on fire and you know that the second you try to transfer your baby to that bassinet, the second they touch the mattress, their eyes will go wide open, they will start to cry again and you will just have to do it all over again… So you decide to leave them on your bed for now, but you don’t really want to. You want to move them to their bassinet and so, you do the next “best thing” you know how to do in that moment. You Google (or ask your favorite AI platform).
Why did I just describe that above? Oh, because it is a little too familiar! That was me almost 6 years ago feeling clueless, exhausted and defeated with my newborn. I wanted answers, I wanted help. So, if you’re feeling this way and therefore just Googled "how to get my newborn to sleep in their bassinet without crying," welcome!! You are not alone!! And I know, I know you aren’t looking for a “parenting philosophy” or a “long-term sleep training method” because you don’t believe in “crying it out”. No, what you’re looking for is a way to go to the bathroom without worrying that the baby will start crying. You want to feel like a human again.
As a Newborn Care Specialist, Postpartum Doula and night nanny serving Loveland, Fort Collins and the surrounding NoCo area, I hear this every single day so I want to try to offer a little bit of guidance. And although, I can promise you there is no “magic button”, no “reset button” or any magic potion that will just miraculously get your baby to stay asleep even when you transfer them to their own crib or bassinet, what I can tell you is that there is a rhythm and certain helpful tips we can try to help bridge that gap between your arms and the mattress, so, let’s break this up and dive right in:
WHY Is your newborn waking up so often, sometimes staying up for 1.5 hour at a time and then only sleeping for 45 mins?
Take a breath. A deep one, right this second… No, no, wait, I mean it. Pause the reading, relax your shoulders, relax your jaw, inhale in 3…. Exhale in 4…. Aaaaahhhh. Now do it again. Inhale in 3, exhale in 4… And one more time? Come on, I promise, we’ll get to the juicy stuff in a sec, but your nervous system will be grateful for this pause. Inhale in 3, exhale in 4… Greatttt! You did amazing. You ARE DOING AMAZING!! Ok, now let’s keep going and answer the real question, the “why”…
Your newborn is not broken and neither are you. Newborns are wired for survival. They just came out of the womb, the safest and coziest place you could ever imagine… Now they’re exposed, in an unknown environment and they have to figure out how to survive. So to break this into two: 1. The reason why your newborn eats every 2 or 3 hours is because their little stomach is the size of a nut and they are growing rapidly so they need the calories (we will talk more in detail about this in a future post!) and you might be thinking “yeah, lady, but this kid is eating FOR 1.5 HOURS AT A TIME! I AM EXHAUSTED!”, and trust me, I HEAR YOU. I was there myself what feels like “forever ago” and also as if it had been yesterday. And I won’t go into detail here because, again, we will talk more about this in a future entry as well but all I’ll say is: THIS IS NORMAL. Your newborn is working with your body to let your body understand the supply and even if you’re not breastfeeding/chestfeeding/bodyfeeding, nature will still work the same way. I will share more about this in the future if you comment or send me a message saying you want more info on this :)
Now part two of this is… WHY is it that you really simply cannot transfer them to the bassinet without them crying hysterically?
This will be a layered answered (what in newborn care is not?😂😅). The first layer is, once again, NATURE. Your baby is going to want the warmth, the smell, the familiarity of being in your arms. And then the second layer of this is… NATURE😂 But also, science! Are you familiar with REM and non-REM sleep?? (No worries if not, we will dive deep into it another time😉) when you try to transfer, matters.
While I cannot promise any specific outcomes because every single baby and every single family are totally unique and completely different, I have worked on truly observing each baby I have worked with and have developed my “Search-To-Sure” method thanks to that observation and here is what I have found to work best from the Search-To-Sure method approach:
TEMPERATURE MATTERS: Both the temperature in the room (which, hey, guess what… We will talk more about in a different entry! Haha) AND the temperature in the bassinet or crib. When your baby’s all warm and cozy in your arms and all of a sudden you try to put them down on a cold sheet, that’s going to be a shock and, remember, we are talking about a brand new human being so their brain will interpret this as a “safety risk”. This will lead to them inevitably waking up because, remember? SURVIVAL. So what can you do? You can try to warm up the crib/bassinet a little bit by putting something warm, perhaps moving a warm water bottle around. MAKE SURE IT IS NOT HOT AND ALSO MAKE SURE THAT THE HEATING DEVICE IS NOT STILL IN THE CRIB/BASSINET WHEN YOU PLACE BABY, OTHERWISE THAT’S A HUGE RISK!!
FEET FIRST: Some people place their baby with their bottom down first, others do their heads and others… All at once. The absolute most ideal way of doing this is by starting with their feet and then moving up (it might be ok to do bottom first, it works with some babies) so feet, bottom, sloooowly lowering the torso/back and then the last thing to touch the mattress should be the head. (Wanna take a guess as to why this is how it should be?? I wanna hear your thoughts, then we can discuss more!)
WAIT TO TRANSFER: The absolute most ideal scenario would be that you put your baby “drowsy but awake”, but, if they already fell asleep on you, the next best thing you can do is wait until your baby is WAIT until they are “sound asleep” (AKA, they are in their NON-REM sleep). You can make sure this is the case by making sure their eyes are heavy, not fluttering, they’re not smiling and moving their eyes around, etc.
MIMICKING THE WOMB: Swaddling and using white noise will mimic the womb’s environment which ultimately, will help your baby feel safe and therefore, sleep better.
Try these things and let me know how it goes!! Whether you are in Loveland, Fort Collins or other parts of Northern Colorado (or, honestly? Anywhere across the globe!), remember that you don’t have the fourth trimester alone. The Maternity Angel was created as a bridge for families moving from the “Search” for answer to the “Sure” confidence of knowing that their baby is well cared for (by parents themselves or by a trusted care provider). Do you want to go deeper in these topics? Send me a message, email or comment. I would absolutely love to get to know you and what you’re wanting to learn more about! Remember to follow me on instagram