Best Baby & Kids Sleep Brands
These are my favorite baby and kids sleep brands.
Sleep is such an important topic (for all ages of human really) but also super polarizing and the bane of many parents lives.
This is my story: Griffin is SUCH a good sleeper. He sleeps like a sweet angel, has been sleep trained since 6 months, and with the exception of the occasional rollback from teething or sickness he has managed to ride that sleep training through bassinet to crib transition, crib to toddler bed transition at 16 months, and toddler bed to full bed transition at 24 months. He now demands to go to bed on schedule like a little old man. I can only take credit for some of this great sleeping (see below).
You’ll notice at the core of this is a sleep training at 6 months.
You should know that for the first 6 months of his life, Griffin slept like absolute trash. Hot, back-of-the-restaurant, week-old dumpster fire trash. This was largely due to his severe reflux (GERD, if you know, you know). He had to be upright nearly all of the time, cried out in pain constantly, and never slept for more than 45 minutes. Around the clock. 24 hours a day. He also had your standard gas pains, trapped farts, startle reflexes, teething pain, hunger etc. It was terrible and we were legitimately ZOMBIES. Barely had time to Mombie, but the early hours of blearily looking after him in shifts is truly where this Mombie was formed.
We had a LOT of help during this period of time and we are very grateful for it, Griffin had two nannies during the daytime through the week alternating (Shama & Jordi, HI), and a night nanny 4-5 (and then 6 and one time 7) days a week, named Mercedes Carranco. She is a professional sleep trainer, and she trained Griffin and most importantly trained me and Dave.
She told us these things about babies and sleep:
Babies are not ready to be guided to focused sleep hours until approximately 2 months. They just need to be snuggled and sleep as needed until then, which is a very legitimate reason to have someone look after them at night (this is my plug for a day 1 night nanny).
Babies can start being guided towards sleep training at 2 months but nothing will really start to stick long term until 3 months.
Babies can be fully sleep trained by 4 months with the occasional rollback for sickness, teething, and sleep regression (real , really hellish feature apparently, not a bug).
Sleep training is 20% about baby behavior and 80% about parents behavior.
Baby sleep is a large industry for obvious reasons, and there are a variety of methods that are out there for training a baby to sleep. There is no right way, it’s about finding a mix of what you are comfortable with.
Here is her website, honestly she’s a genius, just hire her (or find someone to help you with this). https://www.sleeptrainingmethod.com/
Things I can take credit for:
Militantly sticking to the guidelines Mercedes set. No matter how painful.
Using a timer to time out cries so that I knew real time passing vs. baby scream time which is in another dimension.
Prioritizing Griffin’s sleep routine over all else, joint effort from Dave and myself.
Going Full-Mombie on Griffin’s sleep setup, from clothing to wearable blankets to swaddles to pillows to blankets to sounds, lights, repetitive book / movie watching, baby camera for my sanity, the list goes on.
Helping my parents sleep train him at their house so that his routine could be maintained at grandparent sleepovers (they were initially VERY displeased with the routine, and now they love it).
Investing in an Amazon subscription to earplugs.
If I find more brands, I’ll update the list, I promise. Here are my tried and true brands that I always return to!