Author Mara Valderran: The WFH Mama: Products and Methods for Sleeping

Pretty much every product review you get from me is going to come with the disclaimer that every baby is different. That’s exactly why I’m still posting about products that didn’t work for me. These are still great products – but my baby noped right out of them. Your baby might think one of these wifty things is the best thing since sliced bread. Or in a baby’s case, the best thing since… a binky? A blanky? Fill in the blank for whatever your baby loves.

In the first few months, my main concern was how to get my baby to sleep somewhere other than my arms. I eventually lost this battle and embraced working one handed, but there are several things you can try. Here are some that I tried, and I’d love for you fellow WFH parents to tell us what you’ve tried in the comments.

Bassinet/Crib:

I already mentioned that there was no way my anxiety would let me put her in another room to sleep even if we did have the space. Since we have a tiny two bedroom apartment, that wasn’t something we could even try. My 3 stepkids have one room when they are with us (thank you, triple bunk bed designer for making that possible), so we knew our baby girl was going to be in our room with us. Since there was no room for a crib, I picked out a bedside bassinet.

Swings:

We tried two different swings. One was a MamaRoo gifted to us from a friend who swore by it. The other was one I had already purchased by Graco. With either one, the moment I buckled Baby in, no matter how tired she was, suddenly she was wide awake and mad. These were both easy to assemble and move around. They had great features as well. But Baby had no effs to give about the music, swinging, or vibration. Was it Mommy’s chest? Then nope.

Carseat:

Good ole car-colepsi for the win. That’s what my husband refers to it as. We have a Graco infant carseat and stroller that you can pop it in and out of. Even now at 8 months old, this is pretty much the only other place besides the bed or our arms where she will fall asleep. But only if you prop her bottle up and she falls asleep with it.

Boppy:

We still have and use this boppy. I have to admit that I never used it for nursing. I have a short torso so it was massively uncomfortable for me. My long ass husband, on the other hand, still uses it to give her a bottle and get some Daddy snuggles when he gets home from work.

Hey Bear:

You’ll see me mention this one again later, but the Lanterns with Celestial Music is like magic. She didn’t care for any of the other videos, but this music and the hypnotic lanterns soothed her to sleep within five minutes every time I turned it on. It doesn’t work as well now that she is older. She watches the lanterns and thinks they are funny. But if I turn it on my phone where she can’t watch, that music still does it. It definitely puts me and my husband to sleep too. See for yourself:

Cry It Out:

Don’t come at me. I’m talking about me. Yes, there were many nights where I lost my shit and started crying because I was beyond exhausted and couldn’t “sleep when the baby sleeps” like everyone kept telling me to. 1) I had to work. 2) I can’t sleep on demand like that. Maybe it’s my inner toddler, but if you tell me to go to sleep, then I’m probably going to stay up for another hour or two… Crying sometimes actually worked for Baby too because when I started crying, she would stop. She would just look at me and smile. Which, of course, made me cry harder. But then we would both sleep.