Teaching your baby to fall asleep by themselves in their own bed can feel like a maze. Which is the right way? What is the easiest way? Will I ever find my way out and get good sleep again?
The biggest dilemma I ran into as a new mom was:
To let cry or Not to let cry?
Letting a baby cry herself or himself to sleep has been around since mothers started having babies. I’m pretty sure my baby is not the only one that has ever cried inconsolably at nap time. And they won’t be the last.
I don’t know where or when the ‘Cry it out’ method, as we know it now, came into existence. As I understand it, this is the idea that when it is time for a baby to sleep, you place him in his bed and let him cry until he falls asleep. This teaches him how to calm and soothe himself to sleep, and develops lays ground work for good sleeping habits.
I did this with my first child. It worked. He got very good at falling asleep whenever I put him down in bed. But the process was not fun. Listening to the crying was horrible for everyone! I felt so bad for my baby!
So over the years with each kid I have developed an alternate method that still teaches them to put themselves to sleep, but also assures them that I am there to help, and they are not left alone. As a bonus it keeps me from feeling like the meanest mom ever.
It begins when he is 2 weeks old. The first two weeks of his life are mostly just about me healing, making sure he feels loved, and snuggling my baby. 🙂 During that time we just do whatever works. If he falls asleep on me that’s great. If he falls asleep in his bed, that’s great too. It’s all about survival.
I start early because I don’t want to have to do it later, when he is older and knows how to really cry. Beginning when he is still a newborn means that he won’t remember any other way. This will be the only system he knows.
At two weeks old, he needs to fall asleep by himself in bed. I wait until he is struggling to stay awake and then put him down. Since he is already tired, it shouldn’t take too long to fall asleep.
If he fights it and begins to fuss, I wait for just a minute. Sometimes he will calm himself down. Hallelujah! But if it continues to escalate, I go in to help.
I do not immediately rescue him from bed. I first try to soothe him by talking to him and resting my hand on his tummy. Then, once he’s calm I leave the room again, and we start the same pattern. If he fusses again, we repeat as many times as needed. I’ve gone into the bedroom as many as ten different times for one nap. It takes up all of nap time! Most of the time it does not take that many. The average is once or twice.
If my touch and my voice are not enough to soothe him, I will pick him up from bed. But we do not go anywhere. We remain right next to the bed. It is nap time, and that happens in the bedroom. Leaving the room will make him think the nap is over, when it hasn’t even happened yet. I also use this time to check if a diaper change is necessary.
Once he is calm and I feel we are both ready to try again, I place him back in bed and we start over. We repeat over and over, until we both succeed in him falling asleep. (A happy dance is optional at this point, but strongly recommended.)
As they get older the time I wait to go in their room gets longer and longer. When they are really little it’s only a minute or two that I let them cry. When they are one year old or older it can be 30 minutes or more. By then they know the system, and mom’s can usually tell if their kid is crying because they really need them, or whether they are crying because they are exhausted and don’t want to take a nap.
There are times when I am willing to do whatever it takes to get my child to sleep. I try really hard to keep those times the exceptions. I do not want them to become the rule.
I avoid giving them a bottle at bed time because someday, I’ll have to take that away. That week could be a very awful one, and I want to avoid it.
The great things about sleep training is it’s not too late to start. No matter what age the baby or what their previous naptime rituals have been, this will teach them to fall asleep by themselves in their own bed.
Doing what works for me is what has saved my life. Doctors and experts are great resources but they don’t know you or your child like you do. Do what makes you comfortable, and keeps you feeling like you are winning at the whole parenting thing!
Sweet dreams! 🙂
Sleep training is so much fun. With my older son it was a roller coaster. He slept so well when he was a baby and then he started having separation anxiety (I guess) when he turned a year old and he refused to nap unless someone was in the room with him, and he would wake distraught in the middle of the night. That lasted until well past his 2nd birthday, when I was so exhausted that I couldn’t handle it anymore and began bringing him to the couch with me to get him back to sleep quicker. Unfortunately that opened a whole new can of worms. And we ended up in that sleeping arrangement until after he was 5 yrs old. Now he and little brother share a room, and at bedtime I start out the night with them by reading a bedtime story and then reading for my own enjoyment silently until I know they are asleep. Sometimes it is a 15 min process…sometimes I have to leave “to go to the bathroom” with a promise to return to check on him because it is taking too long for him to fall asleep. They both still wake and come looking for me in the night but usually I can get them back to sleep quickly at that point…and I am no longer suffering from sleep deprivation.
I am so glad you’re getting sleep! The struggle is real! I wish I had the will power to keep myself awake like my kids do.