The No-cry Sleep Solution (29 page)

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best advice I can give you is to remind yourself that these early months with your baby will pass quickly. And then you’ll be looking back fondly on those memories of holding your newborn in your arms.

I’m a lactation consultant, and I’ve been working with a mother of a newborn. Today I went over to see her. She was very pleased because he had “slept through the night.” I was alarmed because the baby is only five days old, much too young to be sleeping all night without breastfeeding. I asked for details and this is what I discovered. The baby is sleeping with the mother and last night every time he stirred, Mom put him to her breast. The baby suckled a while and went back to sleep quickly and easily. That was what the mother referred to as “sleeping through the night.” Isn’t that a lovely way for a new mother to think?

Part Two: Solutions for Older Babies—

Four Months to Two Years

The following section presents an assortment of ideas geared to babies who are past the newborn stage, up to two years old and sometimes a little older. If your baby is on the young side of this range, you may want to also read the section particularly for newborn babies that begins on page 64.

Get Yourself Ready

This idea may help everyone.

In the course of my research and in my own experience, I have discovered that our own emotions often hold us back from making changes in our babies’ sleeping habits. You yourself may be

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the very obstacle preventing you from changing a routine that disrupts your life—in this case, your baby’s sleep habits. After all, you probably wouldn’t be reading this book unless you find your baby’s sleep routine difficult to mesh with your own life. So let’s figure out if anything is standing in your way.

Examine Your Own Needs and Goals

Before you read another page of this book, you must ask yourself a few questions, and make a decision. In your heart of hearts, are your baby’s wakeful ways and your coping strategies truly upset-ting to
you
? Or does the problem lie more in the perceptions of those around you? Let me put it another way. Your baby’s sleep habits are only problematic if
you
feel they are. Today’s society leads us to believe that “normal babies” sleep through the night from about two months on; my research indicates that this is more the exception than the rule. I’ve discovered that until about age three, a great percentage of children wake up during the night needing a parent’s attention. The number of families in your boat could fill a fleet of cruise ships, so don’t feel that you must pressure yourself or your baby to fit into some imagined sleeping requirement.

Mother-Speak

“At our last day-care parent meeting, one father brought up the fact that his two-year-old daughter wasn’t yet sleeping through the night. This started a lengthy discussion, and I discovered that out of twenty-four toddlers, only six stayed asleep all night long. Since my daughter is waking up several times throughout the night I found it incredibly reassuring that this appeared to be normal toddler behavior.”

Robin, mother of thirteen-month-old Alicia

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You must figure out where your problem lies. Is it in your baby’s routine, in your management of it, or simply in the minds of others? If you can honestly say you want to change your baby’s sleep habits because they are truly and personally disruptive to you and your family, then you’re ready to read on. But if you feel coerced into changing Baby’s patterns because Aunt Martha, Great-Grandma Beulah, your friend from playgroup, or even your pediatrician says that’s the way it should be, it’s time for a long, hard think.

Every baby is unique, every mother is unique, and every family is unique. Only you can determine the right answers for your situation.

Once you decide how you truly feel about your baby’s sleep habits, you can read this book with a better understanding of what you expect from the things that you learn.

This is a good time to take stock. Compare your baby’s sleep pattern to the information in Chapter 2, which explains a baby’s average sleep requirement. It also covers how often
typical
babies wake up at night. Use that information to help you determine your goals for your baby’s sleep.

Certainly, if your little one is waking you up every hour or two (as my Coleton did), you don’t have to think long on the question, “Is this disruptive to me?” It obviously is. However, if your baby is waking up only once or twice a night, it’s important that you determine exactly how much this pattern is disturbing to you, and decide on a realistic goal. If you are wishing for twelve hours of solid sleep—from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.—your goal may not be reasonable. After all, waking up once or twice a night is really normal during the first two years of life, even though many books and articles paint a different picture. I have found it odd that when more than 50 percent of babies younger than two years of age wake up during the night this is labeled a “disorder.” With that high of a percentage I’d label it “normal.” Just because it’s

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normal, though, doesn’t mean you can, or should, live with it.

You can do many things to encourage your baby to sleep longer.

So, be realistic in determining your goal and honest in assess-ing the situation’s effect on your life. Some people can handle two night wakings easily, while others find that the effect of even one night waking is just too much to handle. The key is to evaluate whether your baby’s sleep schedule is a problem in your eyes or just in those of the people around you who are not as informed as you are now about normal sleep patterns.

If your baby’s sleep pattern is a problem for you, this book will help you solve it. And even if you’ve decided that one or two night wakings really aren’t so bad after all, you can still use these concepts to gradually help your baby eliminate them sooner than he would if you didn’t change anything at all.

Begin today by contemplating these questions:

• Am I content with the way things are, or am I becoming resentful, angry, or frustrated?

• Is my baby’s nighttime routine negatively affecting my marriage, job, or relationships with my other children?