The No-cry Sleep Solution (55 page)

Authors: Elizabeth Pantley

Follow Your Plan for Ten Days

Now that you have created your own personal sleep plan, it’s time to officially begin the process of helping your baby to sleep all night. How quickly you see sleep success will depend on how persistently you follow your plan. I strongly recommend that you make your baby’s sleep a priority in your family for the next month or two. This means that you avoid going out during scheduled nap times or during your planned prebedtime routine and actual bedtime.

I know this can be a challenge. With three older children in our family, we sometimes seem to live on the road. Between school and after-school events, sports activities, birthday parties, and everything else, we’re always on the go. When I was working on Coleton’s sleep routines, I organized our days around his sleep times as much as possible. I made good use of car pools, called in favors, asked Grandma for help, and did anything else I could do so that Coleton would be home for his naps and bedtime routine.

Once he began sleeping ten or more hours at night and taking a regular two-hour nap, I was able to relax and be more flexible.

Once his sleep was consistent, we could extend his nap or bedtime by an hour or two, and he would just go right to sleep when we did get home and sleep later in the morning. Likewise, you won’t be tied to your baby’s nap and bedtime schedule forever, but the more consistent you can be right now, the sooner you will see sleep success.

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

Matthew, eleven months old, and Mike

What If You Can’t Do It All?

You may start out motivated to follow your plan entirely, and then your efforts may be disrupted. Illness, vacations, visitors, and teething are just a few examples. You may find yourself giving up in the middle of the night, and berating yourself in the morning for abandoning your plan. It can be frustrating when these things happen. But hear me now: Even if you only follow part of your plan, and even if you can’t be 100 percent consistent, you will still see sleep improvement. Even a few changes in your routines and habits can bring better sleep. And when things settle down around your house, you’ll have a running start to really focus on your sleep plan and get your baby sleeping all night.

Follow Your Plan for Ten Days

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The Road to Success Is Really More

Like a Dance

Most of you will find that attaining sleep success will not be a straight, easy road, even if you follow your plan perfectly. Instead, you will find that it’s more like a dance: two steps forward, one step back, and even a few sidesteps in between.

I experienced this with Coleton. We’d had our very best night up until that point: He’d fallen asleep on his own and
stayed
asleep for seven hours. I was thrilled! A new level of success! But my party was short-lived. The very next night, he would not even
attempt
to go to sleep by himself; he nursed nearly constantly, and fussed in between sessions. Then he woke frequently, whining,

“Mama, Mama” until I would nurse him again. I noticed this same pattern emerge with a number of my test mommies. I would get an E-mail shouting with joy, and a day or two later another message from the distressed mother asking, “What happened? She was up all night!”

Indeed, what happens? The variables are limitless. The baby gets sick,
you
get sick, he’s teething, she missed a nap, he starts to crawl, she gets her vaccinations, you have company from out of town, or the moon is full. You may be able to pinpoint the reason, or maybe you’ll be scratching your head wondering why your baby had such a rough night. And then the next night, your baby has the best night’s sleep ever. Just more proof that babies are anything but predictable.

The good news is that, when you follow my sleep plan, this complicated dance does end up where you want to go. That’s why the ten-day logs that I recommend are so important. When you have visible proof of successful improvements over a ten-day period, you can live with these annoying “sidesteps.”

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

Maybe twenty, thirty, or even sixty days will pass before you achieve what you call a really good night’s sleep—but in the big picture, a few months is nothing but a blink. That’s another gift my four children have given me: perspective. I have a fourteen-year-old daughter. I know how quickly childhood passes.
Too
quickly, as I know you’re sure to find. It seems as if I held my newborn Angela in my arms just yesterday, but before me now stands a lovely young woman in junior high school who borrows my clothes and my earrings, a person with her own strong opinions and fierce independence. (Oh, and did I mention that she sleeps through the night?)

So, here you go. Good luck with your sleep plan, and (soon) sweet dreams!

Do a Ten-Day Log

Now that you’ve followed your sleep plan for at least ten days, it’s time to do another set of sleep logs, analyze your success, and make any necessary changes to your plan. In fact, you’ll do this after every ten days that you follow your sleep plan (Chapters 9 and 10) up until you achieve the sleep results that you are comfortable with.

Ten is not a magical number—it’s OK to log at whatever interval best suits you. I do suggest that you wait
at least
ten days between your logs, however, to give you and your baby ample time to adjust to your changes in routine. If you log more frequently than this, you may just frustrate yourself by focusing too hard on your desire for sleep and by looking for too much success too quickly (like hopping on the scale every day when you’re on a diet).

Using the following forms, create your logs; be sure to read the instructions, and answer the questions. Read the information in the sections following each log and in the next chapter, which will help you analyze your logs.

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