The No-cry Sleep Solution (58 page)

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

You may have heard about the amazing “two-day results” someone had with a cry-it-out program, and you hoped to see the same kind of quick change in your baby—without the crying part, of course. Except that it’s been ten whole days, and you’ve seen little or no improvement. Things may even seem worse than before.

Remember that back when we first met—in the Introduction—

I promised that I could get your baby to sleep through the night.

I didn’t promise a speedy miracle. Also, it is likely that your sleep issues will be more frustrating for you now that you are trying to solve the problem. Before today, it was easier to play ostrich—not willing to acknowledge the true frequency of your baby’s night wakings, or how negatively they were affecting your life. Now that you’re working on getting your baby to sleep longer, you’ll be very focused on this part of your life and therefore much more aware of your own lack of sleep.

I’m sure that your baby isn’t so very different from all the others who have found success with this method. Take a quiet moment, review all the ideas, and analyze your sleep plan. I’m willing to bet that the next ten days will bring you closer to the results you are hoping for.

Have You Fully Committed to the Plan?

Sometimes parents begin the plan with a half-hearted attempt and hope to see miraculous changes. They review the sleep ideas,
Mother-Speak

“I realized that we were only partially following our plan. I guess we were hoping that changes would just magically happen. My husband and I talked today and agreed: no more casually following the ideas. Today we get serious.”

Neela, mother of eighteen-month-old Abhishek

Analyze Your Success

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choose one or two that seem easy or quick, and then find themselves ten days later with no change in their baby’s sleep pattern.

Not until they
truly
commit to their plan do they see sleep success. Only you can determine if you have created a purposeful plan, given it honest effort, and followed it faithfully.

Have You Had Success, but You Don’t

Realize It?

You may be searching for absolute sleep success—those blissful eight straight hours without waking up, and you’re missing the fact that your baby
is
sleeping better than before. Maybe you’ve logged two extra night wakings, and you’re feeling disappointed. But wait!

If your baby has slept more hours overall, then the number of wakings may not represent bad news at all! In other words, six wakings during a period of ten hours is a great improvement over five wakings during a period of eight hours. Or perhaps your baby’s bedtime is an hour earlier than it was before. Or you’re now taking only twenty minutes to put her to bed instead of an hour. Or each time she awakens at night she’s only up for a few minutes, far less than she was keeping you up before. Take another look at your logs and compare them. Are you really having success, but you didn’t see it at first?

Mother-Speak

“A few times I E-mailed my log to you feeling like a big failure, but then you would respond with congratulations over our improvement. Your comments would prompt me to look

closer at our logs, and I would see that good things were definitely happening!”

Christine, mother of eighteen-month-old Emily