The No-cry Sleep Solution (64 page)

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that you can do to help your baby sleep
better
, but the time when your little one sleeps all night, every night is also affected by his individual temperament and physiology. Therefore, it’s best if you don’t compare your baby’s sleep habits to other babies, but rather to his own schedule week by week.
Your
success will be found by noting improvements in your individual baby’s patterns as you work through your sleep plan.

How Long Is This Going to Take?

Patience, patience. We are dealing with a real live little human being here, not a computer that can be programmed. While it would be pure brilliance if I could invent a one-day-no-cry-sleep-solution, I don’t harbor any fantasies that such a plan exists. I suggest that you celebrate every piece of success along your way.

Taking a longer nap now? Great! Falling asleep quicker? Wonderful! Sleeping longer stretches at night? Hallelujah! If you can honestly appreciate each little victory along the way you’ll feel better about this whole sleep issue. You
are
on the path to all-night sleep. It will happen. Now is the time to recommit to your plan for another ten days. Good luck as you continue on your journey to all-night sleep!

“I’ve Tried Everything! Nothing Works!

Help!”

The ideas in this section are intended for anyone at the end of the rope or anyone who is ready to give up and let the baby cry it out.

For so many different reasons, not every test mommy I worked with had fabulous, immediate success. A few parents struggled

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for weeks until they felt it was completely hopeless. Some were able to reevaluate what was happening, make some plan adjustments, and go on to success. Others struggled still, like these two families:

“I have nothing good to report. I began two logs for you and failed to complete both. The first one, I got only as far as 10:41 p.m. It was unbelievable! She was up so many times I just couldn’t keep up. She slept in our bed and kept waking up. It is crazy. It is enough already.

We are beyond exhausted! I don’t want to be the one test mommy who fails the program, but it looks like it is headed in that direction.

Every day, my husband and I talk about letting her cry it out. We even tried to let her cry for one minute and even got up to two minutes, but neither one of us could go beyond that, so even though we threaten to do it, I don’t think that letting her cry herself to sleep is an option. We don’t know what to do.”

“I cannot cope anymore. I feel like I am totally losing it. Once again, I have gone from bed to bed all night long. I can hardly function. He is awake now and he’s been awake nursing on and off since 4 a.m. It’s now after six, and every time I pop him off he cries like I am hurting him. It’s just ridiculous, and I am beginning to hate nursing! This is horrible. I have been crying. My friends are no help at all. They say, ‘See, I told you so. You should never have spoiled him.

You should just let him cry, he’ll go to sleep.’ I know that they’re wrong and that I am doing the right things with my baby, but I cannot take this ‘no sleeping’ much longer.”

If you are at this point in
your
life, I’m going to give you three ideas that are drastically different from anything else I have suggested. You are obviously at a dangerous level of extreme emotions, and you don’t want to accidentally hurt your baby in the night by shaking or hitting her. These things can happen when you get to this point. (Even the most connected and loving parent can get pushed to anger by severe sleep deprivation.) You also

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don’t want to begin to resent your baby or find your sleeplessness interfering with what should be joyful days with your baby.

As long as your baby is more than four months old, you can use any of the following three ideas. Take a day and think about them. Talk the ideas over with your husband, or a friend you can trust. Take a deep breath. (If your baby is younger than four months old, please read the section about newborns that begins on page 64.)

Idea Number One: Take a Break

For the next week, do not fight the night wakings at all. Do whatever works to get your baby back to sleep fastest. Get rid of your bedroom clock, or at least turn it around so that you can’t see it.

Go to bed as early as possible, and stay in bed as late as you can in the morning. Prioritize your life, and don’t do anything that can wait a week to get done. Take naps when and if you can. Call this your “I’ll do anything just to get some sleep” week. Do this for a week, or even two, as a breather and then go back to the ideas with a fresh outlook. Or, if it seems to work for you, do it for a month, and see if your baby will outgrow her night waking on her own. I’ll be honest and say that it’s unlikely to happen that way. But after filling your sleep tank, and paying off some of your mounting sleep debt, you’ll feel better and be much more able to approach a sleep plan.

During this time, read Chapter 8, especially the section beginning on page 182. The information in this section may be able to help you figure out what problems are preventing you from having sleep success.

Idea Number Two: Get Serious

Continue to follow the steps in this book with one major change.

Get serious! No more “maybes,” “kind-ofs,” “really shoulds,” or

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“next times.” Take some quiet time to reread the first parts of this book, focus, and concentrate. Create a plan for yourself based on what you learn about sleep and what you know about yourself and your baby. Have confidence in the program because it can work for you. Follow every idea religiously.

If your baby spends all or part of the night in bed with you, and continues to wake many times during the night, you may have to move her to her crib in order to gain longer sleep stretches. This will require that you get up and down for a few days but should end up with your baby sleeping longer. You will find ways to do this beginning on page 137. Once she’s sleeping soundly and consistently, you always have the option of bringing her back to your bed if you wish.

Many of the parents who reached the point of utter frustration discovered that they were only following the suggestions partway—hoping success would happen anyway. Following the suggestions half-heartedly will only bring you minor success, if any at all.

Please reread the Introduction, and review the entire section of solutions found in Chapter 4. Modify your plan as necessary and follow it exactly, and your baby will sleep. Now is a good time to read Chapter 12 for some encouragement.

The majority of parents who follow my plan faithfully see outstanding results in thirty days or less. You can do it too.

Idea Number Three: A Temperate Alternative to

Letting Baby Cry It Out

If you are ready to give up, if you are geared up to toss this book and all my ideas out the window and just let your baby cry it out, then this section is written for you.

Dr. Sears calls the place where you are “the danger zone,” and he warns that if your baby’s nighttime routine is making you

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angry, and making you resent your baby, something must change.

Again, I’m including the following suggestion because you are at your wit’s end. It may work beautifully, or it may just upset you more. Think about it first, before you make your decision to try it. If at any point you feel that it’s making things worse instead of better, go immediately to Idea Number One and take a week to reevaluate what’s happening.

This suggestion is more appropriate if your baby is more than one year of age. But, if you have a younger baby (older than four months), and you are on the verge of putting your baby in a crib and earplugs in your ears, then this is a better alternative. Here are the steps to a temperate alternative to cry it out.

1. Give your baby extra one-on-one time during the day (especially morning and before bedtime). Increase the amount of time during the day that you cuddle, hold, and carry your baby.

2. Teach your baby the difference between light and dark.

(Take her in a bathroom and play a game—lights out: dark!

Lights on: light! Read books about opposites. Morning and evening, comment on the time of day as you look out the window.)

3. At bedtime, explain your expectations clearly. For example, you might tell her, “We nurse (or have a bottle) when it’s light. We sleep when it’s dark.” Look for some board books about babies and sleep. Or write your own book (see pages 151–154). Read these books to your baby as part of your bedtime routine.

4. When your baby wakes up during the night, repeat your expectations. For example you would say, “Shhhh. Night night. We nurse in the light. We sleep in the dark. It’s dark now. We sleep.” Pat her or rub her and tell her it’s time to go to sleep.

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5. She will cry. She may cry a lot. She may get really upset.

Be prepared for this and tell yourself, “She’s going to be OK. I am only going to do this for [you fill in how many]