Getting Baby to Sleep Through the Night
Getting baby to sleep through the night is a problem that
almost all new parents face at some stage. It is so common
that there are almost as many books and websites dealing
with the subject as there are babies out there! Well maybe
not, but it is a big problem for sleep deprived parents.
When a baby wakes every one and a half to two hours,
all through the night, parents become exhausted. Their
relationships, their home, even the baby himself may suffer.
It can be just too much to deal with.
Unfortunately, in spite of all the books and help
out there, no one solution works for all baby sleep
problems. Babies are individuals who have their own
personalities and quirks from day one.
Parents
too have very different ideas on how to relate to their
babies. Some new parents come to the job with very set ideas
of how things will be. They often find themselves at a loss
when baby refuses to go along with the plan.
Other, more laid back parents decide that they will
just let the baby show them the way. They go along with
baby's timetable, feeding always on demand, sleeping with
baby in their bed or bedroom ... and sooner or later
discover that baby has become more and more demanding, and
they, the parents, have no life left at all.
No matter what approach
they take, all the experts seem to agree that the first step
is to establish a routine for the baby. Keep the bed-time
ritual the same every night, whether it is a feed, then a
cuddle, then a song - whatever works for you and your baby,
make that a nightly ritual so that your baby understands
that it is time to sleep.
The advice then seems to
fall into two camps:
One is The Dr.Sears Family's
Attachment Parenting.
The Baby Book: Everything You Need
to Know About Your Baby from Birth to Age Two (Revised and
Updated Edition)
Most advocates of on-demand feeding,allowing
baby to sleep in the same bed, or the same room with her
parents refer back to the doctors Sears and their
teaching.This is summed up by one reviewer as " meeting your
baby's emotional and physical needs in order to form a
healthy attachment. Trusting your instincts is a big part of
this."
In the other camp are the believers in teaching their babies
to sleep on their own.The "guru" for this method is Richard
Ferber M.D.
Solve Your Child's Sleep
Problems
Dr Ferber explains childrens'and adults'
sleep cycles and how wakening is natural part of everyone's
sleep cycle. The problem for babies is not the wakening, but
the difficulty of getting back to sleep on their own. Dr.
Ferber lays out a clear and concise plan to teach parents
how to get their babies to go to sleep without having to be
nursed, rocked or patted to calm them. Detractors call this
the "cry it out" method, but in fact Dr Ferber has parents
go in to comfort their baby at regular intervals.In over 360
reviews of the book on Amazon, the vast majority were from
grateful parents whose babies were finally sleeping through
the night. As one reviewer put it "A rested baby is a happy
baby...a rested mommy is a happy mommy".
Most books written for parents about getting baby to sleep
fall into one or other of these two methods, with some minor
differences. A third and more unusual approach to getting
baby to sleep is Dr Harvey Karp's
The Happiest Baby on the Block: The
New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Baby Sleep
Longer
This book gives easy, effective techniques to
soothe your crying baby. They appear to be most useful in
baby's first three to four months, which Dr Karp likens to a
"Fourth Trimester" of pregnancy.
For parents or grandparents who just don't have the
time to read about baby sleep problems, try the audio
program below:
Getting Baby to Sleep-to Home Page
