Sleep Training Update
Thank you for all of your comments. I had no idea that sleep training was so controversial but I am glad to see that people were as upset as I was by my pediatrician’s, Dr. NO’s, suggestion that we leave Baby Jay in another room to cry himself to sleep at two months of age.
We are not doing that!
In all fairness to Nadia, she is a wonderful, loving, doting, mom who just needs more sleep than I do, but she was also very much against letting Baby Jay cry himself to sleep in another room at this stage in the game.
So…what are we doing?
We are not doing any sleep training, at least not by my definition and, certainly, not Dr. NO’s definition. What we are doing is giving Baby Jay a bath between 8 and 8:30, reading him a story, and putting him down to sleep in a co-sleeper (thanks to my BFF) attached to my side of the bed by 9PM. He usually nods off around that time anyway and sometimes he sleeps until 1:30 AM. On those occasions he also gets up around 4AM, which isn’t bad. We have baby monitors (also donated by my BFF) so if he shows any signs of distress, which he does on occasion, we generally run to the bedroom to comfort him or, if necessary, to give him a bottle.
We are very comfortable with this routine and hope that one day it will someday extend into a full night’s sleep.
In the meantime, I am reading On Becoming Baby Wise (also donated by my BFF) and Bed Timing, recommended by the lovely, pregnant, Sarah of Dreams and False Alarms.
Keep the comments coming!
Sounds normal to me. My kid slept through the night at about 2 1/2 months, but frankly that was not because of any sleep training at all. He would occasionally wake up once or twice, but the more he ate at bedtime the better he slept. Sounds like you guys have everything well in hand.
1Sounds like you have a great plan! As it stands now, Sammy does not have a real bedtime routine yet. He usually falls asleep around 9p or so depending on when he’s had a bottle. We definitely need to start a routine for him.
2Sounds great. Sorry if I sounded harsh regarding Nadia. Sometimes even the most loving, devoted parent can benefit from some uninterrupted sleep in another room.
Will you be bringing Baby Jay to the ALI bloggers meetup?
3sounds like normal sleep patterns to me too! Glad you got a cosleeper, if we had one baby we would for sure have one of those as they seem to prefer to sleep close to us!
4Those attached bassinets seems to a good choice. A friend of mine is unsing it and the whole family is very comfortable with it. And as much as I know from the sleeping habits of babies ..Baby Jay’s sleeping pattern and your routine sounds perfectly normal.
5I’m a librarian. So trust me when I say I’ve read most of the baby sleep books out there!
Expecting a 2 month old infant to sleep through the night is absurd. Not even Richard Ferber, the Cry It Out King, advocates that!
Our children co-slept with us until they were at least 6 months old. Then we tried a few things, but what worked best for us was following a program called “Sleepeasy Solution,” a book easily available in any bookstore or Amazon. It worked amazingly well with virtually no crying and frequent check-ins to reassure them we were still there. We first had them sleep in a crib in our room during the sleep training. And once that worked well, we moved them into their own room.
There was even less crying than when we tried the “No-Cry Method!” We used it with both of our children and within a few days they were putting themselves to sleep on their own and sleeping all night with no issue. Our son is now 22 months and our daughter is 9 months and they are amazingly good sleepers (even though we co-slept, which everyone told me would ruin them for life!)
6Long time reader, first time poster. Be careful with Babywise. Google it and you’ll find that it’s advice has been linked with failure to thrive and infant dehydration.
Your son sounds like he’s doing great. My little guy was still waking every 2 hours at that age. He started sleeping through the night w/o any CIO around 12 months but it sounds like Baby Jay will get there much earlier.
Good luck and so happy for you all.
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