The No-cry Sleep Solution (3 page)

Introduction

Do any of these describe your baby?

• It takes
forever
to get my baby to fall asleep.

• My baby will only fall asleep if I do one or more of the following: breastfeed, bottle-feed, give a pacifier, rock, carry, swing, or take a ride in the car.

• My baby wakes up frequently throughout the night.

• My baby won’t nap easily, or takes very short naps.

Does this describe you?

• I desperately want my baby to sleep better.

• I won’t—I can’t—let my baby cry it out.

If so, this book is written for you. It will explain the exact steps you can take to gently help your baby sleep through the night. So, prop your eyelids open, grab a cup of coffee, and let me explain how you can help your baby sleep—so that
you
can get some sleep, too.

How do I know so much about children and sleep? I am the proud and lucky mother of four children who shine the light on my life, whether they’re asleep or awake. There’s firstborn Angela, now fourteen, and leading me into the (so far) delightful experience of mothering a teenager. Not far behind her are twelve-year-old Vanessa and ten-year-old David. And then there’s two-year-old Coleton. Ahh, Coleton. Our little surprise treasure who reminded me of all the wonderful things I love about babies. And who also reminded me that with babies . . . come sleepless nights.

With two of my children, I would not have needed this book.

David followed such a textbook pattern of sleep that I barely remember that time in our lives. Vanessa was one of those
very
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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

unusual babies who, miraculously, was sleeping ten straight hours by the time she was six weeks old. (I wouldn’t believe it myself if it were not written in her baby book!) My oldest and my youngest, though, were frequent night wakers. While I was in the process of convincing Coleton, my youngest, to go to sleep at bedtime—and
stay
asleep,
all
night—I discovered many wonderful, practical, loving solutions to my problem. As an author and parent educator, I take pleasure in sharing these with you in hopes that you’ll get some shut-eye, too.

How This Book Will Help You

Through months of research, personal experience, and work with test case families, I have assembled and organized a wide variety of gentle ideas into what I call the No-Cry Sleep Solution. It’s a ten-step plan to help your baby sleep through the night. It’s not a rigid, unpleasant process. It does not involve letting your baby cry—not even for a minute. Rather, it consists of a customized plan that you create for your own family based on the ideas and research I present here, all within a simple and easy-to-follow framework. It’s a method that is as gentle and loving as it is effective. Let me first tell you why I became passionate about writing this book.

Fourteen years ago, when Angela was a baby, I faced your dilemma. She did not sleep through the night. On the contrary, she woke up every two hours for my attention. As a new and inexperienced parent, I searched for solutions in books, articles, and conversations with other parents.

I soon discovered two basic schools of thought when it comes to babies and sleep. One side advocates letting a baby cry until she learns to fall asleep on her own. The other side says that it is normal for babies to wake up at night and that it is a parent’s job to

Introduction

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Coleton, eighteen months old, and David, nine years old nurture the baby—all day and all night. Eventually, when your baby is ready, she will sleep through the night.

In a nutshell, the two methods can be summed up as “cry it out”

or “live with it.” I wanted neither. I knew there had to be a kinder way, a road somewhere between nighttime neglect and daytime exhaustion that would be nurturing for my baby
and
for me.

Those many years ago, after all of my research about babies and their fragile needs, I felt guilty and selfish when I began to wish for an uninterrupted night’s sleep. It was nearly impossible to rec-oncile my own instincts regarding Angela’s nighttime needs with the fatigue that hampered my daytime parenting. Time passed, and eventually my daughter did sleep through the night—but not until after her second birthday.

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

Cry It Out

Cry-it-out advocates make it sound so easy. A few nights of crying, and your baby will be sleeping all night, every night. If only it
were
so simple! My research has shown that very few parents experience this effortless success. Many deal with weeks of crying for hours each night (for baby
and
parent, in many instances). Some babies cry so violently that they vomit. Some parents find that the nighttime crying affects their baby’s daytime personality—making him clingy and fussy. Many find that any setback (teething, sickness, missing a nap, going on vacation) sends them back to the previous night-waking problems, and they must let the child cry it out over and over again. Many (if not all) parents who resort to letting their baby cry it out do so because they believe that it is the only way they will get their baby to sleep through the night.

My Personal Experience with Cry It Out

At one point during Angela’s period of sleeplessness I
did
cave in to all the pressure from friends, family, and even my pediatrician, who recommended that a few nights of crying would solve our problem. (If you’re reading this book, you know this pressure, too.) So one dreadful night, I let her cry it out.

Oh, I checked on her often enough, each time increasing the length of time before I returned to her side. But each return visit struck me with my precious baby holding out her arms, desperately and helplessly crying, “Mama!” with a look of terror and confusion on her tiny face. And
sobbing
. After two hours of this tor-ment, I was crying, too.

I picked up my cherished baby and held her tightly in my arms.

She was too distraught to nurse, too distressed to sleep. I held her and kissed her downy head as her body shook and hiccuped in the

Introduction

5

aftermath of her sobbing. I thought, “This approach is responding to a child’s needs? This is teaching her that her world is worthy of her faith and trust?
This is nurturing?
”

I decided then and there: they are all wrong. Horribly, intolerably, painfully wrong. I was convinced that this was a simplistic and harsh way to treat another human being, let alone the precious little love of my life. To allow a baby to suffer through pain and fear until she resigns herself to sleep is heartless and, for me, unthinkable.

I promised my baby that I would never again follow the path that
others
prescribed for us. I would never again allow her to cry it out. Even more, I vowed not to let any of her brothers or sisters-to-be suffer the horrible experience we’d just endured.

And I never have.

Thirteen Years Later:

The More Things Change . . .

At twelve months old, my fourth baby, Coleton, was not sleeping through the night. Following in his older sister’s footsteps, and
beating
her record, he was waking up nearly every hour for my attention. Now a mature, seasoned parent and professional parent educator, I found that my beliefs about letting a baby cry it out had not changed at all. But knowing that so many other parents feel the same way, I was certain that the intervening years would have produced new solutions. I thought I would find useful, con-crete ideas in a book, and I began my search.

Nearly a month later, eyes glazed over with fatigue, I evaluated my finds. Before me sat a stack of articles and books—old and new—with the same two choices to address my dilemma: either let the baby cry it out or learn to live with it.

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The No-Cry Sleep Solution

What Experts Say About the Mutual Agony

of the Cry-It-Out Method

I
did
find a lot of new data that reinforced my abhorrence of letting a baby cry it out. Dr. Paul M. Fleiss and Frederick Hodges in
Sweet Dreams
(Lowell House, 2000) have this to say about such training programs for babies: