Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night, Part 2
(continued from Part One)
This is the hard part. A lot of people are totally against allowing a baby to cry themselves to sleep. If you mention it to your mom or anyone of her generation, they would think it was completely normal to do so. Your mom let you cry yourself to sleep. So ask yourself: How screwed up are you? If you turned out okay, then feel free to proceed.
5. When you put baby down to sleep, say goodnight and leave. Wait ten minutes. Baby will cry. Send your partner in to comfort baby for ten minutes. Wait fifteen minutes. Send your partner in to comfort baby for ten minutes. Wait twenty minutes. Send your partner in to comfort baby for ten minutes and so on. Eventually, your baby will fall asleep. This may be tough for the first week, but it gets easier. You also have my permission to go cold turkey and let baby cry until they fall asleep without interruption from your partner. It is important to go by your instinct, but be wary of emotions getting in the way. Yes, moms in African tribes don’t make their babies cry themselves to sleep, but you’re not raising your baby to be African. Additionally, your baby is not crying because they need something, but because they are protesting. By the time your child is 15 months, the protesting will seem to come as constant as drool and you won’t believe how numb you are to it. This is your initiation.
6. Decide how many times you are willing to go in and nurse/feed baby at night. Let’s say it is two to begin with. We will eventually wean down to zero times. Decide what hours you will go in at. For example, 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. Choose hours that baby naturally wakes up. Only go in at these times.
7. When it is not your allotted time to go in, your partner will go in your stead. They will use the same method described in step 5. After a week or two, your baby will only wake up during the two times that you are expected to come feed them. This just proves how we create our babies’ habits for them. They are not born waking up in the middle of the night, we train them to do so. In the same way, we must untrain them or break the habit.
8. After baby is comfortable only waking up two times a night, you will then go in only one time. Follow steps 6 and 7 again until baby only wakes up once a night.
9. And the final step is to stop going in at all. By this time, baby has gotten the point and it may only take your partner two or three trips to the nursery before baby sleeps through the night.
10. If all else fails, drink a couple of shots of rum before you nurse them to sleep. You’ll both sleep better.
P.S. Once you get this down at bedtime, you can start trying it at nap time too.
Good Luck!
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Day in the Life, Mental Health | admin March 13, 2009
