For your convenience, many of the products I link too are affiliate links which means I may earn money if you purchase a product I recommend. I recently discovered the bane of every parent – Sleep Training a baby. Before discovering my little sleep training secret, I was going out of my mind. I was surviving on 3-4 hours of sleep each night and felt like a zombie during the day. I literally couldn’t function. If you are reading this post, I’m sure you can relate. Right now, you can’t even imagine a full nights sleep. It is just too far out of reach. Sleep training is tough but so worth the effort. Just imagine a full 6-8 hours of sleep. Having energy again – it is the small things in life! If you are looking for free resources to try check out these options: Sleep Training wasn’t even on my radar for the first few months. My daughter liked to sleep and from the beginning was consistently sleeping 3-4 hours. I was tired, but could at least function. As she got older I waited for the magical moment when she would start sleeping for longer chunks of time. It never came and at five months I started to get a bit sleep deprived. Particularly since I had returned to work. Related Post: 3 Tips For Mothers Returning To Work After three nights in a row of her waking up virtually every hour, I realized something needed to change. I had heard of the tons of different gentle sleep training methods from friends but wasn’t sure what was right for me and my baby. So I did what I always do when I have a question – Facebook! Here is a link to the discussion on Facebook if you are interested. I realized quickly that I had opened a can of worms. Who knew that sleep training was such a sensitive subject? Fortunately, my friends are awesome and all of them were quick to reassure me that I would find a gentle sleep training method that worked for my family. There isn’t a right way to train your child since each child and parent is different. So at five months, I began the task of sleep training my baby. One of my friends was nice enough to lend me the book – The Sleep Solution: A Proven Program to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Twelve Hours a Night by Suzy Giordano. For me, this book was a game changer. I highly, highly recommend this book. It is an easy 30-45 minute read and will answer a lot of your sleep training questions. The premise of the book is that any child can sleep for 12 hours a night, the trick is to get them on a regular feeding and sleeping schedule during the day. Your goal as a mother is to get them into a routine of eat, play, sleep. When they eat, play & then sleep on a regular basis, their body naturally begins the sleep training process. When a baby naturally begins to sleep train themselves, you are able to sleep train your baby with the gentle, no tears method. I’m not good at schedules but realized after reading Suzy Giordano’s book that just because I don’t like schedules doesn’t mean that my baby doesn’t need a schedule. The biggest ah-ha moment for me was the realization that I wasn’t feeding my baby consistently enough during the day. I was feeding her whenever she acted hungry, this meant she was grazing on food throughout the day. Since that was her daytime schedule, she needed to do the same thing at night. Just by changing Ella’s daytime feeding schedule to four-hour increments (for me this meant 7:00 AM, 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM) she pretty much instantly began sleeping 8-9 hours a night. She’ll still occasionally wake up in the night, but a quick pacifier and she returns to sleep. It was amazing how quickly this one little change in our daytime routine affected our night-time routine. I’ve done a lot of research and reading over the last two month. Virtually every book and website I visit talks about the effect of the daytime routine on the nighttime sleeping habits. I can see a difference in Ella’s sleeping almost immediately if I deviate too far from her schedule. She needs to be feed regularly and consistently. I don’t know why this was such a shock to me since I’m the same way. I get grumpy and out of sorts when I don’t eat regularly and don’t sleep as well. Why would a baby be any different? Sometimes it really is the most common sense stuff that trips me up. If you are struggling to track your baby’s eating schedule you may want to try out this schedule or this form. To other mothers struggling with Sleep Training, I’m so sorry! I know how miserable and hard it is and hope that these ideas and tips will help you and your baby get some sleep. Now that I have the basics of sleep training done it is time to start working on a consistent napping schedule, longer sleeping time at night and a bedtime routine that works. ***Editors Note: It has been 6 months since I wrote this post. It took another month, but by Mid-February Ella was consistently sleeping for 10-11 hours a night and taking 2 regular naps. Now six months later she is still on the same schedule and at night time will often come up to me or Aaron and snuggle up. She knows it is bedtime and is ready. Don’t give up on gentle sleep training. It takes time but is worth the effort when you finally get them on a schedule. One of the side benefits of sleep training is the ability to go on dates and know that my babysitter can easily put Ella down for naps and bed. As dorky as it sounds, this was the side benefit of infant sleep training I hadn’t realized. It is life changing! Related Post: How to Prepare Your Home For a Babysitter A good friend of mine Nedra Cox reached out to me after my post. After dealing with sleep deprivation for two years she realized something needed to change. Her research led her to Dana Obleman’s Sleep Sense program. After going through the program and seeing the personal impact it had on her life, she decided to become a sleep coach to help other struggling mothers. She recently began coaching parents and has seen huge success. She is in the process of building out her website, but you can find additional information on her Facebook page – Snugglebuzzzsleep. Speaking with a coach really reinforced the positive changes I had made. If you are struggling with sleep training and the traditional methods aren’t working I recommend checking out some of the baby sleep training courses listed above. Don’t underestimate how important sleep is to you and your baby.Gentle Baby Sleep Training – A Parents First Step:
***Editor Note – I have a long list of resources at the bottom of this post if you just need quick info.
My Sleep Training Story
Every parent has very strong opinions on Gentle Sleep Training.
I know I’m geeking out, but seriously this book was life-changing for us. I can’t say enough good things about this book and how much it helped us sleep train our baby.
She wasn’t starving, but like the rest of us needed a certain amount of food during the day to keep her full at night.
The first step to take when sleep training a child is a regularly scheduled daytime feeding routine.
Gentle Sleep Train Tips For Your Infant:
Free Resources You’ll Love:
Sleep Training Resources for your Infant:
Baby Sleeping Training Courses:
Sleep Training Books:
Should you reach out to a Baby Sleeping Coach?
PS. Check out these additional baby parenting posts:
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