I’ll let you know up front that this story has a happy ending…Tate is finally sleeping through the night! I wish I could say that even though it took 8 months to reach this point, it’s been a gradual process of forward progress. Actually, it’s been up and down, better, then worse, with me instilling bad habits in my son and being inconsistent in my methods for getting him to sleep. But I hope that at least others can learn from our experience!

Looking back, one of the things that made me most nervous about becoming a parent was the lack of sleep. I’ve always been a big lover of sleep, and maybe that’s partly why I made some of the mistakes that I did. I vividly recall the first night we were home with Tate, sitting in the glider holding him, and asking my husband “how are we supposed to get him to sleep!?” The crib seemed so huge for his tiny body, so foreign from the cozy warm womb from which he’d so recently emerged.

Over the next weeks and months, we’d get him to sleep by whatever means possible- walking and bouncing, rocking, the swing, the bouncy chair, driving, nursing, etc. Our old house has very creaky wood floors, but I found the one spot in the nursery with quiet boards, and we spent a lot of time swaying back and forth there. His sleep was a means to an end (my sleep), and I think I thought we’d have plenty of time to fix any bad habits.

The first book I read on the topic was The No-Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley, a gift from my sister- and brother-in-law who’ve had their own struggles with getting kids to sleep. In order to change a baby’s poor sleeping habits, the author says you can choose “crying or time.” Holding my tiny, precious newborn in my arms, I thought, “well, of course I’ll take as much time as needed to avoid tears!”  I appreciated the fact that Pantley had developed her system in the process of getting her own son to sleep; she had been in the trenches like me! 

After reviewing safety issues (a great reminder when you’re sleep-deprived and desperate), the reader is instructed to keep sleep logs for both the day/naptime and nighttime. After analyzing the logs, you get to choose from a menu of sleep solutions. They’re broken down by age (birth-4 months and 4 months-2 years), and include ideas for changing your baby’s sleep associations and developing sleep cues. Then you implement your custom plan, and review your progress after 10 days. The success of other “test mommies” is encouraging- 42% had babies sleeping through the night after day 10, and 92% were doing so after sixty days.

This feels a little like the concluding sentence to a 4th-grade book report…”I recommend this book to anyone who likes stories with adventure and strong friendship.” But seriously, if you’re not interested in a cry-it-out scenario for getting your baby to sleep, try Pantley’s book. You’ll need a big dose of patience, but it clearly works for many people.

My husband and me, unfortunately, not so much. Whether this was due to our own incomplete efforts or our son’s temperament, I don’t know. Probably a combination of the two. In those early months, I guess I felt that minimal sleep was par for the course. Stay tuned for the next phase of our journey…

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