The No-Cry Sleep Solution

Jack does not sleep very well at night. He used to, but not anymore. He wakes up an average of 6 times during the night, and can't go back to sleep without my intervention. Needless to say, I'm tired. Most people will tell you to let them cry it out, that it's the only way to teach them how to sleep on their own. But I'm just not wired that way. If it works for you and your family - by all means, more power to you. The Cry-It-Out Method just doesn't work for our family. With that in mind I bought a book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley. So far, I'm loving it. It's a big proponent of attachment parenting, which is something we try to practice in our home. It gives many gentle, easy to implement ideas to teach your baby to sleep through the night, and it's full of plain old common sense. So, I am going to attempt "the Pantley Plan". It's not a quick fix, it can take several weeks to see progress, but according to everyone who's attempted this, if you keep at it and have some patience, you WILL see progress. Without hours and hours of crying.

The first step is to complete a Sleep Log, which I did the other night. It helps to see exactly what your child's sleep pattern is, so you can track your progress. Here's how ours looked:

Number of Awakenings: 6
Amount of Awake Time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Amount of Sleep Time: 9 hours
Longest Sleep Span: 2 hours 15 minutes

Now you see why I'm tired all the time??

Now that I can see exactly what I'm working with, we have moved onto Step 2, which is to regulate nap times, which is a big contributer to better night-time sleep. The better they nap, the better they sleep at night. I already knew this, but it can be difficult to ensure they always get good naps. So we are currently working on getting in 2 good naps a day - one around 9:30 and one around 2:30. Pantley says to do anything that works to get your child to nap - the goal is for them to sleep. You can adjust the routine and the method later, once they are sleeping better and have set their little body clocks. Makes sense to me. I got Jack to sleep today at 10:00 (which is better than his normal nap time of 11:00 - and then he only takes one nap a day), so we are seeing a little progress already.

I've taken several of her ideas, the ones I think will work best for our family and sleeping arrangement, and started to implement them. One is the use of key words to signal that it's sleepy time. It takes a week or two for it to start to have an effect she says, but if you keep at it, eventally they will start associating your key words with sleep, and then you can use those words to help calm them down and get them back to sleep. I've also started the Gentle Removal Plan, to help Jack fall asleep without eating, as he does now. This involves slowly taking away the bottle or breast as he falls asleep, the time getting shorter and shorter each time. If he cries, give it back, and just keep trying until he accepts the change, which according to Pantley, he eventually will. Again, it takes time, but I'd rather have it take longer and use a gentle and loving approach than just let him scream it out.

I'm supposed to implement these ideas, and then do it for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, I will do another sleep log, to track progress. Then you re-evaluate your approach, decide if you feel it's working and change as necessary. Then another 10 days, and so on. After a few weeks, we should see some better, longer sleep! The trick is for me to be patient, and not give up on him!

Wish us luck!!