Posts Tagged ‘sleep help’

So, we’ve made it through the holidays in one piece. Phew! Sleep seems to be back on track in our house, given we had some late bedtimes and off-schedules surrounding Christmas. If you are still struggling with the holiday upheaval, make sure you review your post-holiday sleep recovery tips, and if you’re a member, be sure to listen to the tele-seminar recording from 12/29. One member e-mailed me this about it:

“LOVED the Recovering from the Holidays and Nap Transitions taping. I missed it yesterday b/c it was the last of the in-laws… and so I was very grateful to hear this today! Perfect taping!”
-Lily

New Year’s is a time to reflect on the last year and how you want the next year to be. Multitudes will make new year’s resolutions and only a small percentage will achieve the goals they set for the new year.

A look back at 2009

This past year has been a big year. In December 2008, this website (formerly picknicksbrain.com) had around 15,000 visitors. This past December 2009, the website enjoyed over 36,000 visitors who viewed over 71,000 pages! I’ve gone from having just a few clients to ten times the number. I get many e-mail messages that thank me for the site and helping their child sleep, even if I’ve never talked to them directly. We’ve added a Members Area, a new book, and a Facebook fan page. I also hired an assistant to help me manage it all and help me get our name out there. It is beyond phenomenal how wonderful it has felt to help you and your families get more sleep and I can’t even put it into words.

This year I also learned just how determined I am to help new parents in many different ways. I became the majority owner of Babble Soft and took over operations from my business partner, Aruni, who is a serial entrepreneur. She is so great and it’s so hard to believe we only met in person for the first time last week!

On a personal level, I celebrated my five-year wedding anniversary, my 4-year old started pre-school and my almost 2-year old started talking in sentences a few weeks ago.

Fortunately, it has been a very good year for me and my family. I am able to fulfill my passion to help other parents with their sleep struggles like I’ve been through myself and be home a lot with my kids (with help) so I can avoid missing too much of these early years.

It has not all been positive, unfortunately. My father and brother had a falling out, my two older brothers were really sick earlier this year (and both had strokes), and just over the holidays I struggled to help my family understand my son’s spirited temperament and strong-willed personality. I’m sure some of you might relate.

It was difficult to explain how my older son is slow to adapt and how his first reaction is often no (unless you can make him think it was his idea ). It’s hard when someone wants to interact with him, yet his first reaction is no. It can hurt feelings and the fact he is slow-to-adapt makes him prefer familiar (mommy and daddy) over someone new (like a visitor who sees him infrequently even if the visitor is someone like grandma or grandpa). He has grown up a lot and matured SO much in the summer before he turned 4, but if you don’t know him very well, you really don’t know how far he’s really come and I only expect great things from him as he gets older (though I still worry what his persistence will be like when he’s a teenager). His younger brother, who I’m sure looks to his big brother to guide him, is much easier-going but is VERY stranger-averse. He takes a long time to warm-up to new people. Though we sometimes wish they would warm up faster, we are not sad that they won’t let just anyone cuddle with them. I know maturity will make a big difference, so we’ll just have to be patient.

Goals for 2010

Professionally, I hope, with the new name of the website, many more babies will find their sleep. I plan to keep writing new material that will be new and different for parents to help their babies find their sleep and, you never know, I might even start on that published book I’ve been thinking about. I also plan for the Helpdesk to remain busy the rest of the year (it’s surely starting out that way!). I plan to enhance the Babble Soft suite of baby care software and help even more parents gain insight into their baby’s rhythms and help manage their baby’s schedule.

Personally, I hope my Dad and brother mend their rift and my two older brothers stay healthy now that they are on the mend and on blood pressure medication. I hope my husband has a fabulous 40th birthday and my boys, who will turn 2 and 5, stay so very cute and the light of my life.

Sleep-wise, I hope my 4 year old will stop having as frequent nightmares as there is nothing that breaks your heart more than a pre-schooler who says “I hope I don’t have a nightmare tonight” and you can’t do much about it. He’s at the age where fear is normal and they are learning about mortality. Other than that, his sleep is in pretty good shape, now, thankfully (though it’s never perfect)! For my almost 2-year old, I just hope he does not need to transition to no-napping like his brother did at 2 1/2. Otherwise, he is napping well and sleeping well most nights (again, not perfect every single night especially with 2-year molars coming in). I do plan to determine whether chocolate really is a sensitivity for him or if it’s purely coincidence that nights he has had chocolate during the day, he wakes at night. We will also transition him to a toddler bed in the next 6 months and start potty training (have you calculated how many diapers a baby uses, yet? Scary stuff!).

I believe the key to successful new year’s resolutions to keep them realistic, so I’ll finish this by saying my new year’s resolutions are to exercise more often, help more parents with sleep problems, and go to bed earlier myself (I am writing this after midnight so I’m not off to a great start here! LOL). I hope, if you’re still struggling with your child’s sleep, that you make one of your resolutions is to help them sleep better. I promise you, it’s realistic!

What are your new year’s resolutions (sleep or otherwise)?

I am pleased to announce that I have a new FREE guide available on my website titled Nick’s Brain, Picked! Five Ways to Help Your Child Sleep Through the Night.

This guide is an e-Book detailing the five primary ways you can help your child sleep all night. To get your free guide, simply fill in your name and e-mail address and push the button (I hate spam as much as you do and will NOT sell your information!).

“At first I thought this was another harsh ‘baby training’ website, but now I see this site is an invaluable resource for parents who want to find their own way to help their child sleep better. 5 Ways to Help Your Child Sleep Through the Night has helped me begin to get better sleep for my child.”
–Elizabeth, France

If you are just joining us, you should start at Part 1 of my sleep training series.

In this final part of the series, I am going to share my story. I’m doing this for a couple of reasons. First, I want you to get to know me and my story, so I’m not just some name on the internet claiming to have gone through something similar to what you might be going through. I want you to know you aren’t alone. Sure, I suppose, I could be making up my story, but believe me I wish I were, but I’m not. LOL Second, I want to tell you my story because it shows that “experts” don’t have all the answers. You know your baby best! And, away we go!

Sleep Training My First Son

Donovan (in photo above), my eldest son, is a spirited child. He was high-needs basically from the beginning. He needed a LOT of soothing, whether it was me nursing, rocking, or holding him or my husband rocking him or walking him around (and he never took a pacifier – we must have tried 20 of them!). But, thankfully, he was not colicky. He didn’t cry a lot unless he was tired and we weren’t walking, rocking, nursing, etc. He was and still is very sensitive to becoming overtired. I/we had to watch him like a hawk to see if it was time to sleep again. Once he was overtired, it was much harder to get him to sleep.

Around 6 weeks old it was taking me upwards of 2-3 hours to put him to bed at night. I am NOT exaggerating. I would rock him and put him down ever so gently and he’d wake right up and I’d start alllll over! It was so exhausting. After I’d finally get him down, I’d start all over 1-2 hours later when he woke up again. Of course, now I know about sleep associations and why he was doing that. At 8 weeks old, I went back to work and simply could not keep up, so we started co-sleeping, something I never planned to do. I knew it worked for other people, but just wasn’t what I planned or wanted. But, it got us both more sleep…sorta. Since he had to nurse every 1-2 hours, he had to sleep with me and I was so fearful of rolling on him or my husband covering him with covers that I really didn’t sleep well, not to mention it wasn’t always so easy for me to go back to sleep after he nursed (and I never got good at nursing on the other side without physically switching sides! LOL). Anyway, it was better than what I was doing before, though.

Fast forward 8 weeks and he was 4 months old. I was getting depressed going to bed every night at 7pm and never seeing my husband that I had to do something to transition him back to his crib, where he originally started.

I needed to formulate a plan, but I didn’t just want to put him in a room to cry when I had been sleeping with him every night. I didn’t think that was fair. So, first I used the method I described in Part 2 of this sleep training series. The first night, it took TWO LONG HOURS and was very frustrating for both of us. He surprisingly didn’t cry too much, either. He took to sucking on my sheet to soothe himself. The next night it took another TWO LONG HOURS. Ugh. But, by night 3 he did it in just 20 minutes and then the 4th night in the crib with NO CRYING! I was ecstatic!!

But…a week later he decided he didn’t like this arrangement. He had a revolt. LOL I had given him a light receiving blanket that I slept on to suck on, but by the end of the week I guess it just wasn’t enough. So, at that point, my husband and I decided to let him cry-it-out. At this point we knew he could do it and we decided he was protesting the change (like he’s done for other things for years now LOL). It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. No mother plans on letting their baby cry to learn how to sleep. I made myself a mantra to get through it and reminded myself why I was doing it. Like I said, he’s spirited, so he didn’t cry just 5 minutes and then sleep through the night like some books want to make it seem! But, we got through it in just 4 nights and on the 5th he went to sleep with NO CRYING.

I only focused on bedtime, at this point, and promptly responded to all other wakings. Thankfully, after he learned to fall asleep AT bedtime, he could go BACK to sleep throughout the night during sleep transitions. He still woke to eat twice until he was 7 1/2 months old and then he only woke once until I tried to night-wean at 8 1/2 months. Even though the “experts” will tell you babies don’t need to eat at night after a certain age/weight/whatever, he continued to wake in the 5 o’clock hour 3-4 times per week for a feeding. I tried to extend him, but decided it was just best for both of us to continue to nurse and put him back down for 1-2 hours up until he was a little over a year old when he stopped waking on his own. But, even then it was difficult for him to go 12 hours without food and he’d want breakfast immediately upon waking. All babies are different in this regard. Heck, I know some adults would have trouble with going 12 hours without food! :p

Alas, sleep training was not a cure-all for us but it did make things 10 times better. We had many many ups and downs after that. He would slip back into bad habits and all of a sudden I’d find myself rocking him for an hour again. I don’t know how it would happen, but I suppose it was during a teething episode, illness, etc. and things would just start to unravel again and we’d have to let him cry-it-out again. Some might say that this means cry-it-out didn’t work, but I don’t regret my decision one bit…EVER. It *was* our only option. We had tried everything else and it would land us in a big abyss of not-enough-sleep-for-any-of-us and when he didn’t get enough sleep, he was a BEAR! It wasn’t good for him. It wasn’t worth it for me to rock him for an hour to avoid 10 minutes of crying. That was robbing him of 50 more minutes of sleep and believe me, he needed it.

Nowadays, sleep is still ever important in this house for him. He is still a bear if he doesn’t get enough sleep only now he whines more, cries more, and has more tantrums. I *know* that as he goes through life and goes to school, it will be IMPERATIVE that my husband and I get him adequate sleep or he will be one of the kids with behavior problems. I think many parents probably struggle with this and not realize their child simply needs more sleep. I can imagine that if you haven’t really been able to tune into the relationship between sleep and behavior, you might miss it. I know the fact he is spirited makes a big difference.

Of course, I need to mention that my sweet son is just that, too. He is much more challenging without enough sleep, but boy is he one of the brightest lights of my life! He is so smart (I’m not exaggerating LOL) and such a sweetheart giving me kisses and telling me he loves me and kissing his little brother and…I could go on and on. At one point he knew over 30 signs for communicating before he could talk, he could point to over 30 U.S. states when he was just over a year old, knew his ABC’s before he was 2, and so on. Allowing him to cry-it-out in no way damaged him or his self-esteem. He is still ever so strong-willed and negotiates EVERYTHING (I swear he will be a lawyer!). He still trusts us and loves us to pieces.

Sleep Training My Second Son

Nicholas (photo to the right) is my 2nd son and now just 4 months old. Completely different than Donovan. We haven’t had to do much with him and he has started to sleep well. You might think it’s because I know more this time. I disagree. I have not done things THAT much different with Nicholas. Because I seem to birth screamers (not fussers), when he came home from the hospital I had to hold him all night for at least 2-3 weeks. I sat upright on the couch while he laid on the boppy . He just couldn’t be set down much at all. Then, I just HAD to get off the couch, so what did I do? You guessed it. We started co-sleeping, only this time I bought a The First Years Close and Secure Sleeper. That lasted just 3 nights because he was such a loud sleeper and even when he wasn’t awake, I’d reach over and pat his back probably waking him up. So, I decided to try to put the sleeper in the crib with him and voila! He’s been in there ever since (we removed the sleeper about 2 weeks later or so).

For awhile, we still rocked him to sleep (and still do for naps, for now), but then we slowly stopped that and started letting him fall asleep on the boppy on our lap in the rocker and then eventually was able to just put him in the crib and he sucks on…yep…a light receiving blanket. Naps might be a different story, but overall, he’s simply learned how to soothe himself much easier than Donovan did. I really don’t take credit. He’s just different (and not as sensitive to over-tiredness). Pure and simple. And, that’s why those with “easy” babies won’t ever understand how someone like me could allow my son to cry or how some people would find it strange to even have a whole website dedicated to sleep for babies. It’s simply not easy for all babies!

I hope sharing my story has given others either a) hope that they can also have a good sleeper, b) strength to make a change, c) comfort they are not alone, or d) all of the above. There really isn’t just one way to help your child sleep better. There really isn’t a “right” method for all of us. We all must find what works for our personalities and for our children’s temperament. I hope you can find information on this website to do just that.

What’s Your Sleep Training Story?

This article will outline two sleep training methods, including what many people know as “The Ferber Method”. If you are just joining in, you may want to start from the beginning at Part 1 of my Sleep Training (From No Cry to Cry) series.

You may be interested in reading about the age to do cry-it-out and how cry-it-out will not change your child’s personality.

The Ferber / Check-and-Console Method
(aka Ferberizing)

This sleep training method entails allowing baby to cry while checking on him at intervals. The goal here is to reassure him ever so often to a) make sure baby is okay and to reassure yourself and b) reassure him you hear them and are there for them. When you go to check on baby, you are not supposed to pick him up nor engage them much, but simply reassure using your voice and a loving pat for 2-3 minutes, tops (watch the clock!). The goal is NOT to help baby to sleep! That is what he is learning to do on his own! The idea is that he falls asleep in the same “environment” in which he will awaken periodically throughout the night (we all do!). The knowledge of how to fall asleep unassisted at bedtime will pave the way for him/her to go BACK to sleep throughout the night.

Here is an example of how night 1 might go:

• Bedtime is 6:30 pm (make sure bedtime is sufficiently early and don’t make the mistake of “tiring him out” first. This leads to more crying, not less)
• You do the bedtime routine, as usual, starting at 6pm. At 6:20 p.m. you put baby down DROWSY, BUT AWAKE
• Baby begins to cry immediately and you set the timer for 5 minutes.
• At 6:25 p.m. you go in and reassure her.
• If she is still crying, you go back in at 10 minutes and then every 15 minutes until she falls asleep.

Each night, you increase each interval by 5 minutes. If you can’t start with intervals 5, 10, and 15, start with 3, 7, and 10. It doesn’t matter as long as you increase intervals nightly and be CONSISTENT.

Cry It Out (aka CIO or Extinction)

This is basically when you follow the same rules above, only you leave baby completely alone to fall asleep. Some feel this is cruel, however, many feel this leads to less crying, overall, and not cruel since you have already implemented a bedtime routine and she knows what to expect. Again, this will depend on your philosophy as a parent and your baby’s temperament. At night, you do not put a limit to the crying because if you allow her to cry for let’s say 30 minutes and then “rescue” her, you have all but guaranteed that much crying or more next time and you also don’t want them to learn to cry for a predetermined amount of time. It is imperative that you be 100% consistent and follow through. If you don’t want to let your baby cry, that is 100% OK, just choose another method.

You can use one of these methods or a variation of your own. You can try one and then switch to another after a few days. For some babies, going in there periodically only “teases” them and they get angrier that you won’t rock them or nurse them or do whatever you’ve been doing to “help” them to sleep. I do not have hard-core facts to say how long your baby will cry, on average. All babies are different and temperament and level of strong will definitely plays a part. In my experience in helping other parents, the average seems to be around 30 minutes. Some babies cry 5 minutes and sleep the rest of the night. Others might cry over an hour and wake several times in the night. Unfortunately, there is no way to know what yours will do, but I’m sure up to this point you have a good idea about the personality of your child. Many people are pleasantly surprised by how “little” their baby cries and wonder why they didn’t try sooner. They were prepared for the long haul and she may have “only” cried 20 minutes. Of course, as you know, 20 minutes to a mother or father can be excruciating, especially at 2 a.m.

Crying methods generally take 3-4 nights to see marked improvement, however, it isn’t always a cure-all. Sure, there are some babies you read about who, after 4 nights, sleep through the night forever and ever. And, then there are those who don’t and you have to keep letting them cry it out. Well, the important thing is to consider what your alternative is. If rocking/nursing/etc. to sleep was not working, there is a reason you started down this path and thus, you may just have a challenging sleeper who requires more “work” than others.

In part 6, the last part of this sleep training series, I share my story.

I am excited to announce that The Baby Sleep Site™ will now be offering affordable sleep consulting services! We have been working hard developing custom help desk software that will help me streamline giving sleep advice to tired parents across the world (who speak English ). Now that my software is complete, I can now begin doing what I do best, helping tired parents help their baby / child get more sleep! I’ve helped hundreds of parents before this site was created, and now I want to help YOU! In the help desk, you fill in a profile that will help me know your child’s schedule and some other pertinent information such that I will be able to really get to know you and your child and be able to concentrate most on giving you advice and not taking precious time asking general questions. This also enables me to refresh my memory should you go long periods between consultations such that I will have our entire history at my fingertips! You will receive my responses via e-mail or you can login to your account and view everything right there.

I will be offering e-mail packages, unlimited e-mail, private chat and telephone consultations. Here’s how it will work:

• You will be able to enter as many helpdesk “tickets” as you wish and you are only “charged” for my responses. In other words, if you start an e-mail and decide to add to it later, you will not be charged. You will also not be charged for every e-mail I send to you. I get really involved in the cases brought to me and thus I would never charge you to say “That’s great little Lucy slept all night!”, for example. Honestly, I am not looking to get rich (though it would be nice!) off of your sleep deprivation. I only wish to be able to continue providing sleep advice to weary parents.
• The unlimited e-mail option will enable us to exchange as many e-mail as the length of time you purchase. In addition, if you purchase an unlimited e-mail subscription, if you purchase more services before your expiration date, you will automatically get a discount off any service! (fine print: promotions may change)
• The private chat will be by the hour where we will meet in a private chat room and have a discussion. The nice thing about the chat over the telephone is, at the end, I will be able to e-mail you our transcript for you to review later.
• Last but not least, I will also offer telephone support and consultations. You can purchase a certain number of minutes and we talk about the sleep problems your child(ren) are having. These options also come with unlimited e-mail for a specified amount of time!

Wait, there’s more! For the first 10 customers, I am offering $19 off which essentially gets you started with a 2-email package for less than $1!! You can also use this coupon for any other service package. When purchasing services, simply enter “FIRST10″ in the promo box, where indicated before you pay.

As you can tell, I’m very excited about this and can’t wait for us to get started! Come on in and create your account now!

If you have not read the other parts of this sleep training series, I suggest you start at Part 1.

In part 3 of my sleep training series, I went over the Fading method, a no-cry (or limited crying) sleep training method. Today, I will discuss “The Chair Method”. This is the first of what I would call a “crying method”, however, you don’t leave your baby unattended in the room at all. The idea is that you start by doing your normal bedtime routine and putting the chair very near the crib and sit on it while your baby falls asleep. The goal is not to help your child fall asleep, nor help him/her calm down or anything like that. You are generally not supposed to give your child any attention. The reason you are in the chair is only to reassure them that you are there with them. If you have successfully implemented a bedtime routine, your child will very well know what he/she is supposed to do at this moment. Each night you move the chair further and further away from the crib until you are right outside the door, and eventually, when you no longer need the chair, at all.

As you might suspect, this method can be very difficult, depending on temperament, and can take many days or weeks. It can be difficult to avoid engaging with your child and it will likely be a little confusing to the child (particularly younger ones) when you don’t. However, with time and consistency, this can be a good option for parents who do not want to leave their child alone to cry but other methods have not worked, either. As with any sleep training method, it’s important to commit to it 100% for at least one or two weeks before you decide it isn’t working. Consistency is still key!

Continue to Part 5 of this Sleep Training series.

Today’s quick tip is to keep a log of your baby’s sleep for one or two weeks. Log wake times, nap times, nap lengths, and bedtime. Add up the total time baby actually slept (if you are unsure, as long as baby is quiet, count as sleeping). The amount of sleep a child gets in 24 hours stays relatively constant and they will shift sleep from day to night and vice versa (within reason). Once you have your log, you can take the average amount of sleep in 24 hours and use that as a guide when adjusting schedules and setting your expectations on wake-times. For example, if you know your baby gets an average of 13.5 hours in 24 hours and naps 3 hours that day, you can guesstimate (s)he will sleep about 10.5 hours that night. You will likely need to log 1-2 weeks every few months to get an accurate average, as babies change a lot in the first 2-3 years!

Disclaimer: Some babies are more consistent than others. Inconsistent babies might have a large range of the amount of sleep in 24 hours. At least if you keep a log, you know whether this is true or not.

Disclaimer 2: During growth spurts, teething and illnesses, the amount of sleep might be unusually higher or lower. Try to time your logging during a “normal” time. (as much as a baby is “normal”)

For online tracking, you can use Babble Soft. Babble Soft helps you and other caregivers keep track of activities like breastfeeding or bottle feeding schedules, baby sleep patterns, diapers, baby immunization or medicine doses, and baby’s first year photo album. This helps you really get to know your child’s schedule or to show you whether she has one (in the case of inconsistent babies, there just might not be one without your intervention!). Or, you can use good old pencil and paper or track using something like Excel where you can let it calculate the average for you. But, Babble Soft is very affordable and lets you run reports and has charts so you can see information at-a-glance! It’s very easy to use and has a FREE Trial.

Share your baby sleep logging tips

In this sleep training series, so far I’ve talked about the importance of a bedtime routine and gone over how you can sleep train while co-sleeping. In part 3 of this series, I will be discussing the “fading” method of sleep training.

Fading, The Method

This method I would consider one of the no-cry (or very little cry) methods. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, when you change the rules how baby falls asleep (usually by breaking a sleep association), it is usually not done without some form of protest. Your baby is sleepy and wants to be sleeping and you aren’t doing what you’ve always done! He or she might get a little mad here! How would you feel if you had to learn to sleep without your pillow? But, with practice, time and commitment we can all learn a new way to sleep.

With this method, you help your baby fall asleep, but you set up “rules” as to how you will slowly take yourself out of the equation. If you think about how you have done most of the work up until this point, now you will develop rules to follow that will shift the “work” to your baby/child. If you have always rocked baby all the way to sleep, you might rock him/her less time and put him in the crib drowsy, but awake and let him/her try to fall asleep on his/her own. If he/she gets worked up, you try to quiet and soothe them using other methods until he/she is asleep. Each night, you do less and less “work” and your baby should do more of it.

How long will it take?

As you can see, this method can take a lot of time and patience on your part. And, depending on the temperament of the child, it might be very difficult to follow it through until the end. But, if you do not want to allow your child to cry alone and you also don’t want to continue the path you’re on now, it’s a great first step! After all, how do you know whether it will work or not if you don’t try it? The amount of time this method will take will be directly related to your ability to be CONSISTENT and your child’s temperament and personality (how strong-willed is he/she and will he/she “outlast” you?). It is imperative that you remain consistent because if you falter 1 hour in, for example, then it will only be that much harder next time. I highly recommend writing down the plan you hope to follow such that you can refer to it and really stick to it 100%.

Does this sound like a good method for you?

I just wanted to share that I am in the process of writing up a document that will consolidate some useful information into one document that exhausted parents can read quickly or for all parents to have useful information at their fingertips. It will include much of the information on this website, but in an easy-to read “cliffs notes” version. It will include information such as how much sleep babies, toddlers and young children really need, why it may not be a good idea to rock your baby to sleep, useful resources to help get more sleep for you and your baby, information on how to sleep train (from no-cry methods to crying methods), when naps get dropped, and more. This information will be available via e-mail. Click here to sign up and receive your copy. The document will be available by Monday, May 19, 2008.