Sleep: Top Tips from the Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg & Melinda Blau

Author:Tracy Hogg & Melinda Blau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2011-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

Pick Up/Put Down

A Sleep Training Tool—Four Months to a Year

When I met James, he was five months old and had never slept in his own bed. He couldn’t sleep unless his mom was right next to him, in Mom and Dad’s bed. But James’s mom, Jackie, had to put herself to bed at eight o’clock every night and lie down with him every morning and afternoon when James took his naps; his poor dad, Mike, had to sneak in when he came home from work. And James still didn’t sleep well. In fact, he woke several times a night, and the only way his mother could get him back to sleep was by breast-feeding him.

As with many babies who have sleep difficulties during the first year, the problem originated when James was only a month old. When he seemed to “resist” their efforts to put him to sleep, his parents first took shifts in a rocking chair. He’d fall asleep eventually, but the moment they put James down, his eyes would pop open. In desperation, Mom started to calm him by laying him on her chest. Dead tired herself, she lay down in her own bed with him, and the two of them fell asleep. James never went into his own crib again. Each time James woke, Jackie would put him on her chest and hope that he’d fall back to sleep. She’d always end up giving him an extra feed as well.

This was a full-blown case of accidental parenting. I get literally thousands of calls and e-mails from parents of four-month-olds in many variations, and if parents don’t take steps to change the situation, these types of issues get worse and last well into toddlerhood, if not longer. I picked James’s case because it embodies all those problems!

By the time babies are three or four months old, they should be on a consistent routine and sleeping in their own beds for naps and nighttime. They should also have the skills to settle down to sleep and to put themselves back to sleep when they wake up. And they should be sleeping through for at least a full six-hour stretch.

To determine how to solve a sleep problem, especially with older babies, we have to look at the entire day. Every issue can be traced back to an inconsistent, non-existent, or inappropriate routine. Of course, some degree of accidental parenting is also involved. In every case, the solution involves getting the child back on a good routine. To establish or tweak a routine with a baby three months and older, I teach parents “pick up/put down”—P.U./P.D.

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