If your nights are a living hell then you seriously need to roll up your sleeves and get ready to implement some changes. However, before you begin you need to decide what type of sleep trainer (as that’s what you’re are going to become) you want to be.
If you want to choose the ‘don’t let baby cry’ method, then please accept that your nights will be broken. If you choose ‘I will let my baby cry for three nights max’ then you will succeed at this 100% and you’ll see your baby go to sleep in no time!
Before you look at the night times however, you need to look at the day times. Once you’ve got your daytime routine sorted out your nights will follow smoothly. This doesn’t just refer to your baby’s sleeping routine, but also his feeding routine. If your baby is hungry, he won’t want to sleep.
There are some extremely useful books that I’ve listed on this site, that will help you develop a healthy daytime routine for your baby. One thing that the majority of books will say is that babies can very easily fall into a routine starting roughly at 7am and finishing roughly at 7pm.
Now before you decide on whether to change baby’s routine, there’s something you should know about this technique called ‘cry it out’. You only need to use this method when you are trying to change a habit that you and your baby have got into. Once you’ve got made the change (which shouldn’t take more than 2-3 days if you are consistent), you never need to let your baby ‘cry it out’ again. ‘Cry it out’ means crying for a lengthy amount of time but don’t get this mixed up with ‘crying to get to sleep’. Most babies need to have a cry before they go to sleep. They may go from 1 to 10 on the cryometer almost immediately but they stop just as quickly, so allow this to let your baby go to sleep.
So before you start to make the changes you need to understand the following:
1) Look at the daytime routine first and change where necessary
2) Realise that you will have to let your baby cry for an extended period of time in order to make the change (but I will show you how to do this without harming your baby in any way). This won’t go on for longer than 2-3 nights.
3) Understand that the majority of babies need to cry to get themselves to sleep and that it’s OKAY.
4) Be prepared to know what it’s like to sleep through the night again because that’s exactly what will happen if you follow the steps for nighttime success because before you know it, you’ll have a sleeping through the night baby!
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