It's hard to believe, but 6 weeks ago I was in agony, being awakened 6 or 7 times a night by a 7-month-old baby who seemed desperate to nurse each and every hour overnight. I was at DefCon 7, or 8, or 47, or whatever the highest possible number might be for Maternal Sleep Deprivation. Worse, this is our 4th baby. My fantasies of finally getting a baby who was a good sleeper were shot to hell, and I was MAD.
Going the "babywearing" route -- responding to every need -- wasn't working -- it was making things worse. So I undertook the most rigorous "Sleep Training" program I've tried yet. And it worked.
Now, I'm not advocating that you try Sleep Training -- and by that, I mean some variation on the "Let Them Cry Longer Than You Normally Would" theme. No, please don't take this as something I'm necessarily advising you to do. Just hear me out for a minute:
Some babies do very well with "babywearing" and co-sleeping. Mine don't. They either get all aggravated with the extra body contact -- they want to be "free" -- or think sleeping with Mommy and Daddy means fun playtime all night long. It seems they want to sleep in their cribs, because they're wonderfully well-adjusted (and much more well-rested when they finally "get it"), but they need help in "getting it".
So I used my Shrink's Crystal Ball and devised a perfect sleep plan just for her that worked immediately. Hah! I wish. No, seriously, I thought about her specific age (7 months), her temperament (loud and excitable, but resilient and forgiving), and our family's needs (3 older kids who need to have a reasonably quiet house at night plus 2 working parents), and went from there. It was 6-ish weeks, with 2 or 3 of them being fairly challenging, but I am happy to say that the plan has worked fabulously well. Miss Nighttime Partier is now sleeping 10-11 hours at night.
This combination: Your baby's age, temperament, plus your family's needs, all get put into my formula for improving any parenting problem with your baby -- not just sleep. It's a personalized approach that goes way beyond a checklist that you might find in a parenting magazine. It's developed for you and your family. That's the basis for my Parent Coaching service that I'm preparing to offer online, and I'm really excited to be able to help families far beyond my little island home out here in the Pacific.
So stay tuned for more details on BabyShrink Parent Coaching, and in the meantime, comment or email me for more specifics on your little nighttime partier.