Today I'm thankful for the joint efforts of Harvey Karp, Marc Weissbluth, Jennifer Waldburger, and Jill Spivak. Any of you with children may recognize some of these names. They are the authors of sleep philosophies for children, and I have become quite intimate with them in the last coule weeks! Well, with their books.
I've now read 3 different books on the subject, and while I'm very short of expert status, I feel quite knowledgable when it comes to sleep training. That's not to say that I would consider myself successful just yet, but boy, can I spout off random facts like nobody's business. So, again, while I may not be an expert, here are my feelings about each of these philosophies.
Dr. Harvey Karp is the author of The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep. I picked this one up first when I became desperate for some answers to LM's sleep problem. We were very pleased with his first book, The Happiest Baby on the Block, when it came to soothing LM in the first couple months of his life. He was on the verge of colic, and we wanted to nip it in the bud before it became too late. Our pediatrician recommended it, and we never looked back! After great success with Karp's theories, I was naturally driven to the name when searching for new answers in regards to sleep. I have to say, though, I was not as impressed.
Karp's book is more a compilation of other's ideas with a few of his own opinions thrown in there. At first, I thought this was great because it gave me a taste of different strategies, allowing us to choose the one that seemed to make sense for our situation. He also offered a few tips for helping LM sleep longer or better once we'd chosen a training strategy. However, the problem with this book is that it's just a taste. These overviews (for cry-it-out vs no-cry) gave us a good idea of how we wanted to move forward, so I was thankful for that. But I didn't feel prepared, or that my questions had really been answered. If I was going to let my child cry it out (the method that seemed to make more sense for us; I'll explain later), I wanted to make sure I was doing it right and not just causing more damage.
This led to the second book, recommended by our second pediatrician, called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. Weissbluth's theory is that all children are defined by how colicky they were in the first few months of life. After identifying your child's temperament, you can then decide on the best course of action. The idea is that all children are different, so there is no one answer to helping with sleep problems. I fully agree! However, as an exhausted mom who can barely see straight, all I want are answers. Give me a program and a schedule to follow, people!
While this book was full of interesting information, it was incredibly wordy and difficult to sort through all the studies to find anything useful. I think that someday I might like to go back and read the results of all those studies just for my own curiosity. It may be extremely useful in helping identify LM's temperament, which I'm sure can shed some light on other topics, too. It did also narrow down that we needed to approach this with a cry-it-out method. Everything it said about no-cry methods used the word "patience" a lot. We're running very thin on that around this house. While CIO is emotionally difficult for the parents in the beginning, it's quicker and seems less painful for all involved in the long run. Even within CIO, there are choices to be made about cold turkey, or what they call "longer and longer."
This book left me feeling more helpless because it now seemed even more likely that I could do this all wrong. I'm sure some of you are thinking, "How do you let your kid cry wrong?" With more reading, I found there isn't really a wrong way to do it, other than being inconsistent. The answer seems to be, choose a method and stick with it, no matter how hard your heart strings are tugged. This led me to book #3, The Sleepeasy Solution. I stumbled across a blog written by a mother who sounded a lot like me; at the end of her rope, reading lots of books, and about to lose her mind from exhaustion. A friend recommended this book to her, and she says she never looked back, so I checked it out on Amazon. The description is full of statements like, "What all Hollywood parents use for their children!" This almost made me steer clear, but I bought it anyway. And I'm so glad I did! It was exactly what I was looking for: a clear, outlined schedule for the day, how to implement longer-and-longer (the method we liked best), how to handle naps, etc. It answered all my questions in a quick, easy-to-read format, and I felt confident going into this last night.
It's only been one night, so we're far from saying the issue is resolved, but last night was amazing! We put him down around 6:30, doing our check-ins at the recommended times, and at 7:22, LM was asleep! Not only that, but he didn't wake up! We were able to go to bed super early. I "dream fed" him at 1 am, and then he slept till 6!!! And on top of this, he's taken two naps already today, both for and hour and a half! I'm hopeful that tonight will go just as well, and I'm excited to move forward with this plan.
Honestly, the major point I take from this is that there is no right answer. All children are different, so it's impossible to nail down one correct way to help a child learn to fall asleep on his or her own. You have to do what's right for your own family, thus the difficulty in finding a simple, clear program. In the end, I think we've found our answer (at least, I hope!), and I'm glad it came in book #3 instead of #10!
