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

Last week I posted my newborn sleep tips. Today I’ll talk about getting your baby to nap. I am specifically talking about babies older than newborns (i.e. 3+ months old).

A nap is considered to be restorative if the baby is not moving (i.e. such as in a swing or car or stroller) and the nap is one hour or more. I specifically want to mention this because it widely varies what people believe to be a “normal” or “good” nap. Some think babies should sleep 3 hours each time and others seem to think 30 minutes is enough.

It is normal for babies younger than 6 months old to take 3-4 short 30-45 minute catnaps. Around 6 months, they should begin to lengthen to 2-3 longer naps. The 3rd nap is almost always just 30-45 minutes, just to help them get to bedtime. However, some babies don’t have this nap at all and only have 2 longer naps. The average amount of napping is 2-3 hours each day.

With babies younger than 9 months old, short naps are almost always due to too much wake-time between naps. When a baby is overtired, he will have trouble settling down enough to nap well and make it past that first sleep transition around the 30-45 minute mark. If your baby is short-napping you, try to decrease the wake-time between naps. This wake-time should ideally be just 1-2 hours, tops when baby is under 6 months old and 2-3 hours, after. When she isn’t overtired, she is better able to transition to the next sleep phase.

Also, around 6 months of age (some are ready by 5 months and some won’t be ready until 7+ like my first-born), you should nap baby more on a schedule. I have several sample baby schedules on this website (and always working on more). You should always use your baby as a guide, first and foremost, but in general, a schedule works wonders for babies who are having trouble napping (particularly when the problem is short-napping in an older baby). We all have internal clocks and if you get your baby used to sleeping at the same time every day, this will make it easier for her to nap. Remember, our bodies release hormones to fight fatigue, so if she is napping at different times every day, her body will be fighting fatigue and make it even harder for her to nap when you want her to.

Finally, a nice 10 minute nap routine will cue him that a nap is coming up. Change his diaper, read a short book or two, cuddle for a few minutes, and put him down for a nap. If you stay consistent, it will become crystal clear to him what’s coming up and prepare his body for relaxation and a good nap.

If none of these things seem to help and your baby is either continuing to fight his nap or takes short naps, you might need to encourage him to nap more. You may want to look at sleep training him for naps. Remember sleep training is not cry-it-out! And, you may be interested in reading my Sleep Training (from No Cry to Cry) Series.

If you are still having trouble getting your baby to nap, you may be interested in our step-by-step baby sleep guide or one-on-one baby sleep advice for your unique situation.

When you bring your baby home no one tells you that “sleep like a baby” only lasts a short time. This article will give you 10 tips to help your newborn sleep better.

Disclaimer: Before I get to the 10 tips to help your newborn sleep, I thought I should note that it can be dangerous for a new newborn baby (just a few weeks old) to sleep all night. They really do need to eat at least every 3 hours in those early days so they can grow well and thrive.

It is also safest to place baby on his back to sleep, to guard against SIDS. You may be interested in other ways to lower SIDS risks.

There, now that I got that out of the way.

Newborn Sleep Tips Start Here

1. Short Wake-time

The first week or so, your newborn baby will most likely hardly be awake, but after the first week or two, the #1 key with your newborn is to keep wake times very short, at first. You should soothe your baby for sleep after just 1-2 hours of wake time TOPS. You should look for signs that she is getting sleepy and start soothing her. If you wait until she is fussy, cranky or crying, you are actually too late!

An overtired baby will have more trouble settling down and going to sleep and staying asleep. My boys always fell asleep easiest when I caught them before they started to fuss and cry. Some babies are much more sensitive to being overtired than others, so while others will barely notice their child get sleepy before she drifts off to sleep, others will begin to realize just how in tune with their baby they need to be!

By wake time, I mean to include feedings and diaper changes and disregard how long her last nap was. For example, little Suzie starts to nap at 8am and sleeps for 3 hours. She eats at 11am and you change her diaper. Now, it’s 11:30 and you decide to give her a bath. At 11:45, she is fussy. She is already overtired and she needs a nap! In the beginning, they can’t go long before getting tired and overstimulated.

2. Swaddle

To help mimic the feeling of the womb, it helps to swaddle your newborn baby. This basically means to wrap him up in a blanket like a little burrito. You may have seen them do it at the hospital. This helps him feel safe and secure and also helps him stay asleep during any moro reflex or startle reflex moments. It is said that those reflexes are similar to how we have the feeling we are falling while falling asleep. It can take up to 4 or 5 months for your baby to stop the startling.

I recommend The Miracle Blanket for swaddling. It is a little pricey, but so easy to use and so hard for your baby to break out of! So worth it, to me! If you can’t or don’t want to spend that much, try this SwaddleMe Wrap

3. Days bright / Nights dark

Although you might be tempted to keep things quiet and darker for your newborn to nap well, it might prolong the day/night confusion that almost all newborns will have. Day/Night confusion can last up to 6 weeks. When she was in mom’s belly, mom’s movements lulled her to sleep and when mom was resting, she’d have a party. When she comes out, she doesn’t know she should act in the complete opposite fashion.

So, keep days bright and upbeat and nights, dark and boring, and it will help your newborn sort out her days and nights faster. This might be more than you want to know, but light is what cues our eyes to tell us to stay awake or whether it’s time to sleep.

4. Limit naps

If he is taking longer to sort out days and nights (or you are having a very rough time keeping up with him being up all night), you can further speed up the process by limiting naps to no longer than 3 hours during the day.

5. Post-feeding routine

To help your newborn baby sort out day and night sleeping even more, you may want to develop a play routine after she eats during the day. Keep her awake 30 minutes after feeding by playing, singing, bathing, etc. Again, the light stimulating her eyes will help her sort out that daylight is for being awake at least a little bit. Many people recommend the eat-play-sleep routine for newborns. This is the primary message of the popular book, On Becoming Baby Wise. You might want to review my explanation as to why I do not recommend this book, though.

6. Co-sleeping

Sometimes it helps to have your newborn in the room with you for quick access for middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes. This also can help give him more comfort being close by as he will be able to hear and smell you. For safety reasons, you should use a Co-Sleeper , sleep positioner, or bassinette, rather than have baby in bed with you. I used the second one with my second son and then I moved it into his crib for a seamless transition to his crib. We were able to remove it a few weeks later.

7. Angle the mattress

For babies who spit up a lot or have reflux, it helps to angle the mattress when he sleeps, so baby is not flat on his back. You’ll want to angle the mattress so his feet are lower than his head, so his stomach contents can stay put. To angle the mattress, you can simply change the support platform level on one side on most cribs. If that is not feasible, you can put blankets and pillow under the mattress. Please note that the mattress should still remain flat at all times, just at an incline. You must make sure that you do not tilt the mattress so much that your baby slides down the bed, either. I strongly recommend that you first check with a knowledgeable health care provider to make sure that what you do is best and safest for your child. I only wanted to highlight the idea.

8. White Noise

White noise is made up of the sounds like a fan whirring, vacuum cleaner, hair-dryer, etc. It helps a newborn sleep because inside mom’s womb was all white noise. The sound of her blood flow, heart beating, etc. That’s why he finds comfort when you may run the vacuum cleaner. My son used to love when I turned on the blow-dryer. Of course, you can’t run the vacuum all day, so I recommend getting a White Noise machine, sound machine or a White Noise CD. I have two of the second one in each boy’s room so they don’t wake each other and they work like a dream!

9. Wear baby

For particularly fussy babies or just for parent’s convenience and snuggling, it helps to “wear” baby using a sling. They get very folded up in a sling, but again, it mimics the womb and babies love it! I didn’t use a sling with my first, but used a BabyBjörn Baby Carrier and loved it! It really helped me walk off the baby weight, which was a bonus. But, with my second, I did use this sling (there are many others!) and my son would fall asleep in less than 5 minutes until he grew out of it. This helped tremendously when I needed to cook dinner and do stuff with my toddler, at the time. I have also heard good things about the Moby Wrap and the Maya Wrap.

Here are ten reasons to wear your baby.

10. Swing

As I said earlier, mom’s movements lulled baby to sleep while in the womb, so I also recommend trying a swing, but don’t be surprised if your newborn only likes it at high speeds. Our family teased us we were making our first son “drunk”, but he just loved it going FAST and it was the only way he’d fall asleep in it! We used something like this swingto help him sleep (I don’t see the exact one I used anymore — guess I’m officially old now). My friend has the Fisher-Price Ocean Wonders Aquarium Cradle Swing and loves it. They didn’t have that when I was shopping for one!

Important Note: It is not recommended to allow a newborn to sleep in a carseat.

Unfortunately, some of these tips do create sleep associations, but during the first weeks, you really do what you can to survive. Obviously, it never hurts to try to put your baby down to sleep without any of these “tricks”, but as I’ve probably said a billion times already on this site, it just doesn’t work for all of us.

For more product and site recommendations, please view my sleep resources page.

For additional information on helping your child sleep, you may be interested in our free guide, 5 Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night or our e-Book, Help Your Child Sleep, a Detailed Guide.

Do you have any tips to help newborns sleep?

Many new parents want to know when their newborn will sleep on a schedule or what the baby’s sleep pattern will be. This post will outline the average newborn’s schedule and sleep patterns.

Newborn Day / Night Confusion

When your son or daughter was in mom’s womb, mom’s movements lulled baby to sleep and when mom rested, you may have noticed he or she perked up. Once she is born, she does not automatically know she is supposed to do precisely the opposite! It takes a few days to several weeks for this to be sorted out, but it will get sorted out. Of course, this is tiring for us, parents!

Newborn Sleep Patterns

When your baby is first born, he will sleep more than be awake. They sleep about 16 hours per day and wake time includes any feedings. As the weeks go by, they will be able to stay up longer, but still sleep 14-16 hours in a 24-hour period by one month of age. By 3 months old, the average amount of sleep in 24 hours is still 14 hours.

A newborn will also cry 1-2 hours per day (in total, not all at once, usually). This is normal. It is the only way she can communicate to tell us whether they are hungry, tired, uncomfortable, wet, etc. Unfortunately, some babies will develop colic (bouts of intense crying that’s difficult to soothe and the causes unknown) when they are just a few weeks old. The crying might last hours per day and colic usually ends around the 3-4 month mark, hopefully not longer.

Newborn Sleep Schedules

Depending on your baby’s sensitivity level to being overtired, a schedule may not form until after he is 6 months old or longer. My first son, who is the primary reason this site even exists, did not get “good” at a schedule until 7 1/2 months because he just could NOT stay up long enough without becoming so cranky.

Many parents desire a schedule much sooner, but if your baby is sensitive to overtiredness, you will only sabotage your own efforts because he will get overtired and fight sleep more, not less. This is one of the most misunderstood facts of a baby’s sleep needs, in my experience. Many people might tell you to keep your baby up such that he will sleep more at night and other advice like that (I heard a lot of it when my son was such a challenging sleeper!). Unfortunately, this will only lead to more and more sleep deprivation that will make him fight sleep more and thus lose more and more sleep until he’s one big overtired cranky mess. If that is what has brought you to this site today, try to keep wake times short and become in tune with when baby needs to sleep just as much as you are in tune with when he needs to eat and some of your problems may be resolved as simply as that.

Consistency

For some babies, they may be consistent from the very beginning while others remain inconsistent the rest of their lives. Depending on your personality, this can be very frustrating. If you get frustrated by your baby’s inconsistency, take a look within and ask yourself these questions:

• Do I go to bed at the same exact time every night?
• Do I wake up at the same time every morning?
• Do I wake up to go to the bathroom at night at the same time?
• Do I get hungry and eat meals at the same exact time every day?

If you answered no to any of those questions, you are likely realizing that your baby isn’t much different than maybe you are! If you answered yes to all of them and your baby does not follow suit, ask your partner or make sure you brought the right baby home. Kidding! I have no scientific basis for thinking this is a hereditary, just a hunch.

My first son was and still is highly inconsistent. Although I am too, it’s still hard to parent sometimes, especially given my “planning” personality. I used to log and log and log looking for patterns and all I found was that he had none. It took a long time, but I finally had to let it go and realize the only thing consistent about him would be that each day would be different. And, it was. Looking at myself and my own patterns helped me take the pressure off him to be the same every day. Regardless if your baby is consistent or not, the same sleep patterns generally emerge from all newborns.

For more help on your newborn’s sleep, please see my post outlining 10 tips to help your newborn sleep.

Today’s sleep tip is brought to you by Parent Hacks, a useful site with all kinds of parent tips.

When you are breastfeeding, it’s easy to forget which breast is next in the middle of the night. Most of us know about the safety pin idea, but that could hurt in the middle of the night. Here are some other things you can do to remind yourself which breast is next:

• Lie baby down facing the direction she last nursed, so next feeding you can switch sides.
• Put a hair band around the wrist of the side you last nursed.
• If you wear a ring besides a wedding band, switch the ring to the side you last nursed.

I usually just feel which side is fuller, but sometimes that is hard to tell.

Do you have any middle-of-the-night breastfeeding tips?

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?

If you haven’t bought anything for Father’s Day yet, you may be able to win something free! I thought I’d post some links for some free giveaways I’ve seen around the web. I was not ahead of the game enough this year to do one of my own, but still would like my readers to be able to win something. Maybe next year I will host one for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day! Remember, though, the best Father’s Day gift is sleep!.

Father’s Day Giveaways still in play

Mommy Daddy Blog - Jr. High Sweethearts Chronicle Their Adventure Through Parenthood are new parents since April and have a great blog with their reflections as they go through it. I think many of us can relate to them…except for the Jr. High sweetheart part which is just so awesome!

Win a Dyson! (Valued at $499) at An Ordinary Life. It’s a blog in which she talks about her journey through life as a Mom, and college student. Talk about multi-tasking!

My Mom Shops is giving away a Little Tykes Fold-Away Climber. Deadline is June 10th.

Dr. Moz is having a give away worth over $160 with some cool stuff in a gift pack!

Great Father’s Day gift ideas:

My Mom Shops will be posting ideas for the next few days. This site has some great shopping ideas for any day!

Amazon always has great gift ideas and if you are an Amazon Prime member, you get FREE 2-day shipping all year! It’s great! For the high-tech and green dads out there, check out Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device. It looks very interesting and you won’t use up paper reading your favorite books.

AskMen.com has a top 10 Father’s Day gift list, too.

I hope you find the perfect gift you’re looking for! One week to go!

My husband is finished with school this week, which means summer is upon us. This usually means family vacations. How fun! But, what to do about your baby / child’s sleep? We have been on numerous trips with our eldest son and it gets easier every time. I thought today I’d give some tips for traveling this summer with baby:

• Depending on age, prepare a “fun” pack for the car or plane trip. Have snacks (special occasion snacks became a hit like fruit snacks when he got older), books, new toys, crayons, TaDoodles First Markers, some sort of travel drawing toy like the Aquadoodle Travel N Doodle, and a book of photos to remind him/her of home. If you are not opposed to them watching TV, a portable DVD player is a lifesaver, at times, especially for very long trips or layovers. I recommend this player, the Sony DVP-FX820 8″ Portable DVD Player. I really like the Brainy Baby DVD seriesand love the Leapfrog Learning DVDs.
• Of all the things in your “fun pack”, take one thing out at a time and drag it out as long as possible. (Like I had to tell you that!)
• Try to plan your snacks around take-off and landing, if possible. At least offer milk or water to help with the ears popping. My son never had any problems, but you just never know.
• Plan your travel time accordingly with nap or bedtime. If your baby / toddler sleeps in the car, plan to be on the plane or in the car during the naptime. But, if your child is like mine and won’t sleep in the car, prepare to leave right after his first nap of the day. That first nap is usually the most restorative and the most needed in terms of overtiredness for the rest of the day.
• Unless you are co-sleeping, you can bring a Graco Pack ‘n Play or travel crib. Even if you have somewhere for baby to sleep at your destination, bring along any sheets, familiar stuffed animals, or loveys to make a “foreign” place as much like home as possible, for sleeping.
• Call ahead to make sure your flight is on-time, if you are flying.
• Decide whether to bring your car seat. If you are leaving the country, you might check to make sure the car seat will even work. When my son was about 9 months old, we went to Mexico and wouldn’t you know the back seatbelts didn’t “lock” like they do here in the U.S. I later found out you are supposed to bring something to “lock” the seatbelt with the carseat. Plan ahead for that, unlike me.
• Board early or not on an airplane? If you have a carseat, you probably want to board early to get it installed. But, at the same time, that is just longer you need to entertain your baby on board while everyone else gets seated and the plane takes off. Keep it in mind, depending on the age of your baby / toddler and energy level.
• Sleep train or not during vacation? It depends on where you are going and for how long. If you are going to grandma’s for a month, it is unlikely you want to undo all your hard work and risk overtiredness for a whole month. If you are going camping in the woods for 4 days, it is unlikely you won’t do anything you have to in order to make sure your baby does not wake the neighboring campers. Overall, I’d say you try to stick to routine as much as humanly possible, but also have fun!! The good news is a previously sleep trained baby will bounce back after vacation fairly quickly.
• Here is a packing checklist for babies and for toddlers.

My #1 tip is to relax and have fun! Most of the time your child will surprise you just like mine did. And, even if you have a rough trip, you will never see those people again, so don’t worry too much about it and just focus on you and your family. You deserve a nice vacation, so try not to stress out too much about it.

Do you have any travel tips you’d like to share?

Father’s Day is on the horizon! What better way to say Happy Father’s Day than to help your baby sleep better?! Using coupon code “FATHER1″ you will receive 25% off any of our sleep consulting services. You can also help your baby / child sleep with our Help Your Child Sleep FREE Guide! If you have not signed up yet to receive one, now is the time.

Topics include quick facts pertaining to:

• How much sleep your child really needs
• Napping and schedules
• Sleep routines
• Explanation of sleep associations
• Night-weaning
• When and how to sleep train
• Descriptions of a variety of sleep training methods (No-Cry to Cry)

If you like the Quick Guide or have questions, you may desire even more detail in the above subjects and more. Please see our e-Book, Detailed Guide to Help Your Child Sleep.

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.