Unbiased Reviews by Real People
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Unbiased Reviews by Real People
The ABC's of Zzzz'sJan 25, 2000 Write an essay on this topic.Nearly every baby book you read will give you tips on sleeping through the night. They range from setting up a routine to basically when all else fails, try the "cry it out" method. What works best for one baby and her parents is different that another. To make matters more complex, each new little bundle will require the parents to learn all over again what will work. When we brought home our first daughter, the first month was a blur. By the time she was four weeks she was down to only one or two wakings a night. We created a routine like advice in books say to do. At the same time each night we gave her a bath, bottle, cuddling, then off to dreamland. At 7 weeks of age, she fell asleep at a Christmas Eve party and didn't wake up until 7 a.m. the next morning... no routine, no bath, nothing. She has slept through the night ever since, even when her "routine" was off. She is now nearly 15 months old. Piece of cake, this sleeping through the night thing right? The thought of sleeping through the night hasn't even crossed the mind of our 15 week old daughter! She still wakes up four times a night (between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.). Her temperament is drastically different from her sister's. We have tried the routine with her and I must admit it helps in getting her to sleep around the same time every night but it doesn't succeed in keeping her asleep. We have tried having her sleep in our bed. I am able to respond to her awakening more quickly as she fusses but never really cries. Still, she's not sleeping through the night. We have tried propping her on one of those boppy pillows at night, so when she wakes up we don't even pick her up and just feed her, propped up. Still waking up. We are trying to give her cereal before bedtime, but still... you guessed it, no success! We have tried just about everything we can think of to no avail, except for letting her cry it out... for three reasons. 1: She'll wake her sister and then we'll have two awake babies! 2: She really does still appear to be hungry as she downs her bottle, and 3: She has a hyper-sensitive personality and once she really starts crying she can be quite inconsolable. The conclusion I've come to is that there is NO ONE RIGHT WAY to get your child to sleep through the night. You can only encourage good sleep habits by trying the things you think may work, be it a routine, cereal at bed time, lullabies, rocking, crying it out, or whatever. My suggestion is to try what you are most comfortable with and be consistent. Sooner or later your child will start sleeping through the night... then they will start teething!!!!  |
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