A few months ago I blogged that Eve had finally started sleeping through the night. Sadly this wasn’t to last and, although it is not as bad as it used to be, she still wakes me at least twice a night, often more, and yes, I am weak, I give in to the little despot and breastfeed her to sleep on each of these occasions. Oh the shame. It’s just that if I don’t feed her it becomes a pitched battle to get her to calm down and go back to sleep and her will at 3 in the morning is a hell of a lot stronger than mine. Especially since I haven’t felt rested since she was born and I crave my sleep like a heroin addict craves their fix….and the dog ate my homework Miss.
It’s not that I’m short on advice for methods to train her to sleep, oh no, I’ve read them all and the studies that debunk them. I’ve been preached at by those that tell me if I do anything other than wear Eve 25 hours a day, never taking my eyes from her and never allowing her to shed a single tear I am damaging her for life. I have also read those that say unless a child is regimented down to the number of minutes taken to consume each meal followed by bowel movement and then to bed they will become a demon child that overruns the house and is destined for a life of crime and delinquency.
Well, this week we’ve been having a new kitchen put into our tiny house and so we have been staying at my parent’s house. Eve hasn’t taken the change of scenary very well so she has been waking me every couple of hours and has fought me tooth and nail in my efforts to get her to go back to sleep. I’m operating on a cocktail of sugar and caffeine and so once this kitchen is in and we’re back on home turf there’s going to be some changes happening around here. For one thing the milk machine is going to be unavailable between bedtime and morning (soon to be shut down for good), bedtime will be set and not just whenever she stops in mid play, twitches and collapses in a snoring heap on the living room floor, and now Daddy will be taking part in the proceedings too so it’s two against one.
We have decided to employ the Supernanny technique because it seems to be a good middle ground method and I can see us both being able to handle it. It involves:
Boy, she’s going to be soooo pissed.
6 replies on “On Sleep Training”
Best of luck with that. It can be a tough process, but oh, so wonderful when they finally figure it out. Sounds like you’ve got a good plan.
[…] You have to understand that I didn’t think this was ever going to happen. Even when we decided to try the Supernanny method it was with gritted teeth and a sense of fatalism. It may have worked for millions of other children but not Eve, no way was she going to go for such a simple idea. We thought that at the very least we were in for weeks, maybe months of crying and screaming and hours of sitting on her bedroom floor while she stretched her arms through the bars of her cot whimpering “Meeeeem!” […]
flora…
Definitely, the most sensible thing i have seen in a long time….
thanks for the tips
Looks like your patience has paid off. Nice article by the way!
Being a dad myself I have had the pleasure and the torment of raising 4 kids now. They are 28, 25, 21 and 16. One thing that I have discovered is that each child had their own personality and attitudes and you have to deal with each one differently. The common denominator in child rearing is consistentcy. One thing to consider is that a lot of the so called “child experts” have never raised children in their lives but are going to tell you how to raise your’s. If there were a manual on child rearring it would be sent to you with the baby at birth. You just have to raise your child by trial and error. Discover what works and what doesn’t and stick to what does.