Baby Sleep Training: Tips and Book Review

The most common questions I get about raising Lil’ C is regarding sleep.  I am very blessed to be able to say he’s always been a “good sleeper”.  He started off sleeping through the night at around 2 1/2 months.  While I do attribute some of it to nature, I attribute most of it to nurture!  Nothing bugs me more than when people say, you are so lucky.  Because to be honest, sleep training isn’t easy, in fact, it’s quite hard.  It takes a lot of commitment and A LOT patience.

It started when I was pregnant.  I knew that I feel more empowered by reading, so I started asking other moms about sleep books and got three main recommendations:  The Baby Sleep Solution, Baby Whisperer and Baby Wise. 

Here is a fairly concise review of the three books and what they have to offer.

NOTE:  I did NOT follow any 1 book exactly but instead I took tips and tricks from each of the books in order to make my own schedule/routine that worked best for us (because I do believe you can train your little one, but I also realize that every baby is different…so you have to learn to adapt and make your own plan). 

• The Baby Sleep Solution: This is a die-hard scheduling book!  It gives you step by step directions of what to do and when.  I really liked the direction it provided and the idea of the “night time tool box” versus the “day time tool box”.  It also provided lots of other tips and tricks that I took which helped a lot!  It also encouraged me to write everything down from day 1, which really helped when training time came around.


• Baby Whisperer: I LOVED this book.  It taught me about the cycle of Eat, Awake, Sleep.  I used this cycle as a “must do” when I started training Lil ‘C.  It’s also a very easy read and gives lots of great tips!  


• Baby Wise: This was a hard book to read.  I picked it up once and put it down because it has all kinds of numbers and statistics that go along with the advice it gives.  I am the kind of person who doesn’t care how you got to the solution, I just want to hear your claim and evaluate it myself.  If you are the kind of person who wants to hear about the clinical trials and all the results from their studies, then by all means, this is the book for you.  When I picked it up the second time I decided I’d skip all the statistics and just read for the “findings”.  When I did that, I found it was easier to get through and it too provided great tips and tricks

One thing I wish I’d done, and still may do, is actually BUY the books instead of borrow them.  I would have liked to refer back to them once Lil ‘C arrived and I would have written notes in the books and highlighted key points!  When you have a new born and are sleep deprived, it is hard to remember what you’ve been told/read.

My three biggest pieces of advice:

1. From day one, keep track of what he or she does.  Below is a snapshot of the spreadsheet I made and kept on a clipboard in the nursery, where I wrote down everything for the first two months.  This will help you evaluate his or her natural behaviors before sleep training begins.  If you need details about what I wrote in each section, just let me know in the comments and I’ll explain in more detail!

2. Be consistent but not too stuck in your ways that you can’t determine when something isn’t working.  Here’s what I mean….  Babies are new to the world, so they are learning.  They learn from everything you do.  So when things are constantly changing, they can’t get adjusted and used to what is going on enough to get settled.  Give something at least three to four days of consistency before saying it doesn’t work.  So when you are putting your baby down for a nap, do the same things each time (womb bear, baby on back, pacifier, etc).  Make a routine so that they know those things mean sleepy time!  Also, pick different things for naps than you do for nights.  This will help them determine the difference between night time sleep and short spurts of day time sleep (i.e. naps).  For instance, we only swaddled Lil’ C during the night.  As they get older, things will change every month or so and you have to make sure you’re aware of when this happens and change it up a little.  For instance, at around 6 months, he started fussing at naptime instead of going down with no problem like he used to.  I figured it was because he wasn’t tired yet and so I switched him to a longer “loop” (which I’ll talk about in another post).  So after he ate, he was up for 2 hours before nap time instead of 1 ½ like before.  Babies change all the time and just about the time you think you have them figured out, something else comes along.  So be consistent but flexible!!!

3. Remember that whatever you do, do not create bad habits.  They are harder to break than to create!   Shay and I say “What is hard now, will make it easy later.  While what is easy now, will make it harder later.”  And what I mean by that is this….At three in the morning, I knew that Lil’C would go right back to sleep if I nursed him.  But that only encourages a mentality for him that he needs to eat multiple times during the night.  So if I knew he didn’t need to eat (based on his last feeding time and the fact that he’d slept in longer stretches before), then I’d try everything else (diaper, paci, rocking, mobile, re-swaddle, etc.) before I fed him and 99.9% of the time, something else worked and I didn’t have to resort to feeding.  The books above go into more detail about when to hold off and when to go ahead and feed.  The all have a wealth of knowledge and I couldn’t have imagined doing it without reading them first!  

I honestly could go on for days about things that helped, things that didn’t, and things that frankly, I don’t agree with, but I’ll keep it simple for now! I have lots more info in my brain about naps and bedtime routines, but those will be later posts!  I’m not an expert by any means, but this worked like a charm for me!  So take it as you wish! And as always, we love to hear your suggestions, tips and stories!