[Devora]

First off, whatever advice you receive here (including what I'm about to offer)....nothing will be a magic cure. Sleep is one of the hardest issues to deal with and everyone will have a lot of contradictory advice -- because each of us has found something different that works for us and for our children. The following is what we learned when we brought our son home – take whatever (if anything) seems like it will work for you and discard the rest.

(1) Try to set aside all of the subtle and blatant judgements about you as a parent that you may be feeling. Sleep seems to be one of the biggest ways these days that we judge ourselves and others as parents. A lot of times it is subtle and unintentional. But with a small child one of the first questions people will ask you is, “How are they sleeping?” If you say anything other than “Great!” it can leave you feeling inadequate as a parent. This is completely unnecessary. I know how frustrating it is to hear, "Just do this...." as if it's really that easy. The fact is, dealing with sleep is never easy except for parents whose children have never had any difficulties with sleep.

(2) Every child is different. It will take time to figure out what works for you and your child. What worked great for someone else may be entirely wrong for your child.

(3)Your child is still transitioning. Our son had a very smooth transition, but it still took about a month for us to really iron out the sleeping. Too, illness, disruption in the schedule, growth spurts, developmental spurts, and teething can all unsettle a child who normally sleeps well. These are yet more reasons why #1 is so important. Until a child has securely attached and the initial transition is over, it is recommended not to let them “cry it out.” If people tell you to let them cry, don’t listen in the beginning. Maybe eventually that is what you will need to do. But in the beginning your child needs to know they can trust you to respond to them.

(4) Overtired = sleep less. While all kids are different, it's common children in the first couple of years to need 12-16 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. If she's getting much less than 12, chances are she's overtired. Paradoxically, she will then have a harder time getting to sleep.

As for advice...This is what we found. Basically, our son needed to learn that his crib was a safe place to be, that we would come for him when he needed us, and that he could fall asleep on his own. Until he learned that, he would wake up frequently and cry.How did we accomplish that? We took ideas from Tracey Hogg's book "The Baby Whisperer." (Awful title, I know!!) The book isn’t actually quite as helpful as an online interview with her where she’s more practical and also talks about older children. (But the book provides a framework for understanding the interview. You can find the interview by doing a search for using her name +sleep.) She advocates for the fact that we need to not rely on what she calls props to get our children to sleep -- whether that's a bottle, sleeping on us, being rocked, etc. We do need to give them comfort items like a plush toy or something.

Instead of crying it out, she talks about sitting with your child, patting them, and shushing them to sleep. The idea is that you do as little as necessary -- at first it may be patting and loud (like a water faucet) shushing. As time goes on you may be able to lightly pat. Then you may be able to sit next to the crib. (For us, we patted very little when our son fought sleep because it made him mad and he pushed our hands away -- the important part is that we payed attention to his cues and followed him, so patting wasn’t typically part of our approach.)

As for time, she says you do this for 40 minutes; if she's not asleep or seeming comfortable and relaxed in her crib, take a 20 minute break of quiet activity; then go at it for another 40 minutes. Usually they'll fall asleep in that time. If not, then you take a break for food if it's food time, or else another 20 minute break. At first it can mean that you feel like you spend all day trying to get her to sleep. But she says that in 1-2 weeks most babies have learned to go to sleep in the crib with no "props". (This is for children 4-5 months old; a lot shorter for older children.) (However, do have a regular routine with cues ahead of time that naptime or bedtime is coming -- changing a diaper, pulling curtains shut, etc.) In this approach, your child may cry while you pat and shush -- but the difference is that you stay there and build trust with them, minimizing the feeling of being abandoned.

Whatever you do, the key is to be consistent. Once we consistently did (as in NEVER deviated from) Tracey Hogg’s approach, it only took 3 days until we could do our routine, lay our son in bed, and walk out of the room. He would then talk himself to sleep. My advice is to get by however you can until you can set aside 3 straight days where you plan on doing nothing at all besides working on sleep. No errands. No other obligations. Have a backup plan for emotional support for you and for taking care of any other children. My friend did this with her child over a 3-day weekend when her husband would be home from work; we did a similar plan. We figured that a large portion of the day was going to be spent on a 40-20-40 routine. It actually went much better than that. When we had tried the 40-20-40 approach before it did not work because we did not stick to it -- either because we couldn't due to other obligations or we just gave up. You have to be 100% committed to it for the time it will take. There's a good chance that after 3 days it will take a relatively short time to get your child to sleep and that within a week it will be a breeze.

You WILL get through this!! And when it gets too bad, do what I did before we got this worked out: when I was driving I would look at the drivers around me at the stoplights and remind myself that they were all babies once and they all survived to adulthood -- and some of them probably didn't sleep well when they were babies.