My take on the sleep stuff

***Warning: this is a very mommy-bloggy kind of post.***

I read a few books (Weissbluth, Pantley, Lewis & Granic) and countless discussion board posts and such, and here are my thoughts:

1. CONSISTENCY: Lewis & Granic cite a 2006 academic review article that concludes that all sleep-training methods work (from max-intervention no-cry approaches to basic cry-it-out), but what matters most is consistency. So, parents have to form a strategy that they can consistently apply, something they believe in and that fits their lives.

2. A PRAGMATIC NO-CRY APPROACH: Because we're both academics and it's now summer, it's relatively easy for us to embrace a slow, gradual no-cry approach. I don't have a huge ideological investment in it; I don't think babies are harmed by a week or so of bedtime tears, and I certainly don't look askance at anyone who let's their baby cry, knowing that their healthy, safe, and comfortable. But like Trinity, I recognize the privilege we have that we can prioritize a no-cry approach without tons of trade-offs. I don't know where I would stand if I had to get work duds on five morning a week and then perform intellectually, or if we already had a toddler in the family or something like that.

3. FIRST THINGS FIRST: A lot of the baby sleep literature talks about sleep training as something that happens in a week or two. But from where I sit, it's much more sequential. For us the first fundamental thing was to get a relatively consistent schedule. Bed-time became consistent over a month ago, but his day-time napping only got consistent a week or two ago.

After "when" comes "where." DJ and I (but not J) co-slept for a while, which was a good solution for the time. When DJ surprised my by going to bed in his crib without any coaching, I went with it, even though I kind of wanted to co-sleep longer. More recently the goal was to have him nap in the crib (instead of the Moby wrap); and we achieved that by bouncing him to sleep. His naps got longer and more regular.

Now that "when" and "where" are pretty set, we're working on "how." For two nights now, I've laid him in the crib without any prior bouncing and patted his butt (or hip if he's on his back) for 10-15 minutes until he went to sleep. I really thought I would be at it an hour, but, again, he surprised me. So now we'll start doing that at nap-time too. Then we'll try to reduce patting so that we can just do our bedtime routine, kiss him goodnight, and leave him to put himself to sleep. After that we'll get serious about night-wakings (if they don't sort themselves out).

When I was first reading about sleep training, it all seemed so bewildering. There were just so many moving parts, and I couldn't imagine it all coming together, and I felt so hopeless and incompetent. I just couldn't visualize how my Moby-dependent co-sleeping fussbudget was ever going to become a kid that we could just put to bed. Now I can sort of see it. And I feel like what we're doing is less "sleep training" and more like "sleep coaching."

If I were mentoring an even newer parent, I would say:

(a) Forget about all this for the first couple months; get to know your baby, and get everyone as much rest as you can.

(b) As things stabilize, try to detect and reinforce the schedule consistencies as they emerge (and they WILL emerge).

(c) When you're ready to initiate changes, address one or two specific goals, and don't fret about the ones you haven't gotten to yet. There isn't any boat that you're missing.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I sound all self-possessed and shit-togethery in this post, but I was freaking out about sleep issues a mere 36 hours ago, which should also be noted by those kind commenters who remarked on my emotional stability in the face of sleep deprivation.

And, here's a fairly recent picture of DJ to distract you from that disclosure. If you look closely, you can see his first tooth: