Baby Sleep Secrets From A (Self-Ordained) Expert!

The “cry it out” method of getting your kid to sleep is a serious hot-button issue. Every mom in the world seems to have an alarmingly strong opinion on it, and they are all 100% sure that they are correct. If you’re a mother, try this experiment: write a post on Facebook informing your family and friends that you’re thinking about letting your baby cry it out. Within five minutes you will receive a comment like this:

“Good for you! It’s the only way they’ll learn how to sleep. You’ve got to do it now or they’ll never learn!”

Followed immediately by one like this:

“Please don’t do it! It’s so cruel and unnecessary! Here, read this book instead…”

There will literally be no “in between” comments. Crying it out is either the only way to get your child to sleep and you better do it soon or you’ll end up with an eight year old who can’t sleep anywhere but in your bed, or it’s borderline child abuse. It would almost be amusing if you weren’t on the brink of a fatigue-induced nervous breakdown brought on by your child’s refusal to sleep.

Or was that just me?

After suffering through many difficult months of trying to get my son to sleep like a normal human baby, during which I tried just about every legal (how I wish baby sedatives were legal) “sleep training” method Google had to offer, I am happy to report that I am now a (self) certified expert in the fields of Please Go To Sleep and How Are You Not Tired, Seriously!? In light of my esteemed status and all the board-recognized research I performed, allow me to share my findings:

1) Cry It Out will not harm your child. If anything, it harmed me. I hated hearing him cry! Watching him on the crib-cam was the most pathetic sight I have ever seen (why did I continue to look?!). Bubba, though, was none worse for the wear. He was exactly the same the days after he had cried it out as he was the days afer I rocked him to sleep or let him sleep with me: happy, affectionate, and still not good at falling asleep.

2) Cry It Out is also NOT the only way to get your baby to sleep! Thank god, because it didn’t really work.

Yes, unfortunately our attempts at Cry It Out were not overwhelmingly successful. After prolonged bouts of crying he would, of course, eventually fall asleep. But progress was never really made. As I understand it, the goal of Cry It Out is to teach your child to fall asleep calmly and naturally — after some period of time, the baby is supposed to not cry anymore when you put them to bed. That never happened for us. I was willing to commit to Cry It Out as long as the end result was going to be no more crying it out. After a few weeks, it became apparent that while the crying certainly wasn’t harming him, it definitely wasn’t teaching how to fall asleep, so I had to deem it a failure and change course.

BUT FEAR NOT! I said I was an expert, and I will not disappoint you. I have discovered a surefire baby sleep tactic that accomplishes the same goal of Cry It Out without all that pesky crying: Turn his crib into a pit of toys.

During the Cry It Out phase, I gave him a teddy bear in his crib in an attempt to associate something comforting with sleepy-time. He didn’t seem to care or even really notice it at night (he was too busy crying), but I noticed that in the morning, he’d happily play with it when he first woke up instead of just laying there pathetically whimpering until I came to retrieve him.

Wanting to give him some variety, I put a second toy in there. And then hey, why not a third? It was adorable to wake up to the sounds of him singing and peek in on the baby cam to see him playing. Plus, it meant I didn’t have to run in there quite as fast. I move slow at 6am.

After a while, I realized that if he liked playing with those toys so much, why wasn’t I taking advantage of this fact at night? I was still wasting my time every night rocking him to sleep and then gingerly laying him in his crib, terrified I would sneeze or trip or bang into a wall on the way out and have to start the whole damn process over again.

Sure enough, it worked the very first time I tried it and it has not failed me once since. After his bottle I put him in his crib (sleepy, but still totally awake), and leave him to his own devices. I then watch on the baby cam as he entertains himself until he’s literally too tired to sit up anymore, at which point he lays down, snuggles up to a blanky, and falls asleep.

It’s so easy it feels like cheating.

The key is, you have to have a lot of shit in there. Obviously make sure it’s all non-chokey stuff; don’t be a dumbass. But one item is not gonna cut it (if your baby is easily amused enough to be satisfied with one teddy bear, you probably aren’t having sleep issues anyway because you have one of those annoying perfect babies). Here’s what currently hangs out with Bubba in his crib:

• 1 traditional teddy bear
• 1 creepy stuffed camel thing made up of a bunch of different textures and with all sorts of fun rings hanging off of it (great for swinging around and banging into the crib walls — always satisfying!)
• 1 stuffed bulldog, whose folded ears are apparently fun to poke at and gnaw on
• 1 “activity center” thing. I wanted to make sure he had plenty of entertainment, so I took the board off of this walker thingy (it’s detachable, for reasons unknown):
  
  And strapped it to his crib! It was at this point that I realized he was no longer sleeping in a bed, but a toy box.
• 1 pacifier (which he does not EVER use for its intended purpose but whose handle is apparently nice to chew on, so I keep giving him one)
• 1 blanky (fun to flip and flail around AND perfect for the eventual “I give up, I cannot play anymore, I’ll lay down and snuggle now” culmination of events)

You can’t see everything here, but this photo should give you a general idea of the Pit O’ Toys (patent pending) concept:

(No, I don’t put my baby to bed naked. I promise I put clothing on him after snapping this shot.)

Folks, the Pit O’ Toys is a resounding success. Bubba is living proof that there are indeed other options beside Cry It Out (although I feel I must reiterate for anyone who, like me, felt really bad about letting their child cry: you’ll all be fine)!

Granted, there’s a fairly decent chance he’ll wind up requiring therapy 13 years from now when his inability to sleep without six hundred legos in his bed starts affecting his social life, but I’d still say it was worth it.