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Home › Articles › Sleep Issues › Goodnight, All Night

Goodnight, All Night

Getting Baby to Sleep Through the Night

By Lisa A. Goldstein

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

"I did get some comments from other moms who thought letting your child cry it out was mean," Conyers says. "Continuing to not structure my daughter's sleep schedule, to her and our detriment, would have been meaner."

Parents can achieve such peace by utilizing a window of opportunity to encourage healthy sleep habits, Dr. Tobin says. "If you sleep train your baby during this time period, then you can focus on establishing healthy sleep habits without breaking bad ones. The hard part is not teaching healthy sleep habits; it's breaking bad ones that cause babies grief."

Making It Last
How long does it take and will it last? This varies, say the experts, depending on the baby's temperament and what method you use. Consistency is important.

Don't get too used to your uninterrupted sleep, however. Just because your baby slept through the night once or a few times doesn't mean it'll last. "Sleep is a process that needs to be learned and re-learned," Dr. Tobin says. "Babies relapse because of illness, vacations, immunizations and often for no apparent reason."

Put another way, learning to sleep is like learning to ride a bike, Spivack and Waldburger say. "Once a child has learned how to sleep, they've mastered a lifelong skill," they say. "However, there are bumps in the road that knock children's sleep out of whack temporarily."

If a child sleeps through the night for a while and then goes back to nightly feedings, this usually happens due to teething or a cold. In these cases, Spivack and Waldburger often advise parents to put a "dream feed" back in for a little while until the child is better. Once the child is healthy, they recommend dropping an ounce a night if bottle-feeding or two minutes a night if nursing.

"It's crucial parents remember that they need to guide their baby, and not the other way around," Dr. Tobin says. "If a baby begins to wake up, parents need to re-direct them to sleep for longer stretches. Often, when a baby's good sleep habits change, parents just hang in waiting for a baby to resume good sleep habits and it doesn't happen."


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