Sleep is one of a new mother's top concerns/priorities/obsessions. For me it was/is very important to have a plan based on your priorities. Few kids are born putting themselves to sleep for 12 hours a night. If this is your desired outcome, you need a plan, and a determination to work hard for the result.
When I was pregnant a friend suggested the book "Babywise" to me, saying it was amazing and helped you teach your kid to "sleep through the night" by 8 weeks. That sounded great to me, I liked to sleep at night, and I liked having my own time in the evening, and I liked having a deadline ("in 8 weeks I will be sleeping again"), so it sounded like a plan. I read the book, which has a premise that babies tend to fall asleep easily, and need food in their bellies to stay asleep and that they need to learn to put themselves to sleep by themselves. The Babywise plan is to start a regular cycle of feeding the baby (doing whatever you can to keep him awake for a "full" feeding) then let them play, then have them sleep. There is a lot of emphasis on keeping them awake to get that full feeding so they will make it through a 3 hour stretch (and longer as they get older) before the next feeding. When Adley was born we tried implementing this, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, the expected "sleepiness" that the Babywise authors talk about, was not happening in my baby. He would NEVER sleep, so it was very frustrating. When, as I mentioned in the "colic" post, we read the "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Baby" book, we were relieved to find a lot better understanding of the child we were dealing with. Dr. Weissbluth focuses a lot more on watching for the babies natural "sleep windows" and "sleep clues," setting up a consistent routine (which Babywise also does), but really doesn't focus on the relationship with food at all. "Healthy Sleep Habits" worked for us, "Babywise" did not.
The first three kids were sleeping 12 hours a night by 12 weeks (Ezra was not which I'll explain later). We liked Dr. Weissbluth's method so much we just continued to use it with the rest of our kids and it worked for us. I have lots of friends who have used Babywise with great success, so I don't think the method really matters, just your goal and the outcome, which, for us, was evening freetime without kids, and kids who slept all night (10-12 hours).
As we have had more children we've learned that sleep becomes more complicated. Statistically the chances of having one sick child multiplies with more children, and spreads, which turns the "once in a while sleep problems caused by sickness" to occur a lot more often. Sharing bedrooms also creates a whole new element. We fortunately have 3 bedrooms and a playroom that we use as the rotating room for the kid who needs a good night sleep while their sleepmate is working through a stage or overcoming an illness. However, sleep is always an issue.
When Ezra was born, he was our first non-colicky baby. Wow! That was a huge blessing! He was a complete charmer and we were enamored with a baby who actually stopped crying when you picked them up- astonishing! This, combined with 3 other little ones that he could potentially wake-up, made sleep-training a whole new ballgame. We finally had him sleeping all 12 hours by 6 months when he got RSV, and then pneumonia. This turned in to a three-month nightmare, ruining his hard-earned sleep patterns, and having to re-train afterwards. By 9 months he was consistently sleeping 12 hours again and your dad and I thought we were going to die from sleep-deprivation.
Which leads me to this. I have plenty of friends who don't do any sleep-training at all. It seems that their babies don't sleep through the night until sometime between their first and second birthdays. Also, it seems that their kids are up a lot later, they get to spend more time with them in the late evening. Some friends have kids that come into their beds at night regularly and join them for part of the night. All of this seems to work for them. If this is what works for you, that's fine. There is a lot of research on kids not taught to put themselves to sleep at a young age correlating with having a later bedtime and getting less sleep overall which in turn effects their academic performance, but that was never a true motivator for me. For all the myriad biographies I have read, how a kid learned to sleep, and how much he/she slept, was ABSOLUTELY NOT a determining factor in their later life success. (Frankly, some of the most impressive people slept the least). As you know, I have a Benjamin Franklinesque philosophy on sleep ("there will be sleeping enough in the grave") So, when I talk about sleep-training, my motivation is not so you all would become super smarty-pants. I'm really talking about you and your husband's personal sanity. As you also know, your dad and I enjoy having our own individual time. I'm sure this can occur simultaneously with awake children once you are all older, but currently that is impossible. We get more impatient and become worse parents the longer you kids stay up, or the more frequently in the night you wake up. Having you all in your beds asleep by 7:30/8, gives us 3-4 precious hours to connect, get things done, and relax. That being said, we have noticed a huge difference in each of your temperaments when you are getting less sleep. There is always more whining, breakdowns, crying, drama when you haven't been getting to bed on time. When this corresponds to impatient parents, it is never a good thing. This has seemed to decrease as you get older, which gives me hopes for the teenage years. So, yes, as friends have labeled me when they learn that shockingly my kids start heading for bed at 6:30 and actually stay in their beds, I am the "sleep-nazi," and you may find that you become one too.
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