That experience made me wonder if parents for whom the Ferber method worked didn’t follow it exactly to the letter; if they followed their baby’s cues to be more lenient or to stop trying after a certain amount of not sleeping.

We used Ferber’s method when my three month old son was unable to fall asleep anywhere but in my arms. I was exhausted. And it worked but it broke my heart. By the time I had my second, I learned a few little things that made my life easier. 1: co-sleeping through the early breastfeeding days rocks. 2: learning to put a tired but not yet sleeping baby down so that he/she can learn to fall asleep on his/her own is key. 3. changes in our schedule, and away from home rules are different and need to be treated as such.

I also learned that each of my children is simply different than the others. The eldest needed naps right through kindergarten. The second and third suffer from night terrors which have eased off into “bad dreams” but occasionally require reassurance while they settle themselves back to sleep. The fourth slept through the night at six months on her own, no sleep training required.

I subscribe to the thinking that children need more sleep than most are getting, so insisting on naps and putting them down early made it easier for them to fall asleep and stay asleep. And it keeps them more pleasant when they are awake.

One last thought: most parents only want what is best for their children and what is best for their children includes what is best for them. Being a sleep deprived momma might seem noble to some but is it really in the best interest of the child’s mental health and well-being?

Lots to think about. Thanks for your take on it!

Even though your daughter will be teething for months, she is only acutely teething when she is cutting a tooth, as I understand it. But then again, I think teething is just different for different babies. Our son isn’t too fussy about it, so maybe other babies would have a hard time even during non acute teething.

That’s interesting about the teeth. I’m also a human binky. I still nurse our son almost to sleep, and then we do the move to the crib while he’s drowsy but awake. That seems to be the key for us. He has to be really tired to go in the crib, although for naps, we sometimes just can’t get him to that state, so we just put him in there anyway, because he’s so obviously in need of nap (rubbing eyes, cranky). And he works it out for himself.

Observation: She used to suck her thumb to sleep, and suck it to soothe herself back to sleep when she woke during the night. When she got her two bottom teeth, she stopped sucking her thumb (they must have been hurting her hand). I think she now lacks a physical self-soothing tool, as she doesn’t like pacifiers. Well, no, she doesn’t – she has me, her human binky.

Question: Do you think sleep training is practical during teething? My thought has been that I’ll do what’s necessary while she’s teething to keep her as calm and comfortable as possible, then deal with any new bad sleep habits after she’s restored to full health. But she may be teething for another couple of months! When her crying is from the pain of teeth (or soreness, even when she’s had Tylenol for the pain) is it likely that she will go to sleep on her own?

With that said, we came home from the hospital with newborn twins. They were not preemies (thankfully) but I maintain that it is very difficult to understand exactly what a twin (or more) mom goes through unless you have been there.

We did a version of CIO with our twins, where we made sure that they ate enough during the day and had some awake/play time as well as individual cuddling. We practiced extinguishing – where one of us would go in after 5 minutes, 10 minutes, etc. making sure that the baby wasn’t wet or in a strange position.

It may sound strange, but one of our goals is to have children who can deal with mild frustration and be self-soothing (they are able to go to sleep on their own). I know my sleep was vital during those first six months. It may sound selfish, but without my own sleep, I know I could have found myself becoming bitter and resentful and not being the best mom I could be while my kids were awake during the day. I may have opened up a can of worms here, I just think parents’ sleep is also important for the overall health of the family. IMO, nights of crying and checking may be painful and necessary for some families so that everyone gets some sleep.

Funny but I’m very presently dealing with sleep. Between this comment and my last, I just had to do my 3 a.m. “dream feed.” Part of the Sleep Easy book’s thing is weaning off night feedings. We’ve just about weaned away the midnight feeding. But I still have to set an alarm and then go in and do a 3 a.m. feeding.

But we’ve also all been sick around here, so today he slept on my lap for two hours. He was having trouble napping because of a cough. And actually he did end up sleeping with me again when he had a high fever, and I feel just as you do–being in the other room stressing out about him will get me absolutely NO sleep. I’d rather be right there with him if he’s sick.

As for the rolling over on the baby thing, I did find some scary stories about that on the internet. Those stories kept me away from co-sleeping at first, even though I could see how quickly Zack fell asleep next to me. I always transfered him to a bassinet. Once we finally did try it, I found out that I would just never roll over on him. We really slept well together.

But my bedtime is not 7:30 is all.

I considered going to get him at the first night waking and then taking him to our futon, but I wondered if this might become another kind of trap for me. But I have to say that I really do miss waking up next to his sweet little face!

My family and I essentially went with the co-sleeping option. I say “essentially” because I didn’t bother to read much (if any ) theory on the subject — I just did what worked best and was most convenient for me. Ok, not reading the theory was perhaps arguably wrong, but, seriously, if you sleep with your baby, the idea that you just might unconsciously roll on your baby and smother him/her is so bizarre that I can hardly imagine how anyone would even have come up with such a thing. (Perhaps another subject the Rational Moms could investigate? )

Anyway, even if I didn’t do much research on the co-sleeping theory, I was glad that the theory was out there as something people are aware of since it helps when dealing with all of the well-meaning people who would tell me that I was doing it all wrong: “your baby won’t learn to sleep on his own, blah, blah, blah…”

I think this whole subject depends quite a bit on the sleeping patterns of the parents. For myself, I’m naturally a bit of a light sleeper — I typically wake up a bit during the night anyway as part of my ordinary sleep — and I don’t seem to need as much sleep as a lot of people. So when a friend of mine was telling me how much more soundly she slept when her baby was in the other room (not waking her up every five minutes ), I was thinking “fine for you, but me, I sleep better if (on some unconscious level ) I can constantly feel that he’s still breathing and respond immediately to any problem instead of lying in my bed alone, wakefully stressing about whether he’s ok.”

And, yes, this leads to a habit of cuddling kids to sleep even when they’re a little older. My two boys (5 and 7 ) can and do fall asleep on their own if they’re really tired, but normal bedtime entails extended cuddling (until they fall asleep and I go get in my own bed with their dad ). Prospective co-sleepers need to be aware of that since some people see it as a drawback. But these are the only two kids I’m planning to have, and I like cuddling them. Someday they’ll be too old for this, and I’ll miss it…