The No Cry Sleep Solution

Henry has never been a good sleeper. Ever. He's done a 5 hour stretch on 3 totally random occasions in the past 4 months, but his usual night is waking every 2 hours.

The general consensus is that I should do one of 2 things:

A) Live with it, he'll sleep through eventually and I should just get used to the tiredness

B) Try controlled crying

Now I know that controlled crying works for a lot of people. I'm unfortunately not one of those people. I can't deliberately upset and hurt my baby every night for a week for purely selfish reasons, even if the outcome is brilliant. I just can't do it. To me, if Henry is crying, there is a reason. It could be that his little body aches (and no wonder when you watch how he uses new muscles for the first time on an almost daily basis at the moment), it could be that he has a pain or that he is scared and needs reassurance that I'm there. I don't care what anyone says...he is a baby mammal and crying is his way of communicating... He is too young to be spoilt and he needs me to be his Mummy in the night, just as much as he needs me in the day. When I signed up for this mummy business, I signed up for the whole 24 hours.

Having said this, when I go back to work, surviving on a few hours sleep here and there in the night will be really hard and I will probably find myself stressed and run down and I really want to avoid that, if at all possible.

So I needed a solution and this is where the book comes in. It came recommend by a friend who said that it's no quick fix, but it certainly worked for her. I'm willing to try anything so here we go...

'The no-cry sleep solution' is by Elizabeth Pantley and she sounds like the sort of woman I'd take parenting advice from. She has children of her own for a start, unlike Gina Ford and many others. How you can advise people on breastfeeding and letting your own baby cry themselves to sleep when you've never experienced the feelings associated with either, I'm not sure, but anyway, that's a rant for another day. She understands that it's lovely to sit and cuddle your baby to sleep. She understands that sometimes when you're so tired, you'll do anything to get your baby to sleep. You know you shouldn't, but feeding to sleep works and that's why you keep doing it. I like that she seems to get that, she's not constantly battling against it. She doesn't forbid you from doing it and seems to be of the opinion that if you need to do these things for whatever reason then just start again properly tomorrow.

Anyway it's no quick fix but I'm willing to give it a go. If it gets me a few 4 hour stretches of sleep and some consistent naps then it'll be worth it. I'll give you an update on my blog after 2 weeks and 4 weeks to let you know how we're getting on. I fill in a chart every 10 days to look at progress and here is the analysis of last night's sleep chart...

Last night's sleep

Asleep time: 10:30pm

Awake time: 8:15am

Total number of awakenings: 5

Longest sleep span: 2 hours

Total number of sleep hours 8.25 hours

Fingers crossed for some improvement....wish us luck!!