Sleep training is something that you can do by yourself.
90% of success will be ensured by a proper preparation.
First, you need to be onboard
I have so many friends that ask us many questions about how we managed to get the girls to sleep by themselves and seem to want this for their children, but in the end they end up sleeping in the same bed with them.
What is stopping them to go for sleep training?
Most parents are aware of the benefits of sleep training but are not preparing emotionally for it.
I’ll tell you that even we’ve been through the process twice in 3 years ( 😳 ), we had the same conversation and planned for the sleep training to happen.
What triggered the sleep training conversation for us?
The first time it was repeated midnight dances to get Bianca to fall asleep. It was obvious that she wasn’t a well rested baby and that us, the parents couldn’t really enjoy the time with the baby because we were so tired..
I thought that having this experience with the first child, I’ll rock as a second time parent, but guess what: babies are not the same and parents change. By 3 months of age white noise wasn’t helpful anymore and Giulia was easily woke up by my slight move during the night. She seemed ready to be sleep trained, but was she too young?
Sleep trainers recommend you to wait until the baby is 4 months old to start sleep training. We knew that Giulia is ready to sleep by herself earlier at 3 months of age, so I did some research and I got convinced pretty early by the stats: apparently starting sleep training before the 4 months of age will mean ( on average) 15 minutes less crying.
In an ideal situation, both you and your partner get on the same page with sleep training and stick to the plan. Otherwise, you’ll confuse the baby and get frustrated.
Prepare the room
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These are the points that helped us:
- The absence of light. You probably heard that if you get into a dark room, your melatonin level goes up and you get sleepy. This works out for your baby as well. So make sure you get some black out blinds: You can use these for travel purposes as well.
- The perfect temperature. Recommended sleep temperature is around 68 F – 70 F (20 C – 21 C). You can easily reach this and control it with a smart thermostat (that also controls your A/C).
- If possible, move the baby in their own room + Crib with elastic strip sheets.
- Baby monitor / Camera + audio monitor. We have both and use them depending on situation. I prefer the Camera + Audio monitor combo as camera connects via Wi-Fi and you can be a bit further away from baby, but still able to monitor them (e.g. when you’re on vacation: you can have the baby sleeping in the room while you get a coffee in the hotel’s lounge/restaurant). We use a D-link camera.
- White noise: it’s so easy to configure and manage through Wi-Fi the Amazon Alexa Echo Dot to be your white noise machine.
Prepare the baby
Check also the below boxes, and you can start sleep training tomorrow:
- Sleeping bag/sack.
- Nighttime diapers (can hold more urine and your baby won’t get wet ). We love HUGGIES.
- Give your baby Vitamin D in the morning, so it won’t interfere with the nighttime sleep. Taking the vitamin late in the day may affect sleep.
- Incorporate in the nighttime routine a warm bath.
- Follow the sequence: eat- play- sleep. In this way, baby won’t associate eating with sleeping.
- The final and hardest one: put your baby to sleep drowsy but awake . You’ll rock this after a few tries!
If you what to read about the 2 methods I used to sleep train my baby girls, check this link.
This is a personal blog. My opinion on what I share with you is that “All models are wrong, but some are useful”. Improve the accuracy of any model I present and make it useful!
