The Secret Weapon

We finally got our copy of “The Lull-a-Baby Sleep Plan” by Cathryn Tobin. We ordered it over 4 weeks ago from Chapters and though we got an email saying it was delivered to the store after a week, it took over 3 weeks for the store to unpack it and tell us it was available. This book promises to end the little sleep deprivation war we’ve been having with Juliette for the past while.

The problem with putting Juliette to sleep has been growing. Every time it’s time to put her down, she demands to suckle and will not go to sleep without the breast in her mouth. Breaking the seal before she’s asleep results in Juliette having major tantrums, crying and thrashing about. If she doesn’t get the breast back, she works herself into a righteous fury and all hope of sleep is lost.

During the night she’s still waking up at least 3 times – 1 am, 3 am and 6 am – wanting to suckle. But it doesn’t seem that she’s especially hungry as she doesn’t drink strongly. And again, she wants to fall asleep at the breast. Due to the frequency of wakings and feedings, Becoming-A-Mom has taken to letting Juliette sleep beside her in bed.

Poor Becoming-A-Mom is finding this a burden as she’s not able to get a fully night’s rest. As well having Juliette in the bed means that she doesn’t sleep deeply as Juliette pokes or kicks her and Becoming-A-Mom is worried about disturbing Juliette’s sleep.

When we hear the stories of other babies sleeping 10-12 hours straight through the night we wonder why Juliette won’t. We’ve even considered hiring a Sleep Consultant, but those people are very expensive ($200 and up, much more if you want them to help you in person overnight). So after a bit of using our digital parenting advisor Google, Becoming-A-Mom ordered this book.

Since getting it she’s been reading it intently. It’s a bit too early to start using the techniques tonight, but already we’ve identified 3 major things that we’ve been doing wrong which has encouraged Juliette’s bad sleep habits.

The list?

1. Allowing Juliette to fall asleep at the breast, so she’s developed the association of falling asleep with nursing.
2. Putting Juliette into her crib already asleep, so she doesn’t know how to fall asleep on her own.
3. Misunderstanding her sleep cycle, so when she wakes and cries out every couple of hours we immediately pick her up and comfort/feed her. This feeds back into mistakes #1 and #2.

Now that we know what we’re doing wrong, it should be easy to fix the whole thing, right?

Yeah, I’m not that optimistic either. Both Becoming-A-Mom and Becoming-A-Dad are preparing ourselves for some inevitable screaming and unhappy nights.