I LOVED this episode and started utilizing the crying-in-arms method right after listening to it. It worked great for before naps, but didn’t do the trick for night time – my son, our first and only baby right now, was waking up every 45 minutes on average and just wanted to nurse to fall back asleep (we moved him from sleeping next to us in his bassinest to our bed as he would only fall asleep on me, while nursing). He slept great for the first 2 weeks of his life and then it went downhill from there.

We ended up hiring a sleep consultant. She helped us transition him to his own crib/room. It wasn’t exactly “cry it out”, but a gentler version where we sat next to his crib until he fell asleep, for the first 3 nights, the subsequent 3 nights halfway across the room, and the next 3 by the door. If he woke up at night we would wait 10 minutes and if he didn’t fall back asleep on his own (self-soothing) we would go in and comfort him by briefly picking him up, rubbing his back, or patting him while repeating a specific phrase we picked. The first 2 nights were pretty terrible, but on the 3rd night he slept 10 hours straight and didn’t wake up once. I was concerned we were damaging him emotionally/psychologically, but honestly, he is sleeping so much better now for both naps and night time, which has to be helping him develop as well, and I am obviously much more well-rested!

My question, or conversation starter here is; do you think there is a way to implement aware parenting and sleep training? I don’t know how I would’ve coped had we not gotten help; I was losing my mind running on zero-sleep with a baby that needed to be held 24/7. I do wear him often and follow a lot of principles from Aletha Stolther’s “Aware Baby” book, just not the sleep bit!