Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child
Feb 4th, 2008 by Bethany
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Today I’m feeling grateful for Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, the book that saved my life, and to our friend Marcie who recommended it to us.
When Degen was about Maggie’s age we were at our wit’s end because he was only sleeping about 4 hours in a given 24 hour period, and then only with a lot of work from us (like, we had to hold him the whole time and lie down with him and he’d only fall asleep if the TV was on). It was awful and I was extremely cranky and getting depressed, not to mention that I was sick and pregnant at the time. Degen’s normally pleasant nature was slowly being replaced with crankiness. Finally, we took Marcie’s suggestion and read this book, followed the advice of Dr. Weissbluth, and Degen started to improve quite quickly.
We opted for the quicker but possibly more painful route of letting Degen cry until he went to sleep. He was already out of his crib and in a toddler bed because we were trying to get ready for a new baby in the crib (one of the things Dr. Weissbluth advocates is keeping kids in their cribs until they are at least three), so we just made sure his room was totally safe and then put him to bed and closed the door. He cried for more than two hours the first time and it was possibly the worst thing I’ve had to sit through in my life. I just had to keep reminding myself that teaching him to sleep is important and that I’d be doing him a disservice if I let things continue as they had been.
To make a long story short, within a couple of weeks Degen was sleeping about 14 hours a day and learning to put himself to sleep with no outside assistance. Colin and I were back to getting a reasonable amount of sleep and feeling “normal” again. So, if you’re struggling with kids who have a hard time getting enough sleep, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It’s not easy to correct sleep problems, but it’s totally worth it.
