Sleep Training Your Baby

from Parents magazine (Feb. 2010)

A review of 52 articles on sleep training techniques published in Sleep finds that pretty much any method will work if you’re consistent.  The most effective plan is one you can live with night after night and feel good about returning to if your baby falls off the wagon because she gets sick or you go on vacation.
Here are the most popular sleep methods:

1.  Supervised Crying: For the first few days, sit by the crib and calm your baby back to sleep.  Move your chair progressively farther away until you’re shushing her from outside her door – then not at all. Read more in:  The Sleep Lady's Good Night, Sleep Tight: Gentle Proven Solutions to Help Your Child Sleep Well and Wake Up Happy by Kim West

2.  Checking Method: This involves frequent bedside checks at progressively longer intervals but no picking up the baby.  Read more in: Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems: New, Revised, and Expanded Editionby Richard Ferber, M.D.


3. Gentle Approach:  Once your child learns to soothe himself to sleep at bedtime (you put him down and leave, though you can check on him frequently without picking him up), he’ll be able to do so in the middle of the night. This process takes about two weeks, during which time you can do whatever you normally do to soothe him back to sleep at night – nurse or rock him.  Read more in : Sleeping Through the Night, How Infants, Toddlers, and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep by Jodi Mindell, PhD.


4. Cry It Out: Kiss and hug your baby, shut the door – and don’t come back until morning, even if she cries for an hour. Read more in: Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Childby Marc Weissbluth, M.D.