Rock-A-Bye, Bend Baby?

By Kelley Moen, 8-05-08

Sleep is a precious commodity in our new-baby household.  With drooping eyelids, bags under my eyes and scrambled new-mommy brains, I am reminded daily that being a parent, while so wonderfully life changing, is utterly exhausting. 

But something else reminds me of my new everyday sleep-deprived state, and it mocks me each time I walk past it, where it innocently lays on our queen-size bed: it’s a stuffed toy lamb.

Yep, it’s one of those oh-so-soft, oh-so-cuddly imitation wool toy lambs, with a sound machine tucked inside its super cushy body.  Its oh-so-cute eyes are closed in an oh-so-wonderful slumber.  This soporific children’s toy makes sounds aimed at coaxing any baby, or parent for that matter, into a heavenly slumber: a human heartbeat, rain, ocean waves and echoing whale calls (this last one is actually quite scary and reminds me of a Halloween haunted house I walked through as a kid.)

“Na, Na, Na!” the toy lamb seems to taunt each time I merely glance toward it, propped up on pillows at the head of our bed.  “I can sleep ALL DAY if I want to!” it chimes.  Pure mockery.

How can my child’s cute toy, one I would now like to send down the Deschutes River without a paddle, make me feel so bad?

Sleep time for new babies is a strange new world for me.  According to the American Academy of Pediatrics , babies can need up to 18 hours of sleep per 24 hours for the first three months of their lives.  Then, between the ages of three and six months, they need about 14 hours.  After six months, babies still need to sleep nearly 13 hours per day, with the majority of those hours occurring at night.

However, the method in which we get our babies to sleep is a much debated, and highly individualized, topic.

According to Parenting Magazine, there are four methods to the madness of getting your baby to sleep through the night.  And if you are willing to take a quiz, you can discover which one will work best for you and your family. 

The first of these is called the Self-Soothing method.  The gist of this method is that a consistent schedule, plus verbal and physical reassurance, can help your baby learn to fall asleep (and fall back asleep) on his own.  Basically, it says to keep a consistent bedtime routine: a warmed bath, a comforting story, dimmed lights, soft music.  Or, as one set of parents I know calls it, the PBJ’s: poop, bath and jammies. 

“It can take up to a week for your baby to get it,” says Jodi Mindell, Ph.D., who is the associate director of the Sleep Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the author of Sleep Through the Night: How Infants, Toddlers and their Parents Can Get a Good Night’s Sleep. Mindell says that within two weeks of falling asleep easily, your baby is likely to sleep through the night.

This first method takes diligence and routine, two things for which I do not have a natural knack.  However, with some practice, and some serious urging from my also-sleep-deprived husband, I will admit that this method has been the most successful.

The second method to get your baby to sleep is called The Long Goodbye.  It just sounds like an awful b-rated movie from the start.  Anyway, this one basically requires the parent to sit farther and farther away from baby at bedtime to slowly break his dependence on mom or dad. 

Good Night, Sleep Tight author, Kim West, urges a parent who wants to try this method to respond to baby’s cry, but only pick up the baby when he becomes hysterical- the baby that is.

Hysterical?  By the time our baby is hysterical, his ear piercing, teacup-chattering screams would have the entire Bend fire crew at our door ready to intervene.  Plus, I will admit it, I am a softy.  I don’t do “hysterical” if I can help it.

The third method is called Ferberizing.  Spraying Febreze into the baby room?  Not quite.  A guy named Richard Ferber, M.D., who wrote a tantalizingly succinct-sounding book called Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, popularized this method.  Solve the problem?  OK!

Basically, this method says that if you stick to a schedule and let your baby cry for increasing lengths of time before reassuring him verbally (not by picking him up), you can gradually get your baby to sleep longer.  For example, wait five minutes when you hear your baby cry before coming to the rescue.  Then, the next time try seven minutes, and then 10 and then 15.  Each night, the author urges, let your baby fuss a little longer.

Fuss longer.  Hmm.  Like I said, I am a softy, and asking for more of this fussy business is like asking me to walk barefoot across poopy diapers.  Yuk, and no thanks!

The last method, and obviously the most demanding of all four ways to get to your baby to sleep more, is called The No-Cry method.  As it implies, you comfort your baby every time he cries, whenever he wants you. 

This requires either tuning-in with a baby monitor all night long or sharing a room with your little creature.  The American Academy of Pediatrics warms against sharing a bed with your baby because more accidents could happen, and the risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) actually increases when babies sleep with their parents.  However, they urge you to take precautions, such as removing all pillows and covers, if you do choose to sleep alongside your little one.

As for the preferred method in our house, I can’t say it’s strictly any of these.  Sometimes, despite the fact that I have finally achieved the medal and gotten my baby boy to fall asleep (and am now in desperate need of some ZZZs myself) I just stand there looking in awe at his tiny, blanket-wrapped body.  He won’t be this small forever.  And other times, when I am exhausted from rocking him into the wee hours of the night and the sun is threatening to rise before I have even hit the pillow, I hover over his crib, waiting to spot the barely visible rise and fall of his breathing. 

And sometimes, sleep deprived to the state of what my husband calls near-psychosis, I remember that these times will pass.  One day soon I will be waking my teenager, rousing him to get up, get out of bed and get to school on time.

Until then, my son’s silly, stuffed toy lamb will continue to mock me with its ever-closed eyes.  Well, let it sleep.  I have better things to do.  I have a darling boy to care for.  I figure if I can tolerate mockery from a little toy, I can darn sure do just about anything.