I have a preemptive apology to make to the newest member of our family. Prior to this, I have been writing about hypothetical kids or other people’s kids, but now, I can write about my own kid. She’s not even 4 weeks old & I’m already taking advantage of her. Forgive me love.

And I begin where we are. She is napping right now, which is a perfect thing for a baby to do. But as many parents know, sleep + babies can also be a trial. There are a plethora of books written to help parents shape their children’s sleep (The Sleep Lady, Dr. Sears, No-Cry Sleep Solution, Dr. Ferber & many more). My little one sleeps about as much or more than my cat currently. And while she generally does ok on her own, it seems that if we miss the window of opportunity, or she gets over-tired, then her ability to go to sleep and stay asleep is lessened.

My husband and I have subscribed to our own set of sleep standards as outlined by Dr. Harvey Karp in The Happiest Baby on the Block. We swaddle our daughter, shush her, have her suck on a pacifier, put her on her side and rock her. According to Dr. Karp, she’s in her 4th trimester right now and would prefer to be back inside my uterus, so we work to recreate that snuggly, noisy atmosphere to help her feel more at home. I’m down with all of this mostly because it seems to work. But I will admit to feeling a little trepidatious about eventually weaning her off of these sleep helpers.

For instance, I’ve noticed that the more aids we use for her, the more she notices their absence when they go away. What does that mean? Well, if she is having trouble calming down, but is clearly tired, then we tend to pull out all the stops. Turn on the shushing app, pop the pacifier in, rock the cradle! These things tend to calm her down and help her eventually transition into sleep. The problem comes when the pacifier falls out or the rocking stops or the timer runs out on the shusher. When she’s disquieted from the get-go, she’s much more likely to continue to get upset if something goes missing. This is not true if she goes to sleep without this help. She only realizes what she’s got when it’s gone. On the other hand, if she falls asleep on her own without the white noise and without the soothie, then she sleeps better, longer and deeper. There’s less to go wrong, so less upsets her even while she sleeps.

So while the soothing sounds of the ocean help her get to sleep, they don’t seem to help her stay asleep most of the time. The same with the pacifier. It only helps until it hurts by falling out. I’m not swearing these helpers off by any means, but I do want to encourage sleep without help as much as I can since it simply seems to be more restful for her. And I do know that sleep begets sleep. If she’s not getting enough during the day, then she won’t get enough at night and all of us will need some soothing then.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz