About book The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways To Help Your Baby Sleep Through The Night (2002)
The excellent podcast "pregtastic" has an interview with the author of this book on their website. It's episode 139 May 19, 2009 or you can click here: http://www.pregtastic.com/new-moms-ne...William Sears writes the forward for this book in which he says:"Sleep -or more accurately, the lack of sleep- is one of the most challenging aspects of parenting during the first year or two of a baby's life. The biggest hurdle is getting the baby to sleep through the night. Parents who are sensitive to their baby's needs are reluctant to try any technique that requires that they let their baby cry, so they often struggle through a fog of sleeplessness. This 'nighttime-martyr parenting' often leads to frustration and resentment, resulting in unnecessary feelings of guilt and obscuring a family's joy over the new arrival. ... At long last, I've found a book that I can hand weary parents with the confidence that they can learn to help their baby sleep through the night -without the baby crying it out."The author says:"Fourteen years ago, when Angela (her oldest of four) was a baby, I faced your dilemma. She did not sleep through the night. On the contrary, she woke up every two hours for my attention. As a new and inexperienced parent, I searched for solutions in books, articles, and conversations with other parents. ... I soon discovered two basic schools of thought when it comes to babies and sleep. One side advocates letting a baby cry until she learns to fall asleep on her own. The other side says that it is normal for babies to wake up at night and that it is the parent's job to nurture the baby -all day and all night. Eventually, when your baby is ready, she will sleep through the night. ... In a nutshell, the two methods can be summed up as 'cry it out' or 'live with it.' I wanted neither." (p. 2-3)"Typically, when a frequent night-waking baby wakes up and starts to cry, he's not hungry or thirsty or wet or even lonely; he's just plain tired, as desperate for sleep, perhaps, as his parents but, unlike them, clueless as how to fall asleep." (p. 45) Your job is to either put them to sleep every time they wake up or teach them how they can put themselves back to sleep and set them up for success with routines, sleep associations, and paying attention to their cues.Not having kids yet, I read The No-Cry Sleep Solution for two things: to get a realistic idea of what I can expect 'normal' infant sleep to be like and to hopefully hit the ground with a few tricks already in the bag.Excerpts I found especially interesting:"Babies make many sleeping sounds, from grunts to whimpers to outright cries [even shouting "mom!" when they're older:], and these noises don't always signal awakening. These are what I call sleeping noises, and your baby is nearly or even totally asleep during these episodes. These are not the cries that mean, "Mommy, I need you!" They are just sleeping sounds. ... In [your:] desire to respond to [your:] baby's every cry, [you may:] actually [teach:] her to wake up more often." p.76"Many people put their babies to bed much too late, often hoping that if baby is 'really tired' he will sleep better. This often backfires because baby becomes overtired and chronically sleep-deprived. ... A baby's biological clock is preset for an early bedtime. When parents work with that time, a baby falls asleep more easily and stays asleep more peacefully. Most babies are primed to go to sleep for the night as early as 6:30 or 7:00pm. ... plan for it by beginning your prebed routine an hour before. ... For babies, early to bed does not mean early to rise. Most babies sleep better and longer with an earlier bedtime. ... Many [parents:] were truly surprised to find that an earlier bedtime really did help their baby fall asleep easier and faster and often encouraged better sleep and a later waking time." p.103-104 I know this is true for me even as an adult. I get drowsy around 9 pm. If I try to power through that drowsiness to squeeze even one more hour out of the day, then often when I climb into bed at 10:00 I find myself laying awake until 2 am, unable to drift off."During the night, we move through a sleep cycle, riding it up and down like a wave. We cycle through light sleep to deep sleep to dreaming all through the night. In between these stages, we briefly come to the surface, without awakening fully. We may fluff a pillow, straighten blankets, or roll over, but generally we fade right back into sleep with nary a memory of the episode. ... Babies move through the same sleep cycles as adults do, but their cycles are shorter and more numerous. Babies also spend much more time in light sleep [dream sleep or REM:] than adults do, and they have many more of those in-between stages of brief awakenings." p.41-44 A "mother's best long-term sleep enhancer is to learn how to pretend to be asleep while listening to baby's sounds. And to wait. Your baby just may fall back to sleep (or may turn out not to have actually been awake in the first place) without your help. If she needs to breastfeed, you'll know that soon enough." p.78There are many more bits explored in the book. Sleep associations, for example, are discussed and how to form the ones you want and avoid the ones you don't. Biological clocks' development are explained by age with tips on how to help them along, such as keeping it dim or dark at night, exposing the baby to natural light in the morning, and developing a routine. Avoiding activity that might wake baby up all the way includes not just leaving lights off and avoiding play, but also skipping diaper changes that aren't absolutely necessary (just be sure to start off the night w/plenty of ointment to avoid rashes). Also discussed is how getting a baby to 'sleep through the night' is an ongoing task: just when it's all sorted out, along comes a new tooth, illness, growth spurt, or milestone to throw it out of whack again. A growth spurt brings back the night feeding for a little while. A milestone interferes with sleep in all kinds of ways: if a baby is learning to stand, for example, he may pull himself to a stand with the crib railing and not be able to figure out how to sit down again; he may roll over onto his stomach and be ticked off about it and need help getting onto his back. Or his mind, eager to devour everything in sight, may be too distracted to nurse quietly during the day and he will try to make up for this by nursing at night. As much as I like this book, I like the information in Good Night Sleep Tight even better. Both are worth reading, but if you only have time for one I'd lean towards Good Night, Sleep Tight.
A beacon of hope to those mired in the fog of sleep deprivation.There is an almost universal malady among parents of young children and babies and it’s called Sleep Deprived. You know if you suffer from this condition if your baggy eyes remind you to that you need to call Grandma June, your pillow hair resists all attempts at taming, you put the cereal in the fridge and milk in the cupboard, and slinged to your body is a bundle from heaven for whom all of this is worthwhile. But you think, “Can’t I have this wonderful baby AND get some sleep?” What if I said, “Yes”?If you’re like me you’d say, “But I can’t—won’t make her cry.”What if I still said, “Yes”?It is possible. I know because I was there and we did it thanks to a wonderful book called The No-Cry Sleep Solution. Instead of a one-size-fits all approach this book respects the unique combination of you and your baby’s temperaments. Not once, has there ever been a mom exactly like you, nor a baby exactly like yours. This wonderful variety among people almost ensures that whatever trick worked for someone else probably won’t for you, and you’re left feeling like you’re doing something wrong. This book supports different parenting styles by offering help for nursing moms, bottle fed babies, pacifier users, co-sleeper and crib sleepers alike and provides dozens ideas from which you plot your own route out of the fog of sleep deprivation. At four months old, my first daughter Danielle was only waking once a night and we thought the worst was behind us. However, her sleep got progressively worse as she started teething and reaching developmental milestones. I knew my tenderhearted husband and I would not be able to muster the wherewithal to let her cry-it-out, as her doctor and many of my friends felt was the only way. According to my sleep logs, at about 9 months of age I was up 11 times a night tending to every little whimper and perceived sign of discomfort. She was sleeping a total of 8 ½ hours a night with only one or two short 45 minute naps a day. I was exhausted, desperate, and feeling like a failure because I couldn’t help my spirited little baby get the rest she needed. Other babies I knew that were her age were taking two, two-hour naps a day and sleeping 12 hours a night! What was I doing wrong? It turned out that my spirited baby wasn't wired to sleep as much as other babies, and that’s OK. Using this book, I learned how to set her circadian rhythms, (and my own) and how to prime her for sleep. With something as simple as setting an early bedtime, she improved her sleep by almost 2 hours a night! Further, I was able to learn to which night-wakings I needed to respond and which was normal sleep movements and noises. I was waking the poor thing up! The map I created led us to a place we could live in. It still fell short of other people’s standards, but that was OK; because as Elizabeth teaches it’s only a problem, if we feel it's a problem. And we no longer did. By the time Gabrielle came along, all those changes we made to our daily life that felt unnatural four years ago were now intuitive. I followed Elizabeth’s advice without even being conscious of it and had a much easier time helping her sleep well from the beginning. Although, we too found ourselves in rough waters, but Elizabeth’s book was right there, whispering words of kindly advice like breezes into my sails, righting our course and sending us to the pleasant waters of restful nights. How this Book WorksOne of the first things Elizabeth says is to “use this book however it is helpful to you”. You don’t like the idea of doing logs all night or the formality of creating a sleep plan? Don't. It’s OK. The strength of this book is the ideas, support and hope it provides. It is a map showing many routes out of the fog of sleep deprivation. You build your own boat, choose the beacons and the speed at which you travel. The magic is that with her ideas and your perseverance, they all lead to a sunnier place.Do a Safety CheckWhether you plan to co-sleep, use a co-sleeper or crib there are important safety considerations to follow. I found the co-sleeping safety advice particularly helpful, most other resources simply discourage the practice and since I chose to do it anyway, I was grateful that Elizabeth showed me how to do it safely.Learn Basic Sleep FactsJust the most important facts about sleep and circadian rhythms to help you understand how the following solutions will help.Sleep LogsLogging what’s actually happening at night to help you asses your current situation. This is probably the most discouraging step, but hang in there—help is coming!Review and Choose SolutionsI was relieved when I got to this point. The solutions are divided into sections based on age: newborn to four-months-old and four-months to two-years old.Create your Personal Sleep PlanThis is the fun part. You pick and choose from all the wonderful ideas to create a plan that fits you and your baby.The second half of the book deals with logging your nights using your new plan so you can track your progress and troubleshoot the rough spots. It may take several iterations to achieve the goals you set, but you’re well on your way. At this point I began to think of Elizabeth as my wise friend and the other moms as my sleep support group. Their testimonies, woven throughout the book, are very comforting and supportive. The book wraps up with more information about revising your plan and logging your results as well as information about how to get you sleeping again, once baby is doing better. It is a concise 246 pages, chock full of advice, support and only the most pertinent clinical information. After all, tired mamas shouldn't have to wade through a thousand page tome of medical jargon to glean a little help and hope.Once you've navigated out of the fog of sleep deprivation, you can bask in the love and beauty of your baby. You’ll see with clarity routes through the many challenges of parenthood and life. Each night you can go to bed relaxed knowing that you have the skills to navigate through future patches of rough water, thanks to your perseverance and this lovely book.
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As someone who is a big believer in not letting your child cry it out and who breastfeeds her child to sleep, this is definitely a book written for me. I am naturally not inclined to like this book because I abhor the idea of "training" of any kind, however she definitely offers a nice way to start working with your child should your child not be sleeping the five hours or more time span that makes up "sleeping through the night". What I like about Ms. Pantley is she asks you to be honest about your current situation with regards to your baby's sleep and if you really do need a change or not. She asks you not to succumb to outside pressure or comparison re: your baby's sleep patterns and to do what you are personally okay with - something I don't think a lot of doctors or others ask. My baby stills wakes up every 2.5 hours at night, so I do need some help. She offers real solutions and practical advice as to how to deal with it. I feel that her method has improved my son's restlessness, however I haven't fully implemented it because I am so tired at night. I agree with a lot of what she has to say so I recommend this book just for that. I can't advocate for her advice as of this moment, however I will update this review in a couple of weeks with my results.
—Tammye
Does your baby cry every night when you put her to bed? Does she wake up in the middle of the night and cry for you to come hold her? Go to her every time and risk having a spoiled child. Let her "cry it out" and you’ll cry too. What’s a parent to do? The No-Cry Sleep Solution is the answer to every parent's sleep problems whether your baby sleeps in a crib or co-sleeps and whether your baby is breast or bottle-fed. Using the many tips provided, you will create a plan based on your baby’s needs. If you’re ready to get a full-night's sleep but don’t have the heart to let your baby cry it out, The No-Cry Sleep Solution is for you.While this book is good, I highly recommend The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer. The combination of the two of these saved my sanity after nine months of sleepless nights!
—Lori Reed
I read this book in conjunction with Ferber's Solving Your Child's Sleep Problems, just to get a range of perspective. I definitely liked the approach in this book better than Ferber's: it's based in attachment parenting principles, focuses first on whether the parent themselves sees a problem or just feels pressured to have a child that "sleeps through the night", and emphasizes that the process of getting a frequently waking child to sleep in longer chunks can be a long one that requires patience. The research about why babies wake up so goddamned much is basically the same as Ferber's, which is reassuring- basically all humans wake up during the night and the trick is how to make the waking moments short and calming. My only issues with this book were that the author is crazy in love with Dr. Sears (who, if you read the Attachment Parenting book he wrote, is kind of gaggingly sexist) and seems like kind of a fruitcake. I wanted a little more frank and informed writing and a little less folksy patronizing, because I am a grown woman who can handle information being dispensed without digression to topics like "sleepy baby bottoms" and the excessive use of "mommy" as a modifier. Despite all that ridiculousness, however, this is a book I plan on buying and actually referring back to as my kid grows, which is the most important thing.
—Denise
