Reddit reviews Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems: Revised Edition: New, Revised, and Expanded Edition
We found 3 Reddit comments about Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems: Revised Edition: New, Revised, and Expanded Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
This post is dead on. I understand that not going to your crying baby can seem cruel. After a few nights of CIO, though, our baby now gets a very healthy night of non-crying sleep every night (basically). With everything we know about how important good sleep is to overall health, if felt to us that a few nights of CIO seemed far less cruel than not establishing good sleeping patterns for our baby (and for us, so that we could be the best parents possible).
I would also say that, while I am definitely not an expert, every time someone that I know in real life has told me how the Ferber method did not work for them, it turns out that they were clearly not actually following Ferber's recommendations.
If you want to try Ferber, I strongly urge you to get the book and read through it. At least read the entire chapter on sleep associations (the CIO chapter, aka "Progressive Waiting"). Your library probably has the book. For instance, we actually dealt with similar issues to what you are describing in two stages: first got baby to fall asleep without nursing, then taught baby to go back to sleep on its own without us coming in the crib. Breaking this into two steps made it feel more humane.
Edit: Ferber also has a really helpful chart about average sleep times at various ages. I find that a lot of parents around me expect their baby to sleep longer at night than they should be able to (obviously you're a ways off from there right, now, but it still may be helpful). There is also information about how to set or adjust your baby's sleeping and waking times.
Edit 2: A lot of people are commenting about feeding. I know I only talked about Ferber here. I do not mean to suggest that your only concerns are purely sleep related. Other people's comments about food sound like they also could be a big part of what's going on.
Honestly - it all goes out the window the moment you actually get into it.
But two books I found useful to some degree:
Wonder weeks - really useful for understanding the mental leaps your child will experience. It's more helpful at the time - but it's a nice thing to browse.
Solve your child's sleep problems - This is the ferber (cry it out) method for sleep training. I am not saying I entirely followed this book - but I did find the sleep patterns and cycles to be useful to understand WHY my kid was having issues on occasion. I did not follow the ferber method to a T though - however, I did do a modified CIO method with my dude and it was pretty successful (though it's sort of more about training you than the kid, IMO).
I also recommend anything by the Mayo Clinic (and avoid all of the "What to Expect..." line).
It's scientifically based and doesn't treat you like an idiot. They have a pregnancy book and a first year book, both of which I liked quite a bit.
Other than that - start browsing /r/beyondthebump and /r/toddlers - they are both great places to go when you are feeling insane and just need to hear that "this is normal".
P.S. You may want to try posting to /r/babybumpS - it has a larger following. :)
Great question! I want to check out some of the other books mentioned here.
Our household also believes in free-range parenting, and I'm so with you on sleep being a priority. Our LO is 5 weeks old now, and I've found two that are helpful on sleep:
The first book was recommended by a co-worker who had good luck with it. It gives a good overview of what to expect week-by-week, month-by-month and into childhood. Basically, it takes about 6 weeks for circadian rhythms to develop, so until then the goal is just to learn to put the baby down "drowsy, but awake," so that she learns how to self-soothe and fall asleep on her own, rather than depending on a parent to rock her to sleep. We're not sleeping through the night yet, but we're pretty consistently seeing 3 and 4 hour stretches at night, and naps are getting shorter to compensate.
I'm only about halfway through Ferber, and I really like how it goes into sleep cycles. Basically, babies start with 5-10 minutes of REM, then fall into deep sleep. So when she's extra fussy and needs to be rocked to sleep, I know I can watch for the REM cycle to complete, then put her down when she's in deep sleep. Much of the sleep training content won't be appropriate until our baby is older. I like that it's not straight up "cry it out," but more strategies to get a baby/child to sleep with limited crying. Here's hoping that starting early works.
BTW, I loved Expecting Better. Such a relief to drink coffee guilt-free. I think the author is working on an evidence-based book about infants, but I'm not sure when it will be out.