Here Are All Of The Things I’ve Done To Try To Get My Child To Sleep In His Own Bed

When my son was an infant, I had nursing to rely on, which helped in many ways. When he’d wake in the wee hours, seeking satisfaction, I could confidently turn to feeding to help revert him from a screeching banshee back into a snoozing baby. Not only was that a slippery slope, it was fleeting, and though I was fortunate enough to be able to nurse for a good long time, eventually this trick up my sleeve morphed into a millstone around my neck. No matter where we were or what was going on, the only thing that would really soothe him was to nurse, which wasn’t always convenient or ideal, and we ended up nursing for probably much longer than I perhaps would have done otherwise.

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Once he became a little older, I began employing other methods, steadily, that I gleaned from a barrage of sources.

This was an utter disaster. I know a lot of parents really swear by sleep training, but all it did was fluster, petrify, bewilder, and confuse both myself and my sweet boy. I read all the books — The No-Cry Sleep Solution, The Happiest Baby on the Block, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems — and the only one they put to sleep was me. But I did try the methods outlined, as instructed. I put him to bed drowsy, I committed to the process, I implemented the strategies for a week in a row — and I struck out. He refused to be trained, and I refused to let him scream bloody murder until a close-quarter neighbor decided to call the police on us for disturbing the peace.

The longest I let him cry was for a little over an hour, and then I caved. I stayed outside his door like a scared puppy, wondering, “Should I go in? Is he OK? Why won’t he sleep?” When I finally went into the room, he was gasping for air between sobs, and as I held him in my arms, he hiccupped and huffed, unable to really catch his breath until well after he was asleep. It felt … wrong. I couldn’t handle it, emotionally, and by all signs, he couldn’t either. In short, it just didn’t work for our family.

One mom introduced me to the “dream feed,” wherein you gently rouse the baby to nurse just before you go to sleep, and it’s supposed to buy you a little extra time. It did extend the amount of time he’d sleep for, but he always found his way to wake up regardless — and at some awful, odd hour.

I read somewhere that the foods we eat while nursing can upset the baby, so I limited garlic, spicy foods, and things that could have perhaps been causing internal distress to my son. I can’t say if it helped or not, because while he didn’t appear to ever be suffering from tummy issues, he never could confirm that to be the case.

Somewhere along this process, I decided if I’m ever going to sleep again, this kid is going to have to sleep beside me in bed. I know that there are a lot of mixed feelings about co-sleeping, varying from, “We did the same thing,” to, “Oh my God, how could you, you monster!?” Yes, I am that monster. After reading (and reading, and reading) about it, I decided the benefits outweighed the cons, and, exhausted in body and spirit, I was ready to try anything.

Some of the things I read and found appealing-slash-interesting were that co-sleeping is common and popular in other cultures (I still recall reading about a Japanese mother who referred to it as ‘mountains and the valley’), that it lessened the chances of crib death, that it increased the likeliness of positive sexual relationships in the child’s adult life, and most importantly that I wouldn’t have to sit up in the night, rustling the pain of my C-section wounds and becoming fully awake and unable to fall back to sleep after tending to my son, because I could easily turn to nurse him. I installed bed gates, kept him sleeping on the other side of me and not beside my husband (to limit the likeliness of him being rolled onto), and gave it a try. The downside was that it was so efficient, it lasted way longer than I would have liked it to, and I am still, to this day, trying to keep the kid out of my bed.

Our bedtime routine involved dimming the lights a little while before bed, running a bath, reading two short books, lots of love and snuggles, and then calling it a night. We still do it today, and we all enjoy it, but I am not sure how much “the routine” helped, because five years later, he still doesn’t sleep through the night.

I read somewhere that children who have sleep troubles are “overtired” and in fact should be put down sooner, so we moved his bedtime to even earlier than it already was. We had been aiming for “lights out” around 7 p.m., so we tried 6:30. His pediatrician bewilderingly told me that an appropriate time for a toddler to go to bed was 6 p.m., which seemed a bit early to me, but hey, I didn’t spend the price of a four-bedroom home on my education. So we tried that, too. Both were a no-go. We also tried keeping him up later, until 8 p.m. It turns out no matter when he goes to bed, his default wake-up time is 6:30 a.m. Oh, and also midnight, and 3 a.m. Every. Night.

At one point, it occurred to us that maybe more activity during the day would help. After his birth, my OB-GYN suggested that I get him into soccer as soon as I could. “As a mom of two boys, I know, and trust me — you’ll thank me,” she said. Well, I took her advice, and soccer soon became an opportunity for me to chase him all over the field, trying to wrangle him toward the game and the rest of the players. So we instead began to implement a daily walk. Of course, it mostly only happens during warmer months, when we also swim and spend more time outside playing anyway. I have not noticed any difference between his sleep cycles during the winter and summer, except that he is bewildered as to why he’s being put to bed before it’s dark outside. I do believe that he sleeps for longer before his first wake-up when we’ve taken a long hike, on days when we swim, or if he's had a particularly active day. But he always wakes up.

Somewhere along the way, I began slowly adding knickknacks and devices, inspired by a chorus of “Have you tried” advice geared toward helping sleep happen for longer, better, faster, more. A sound machine was added into the fray (it’s nice, but not the answer), as were blackout curtains (pricey and helpful, but not a fix), an air purifier (surely good, but no), an “OK to wake” clock (total waste of money), a night light (hard no), stuffies (helpful, but no), a vibrating sleep doll (no) and, eventually, a weighted blanket (extends his first cycle, but not a solution).

None of them have worked.