I have a feeling that this may prove a divisive post, and frankly you’re welcome to disagree with anything that I put up here. Nobody, including me, is making you read it. However, this is a topic that I wanted to cover precisely because it has proven so divisive when I’ve been looking for resources around it online.

First things first, though: let’s be clear about what I mean when I say “sleep training”. I don’t mean neglecting your kid. Nobody means that when they’re talking about sleep training, but that doesn’t stop plenty of people chirping on like you’re the devil for even considering it. Nor do I mean “cry it out”, or leaving the child for an unnecessarily long period of time in a state of distress. Because that just sucks for everyone.

So what exactly do I mean when I’m talking about “sleep training”? I’m referring to a particular solution to a specific problem: getting the little’un to sleep, then being able to move them into their own sleep space.

The problem

When they were very little, as you’d expect, my wife or I would find ourselves “trapped” by a sleeping baby. Frankly, I loved this and it doesn’t happen so much any more and at times I miss it. Whilst this was all well and good during the day, where we could just lounge on the sofa and read or watch the TV at low volume, at night this was a problem.

See, I really like sleep (and so does my wife!). I knew that the arrival of a baby into the home was going to screw my sleep up, but I didn’t fully appreciate just how much disruption there would be. That being said, as bad as it was for me I know it was much worse for my wife. I didn’t have the all-you-can-eat buffet…

The “problem” in all of this was never that we were a comfy, warm, safe place to fall asleep. It wasn’t that we were being roused by a tiny person who needed us to attend to them. Where we struggled was getting them back into their bed at night-time.

Cot gymnastics

Getting the baby back to sleep after a night feed or change? Easy enough. Sing, sway, gently bop around the bedroom… job’s a good’un. Their head stuck to my chest, all was well and they’d sleep like a… well, like a baby.

Dare to try and get them back into their own bed, though, and all hell broke loose. It didn’t seem to matter how we tried to put them back down. Take it slow, keep them horizontal, gently down into bed? No dice. On their side, roll them onto their back once down? Good Lord, no. Let them sleep on us for a short while, then try and put them down when they’re definitely into a deeper part of the sleep cycle? Hahaha, you must be mad for thinking that’d work!

No, the only place they were content to sleep: being cuddled. Which, again, in the day when it was appropriate to consume dangerous levels of caffeine was no problem.

The solution?

It was at this point we stumbled across this notion of “sleep training”. My initial feelings from looking into it were… not positive. This was largely, I think, because I found quite a lot of people slamming it as “cruel”. Also, quite a bit of content around “cry it out” – where you apparently leave the baby to it and eventually they get the hint, stop crying, and you’re good. That, to me at least, seemed horrific and I wanted no part of it.

Fortunately, my wife had discovered different content to me. What she had found was the “pick-up, put-down” approach. So, off I went to do some more digging.

Pick up, put down. Repeat.

The gist here is simple. Baby upset? No problem, soothe them. But there’s a limit. We started with 30 seconds; if the baby was upset at being put back into their bed, we waited 30 seconds before picking them back up and soothing them. (In hindsight, I’m immensely glad that we started there… because it sure felt like a lot more than 30 seconds…)

Once they’re calm, and ideally sleepy and ready to return to bed, you pop them back down. Hopefully they’re all good, which means you’re all good and everyone’s back to bed. If not and they get upset again, you repeat the process: wait for however long, then pick up and soothe the baba.

My wife and I stuck with the small intervals for a bit while we tried to work out whether it was making any difference. As it did, gradually the intervals got longer: 30s became 45s, which became 1 minute, then 2 minutes… you get the idea.

At this point, for clarity: you’re still expected to exercise some parental judgement whilst doing this. Ignoring the child isn’t the task at hand, here. There’s a difference between grumpy/upset over not being cuddled any more, and upset because there’s something wrong that needs dealing with.

Did it work?

Gradually, over time, yes. Any scepticism I had around the process vanished as it became easier to put sleepy baby into their bed and not have them immediately start bawling over it!

It was not, however, a “one and done” process. At times, not always related to other occurences like teething or illness, we’d run into some bed-related fussiness. Some repetition of the process, starting again with short increments and building up, and the difficulty with putting them down waned again.

Let’s be absolutely clear about all this, though; if you’re expecting sleep training to be some sort of magic bullet for your sleep-related woes, then brace for disappointment. For us, it was certainly a useful aide. However, I realise that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

But isn’t it harmful?

As I mentioned at the outset, this topic is divisive. There are many people who feel very strongly and very negatively about the whole idea. Honestly, I can entirely understand why and I appreciate where they’re coming from. There are few things in the world worse than hearing your child crying and being unable to do anything about it; even if that’s only temporary, say for 30 seconds, before acting.

A lot of what I read dismissing sleep training revolved around the entirely valid argument that if your child is crying, they probably need something from you. And, since they largely can’t tend to their own needs… it’s on you to sort out what’s wrong! I’m not going to argue against that, because in honesty I agree with them. But, unlike my offspring, as an adult I know that what they need is sleep. Just as much as my wife and I do.

So as readily as I will concede that, yes, the little one crying is probably a good indicator that you need to go deal with something, I would argue the counterpoint that if you have multiple children then there may be times where for all your best efforts you simply won’t be able to drop everything and soothe the youngest of them.

You can’t do everything for everyone all at once, and there may well be times where you’ll have to choose between the infant and an elder sibling. Again, this is where that parental judgement comes in – you prioritise. But as with many things, is it not better to introduce the idea that parental intervention may not be immediate in a controlled way rather than simply jumping in at the deep end when circumstances force the situation? That was my thinking, at any rate.

Further reading

Huckleberry, who make a child-centric app for parents, have a pretty good article on this subject available on their website. Their app also has features intended to demystify your child’s sleep patterns, some of which require a paid subscription. We used it, and found the “wake windows” to actually be pretty good.

Conclusion

In summary, I hope I’ve given you a bit of useful info around sleep training, my experience of it as a Dad, and some food for thought. I’d encourage you, if you’re thinking of sleep training yourself, to read quite widely around the subject and do your best to make an informed choice that works for your family and circumstances.

Because babies are each individual little people, what works for one won’t necessarily work for another, and each family is unique and you’ll have your own ideas on what’s agreeable and what isn’t. Oh, and definitely make sure you talk to your partner in parenting before embarking on this journey.

Cover Image by Vishnu R Nair on Unsplash

— TTFN