Let me just say before I get rolling here, that I’m not strictly anti-pacifier. I mean, what mother could be? We’ve all been saved from a major baby meltdown by the quick introduction of a pacifier into baby’s mouth at the right moment. Maybe they missed their sleep window by a little bit and were […]
Categories
How To Drop To One Nap
One of the nicest transitions I experienced with my son was when we decided to consolidate his two short daytime naps into one big one, right in the middle of the day. I can’t deny it, I loved the time off in the middle of the day. He went from sleeping an hour and a […]
Categories
What if Baby Gets Sick?
One of the most aggravating situations I see parents running into when they’re sleep training is the sudden onset of a minor illness when they’re finally seeing some progress. After months of sleep issues, they finally decide to take the initiative and get serious about getting their baby onto a schedule, baby starts getting the […]
Categories
When Can I Night Wean?
I get asked this question a lot, and I have two answers for you. First of all, the clinical one. If your child’s six months or older, gaining weight as expected, and your doctor says you’re okay to end nighttime feeds, then go ahead and give it a shot. But that doesn’t really answer your […]
Categories
Getting Your Partner Involved
At the risk of generalizing here, it’s been my experience that there’s usually one parent who handles the bulk of the nighttime responsibilities. And that parent, in a man/woman relationship, is almost always Mom. Now, before you go accusing me of sexism or stereotyping, I’d just like to point out that there’s a reason this […]
Categories
Sleep Training and Daycare
One of the biggest obstacles my clients face is what do when they send their little ones to daycare. Whether they’ve already gotten their baby on a carefully planned nap schedule or they’re planning on starting one, a problem obviously arises if their daycare provider doesn’t follow that same schedule. In the latter scenario, parents […]
Categories
Preventing Overtiredness
If there’s anything that can send your child’s sleep off the rails, if there’s an arch-enemy for sleep training, it is, without a doubt, the dreaded condition of overtiredness. Kids, as with all people, have a natural rhythm when it comes to sleep. Our bodies secrete hormones to keep us up and running during the […]
“With all of the information that’s readily available online, and the resources you have at your disposal in the form of friends and family who have managed to get their kids to sleep, why would you want to invite a stranger into your home to get your child sleeping through the night?” I don’t often […]
What can I say? These past few weeks have been…I mean, wow. Right?Just wow. If you’re in the same boat as most parents in the world, you’ve had to accommodate the fact that your kids were suddenly and unexpectedly given an extra four months of summer vacation. And to top it all off, they’re unable […]
Toddlers are fascinating creatures, aren’t they? Watching them develop into thinking, creative little people is such a fascinating time, and one that parents often wish would last a little longer. Of course, they usually wish that after baby’s grown out of the toddler stage, because along with that creativity and new found intelligence, we usually […]