Harvey Karp - The Happiest Baby Guide to Great Sleep: Simple Solutions for Kids from Birth to 5 Years

The Happiest
Baby Guide
to
Great Sleep

Simple Solutions for Kids
from Birth to 5 Years

HARVEY KARP, M.D.

To the millions of great parents who pray for just a little more sleep.
Your goal is truly within reach.

Sweet Sleep for Little Babies:
Birth to Three Months

When children are young, you get no sleep.
When theyre old, you get no rest.

F OLK SAYING

Does your baby melt your heart with love when you rock her to sleep and then drive you totally insane for the rest of the night? Does your home become a battleground every night, as your tot flails and cries No, no, no! when its time for bed?

Being a parent is the most wonderful experience youll ever have. But having a child who is a bad sleeper hits you with a huge double whammy:

You feel like youre getting a big, fat D in Mommy-ing (or Daddy-ing).

Plus youre utterly exhausted.

Ahhh sleep!!

If youre like most new moms, a good nights sleep shimmers in your weary mind like a mirage in the desert. No wonder sleep struggles are the number one behavioral grumble of parents.

And its not just about babies. A third of toddlers fight bedtime and half still get up once a night (one in ten wakes two times a night or more!). No wonder a 2004 National Sleep Foundation poll found that millions of parents get less than six hours of sleep a night (one in five of those with infants and one in eight with tots and preschoolers).

Bone-weary parents often fall prey to overeating, quarreling, accidents, illness, anxiety, and even depression. And, like a rock thrown in a lake, exhaustion can trigger wave after wave of worry:

Am I creating bad habits?

Will crying it out scar my baby emotionally?

Should she be on a schedule?

Will this ever stop?

Todays new parents have little experience with babiesamazingly, many have never even touched a newborn in their lives! So they seek answers from the piles of sleep manuals on bookstore shelves. (Over the past twenty years, more sleep manuals have come and gone than any other type of parenting book.)

Yet these guides often misguide parents, and make things even more confusing:

Hold your baby but dont spoil her!

Swaddle your baby but dont create a dependency!

Love your baby but shut the door and let her cry herself to sleep!

So its no surprise that rookie parents flip-flop between feeling like major-league pros (on good days) and bumbling boobs (on those other days). And, on top of all this, most parents today have lost the strong support system that helped their great-grandparents manage: big, supportive families; close neighbors; and teenage girls down the street eager to babysit.

However, you can be reassured to know that billions of parentsstretching all the way back to the beginning of timehave successfully conquered these hurdles, which means that you can, too.

And that leads me to the best news of all: a few simple ideasweaving together ancient wisdom and breakthrough sciencecan help you solve most of your childs sleep struggles in less than a week. (Or better yet, prevent them even before they happen!)

Sound too good to be true? Ive heard that before.

Parents and even many doctors were a bit skeptical when I introduced The Happiest Baby DVD and book a decade ago. But those very simple ideas have now helped millions of parents around the world calm their fussy babieseven most colicky onesin minutes or less!

Likewise, the unexpected innovations in my DVD and book, The Happiest Toddler, surprised many by answering a problem that had vexed parents for centuries: Why are toddlers so unreasonable? Suddenly, parents had new ways to stop most tantrums fast and to help even easy tots become more patient and cooperative, in just days!

After thirty years of caring for thousands of babies I was so fortunate to uncover practical solutions to common problems that work unexpectedly well and fast. And now, I am thrilled to offer you some simplebut surprisingsteps to help your infant or young child sleep beautifully all through the night.

It sounds almost unbelievable, but sixty years ago, few American moms nursed their babies. After tens of thousands of years of every single mother feeding her baby at the breast, women in our country almost lost this life-sustaining skill.

It took millions of dollars, decades of effort, and a nationwide education campaign to debunk the myth that factory-made formula was better than breast milk. But the effort was well worth it. Today, women across the country are confidently breast-feeding their babies. As a result, their children are healthier and mothers are, too.

Now that weve popped the formula-is-better-than-breast-milk myth, my goal is to shatter another set of mythssleep mythsthat have confused and misled exhausted parents for centuries. For example:

Babies need to sleep in total quiet Wrong!

Rice cereal boosts an infants sleep Wrong!

All infants sleep longer after three months of age Wrong!

Stomach gas and cramps cause babies to be wakeful and fussy Wrong!

Crying it out is the best way to sleep train a child Wrong!

My goal is to replace these mistaken ideas with new insights to quickly improve your childs sleeping the Happiest Baby way. Youll discover:

Why you cant spoil your little baby.

How to add an houror moreto your infants sleep.

Why waking sleeping babies actually boosts their sleep.

Why white noise works sleepy-time magic at any age.

Why your childs bedtime really starts in the morning.

Which bedtime routines work the best.