Natalie Willes - Getting Your Baby to Sleep the Baby Sleep Trainer Way

Copyright 2017 by Natalie Willes. All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-9990867-2-8

Illustrator: Graphic design by Eliza Frye

For Olive and Milo: Without you there would be none of this.

Contents

Introduction

If youre reading this book, you likely fall into one of two categories: Youre either a type-A, get-er-done parent who is trying to preempt any sleep problems by tackling them early or preventing them before they start, or you are the parent of an infant or toddler, and completely and utterly exhausted because your child is struggling to sleep well. Either way, this book is for you!

Id like to first address the latter group. Ive spent the better part of the last five years working with hundreds of families across the world to solve their childrens sleep issues. Parents come to me having read multiple books, spoken to dozens of friends, and scoured the entire Internet trying to figure just how to help their beautiful and precious child sleep through the night and take healthful, restorative naps during the day. So many families find success to be completely elusive, and determining the right solution is complicated by the fact that nearly every piece of information a parent reads or hears is in direct conflict with the next. Add a tremendous lack of sleep for parents and baby, and its not hard to see why sleep issues seem to compound so quickly.

Heres my secret: I was once like you! I dog-eared, highlighted, and tagged multiple sleep books before my first child, Olive, was born eight years ago, and I remember how it felt for days to turn into weeks as I desperately tried to find the formula that would result in something that I had thought would be easy and naturalsleep!

To those of you in the first category, who are reading this in preparation for your new baby, I commend you. Understanding the principles in this book will help you avoid many of the long-term issues that families tend to endure when it comes to sleep. You wont be able to avoid needing to sleep train your baby, for reasons I will go into in the coming chapters, but it will be accomplished more easily by not only knowing what to expect, but also when and how to appropriately deal with issues when they do inevitably arise.

For anyone who has already read a stack of books, believe me, I know theres a lot of information out there, and I also know that sleep experts tend to come across as extremely authoritative, making you feel like their way is the only way. I am not here to tell you that the Baby Sleep Trainer Method is the only way, and Im not even going to tell you that its the best way (although hundreds of clients have told me that its been true for them). I am here to tell you that, when applied consistently, the Baby Sleep Trainer Method works for almost every child, and it usually resolves sleep problems with the least amount of overall crying out of any popular approach. Ill make an evidence-backed case for everything I ask you to do, and guide you through any blip and bump you may experience along the journey. All you need to be successful is patience and consistency.

So heres my promise to you: If you work through the strategies outlined in this book and remain consistent in allowing your child the time and space they need to learn how to fall asleep on their own, theyll be sleeping through the night and taking regular naps before you know itand thats a gift for you both.

How To Use This Book

There is one principle that is key to understanding the Baby Sleep Trainer Method, and that is that nearly all sleep issues arise out of a childs inability or unwillingness to fall asleep unassisted. Nearly every family that calls me with a four-month-old, a three-year-old, or any age in between, shares a single trait: a child who is dependent on something or someone else to fall asleep. (There is the rare child who struggles with sleep due to something as simple as napping too much each day, causing them to wake excessively at night, or waking too early in the morning because they dont have blackout curtains in their bedroom windows. But these are few and far between.)

Generally, parents come to me with a variation on these issues. Their child:

1. takes a long time to fall asleep (via rocking, nursing, or needing someone to lie next to them);
2. wakes immediately or shortly after having been put down in their crib;
3. wakes repeatedly at night, needing some form of assistance to fall back to sleep, like a pacifier, feeding, rocking, etc.; or
4. wont fall asleep easily for naps, skips naps altogether, naps for only short periods of time, has no consistent nap schedule, or only naps while moving in a stroller, carrier, or car seat.

At first glance, these appear to be unrelated problems, but upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the trait they actually share is that they all have to do with a child not knowing how to fall asleep on their own.

A child who takes a long time to settle into sleep for naps or at night is usually just struggling with the method being used to get them to fall asleep in the first place. That is, the child naturally wants to lie down, close their eyes, and fall asleep, but they only know how to fall asleep with assistance, be it rocking, nursing, strolling, or sleeping next to someone else. If a child has had help, they often wake up once that help is taken away (for example, many babies wake up the moment a parent places them in their crib, even though they appeared deeply asleep while being held).

Parents often mistake frequent night wakings as an indication that their child is not yet sleeping through the night, or, conversely, if they do not hear their baby crying overnight, that they are. In fact, all humans wake regularly throughout the night (generally, after completing each sleep cycle, which occurs every thirty to sixty minutes for infants). Children who have assistance at bedtime will often need it again each time they wake. There are even children who fall asleep easily at bedtime but seek assistance during night wakings and for naps. At nightespecially at bedtimethe bodys hormonal cycles make it somewhat easier to fall asleep, but children who are reliant on external help struggle to sleep at bedtime can have a very, very hard time falling back to sleep after they complete a cycle.

I go into this much detail because I want to show parents that the primary goal of sleep training is to teach a child to go from being 100 percent awake to 100 percent asleep without any assistance. Its really that simple. Now that we have identified the root of nearly all sleep issues, the solution becomes both more obvious and easier to attain.

Since our primary goal is to ensure that children are falling asleep unassisted for naps and at bedtime, this book provides clear instructions on implementing a program that will achieve exactly that. First, Ill make a concise, but detailed and science-based, case for the importance of training exactly as laid out in this book. Ill also address the most common impediment for parents (spoiler alert: its crying!), and, for those with newborns, Ill give extensive direction on what can be done in the early weeks of life to help baby and parents get as much sleep as possible. Youll also learn the only four things that are truly necessary to have in your childs bedroom in order to promote successful sleep training. Since consistency is key, Ill give you a few important tips to make sure you are able to remain steady from start to finish.