Stopping!

Everyday I stop 3 times for around 5 minutes each time.

All children go through it I think, that faze where they find it hard to settle to sleep. Sometimes they have been a great sleeper since they were born and it can hit you like train other times it starts a birth. There has always been great debate about how is the best way to get your child to settle to sleep. When I had Monkey the trend for settling babies to sleep was the "cry it out" method. Everyone was doing it. It didn't FEEL right to me but I read all the information and it was what was recommended to me by the nurses so we gave it a go. There was very little information which offered a real alternative (at least very little my baby brain could find). We tried it for a short while but it didn't work and we couldn't keep it up. It works really well for some parents but for us nope. I know of many who have had great success using it.
We rocked him to sleep sometimes, shhhed and patted him and tried all sorts of different methods eventually Monkey just grew out of it.

Miss Boo however has always been really good at settling (except when teething of course) so it came as a bit of a shock when she suddenly stared having trouble getting to sleep at night and then during the day. I think it must be separation anxiety kicking in (something that never happened with Monkey).  Well again we briefly considered the cry it out but this time we were wiser about our own feelings on the subject.

We did decide to give it a shot and tried for one night, but again it just didn't feel right for us. This time however we listened to our instincts straight away. I know that you have to keep up the cry it out method for more than one night but it just wasn't going to work.

We soon noticed that Miss Boo settled far quicker if we were in the room. I did a very through search online and came accross a youtube movie I had never seen before. It recomended allowing the child to fall asleep with your hand on them then leaving once they were asleep. Now I know how stimulating it can be having a parent in the room so I just lay on the floor with my hand on her tummy. If she rolls away I stay put. It worked from the first time we tried it. The first time it took about 10 minutes for her to fall asleep but now it takes less than 5.

So for around 5 minutes I just stop! I lay on the floor in my daughters room and just be there for her. As time goes on this too will no longer be needed and we will start to withdraw ourselves from the sleep equation, but for now I love this snippet of quiet time we share.