Formula for success: Teaching baby to sleep independently

That moment when you have one kid under your belt and your maternity leave was the best time ever. In fact, it rocked SO much so that you wished for years that you could repeat that experience. Fast forward 4 years later, I find myself back into maternity leave. This time…THIS TIME was SO much different than the first. What worked for my first born did not work for my second born. Maybe it’s because they are different genders. Maybe it’s because they have different personalities. Or maybe it’s because you think you were so awesome at parenting you have totally got this in the bag no questions asked the second time and God is sitting on his throne giggling saying “Just wait until you meet your second born!”

I had the best sleep of my life on my first maternity leave. I looked like the living dead my second maternity leave. I could not get my baby mister to sleep. He insisted on sleeping on me all day. He nursed every 60-90 minutes all night long. Night after night, I would sacrifice my own sleep so that my daughter wouldn’t be a bear and my husband would get adequate rest for his hour long commute. I had all day to sleep anyways. Wrong. There was little sleep to be had during the day. I swear that baby boy knew the second I thought about sleeping because he would wake immediately! On recommendations from friends, I picked up “The no cry sleep solution”. I was so exhausted I couldn’t even read it. At all. I tried a dozen times and I just could not. The full force of my lack of sleep would weigh on my eye lids, the words would jumble together and I would be left frustrated.

Desperate for relief and rest, I gave Christina Gantcher a call. This woman is a life saver. She provides moms with personal 1-on-1 baby sleep consultations via phone five days a week for free, thanks to an awesome partnership with Gerber® Good Start® Gentle Formula. Schedule an appointment online at Gerber.com/experts or call the Parent Resource Center 24/7 at 1-800-284-9488 and they can help schedule an appointment for you. Trust me when I say, your under eye bags will thank you!

Christina spent 20 amazing minutes of her time with me. Her call was exactly what I needed: interactive, encouraging, gentle and full of easy to implement advice to get baby and myself well on our way to the blissful land of SLEEP.

Here are a few gentle sleep strategies she went over in teaching baby to sleep independently:

I started implementing her suggestions and the first few times were met with tears and confusion by my baby mister. He HATES his crib, would barely get a big toe on the mattress and he’d be screeching. Yes, screeching. I kid you not when I say I put him in there and I crawl in his crib and sat in there and played. I wanted him to see the crib is a happy fun place, not solitary confinement in a wooded prison 😛 His 4 year old sister also spent some time in there with him, again reinforcing that the crib is not as scary as his baby brain tells him! This only happened a handful of times before we were over the crying fit of the crib. This was definitely our biggest challenge in getting rest! It was not time at all and baby mister was putting himself to sleep in his crib and Momma was getting MUCH needed rest!!

I cannot thank Christina enough for her kind words, encouragement and advice. We all thank you!!

If you find you are in the same “Mom-bie” state as I once was, please don’t hesitate to schedule a personalized phone consultation with Christina. Gerber.com/experts or 1-800-284-9488.