I had the misfortune of birthing not one, but two babies who just could not slumber for longer than two hours at a time. It almost killed me.
Until you yourself go through the throes of sleep deprivation it’s impossible to understand the sheer torture, desperation, and panic it instills. You get to the point where you actually fear falling asleep, because you know you’ll only be woken up again and the horror will begin all over again.
I tried a lot of things to make it better. I read a lot of books, surfed the internet for help, despaired to my GP. But I’ll tell you what I didn’t do: hire a sleep consultant.
Firstly, I didn’t have hundreds of dollars to blow on an initial consultation, let alone thousands of dollars for a full “sleep training package”. I find it astonishing (and, frankly, gross) that there are folks out there legitimately charging hundreds of dollars an hour to tell you what I’m about to tell you now. Secondly, I think the whole “sleep training” industry is a money-grab taking advantage of sleep-starved parents so desperate for relief that they’d do anything just to get some shut-eye.
You want to know how to sleep train? Here it is: You put the kid in the crib, say goodnight—and that’s it. You wait. They cry. You cry. And it is brutal. Oh sure, there are plenty of different “approaches”, with their own cute little acronyms (CIO, PIPD, etc). But listen: it’s all the same shit wrapped up in a different bow.
You can sit in the room while they scream until they (or you) feel like puking. You can leave the room and pop in and out at regular intervals while they scream until they (or you) feel like puking. You can slowly creep out of the room, bit by bit, over the period of week. You can just leave and not come back at all until they stop (or puke).
That’s what worked best with my first kid, who screamed for 45 minutes the first night, 20 minutes the second night, 5 minutes the third night, and started sleeping through the night after the third.
Or, if they’re still screaming three hours into it, you do what I did with my second: you give up. You take them into your bed, lie down with them, let them use you as a human soother, and adapt to sleeping with one boob in a tiny person’s mouth.
What you don’t do? Pay an unprofessional, unaccredited, unlicensed person to tell you to essentially ignore the kid until they nod off.
Sleep trainers do not have a degree in sleep. They’re not neurologists. They’re not psychologists. They’re not counsellors. They’re not medical professionals. They don’t need a license to call themselves “sleep trainers”. They don’t even have to take a course (although some private institutes will sell them).
But they WILL charge you the kind of fees that make you think they do.
BATSHIT PARENTING 