Teaching Your Baby to Put Himself to Sleep
How do you get your baby to go to sleep and sleep through the night?
She may accomplish that milestone on her own, soon. Or she may need a little help from you to learn how to put herself to sleep. We all need to learn how to get back to sleep when the normal rhythm of our sleep cycles takes us into a slightly wakened state during the night.
I suggest that you begin by reading the section on Infants and Sleep, for a general framing of the issue, including my bias toward keeping infants near you during sleep. (Why this bias? Because it gets you more sleep, and reduces the risk of SIDS for your baby.)
If you're considering Ferbering, you might want to read my biased view on that. Finally, I recommend that you check out Toddlers and Sleep for step by step recommendations on teaching a little one to sleep on her own.
After all that reading, you'll have a decision to make. Do you embark on some kind of sleep training with your baby? Your strategy will depend on the age of your baby, and of course also on how desperate you are for some sleep.
You'll be interested to know that most babies either do not fall asleep without being held, or do not sleep all night in their own bed. It simply isn't a "normal" thing for small humans to do, biologically speaking.
You can, however, teach babies to fall asleep themselves without leaving them to cry. This is not an overnight process -- it can take months -- but it does work. If you'd like to consider this, I highly recommend Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution as you think about how to approach it.
