Guest Blogger Darlene from Young Mama Tales

Hey guys I'm Darlene from http://youngmammatales.blogspot.com.


I'm here today to answer a question that I get frequently about my 4 year old.
How do you get him to sleep so well?

I've been getting this question for about 3.5 years now. I usually respond ' I'm just lucky' and smile, but there might be something more to it.

For the first 6 months of Jasper's life he slept in our bedroom with us. I wanted to be near him, hear him and be able to check on him every second of the night. Most of the time he slept in a little bassinet that Drew, his brother's, Drew's dad and all of his uncle's slept in as babies. Sometimes he would sleep on top of me as well, though I never got ANY sleep while co-sleeping.

Naps seemed pretty much non existent- he would sleep 30 minutes at a time, and only if held. Finally, I had had enough. It was time for him to start sleeping in his crib for naps.

It was one of the best decisions I'd ever made.

I followed my grandmother's 3 day rule. She always told me that whenever introducing anything new to a baby, give them 3 days to adjust. And since she did an amazing job raising 6 children- I took her advice.

The first day I laid him down for a nap in his crib Drew was home. He cried. I had to leave our apartment and go for a walk so I wouldn't have to hear him. Drew went in every 10 minutes, patted his back, and walked out. The crying lasted 40 minutes.

The next day, we did it again. Again I had to leave. I couldn't listen to my baby crying. 20 minutes of crying this time.

And then day three. The magical number my grammy talked about. I laid him down. Walked out the door so I wouldn't have to listen to his crying. Drew called me on my phone 2 minutes later. "He's not crying!!" He wasn't asleep yet, but he wasn't crying. 5 minutes of babbling and he was out.

And that was the last time he cried when we put him to bed.

I know a lot of people disagree with the crying out method. And that's fine! I don't agree with doing it for infants. But my 6 month old was ready. As were we. And it worked like a charm.

And to this day? Jasper sleeps 11-12 hours at night AND takes a 2 hour nap. Every.Single.Day.

My only advice, if you are ready to try it is make sure you put your baby down while he/she is tired, but not falling asleep. Watch for the clues, eye rubbing, fussiness etc.

If you decide to do it? Stick with it. You are only going to confuse the babe if you go in and pick her/him up and then try to do it again later.

We had a mobile that turned on and made noise, I think this helped. It distracted him until he fell asleep.

That's it! Obviously every child is different, and this is just what worked for us.

It will be interesting to see if this works for us next time, and it looks like in about a year I will get the chance to test it out again :)