The Sleepeasy Solution: The exhausted parent's guide to getting your child to sleep - from birth to 5

This is a straightfoward guide on how to help your baby sleep at night. I wish I had found it before my son went through his 4 month sleep regression. Before 4 months, he was sleeping well and waking up once, rarely twice, a night to nurse. Then right around four months, he started waking more often - every 1-2 hours. I found putting a pacifier in his mouth helped him back to sleep, and hoped this was just a phase. But 3 weeks later it was getting worse. He was eating almost half his daily milk/formula in the middle of the night, and he was exhausted during the day - rubbing his eyes constantly and not staying up more than 90 minutes at a time. We tried different things until he was 5.5 months old. But now we were really sleep deprived and he was cranky all the time. Clearly something needed to change.The thing is, he has always gone down well to sleep - he just wouldn't stay asleep! You don't need to have your baby be able to fall asleep by himself when put down awake, but for me, I didn't have that problem. I had a baby that wouldn't stay asleep and was eating far too much at night, and less and less during the day. While I didn't want a "cry it out" solution, this method does involve some crying. But as the authors explain, there HAS to be crying involved. Your baby is learning to put himself back to sleep when transitioning from deep to light sleep. And in the current situation, my baby was already crying a lot (albeit for short periods of time). So I expected some crying.My results:First night, when he woke an hour after going to bed, he cried for 30 minutes. That was hard. My husband checked on him at regular intervals and thought that made his crying worse. Not going to lie, it was a long 30 minutes. But he did fall back asleep. Then we woke him up for a small bottle (started the weaning). He woke and cried for less than 10 minutes each twice more that night, and we fed him one other time.Second night, he slept for 2 hours before waking and crying, but was back asleep after 10 minutes. He was woken up for a feeding, and went back to sleep by himself. He had 2 other wakings but went back to sleep within a couple minutes. Then (because I was dropping the second feeding) he woke and fussed, then cried, then fussed, on and off like that for 50 minutes about an hour after he was normally fed.Third night, he woke twice and went right back to sleep. Was woken for a feeding and went back to sleep. Woke for 15 minutes around 3am and went back to sleep after crying a little. Then he fussed for an hour at 5am until I realized he needed a diaper change - went back to sleep after that.All subsequent nights (it's been 2 weeks) have gone smoothly. We still wake him for a snack bottle before we go to bed (he's almost six months now) but he sleeps through the night. He's woken up once or twice around 5a and needed a diaper change, but it's rare that I hear him wake in the middle of the night. And if I do, he makes a couple sounds and then goes right back to sleep. He is just starting to teethe so I expect some other sleepless nights but overall, he has learned to sleep! And we have had success with naps as well - before he was napping inconsistently but now he is pretty good at falling asleep for an hour for each nap in his crib.It's not for everyone, but it worked for us. And I think the crying is, as the authors say, just his way to saying I'm frustrated! I don't know how to fall back asleep! But like learning to crawl and walk and talk, there is going to be frustration along the way. It's better to have a well rested baby - and parents! when tacking those milestones. I also expect this book to help as he gets older, they have some good tips for toddlers. My recommendation is to read this prior to 4 months to avoid developing bad habits in your child. And I like that the authors recommend waiting to sleep train - I don't necessarily agree that he has to or can sleep 11-12 hours without a meal (every baby is different), but we don't mind doing a snack bottle before we go to bed, but their methods are easy to follow and modifications like that fit in well.

This book changed our lives!!!! I breastfeed our child and at 10 months she was still waking 2-3 times a night and I would nurse her back to sleep. I also had to nurse her to sleep for naps and gently place her in her crib. My mom and husband had to rock her to sleep while they were standing. It was very hard on their backs and she would sometimes wake up as soon as she was placed in her crib. After following the advice of this book, she is now sleeping 11 HOURS STRAIGHT, every night. For naps, we just read her a couple of books and put her in her crib and she falls asleep. No fussing, no crying, she just falls asleep happily. She is now 13 months and sometimes while we are reading her a book, she will close the book for us before the story is finished and look at her crib as if saying, "alright, I'm ready for my nap now!" It's truly amazing!!! Because I was still nursing her back to sleep at night, I also had to do the night weaning process but that also worked really well. I've also tried.... the no cry sleep solution and that just made her angry and me even more sleep deprived....the "gentle release" method and that just prolonged everything, again resulting in less sleep for both of us......and the Baby Whisperer "shush/pat" method and again that just resulted in her frustration and our combined lack of sleep. Then a friend recommended this book. I was hesitant at first because I cannot stand to hear her cry and wanted to avoid it at all costs but after 10 months of extreme sleep deprivation (on top of working and trying to run the household) I decided to at least read some of the book and then decide if it was something I could do. They really do know what they are talking about and have a sympathetic and understanding way of relaying their message. The first night was excruciating, I will not lie, and I felt like the worst mommy in the whole world. But the next night her crying was cut in half and another half the following night and then it just all started to fall into place. The naps did take a bit longer as they suggest (maybe closer to 2 weeks before she didn't fuss at all) but as mentioned above; she does great with those too! Sometimes she will even play in her crib for a minute or so before falling asleep and if she wakes before her nap is done or in the middle of the night, she just rolls over and goes back to sleep! I should also say that I have a VERY strong willed little girl and our pediatrician has even commented on it! So it's not that she's a super easy going baby as I probably could have done the other no cry methods had she been more laid back about the whole thing but she wanted it done her way (or how she was used to) and it took some perseverance to break of those habits. Consistency really is key and all caretakers must be on board as the authors suggest. We saw this first hand with my mother who thought she could deter from the plan with disastrous results but once she saw that "the plan" and this method really does work she got on board with it pretty quickly. None of us can believe how she is such a great sleeper now and she's a much happier baby because she's no longer tired all the time from lack of appropriate sleep and I'm a much happier and better mommy because of this book too!! I have much more patience now and actually have energy to play with her and act silly; which she totally deserves. I HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone and have already recommended it to a few friends and they've had outstanding results as well.

After cosleeping for 9 months it was time to transition my baby to his crib and this book was so so helpful! Everything happened as they said it would, which made it easier with the inevitable crying. Luckily this only happened the first night, and in night 2 he slept 11hrs.I find the travel and troubleshooting sections really helpful still for help in times when he’s teething or waking up early. 10/10 recommend!

Excelente compra

Most parents buy these books in a moment of desperation at 3am when everything is going horribly wrong, and we were no different.At 5 and a half months, our little baby had never napped well and I'm not talking about only 30 minute naps. She had never slept more than 30 minutes in one go even when being held upright. Most of the time if I managed to put her down asleep she lasted 5 minutes maximum. With silent reflux and cows milk allergy we had had a rough start and sleeping, at night and during the day was horrendous. I spent most of my day trying to get my baby to sleep, walking, rocking and patting and then when she finally went to sleep I had to hold her upright. At night she was fed to sleep and would wake up very frequently up until 10pm and then would have stretches of about 2 hours lying down but by 4am she would rarely go back to sleep and always needed to be held.So in the middle of the night my friend who lives in Canada recommended this book, with the words "I think you're ready for it"!!!We were ready for a change, but I was nervous about letting my baby cry and had horror stories from friends about their babies crying all night. Now don't get me wrong, the method does involve crying, but there is guidance about how to hand night feeds, how to reassure your baby enough so they don't cry all night but not too much that they expect to be picked up. All my questions about how to handle the crying were answered. So.. how did we do?So what happened.... night one we had 23 minutes of crying to go to sleep, two night feeds and another 2 wake ups with about 15 minutues of crying each. I strongly recommend noise cancelling headphones if you can't handle to tears! Night two, 15 minutes of crying, night three 10 minutes. Naps were similarly successful but with a bit more moaning and some waking up after 30 minutes but in general completely manageable.We are now 2 weeks in and I really can't believe the progress we have made. For the last few nights there has been absolutely no crying at bedtime and for naps a maximum of 5 minutes moaning and then she drops off to sleep. We consistently have a solid 1 hour for a morning nap and 2 hours for a lunch time nap. The afternoon nap is still the hardest but she does go to sleep eventually but this is the longest she moans. She is now weaned off all night feeds except for a 10 minute dream feed and wakes up in the morning without crying and just rolls around her cot until we go in. We are still working on early morning wake ups, but the book has lots of good suggestions about this as well and I'm confident in a few weeks we will have conquered that too!You do have to be consistent and don't deviate from the plan but I am still so shocked at how well our little baby has done (and us!). Out of all of my friends our little baby was the worst sleeper by far and now they are all asking my advice on what to do!!So if you do want to try a form of sleep training but don't want to just let your baby cry and cry this book has all the advice you need. Its practical and goes into detail where you need it, there is advice for 4 months up to toddlers and I'm sure we are going to encounter some bumps in the road in the future and refer back to the book time and time again.

I bought this in desperation after coming home from a cottage trip that saw me trapped in a bedroom for most of the trip with my 5 month old latched all night to keep him asleep (not to mention naps). At 4 months he had started busting out of his swaddle and sleep became an issue for us. Prior to the trip I would disappear into the bedroom and rock, bounce and pace while shushing and shaking a rattle until my arms felt like they were going to fall off... and then I still couldn't put him down without him waking up. After that horrible trip I needed help badly because I was so sleep deprived I was concerned I wouldn't be able to care for my 4 year old either.This book helped right away, if you are so tired you don't even have time to read (which I debated) maybe try the DVD. I'm a book person so this worked for me. I found it well written and organized, it was compassionate towards parents who are naturally going to freak out about any length of crying.Well, I got myself prepared with my sleep plan and was all psyched up for a night of horror and he went to sleep on his own within 20 minutes. Then it got really rough at 1am when and 4am when he woke up before I could wake him up (since he had spent a week just co-sleeping and nursing whenever I didn't have clear wake up times to use in my sleep plan) and I had to let him cry back to sleep before i could wake and nurse. That sucked. But... lo and behold the next morning when I put him down for his first nap... he went to sleep like a superstar. And again, and again, and the next night. It was like getting out of baby jail to not have to spend hours rocking a sweating screaming tired baby to sleep. And within 3 days of following the routines he cut a tooth... didn't throw him off. The same time, he learned to roll over... other than waking him up during his naps a little earlier than I'd like it also didn't throw him off.So I'm very happy with this book, I'm also planning to use it to work on some sleep issues with my preschooler (have already used some of the techniques to deal with moving to a new home and getting him prepared to sleep in a new space). I haven't successfully night weaned so that's the next thing to tackle but overall I would highly recommend this method if you are just completely stuck in a terrible sleep cycle and you need to get out fast. As I write this my now 7 month old is napping and I'm so grateful we did the sleep training -it's always awful hearing your baby cry but as they're learning and dealing with frustration it happens. I have had to listen to my babies scream in the car on every car trip we take over 10 minutes and I can't pull over every time they started so there are times when crying is just going to happen.5 stars!

Terrible, terrible sistem. Don't buy this book. The system they suggest is dangerous and it does not work. I was desperate to sleep and tried it! I only managed to upset my son. I went through with it for months, never worked. Don't do it. I learned later it can be bad for your son's confidence and not only as an adult!