Get Some Sleep!

I've just returned from the Baltimore Magazine mini-kitchen where I retrieved my second cup of coffee this afternoon (I've lost count of my total for the day). You know what the worst part of it is? I don't like coffee.

It's as if our boys, two-year-old Jack and two-month-old Ben, have conspired to keep us from getting anything resembling a decent night's sleep. My wife and I have taken to describing our nighttime sleep patterns the way veterans recall their years in combat zones.

"I got an hour or two in before Ben started shreiking his head off around ten," I might say. "I was hit with some incoming spit-up and poop and didn't get him down again until 2 a.m. I got another couple hours in before Jack approached from the right flank at 0500, looking for a glass of water."

Okay, that's a pretty extreme scenario, but sleep truly is a battle these days.

Our guru in the sleep department is Dr. Michel Cohen, our former pediatrician in New York and author of the excellent baby book The New Basics: A-to-Z Baby & Child Care for the Modern Parent. On the website for his practice, Tribeca Pediatrics, Dr. Cohen describes his philosophy as “less medicine is often the best medicine." More accurately, it could be described as "The baby's fine, you're fine, go home. Call me if anybody turns blue."

He specializes in sleep issues and, not surprisingly, he preaches a tough-love philosophy of sleep-training. When Jack was born, he recommended that, beginning at four months, we put him to bed at around 8 p.m., close the door and not open it again until 7 a.m., no matter what. When I spoke to him this week, he told me his advice had changed a little.

"I've become a little bit more hardcore, based on what I've been hearing from parents," he told me. "I now recommend that parents let the baby cry through the night beginning at two months. By three months, 95 percent of babies will have 10-12 hours on uninterrupted sleep a night."

The theory is that babies need to learn how to soothe themselves to sleep and the sooner they learn, the better for everyone. "We all wake up three or four times a night and soothe ourselves back to sleep," says Dr. Cohen. "When the baby is born, they wake up and look for comfort, but the need for closeness becomes a soothing habit."

He says that, contrary to conventional wisdom, babies do not need to eat every three hours and can learn to be content sleeping through the night, almost from birth. "I recommend parents wait until babies are two months old, not so much because the baby is finally ready, but because the parents are ready," he says, adding that parents should expect to hear their babies crying for about 40 minutes at a time, several times, for about three nights, before babies learn to soothe themselves. "At two months, parents are able to cope with the process."

The idea that babies are ready to sleep through the night from birth is backed up by our current pediatrician, Dr. Ralph Brown (who has made other delightful contributions to Learning to Craw). Dr. Brown says that while he doesn't recommend letting babies cry through the night from birth, he has several Orthodox Jewish clients who have so many children that, almost out of necessity, they sleep-train their babies from their first night home from the hospital. Their children are as happy and healthy as all the others he sees.

We tried sleep training Jack at four months. The crying periods lasted as long as an excruciating 90 minutes, and after three days, he still did not always sleep through the night. But after about two weeks of some good nights and some bad, Jack learned to soothe himself and sleep soundly through the night. He has been an excellent sleeper ever since and really never wakes up before morning (though "morning" to him sometimes means 5 a.m., usually between 6 and 7.)

We are just starting to think about sleep training Ben. One complicating factor is that Ben's room is right next to Jack's and we're worried that 90 minutes of crying will badly disrupt Jack's sleeping. This week, though, we let Ben cry himself to sleep after a late-night feeding. It took Ben about 10 minutes to soothe himself, but the crying—more like shreiking—did not seem to disturb Jack. When we're ready to let Ben soothe himself through the night, we figure we'll put a white-noise machine in Jack's room to drown it out. We also plan to let out neighbor know in advance, which is always a good idea. When we sleep-trained Jack we were in a small railroad apartment in Brooklyn, and it was if the building was in the process with us. We were sure to let everyone know in advance and, in retrospect, it might have been nice to drop off some little apology treat/gift to each apartment.

Despite Dr. Cohen's advice, we're going to wait until at least three months before sleep-training Ben. We're just not ready yet. For now, we're trying to get him down to one middle-of-the-night feeding a night, and letting him cry himself to sleep if he needs to after feedings (we used to hold/rock/bounce him until he was totally asleep). Tired though we may be, we know the end of this is near. Of course, we still won't be able to sleep past 7 a.m., even on weekends, but they go away to college at some point, right?

If you have advice or words of wisdom (or questions), please leave them in the comments on email me at sevan@baltimoremagazine.net