Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar… Your baby wakes up in the morning after a solid night’s sleep. You feed her, change her, play with her for a little bit, take her for a little walk outside, then rock her to sleep and put her gently into her crib for her morning nap. And…
One of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to getting babies to sleep through the night is the old “cereal in the bottle” routine. It’s been used by parents for generations, and I can understand why it’s so popular. As adults, we know that sleeping on an empty stomach is challenging, to…
I get asked this question a lot, and I have two answers for you. First of all, the clinical one. If your child’s six months or older, gaining weight as expected, and your doctor says you’re okay to end nighttime feeds, then go ahead and give it a shot. But that doesn’t really answer your…
Toddlers are fascinating creatures, aren’t they? Watching them develop into thinking, creative little people is such a fascinating time, and one that parents often wish would last a little longer. Of course, they usually wish that after baby’s grown out of the toddler stage, because along with that creativity and new found intelligence, we usually…
I used to think that snoring babies were absolutely adorable. After all, what better indicator is there that your baby is fast asleep and getting the rest they need than the sound of them purring away in their crib? As a mother, the sight of your baby sleeping means they’re relaxed, feeling safe, and content…
What is it about you having a lousy night’s sleep that makes everyone else so awful? It seems that way, doesn’t it? You have a night of broken, interrupted, just plain lousy sleep, and the next day people are driving like they’ve been lobotomized, humming and hawing about their Starbucks order in front of you,…
Raising kids is a high-stakes responsibility, and in this age of social media and easy access to information about anything and everything, parents are easily overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. As a sleep consultant, I see this all the time from parents whose babies aren’t sleeping well. One of the other major contributors…
When I was expecting my first child, I probably did more reading than I did throughout my entire academic career. I was determined to know everything there was to know about having a baby, raising a child, and everything that had anything at all to do with parenting. What I wasn’t prepared for was the…
Sleep has always been, and will likely continue to be, a bit of a mystery. From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems like something that we should have abandoned a few hundred thousand years ago. The fact that we fall into a near unconscious state for a third of our day, every day, leaving us vulnerable…
As the parent of a new baby, the number of questions you’re going to find yourself asking are, to put it mildly, astronomical. The old saying about babies not coming with instructions has cemented itself in parental lore for a good reason. Even after spending nine months doing endless research on what to expect when…