RE: Valerie...HELP!
Hi letswork,
I followed the principles from the book Becoming Babywise. Basically the authors advocate scheduling your day with your baby into three different activities throughout a 3(the cycle length increases to 4hours as they get older) hour cycle(feedtime, waketime and sleeptime). It's obviously harder to do this with a very small baby because they're soooooo sleepy and can be hard to wake up at times so I just made adjustments where necessary. I didn't follow everything to the letter(especially with child #2). I adjusted the principles in the book to work for me and my children. The authors also advocate that instead of teaching your child to sleep by using sleep props(i.e. having to be rocked to go to sleep) that babies can learn how to go to sleep on their own if you lay them down in their bed still awake without using a sleep prop.
It's definitely not for every family but using their principles we have taught our children, successfully, how to be good sleepers.
Valerie