How to decide what baby sleep strategy to use?

MontyMrs · December 2010

I'm home on bed rest waiting for my boys to make their appearance so I've got some time to read up on the different sleep books, right now I'm on The Happiest Baby on the Block. I know that there's quite a few out there and I'm my first book so I don't know if the suggestions contradict each other. I don't want to confuse myself with lots of different ideas.

How did you decide what strategy to use? Do you have a favorite book suggestion?

TIA

OrangeSmoke · December 2010

Well, we sort of let the boys decide.

The first few weeks was a free for all. We let them sleep/eat whenever however they wanted. I really didn't do as much preparation for parenting as I should have. I spent my entire pregnancy worrying about staying pregnant and freaking out about NICU stays. When the boys were discharged with me, we were totally not prepared!

I think we watched "Happiest Baby" when they first got home but it really didn't tell me anythign I didn't know from these boards. Swaddling, shushing, yeah, it all worked great... At about 6 weeks, we started doing the EASY method as the boys had decided they wanted to be grazers (eat every hour or so but little amounts). That was a big turning point for us. At 8 weeks they started STTN! The big issue for us was that the boys would each do a 6-8 hour stretch but they would be at different points of the night! Finally at 3 months, they both started sleeping 10-12 hours.

Well, that turned into a ramble. Hope that helped! You must be so uncomfortable by now... hang in there mama, you are soooo close!

Breenie29 · December 2010

Honestly, don't stress over that right now. Once they arrive, and you get yourself used to having THREE babies in the house, then you can start thinking of what would work best. It is very overwhelming in the beginning, so be sure that you take care of yourself too (especially mentally) So worrying about strategy, just might drive you crazy - I'm speaking from experience Like pp said for the first little while you let them decide, then once everyone is getting into the swing of things then you can start putting a plan into place.

I didn't start any sort of real routine until they were about 4 or 5 months old. Before then we just had a strict feeding schedule that we stuck by. At that point I used The Baby Whisperer. The EASY routine worked well for us.

I wish you all the best. This is such an exciting time! Merry Christmas!

AlishaMay · December 2010

I really liked Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Twins. It wasn't so much a sleep strategy book, as it is a good overview of sleep in general. It seemed less overwhelming to me to learn all the basics of sleep, like how much they need at each age, etc. It helped me to them apply a logical approach to 'sleep training' the girls, without having to fit them together, and individually into some mold.

macchiatto · December 2010

HBOTB is great, but it's more about soothing than sleep training.
Personally, I just read up on each of the major methods and chose the one that made the most sense to me and seemed to have the most research behind it. For me that was HSHHC. I also loved the trouble-shooting sections. Very helpful and it will be a handy reference for any sleep issues in the years to come.

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