Still cocky about the whole sleep thing

We babysat Sienna this afternoon while Jen and Jason attended a two-hour class on how to convince an infant to sleep like a normal person.  I told them they should go to the mall for two hours instead and I'd help them solve this first-world problem they anticipate they'll have.

Step one: Send Mom to a hotel, or have her sleep in the basement if you have one.

Step two: Purchase earplugs for Dad.

Step three: Starting at four months old, put the baby to bed fed and changed and awake.  Pat it on the head, leave, and let the baby cry its ass off for four minutes.  Time it in the kitchen.  Put in your earplugs and read an article from your favorite non-parenting magazine.  Mine is Esquire.

Step four: At the four minute mark, go comfort the child in the most boring way you can manage.  For the love of God, don't talk to it.

Step five: Four minutes later, go up there again.

During the night, if the baby wakes up and is not starving or marinating in its own feces, pat it on the head, leave, and then put earplugs in for four minutes, at which point you go pat it on the head again, etc.

The idea is to slowly teach the baby that at sleeping time, the most interesting and satisfying option they have is to sleep.  It's difficult to do because the baby will try to convince you that you're killing it.  What also makes it tricky is that babies look like this:

That's Sienna, by the way.  During her two hours here, Julie and I devoted every second to not pissing her off.  This "don't piss off the baby" instinct is exactly how parents accidentally train their babies to be terrible sleepers.  The only reason Julie and I were able to make great sleepers is because when I stayed home with Baby Lyla or Baby Rowan during the summer or a parenting leave, I put them through nap time boot camp starting at about four months, and the concepts naturally transferred to bedtime.  It was either their immediate happiness or my sanity, and I chose the latter.

Here are Rowan and Sienna chillin'.

Perhaps you recall a similar photo of Lyla and Rowan at about the same ages.


So anyway, when the kid is five months old, it now can cry in the crib for five minutes, and so on.  It worked for us. I'm still feeling pretty cocky about it, clearly.