Aaron Gladders

When my first child was born, the nurses said, “Boy, he’s a loud one.” I realized later that if the nurses were saying that, he really had lungs on him. Just about every night we’d go through “happy hour” which usually involved us cradling and jiggling our little guy around while he eventually went to sleep. I had a healthy supply of ear plugs.

So, was this normal? Was he colicy? Were we doomed to the horror stories I’d seen on Nanny 911?

We very quickly accumulated a stack of books about 3 feet high on helping babies sleep. They spanned a spectrum from letting them cry it out to never letting a tear touch their cheek. As this was our first and we hadn’t been around babies very much we tried just about everything to “help” our child get to sleep and this went on for a number of months. Eventually we got onto “Healthy sleep habits, happy child” by Marc Weissbluth (disclaimer, I setup an amazon affiliate account and I may get a few pennies if you buy it). It helped us to understand what was “normal” at the various stages of our childrens lives and for my next children they had it much easier. They got more sleep, we got more sleep (more, that doesn’t mean enough…). Everyone was happier.

So, I sometimes come across first-time mothers and the inevitable question comes up, “does it ever end?” followed by, “how?”. I’m going to send them here because a) I can never remember his name and b) maybe it will help.