Library Mama

The No-Cry Nap Solution by Elizabeth PantleyThis is one that I wish had been out when LB was small. Pantley does her usual thorough job, outlining how much sleep infants and young children need and when they need it. As in, both how much sleep they need total and how long they can stay awake, at different ages, before they need to sleep again. She talks about why nap problems can be more challenging than night-time sleep problems to solve. Pantley tells you first only to try to fix something if it’s a problem for you; if nursing your child to sleep in bed is working for you and getting your child enough sleep, there’s no need to change anything. Where there are problems, she says right up front that this isn’t going to be a quick fix. She then goes into individual problems to help parents put together a solution to work with their child in their family. Problems covered include things like “will only sleep in the car”, “naps are not long enough”, “child is resisting naps”. After reading through all the ideas, you can put together your own nap plan. The upside of having all the ideas that worked for her numerous test families listed can of course also be a downside: you have to read through all the ideas to pick out the ones that sound most like they would work for your child and in your family. A friend recommended Mary Sheedy Kurcinka’s Sleepless in America for a personality-based approach to solving sleep problems; I haven’t read that, although I really enjoyed her Kids, Parents and Power Struggles. We’ve been working with Baby Godzilla using the Pantley methods for a couple of weeks now. We haven’t yet reached the gold standard of her being able to be set down in her crib drowsy but awake by anyone and sleeping for an hour and a half to two hours. But she is going down into the crib much more easily for me and sometimes allowing Daddy to put her down – which is enormous progress.