No-Cry Sleep Solution

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A book review of The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night by Elizabeth Pantley

Stars: *****

McGraw-Hill (2002)
Parenting
416 pages

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.

Summary: Nearly all babies fight sleep. Some people argue that parents should let their baby “cry it out” until the child falls asleep; others say parents should tough it out from dusk until dawn. Neither tactic fosters happiness in the family. The No-Cry Sleep Solution gives parents a third option: a proven method to pin-point the root of sleep problems and solve them in a way that is gentle to babies, effective for parents, and provides peace in the home.

One of today’s leading experts on children’s sleep, Elizabeth Pantley delivers clear, step-by-step ideas for guiding your child to a good night’s sleep―without any crying. This parenting classic shows how to decipher―and work with―your baby’s biological sleep rhythms, create a customized plan for getting your child to sleep through the night, nap well during the day, and teach your baby to fall asleep peacefully, and stay asleep, without all-night breastfeeding, bottle-feeding, or requiring a parent’s care all through the night.

Is your baby not sleeping through the night but you don’t believe in letting her cry it out? This is the book for you. Elizabeth Pantley, a parent educator and mother of four has a ten-step program to change your baby’s sleep habits for good. For Ages 0-2.

Sections/Chapters

Part 1 – Ten Steps to Helping Your Baby Sleep All Night

Do A Safety Check – SIDS, General Safety Precautions, Cradle and Crib Safety, Co-Sleeping Safety
Learn Basic Sleep Facts – How We Sleep, How Babies Sleep, What is a Sleep Problem, Amount of Sleep Needed, Nighttime Feedings, Realistic Expectations, The Right Way to Teach a Baby to Sleep
Create Your Sleep Logs – Log Naps, Pre-bedtime Routine and Night Wakings including times, where and how.
Review and Choose Sleep Solutions – Two categories, Birth to 4m and 4m to 2 years. Ideas to help create sleep environment
Create Your Personal Sleep Plan – Form to fill out your selected sleep solutions.
Follow Your Plan for Ten Days – Quick chapter to get you started on your plan
Do a Ten-Day Log – To gauge progress
Analyze Your Success – Evaluate your Sleep plan. Where to go from here if baby is now sleeping through the night, if you have seen some success or if you haven’t seen any positive changes.
Follow Your Plan for Ten More Days – Reminder that every baby is different and you can’t say for sure how long this will take as well as help if nothing seems to be working.
Complete a Log, Analyze Your Success and Revise Your Plan as Necessary Every Ten Days – Necessary to see if you need to make changes to your plan

Part 2 – Let’s Talk About You

Baby’s Sleeping (Finally) but Mommy’s Not – Why this may be happening, how to get a good night’s sleep
Final Thoughts: Mom to Mom – Encouraging words, suggested websites/message boards for support, helping you get perspective and things to think on.

My Thoughts

So what did I think? Well I did what was suggested as best as I could and did logs for two months. We did make some progress but we were still a long way from sleeping even mostly through the night. When I first did my log (before implementing changes), my youngest woke me up 10 times during the night, with the longest span of sleeping being 1hr 47 min. The last log I did had her waking up 3 times per night with an average sleep span of 2hr 40min. This was all 4 months ago and now she gets up anywhere from 1-4 times a night so sometimes I get 5 hours sleep straight and sometimes and hour or two.

So overall the sleep solution wasn’t a complete solution. But I understand now that one book is never going to solve the sleep problems of all children because all children are NOT the same. In fact after reading The Spirited Child I’ve learned that my youngest is spirited. She naturally doesn’t sleep as well and that there isn’t much to be done about that. She’ll sleep longer when she can sleep longer.

I do recommend this book if your child is under ages 2 and is having sleep problems. However don’t expect it to be a be all and end all solution to your woes

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