Book Review: Good Night, Sleep Tight

The book, Good Night, Sleep Tight: The Sleep Lady's Gentle Guide to Helping Your Child Go to Sleep, Stay Asleep, and Wake Up Happy, by Kim West, with Joanne Kenen, came out in 2006. Ten years after I first needed this book.

In 1996, I gave birth to my first son and had a very bumpy transition into motherhood. To begin with, he was three weeks late. I had made arrangements to begin my maternity leave from my teaching job one week prior to his due date. That month drove me insane! When he finally arrived via c-section, after two attempts to induce, a breaking of my water, a dose of pitocin, and declining heart tones with every contraction, we discovered that he was fisting the umbilical cord with each contraction. Let me assure you, this is a very appropriate picture of his entry into the world.

We were separated for the first two hours after the birth, and when we met I fell into that delirious love that new mothers experience when your world has been rocked in a way that you never felt possible. Those delirious moments didn't last long enough. They were followed quickly by the realization that, despite years of helping take care of my younger siblings and babysitting loads of other children, I was completely clueless about caring for an infant.

Breastfeeding was the first aspect of care that made me feel like a drowning woman. Try as we might, in the hospital, we couldn't get that boy to latch on. The lactation consultant ended up leaving me in tears, because she went into a personal tirade against my decision to have my little boy circumcised. Then, a nurse offered to help and provided me with a "nipple shield." (If you are an expectant mother - please don't ever take this HELP!) He seemed to finally be getting something, but he refused to latch on without the nipple shield.

The first night at home in our apartment was equally disastrous. Between my husband, my mother-in-law (who had birthed four kids, mind you) and myself, none of us could get this baby to quiet. He would go to sleep and the minute we put him down he would scream. My mother-in-law suggested that we feed him some water. The baby actually took water from an egg-cup that first night.

The first three nights were so similar that finally, my mother-in-law drove us back to the hospital to ask if something was wrong with the little guy. Ah, the condescension you receive. "You have a baby. Babies cry!"

At last, my sister-in-law, Miriam, offered to help. She had been offered the infamous nipple shield as well and her own sister had helped wean her first child from the offensive item! One problem. We lived in IL and she lived in MN. So, my parents came and drove me and the baby to MN (I think it was five days after my c-section - I know for a fact, that it was the bumpiest ride I have ever experienced in my life! and I'm sure there was nothing wrong with my parent's vehicular suspension). Miriam worked miracles and he finally fed properly.

However, at three months in, while on vacation in the home we now reside in, he decided to stop breastfeeding cold-turkey. We drove four hours back to IL to see his doctor and were informed that he had double ear infections and was probably allergic to milk. (I decided to test this theory, because I thought soy formula was more expensive than regular and couldn't they be wrong? NO, after one milk-based bottle, he projectile vomited for five hours - then, I was convinced.)

He persisted with constant ear infections until we had tubes put in when he was 11 months old. It was amazing. Suddenly, he was a completely different baby. Let me just say that I struggled with postpartum depression, we were all severely sleep-deprived and the bonding experience wasn't as smooth as it should have been.

Still, even with tubes, my ES was never a good sleeper. He routinely woke in the night clear up until the time he was five or six years old. When he attended sleepovers, I would have to alert the parents to please force him to go to bed because he literally is capable of staying up all night long. In fact, I began to believe that this child merely required less sleep than the average kid (I knew that my own father would often head to bed at midnight and wake around four or five in the morning to get in some uninterrupted work at the church office and he functioned fine on four or five hours).

According to Kim West, this is just not true. Every child requires a regular amount of sleep, but the theory "sleep begets sleep" also applies on the flip-side, "loss of sleep begets further loss of sleep." This book would have been so helpful back then. As I read, I saw sleep crutch after sleep crutch that I employed with my first son.

Here is a small list of things I did wrong with my first child. I jumped at every cry because we lived in a small apartment. We decided that he was merely a "motion baby" and so we employed motion to get him to sleep constantly. We would swing him in his infant car seat until he fell asleep and then set the seat down ever so gingerly, for fear of waking him. I would drive around in the middle of the night because he was often awake then and screaming. He loved these drives. He would stare out the window at the shadows of lights and houses. He rarely went to sleep as a result of these drives. He rarely slept - PERIOD. At age 2, I would still rock and then sing him to sleep. Clear through age five, I would lie down next to him until he fell asleep (the whole while resenting how much time it took to get him down).

When my second son arrived, I swore up and down that I would not breed another baby like the first. I would not jump at every cry. I would not rock and sing him to sleep. I would put him down in a wakeful state and let him teach himself how to fall asleep. He did just that. He was a wonderful sleeper. When I began to wean him from the night-time feeds, I had to practically hold down my husband to keep him from going in and rescuing the boy with a bottle. I would put the gate down and lie my whole body across his body and whisper, "Baby go sleep, baby go night-night," over and over again. Then, I would leave and return at longer intervals until he returned to sleep. This only took a week and he has always been a fabulous sleeper ... until December of 2007. (Although, he really began to have occasional problems back in summer of 2007 when we moved him to a twin bed - this was when he began to sleep-walk, sometimes waking us, sometimes going back to sleep on a couch or chair.)

My third son was somewhere in the middle. He wasn't a fabulous sleeper like MS, but never as difficult as ES. He, too, was sleeping through the night. I have spent hours trying to determine what happened in December to start our cycle of endless night awakenings.

Here are some of my thoughts: They both had an illness where I jumped up quickly to make sure they were fine. I began telling my MS stories from my head. These are always Spiderman stories and he will often dictate what crisis or event he wants it to be about. I think, after their illness, I was sleep-deprived and I began to lie down with my MS at nap-time to nap with my MS. This was partly due to my exhaustion, but also due to the fact that MS seemed to be fighting naps and the only way I could get him to nap was if I stayed in the room, rocking in the chair and insisting that he lie still and quiet. At some point, I began lying next to him for naps and have continued doing that every day when I want him to nap.

The "Sleep Lady" is right in her theory that sleep-deprivation makes it more difficult to sleep well. I have been experiencing this just as much as the little boys have been experiencing it. I will head to bed exhausted and still find it difficult to fall off to sleep. Yet, my whole morning is compromised because of my loss of sleep in the nights.

So, I have read her informative book - a book I would certainly recommend to anyone who is having trouble with their child's sleep patterns and who is loathe to let them merely cry endlessly. She emphasizes the importance of routines, encourages a "lovey" (which my YS has!) and incorporates a "sleep shuffle" (moving yourself further and further away from the child over a period of days until they are going off to sleep and staying asleep through the night without your assistance and without the endless, unproductive sleep crutches we often turn to).

I will try to make a log of our sleep habits this week and begin using her techniques next week. I will try to alter some of my own bad habits as well (one of which is, staying up too late blogging, she says while staying up too late blogging). I have fully changed my tune with my ES and have informed him that contrary to my previous opinions, he does NOT require less sleep than average and he will have to improve his sleep habits as well (he is forever trying to convince us that no other parents in the world require their 12 yr. olds to go to bed by 9 on a school night and 10-10:30 on a weekend). I have informed MS and YS that if they are not in their beds by 8:30, there will be no "story from mommy's head." We'll try to work our way back to 8 (I have no hope for the 7 p.m., she recommends and I also know this will all be thrown off again when we head to CBLI).

I highly recommend the book, even though it did make me feel like a horrible loser of a parent because I noticed all the myriad of things I have done and am still doing wrong when it comes to training my children in their sleep habits. I sincerely hope that we can get this ship back on course and "leap into dreamland" more effectively, as Bear-in-the-Big-Blue-House says (yes, I have even resorted to searching for sleep-encouraging videos at the library) I'll keep you posted. Until then, good night, and sleep tight!