Sleeping Through the Night, Revised Edition: How Infants, Toddlers, and Their Parents Can Get a Good Night's Sleep

I have read a lot of sleep books. And some of the original research articles on young children and sleep. I have twins, and by 12 months, someone was waking up every hour. My husband and I had been too tired to try to solve our sleep issues. After a year of waiting for things to get better, I couldn't do it anymore. I appreciated some of the ideas in the No Cry Sleep Solution, but they didn't work for our family with twins. Some of the Cry It Out books seemed really extreme, and didn't seem to present all sides to an issue. Then I found Mindell. I love the way she summarizes research clearly, and without bias. Her suggestions are practical, well explained, and realistic. She gives ranges you can work with. These techniques, with some modifications, absolutely worked for our family. I recommend (or buy) this book for all new moms. My best advice is, read about sleep BEFORE the baby's (babies') birth so you can be prepared.

We sleep trained both our kids with this method and never looked back. It was the number one best thing we did with our babies.

Helpful information, but nothing you can't find online or in magazines. I bought this at the recommendation of my pediatrician, and I read it (skipping over the ages that didn't apply to my family), but I ended up following the advice of my friends and family who've recently sleep-trained their kiddos.

This book was a life saver for me when my three children were small. I am now buying it for my sister and her first baby. The book offers practical advice without judgement. If you can stick to it for 4 days you will revolutionize your sleep habits, even when you exclusively breast feed like I did. Have hope! My children have been good sleepers for years now, even with a family history of light sleeping. You will not go wrong with this book.

We started with "The Baby Book" by Dr. Sears, then tried, "The No-Cry Sleep Solution" and then "The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer." We were really at our wits' end. The major issue wasn't actually that our baby wasn't sleeping through, but that she was having a really hard time napping and she was crying like crazy every bedtime. We were trying not to let her cry but she was totally inconsolable, screaming right in our arms! We would be driving her in desperation to get her to go to sleep and sometimes she would still scream. It was heartbreaking.

Finally I got really desperate for a solution to my poor baby's anguish and looked online to see whether anyone in the sleep world was actually a PSYCHOLOGIST who specialized in sleep. Lo and behold, Jodi Mindell. She is truly an expert. Long story short, my baby now LOVES her crib. If we forget to put her down when it's time, she looks at us and says "Nigh night." She has no more negative associations with sleeping and she's a GREAT sleeper. 12-hour nights, plus usually 2 90-minute naps during the day at 13 months old. It took about 3 nights for bedtime to work (the longest she cried during that time was 20 minutes, which was already less than she cried when we'd tried to hold her or rock her to sleep!) and about 2 weeks or so for naptimes to get in gear.

The three hallmarks of Mindell's method are:
1. Reliable scheduling. For about a month our naptimes and bedtimes (and waking times) were literally to-the-minute. It worked. It actually even worked for me. I'm pregnant and I was able to set my own internal clock to take an afternoon nap when my baby does!

2. Routine, routine, routine. Bedtime and naptimes in our house now have an exact routine that is the same every single day. Same items, same order. Same books! I think this was the key for our daughter. She really relies on her routines.

3. Going to sleep on their own. Now, this doesn't mean you can't go in the room, or that you can't comfort your child if they need you. But you can't help them sleep. No rocking, nursing, feeding, driving, patting, etc. We went in and checked every 5 minutes and if she was really scared and not just fighting sleep we would pick her up, calm her down and put her back. Now she grabs her binky, says "nigh nigh" and lays down! Mindell also offers an alternative where you get to this gradually. So you could stay in the room for a while and get farther away or whatever if you don't want to do any crying at all.

I will also add that our baby, who we and everyone else thought was just a "fussy baby," turns out to be the happiest person in the world. We thought she had tummy problems, teething problems, all kinds of things. Well, now she's smiling, giggling and babbling 95% of the time. Sleep is a miracle cure!