Messages By: kendellsma

Maybe you're feeding him foods that don't agree with him? Still teething? Hitting another development milestone? Growth spurt that interuppted his schedule? Try to find the cause, eliminate it, and if that doesn't work, try a new method. 

If he won't nap, make him take "quiet time" anyways. Babies need consistent sleep schedules, but it does take time unless you want to push it along with CIO. My daughter, now 2, has over time set her own sleep schedule. It took a long time, and any little adjustment threw her off and we had to start all over. 

Some tips: 

Put baby down drowsy, but not asleep. 

Keep the lights low. 

Try a white noise machine or fan, depending on time of year (fan worked best for my son, 5 months, until cold weather hit. Then we bought a noise machine.) or climate. 

Be consistent. If you are going to use CIO, use it. Don't flop between methods until you've given one method a chance to work. If you don't want to buy the books, try borrowing them from your local library. If your library doesn't have them, see if there is an intra-library progam that you can use (libraries that interchange books). 

I just want to say that most doctors will tell you NOT to put cereal in a bottle and will tell you that feeding a baby cereal with NOT help them sleep longer. Giving a child cereal in a bottle confuses the "hungry/full" reflex and can lead to overfeeding. 

Also, there is nothing that proves keeping a child in your room for any amount of time will make it harder to get them into their own beds. This is also a matter of opinion and varies by child. My 2 year old sleeps with me, but is showing signs of being ready to transition. If you try to transition a child before they are ready, it will cause them to want to stay even AFTER they are ready to move. I and three of my four siblings shared my parents bed from birth- 2 years and transitioned with minimal problems (other then the typical problems associated with moving a child into their own bed, even from crib-bed). The youngest slept better in a crib from birth, so they didn't force him to sleep with them and had the same problems getting him into a toddler bed as they did the rest of us. 

I want to add that I understand the poster stated that this was just personal experience and what worked for her. I'm not knocking it, I'm just offering another viewpoint on what she's said. (That doctors recommend you don't put cereal in bottles and that co-sleeping does not lead to a clingy child unless the child is naturally a clinger.) 

My wife and I are interracially married and expecting our first child (a baby girl) in March.  As far as I'm concerned, when someone would ask her the question, "what are you?" the answer should be, "a human being."   

But I'm just really uncomfortable with the term "biracial."  I guess that is the "in" term these days, but to me it says there really are two different races of people.  We want to raise her to believe the truth, that all people are equal human beings and there is no such thing as "race." So any suggestions on a new term?