Enough is enough - I had to get my baby to sleep through the night and on his own, not in our bed. I think that our moving home created the opportunity for it - the familiar environment was changed and that made easier for me to break his sleeping habits. I tried to create new rules and get Eric accustomed to them.

This time I wasn’t going to try the ‘controlled crying’ routine because it failed me twice in the past and I didn’t believe in it any more. So we got Eric his own room and put his cot in it - in the old house he slept in our bedroom. I put a mattress in Eric’s room by his cot so that I won’t have to lie on the floor.

So my sleep school had 3 stages.

Stage one was to get him tired by the bedtime. The tricky part was to not over stimulate him and minimize the excitement - so we ruled out wrestling and running around. Quiet activities like reading books or singing songs or petting our dog worked well for that.

Stage two was to have a getting-ready-for-bed routine - first we were bathing Eric and putting his flannel pajamas on him. The next step was sitting him up on high chair and giving him warm formula milk. That filled his little tummy and made him sleepy.

Stage three was saying good night to everyone and going into his bedroom, I turned the lights off and had a little night light at first - later I gave it up because Eric didn’t need it.

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