If you are careful, thoughtful, and consistent in how you do this, your baby will feel supported (even though she may express big feelings about the change), and eventually she'll learn a new pattern that helps her sleep well.

If you put these habits in place, your child will have the best chance of sleeping well, both now and in the long run. For each of these reasons, sleep is one of the most important 'activities' we humans participate in.She tends to wake sometime between 6 and 7am, which works pretty well with our schedule (I mean, it would be absolutely perfect if she slept until 7:30am, but my natural wake time is right around 6am so I wouldn't be surprised if this is just her schedule).

an 18-month-old who only naps in a stroller, or a child refusing to fall asleep unless Mom or Dad snuggles up too.

Having this book as your companion, you will gain the clarity and conviction necessary to build a secure relationship with your child and, in turn, to help them build a secure relationship with themselves and their broader community. I skipped the 0-4 months section since I was looking for tips for a 5+ month old, so I can’t speak to that advice. Infants learn language better after a nap, and preschool children's spatial learning is boosted by a midday nap. All our friends and mentors who coslept happened to have babies who slept for at least 3-4 hours consecutively without feeding, or who nursed for minutes and went straight back to sleep.

These are important issues to address; good sleep isn't just about hitting the numbers, it's about setting up habits and routines in your house that feel good for everyone. For anyone debating whether or not to sleep train their infant (and make no mistake about it, what this book describes is sleep training), I highly recommend Safe Infant Sleep instead. If she was crying, we couldn't tell if she had her leg stuck through the bars or if she was just protesting. They’re diligent about helping, but over time the baby is overly reliant on the parents and hasn’t practiced her own abilities. There are tips for dealing with small spaces and shared bedrooms, but honestly our main roadblock at the moment is not having a separate room for the baby - she has to either share with us or her brother - and that makes it really hard to follow the technique exactly.Julie is a psychotherapist whose work focuses on empathic, mindful parenting, attachment, and of course, sleep!

Heather and Julie are psychotherapists and authors of the best-selling baby sleep book, The Happy Sleeper.

Problems can arise when parents (with the best of intentions) overhelp or ‘helicopter parent’ at night, overshadowing their baby’s biological ability to sleep well. It's conservatively estimated that 100,000 police-reported crashes every year are a direct result of driver fatigue'resulting in 1,550 deaths and 71,000 injuries. Newborns acquire knowledge and skills at a breathtaking pace and they are capable of associative learning (linking and remembering objects and events in their environment) right from the start. When we work with parents to fix a sleep issue, we always locate the solution in one of these two places. And as parents, helping our children develop good sleep hygiene is one of the most important contributions we can make to their well-being.