Many parents would like their baby to fall asleep
on their own. This is a tough demand on babies
and an equally hard undertaking for the parents.
Parents usually rock their babies to sleep or
put up with their fussy child until she falls
asleep. This gets very tiring and irritating.
Ferberize, a program developed by Dr Richard Ferber,
advocates that poor sleep habits are learned and
they can be unlearned especially when baby is
older than 6 months. According to this program,
baby learns to soothe herself on her own. Below
is a description of the steps involved. You may
want to try this.
• Put baby down in her crib while she is
still awake. Tell her its time to go to sleep.
Leave the room. If she does not start to cry,
you can leave her on her own. If she does start
crying, let her cry for 5 minutes before attending
to her.
• Do not turn on the lights and keep physical
contact to a minimum. Speak softly to her; tell
her she is a big girl now and that she can go
to sleep on her own. Leave the room again.
• If she continues to cry, this time wait
for 10 minutes before going to her room. Speak
to her again and leave the room within a minute
or two.
• If crying continues, wait 15 minutes between
each visit to her room, until she falls asleep.
• On the second night, let baby cry for
10 minutes before you first enter her room.
•
Gradually increase the time from there. If you
find it too difficult to leave your baby crying
for 5 minutes the first night, wait 2 or 3 minutes
before going in. Do what is comfortable for you.
•
The results: Parents
have reported that after a few nights of using
this system, baby fell asleep on her own.
•
Setbacks: When baby is
sick, she is often sleepless. While she is sick,
you may have to get up with her in the middle
of the night and this may cause a setback in the
progress you have made so far. But again, this
is a necessary setback. Once she is better, you
can start all over again if you need to. If you
had success the first time, there is no reason
why you won't succeed again.
