Thank You Dr. Ferber

For the last couple of months Bridget's sleeping habits were getting progressively worse. It was so bad a couple of weeks ago that I felt like I was at the end of my rope. She had to be held to go to sleep and would usually wake up and freak out as soon as you laid her in her bed and then the whole process would begin again. Add that to her waking up 2-6 times during the night and you can see why we were getting desperate for help. I'd read a lot online, in magazines, and in a book someone gave me, and nothing was working.

I decided to ask my older sister Amy for advice. She told me that they had very similar problems with their son and that they had amazing success with the method found in a book by Dr. Richard Ferber called Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. Amy was very skeptical about it, but her husband followed the method exactly, and in 3 days their little boy was sleeping great. As soon as I told Nate about the book, he said that Amy's husband Stuart had given him a book for Christmas, and amazingly it was that exact book! When Nate started reading the first chapter, he was in tears laughing because Dr. Ferber described our situation exactly.

So last Saturday night we instituted his method which consists of putting your child to bed awake, leaving them for short periods of time which increase in length, returning to comfort them for 1-2 minutes without picking them up until they fall asleep. I knew it would be difficult because Amy warned me that it took her son an hour and 45 minutes to fall asleep the first night. Well, it took Bridget an hour and 30 minutes. It was hard listening to her cry for that long, but I knew I would only get results if I followed the method exactly. She only woke up a couple of times in the night, and when Nate used the method again she only cried for about 5 minutes before falling asleep again. I really thought the first night would be much worse than that, so I was pleased. When we instituted the method for naps, she only cried for about 5-10 minutes and sometimes less. The second night she only woke up once and cried for about 15 minutes before falling asleep. And she slept through the night (9-10 hours) nights 3 and 4. I love the Ferber method! Thank you Amy and Stuart for your advice and for giving us this book.