This book is a keeper!

I think I mentioned this book before, or maybe I mentioned the doctor that wrote this book. But I wanted to say specifically that this book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, by Dr. Richard Ferber, is the book that changed forever how we get DD3 to bed. When we first got DD3 in China, of course, she slept in a crib in our room. So there were times when it seemed only natural to bring her into bed with us to get her to go to sleep. It made it easier for us to sleep to. Then when we got back home, we had DD3 stay on the same bedtime routine and schedule.She'd go to bed with a bottle and one of us would lay down with her in our bed unti she fell asleep. Then we'd move her into her own crib where sometimes she'd sleep through the night and other times she'd wake up several times a night, whereupon we'd repeat the routine. As time went by, this method become more and more demanding and less and less effective.

One day, I was reading a post on our travel group's Yahoo group. One of the women had asked for help to get her adopted daughter to sleep. It seems her and her husband were having worse problems than we were with getting their daughter to bed, sleeping all night, and sleeping in her own bed. Well, one of the pieces of advice that she got was to read Dr. Ferber's book and try out his method. This woman claimed that it solved their sleep problems with their daughter. I got to thinking about that, and decided that even though our sleep issues weren't as bad as this woman's experience, I'd give it a try.

So I borrowed the book from our local library, read most of it, and with support from DH, decided to give it a try. I have to say, that I think one of the most helpful sections of the book was where Dr. Ferber describes the process of sleep. I knew very little about how we sleep, and how we mature in our sleep as we age. I knew that there were stages of sleep, but I didn't know that we move in and out of these stages at regular intervals throughout the night. Of course, once I understood better how sleep works, following the Dr. Ferber method was pretty easy.

We followed the method pretty religiously, and by about the 5th night DD3 was going to sleep by herself at bedtime and naptime, and sleeping through the night. It's been great! I highly recommend this book!

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