Thanks to the Internet we now have parenting tips available to us 24 hours a day!
While we might occasionally stumble across some helpful advice, most of it is either totally useless or appears to assume that parents are idiots.
One area in which there is an abundance of guidance from ‘experts’ is how to get a baby to sleep.
For example:
1.Sleep when the baby sleeps
This is all well and good IF YOUR BABY SLEEPS! If she/he doesn’t, then your best option is ‘drink shit loads of coffee while the baby doesn’t sleep’.
2. Put your baby down drowsy but awake
This is great advice; if you want to really PISS OFF your baby. After spending most of their life inside a female human, it is not surprising that many babies hate being put down in a cot.
If this applies to your child, Put Your Baby Down Practically Comatose Or Not At All is far better advice.
3. Establish a consistent bedtime routine
‘Ah, so that is where I’ve been going wrong! Some days I put my baby to bed after breakfast, other days, halfway through dinner and occasionally I don’t put her to bed at all!’ – Said no Parent ever!
#3 is the one that really grinds my gears. The thing about my four month old is that she doesn’t look at the clock every night and think, “gee, my bedtime is coming up, so I guess I’d better hurry up and get tired.” I don’t care what anyone says, if a baby isn’t tired there is no way to make them sleep.
I’ll go for #1. You are so right. If only my toddler would sleep. He runs all day, all over the place, but, never seems to get tired.. I get tired running after him the whole day and eventually feel sleepy. But, my son, NO, he is going to give away to sleeping. What am I to do? And you are right again, the routine thing does not work at all.