If you want your baby to sleep well, creating the perfect environment is essential—dark, cool, and relatively quiet. Whether you’re trying to sleep train your baby, escape the short nap rut, or prevent night wakings, setting up their nursery or bedroom is the first thing you’ll want to look at. This post will walk you…
sleep
Master Your Kids’ Bedtime with the Perfect Bedtime Routine
Is getting your kids to bed an endless challenge? It takes commitment, but you can make it work, once and for all! Do you ever feel like getting your kids down to bed is like pulling teeth? Right when you think they’re out for the count, you hear the little pitter-patter of feet tiptoeing down the hallway….
Help! My Baby Climbs Out of the Crib!
Crib tents have a controversial reputation. But are they right for you? It’s a bit ironic. I’ve been parenting toddlers for about 15 years and I never remember having the issue of a baby climbing out of the crib before they were ready for a bed. Yes, I remember bedtime being harder once they transitioned…
How to Toilet Train a Child for the Nighttime
Whether it comes about naturally or you’re a mom of a really deep sleeper, you can still easily train your child to stay dry overnight. (For those of you who missed this post on training a toddler and are looking how to toilet train a child by day, you can start there. In that post,…
How to Toilet Train Your Toddler
Practical tips and steps to make the process stress-free for both of you. I never thought I would write a post on toilet training.Before I start, while training has gone smoothly for most of my children, there was one time that it didn’t. That one child completely demoralized my confidence in my ability to train…
How I Solved My Lack-of-Sleep Issues
I used to complain and complain about how very tired I was. Years ago, I had trouble sleeping. And I complained about it all day long. Whoever wanted to hear, I told them about my lack of sleep, about how the kids kept me up all night, and how so so tired I am. But…
The Problem with Melatonin (And How to Fix It Without Melatonin!)
If a mom can’t get her kids to fall asleep, what else is she supposed to do? If we were sitting in a physical room right now, and I’d asked you how many of you have heard of melatonin, I’m guessing all hands would go up. And if I’d asked how many of you have…
3 Unconventional Steps to Actually Solving Bedtime Battles
Bedtime was always a struggle, and not getting kids to bed is harder than it ever was. One fine day, BCP and I got a bedtime SOS from a mother (well, to be fair — she contacted them and they forwarded her to me): I have 5 kids 10 and under (10, 8, 6, 4…
What’s the problem with melatonin?
Melatonin is a commonly-used synthetic hormone that is, in fact, entirely unregulated by the FDA. So, if it’s unregulated, is taking OTC melatonin safe? Let’s start with the studies: what do we see from them? Well, we don’t have that many studies on the use of melatonin in general, and definitely not on melatonin in…
This Is the Only Sleeptraining Method That Worked for Me
It’s been 8 kids and I still don’t know how to put a baby to bed. But I think now we’re onto something… Over 15 years ago, when my first child was a year old, I read a book about sleep training and I let him cry himself to bed. My son did not take…