If you’ve been following the progress of Josie George in her journey to help little Kai sleep through the night, well… the verdict is in. He can do it!
Josie and I looked at two approaches to teach Kai to sleep well on his own – 1) Leaving him for short periods of time, returning to reassure him until he falls asleep. Or 2) Staying with Kai whilst he falls asleep and gradually moving outside of the room over a several nights.
Because Josie has been working to improve Kai’s sleep for many months, she knew he would respond best to the approach of gradually withdrawing her presence at bedtime.
A couple of nights into the plan and she wrote a blog post that was enough to put anyone off going any further. He was pretty much awake from 2:30 until 6:30am.
But by night four, Kai slept through the night with just a brief awakening at 10:30pm. It’s really wonderful to read about the impact of this on Josie. Kai is nearly 18 months and he has never slept through the night. And yet, after a lot of support from Josie, plus some serious perseverance and consistency, he showed his mummy he could do it.
There’s still work to be done, behaviours to reinforce. The following two nights weren’t so good. But then he did it again. That’s twice in one week! Now that Josie and Kai know he can sleep through, it will be easier to improve things until Kai does it so often that Josie just takes it for granted!
So if you’re considering tackling your baby’s sleep problems in the New Year, Josie’s success might just give you the encouragement you need!
