IT’S 7pm and, as I tuck my five-year-old son Felix into bed for the night, I breathe a sigh of relief.
There are no pleas for one more story or other tactics to delay bedtime, and I know he won’t wake up and wander into my room at midnight.
Yes, I’m one of those mums who claims their child sleeps through the night— and has done since day dot.
When Felix was born in June 2018, I was hell bent on getting him to sleep through the night, so I could get my life back on track.
And I cracked it in just two weeks.
I was a single mum — I’d split with Felix’s dad before he was born — so after I gave birth by C-section, my mum came to stay, bringing her no-nonsense brand of Italian parenting with her.
“We’re going to do this the European way,” she insisted, and told me about the Gina Ford method of getting a baby to sleep through the night.
Gina is an advocate of initially letting babies “cry it out”, and claims it is completely harmless.
Her best-selling book, The New Contented Little Baby Book, has sold more than a million copies and has been translated into seven languages since it came out in 1999.
The more I looked into her approach, the more I liked it.
She recommends following a strict feeding and sleeping schedule.
This involves waking the baby at 7am for a feed and keeping them awake until their next nap which shouldn’t be longer than two hours.
Bedtime is always 7pm, and after some hand holding, mum should leave the room for a few minutes at a time to let the baby settle.
My mum, who has raised three children, said: “It might be a pain now, but you’ll thank me later.”
On paper, it sounded simple, although I was worried it wouldn’t work — and as soon as I laid Felix in his cot and turned off the lights, there was flailing, crying, the full works.
I tried rocking, shushing, and even a slow dance.
He seemed so unsettled, I worried that I was doing the wrong thing.
But mum was very reassuring so I stuck with it and eventually, after what felt like a lifetime of rubbing his tummy and creeping out of the room on all fours, Felix finally drifted off to sleep.
The next few nights, the same thing happened, but I carried on, living off cereal bars and boiled eggs, too terrified to look at the state of myself in the mirror.
Then, on day five, we turned a corner.
My son was slowly adapting to his new routine of going down at 7pm— a dream feed which involved giving Felix his bottle without waking him up fully — at midnight with mum sometimes helping, then another around 6am.
When Felix was ten days old, the health visitor came round.
‘IT WAS WORKING’
As I explained our routine, she said sleep training should be done in moderation as parents should stuck to their babies’ schedule and had concerns I’d given up on breastfeeding.
I’d tried, but I found it tricky because of latching-on issues so after four disastrous days I switched to bottles of formula.
I decided to ignore her advice and trust my instincts — so I ploughed on with keeping Felix in a strict routine.
And breastfeeding just didn’t seem like the most important thing.
Felix was born with a rare bleeding disorder called Glanzmanns which doctors estimate affects one in a million people and requires hospital appointments and care.
Making sure we both felt rested was paramount because I didn’t know when I might have a night-time emergency so I decided, once again, to not follow the health visitor’s advice and instead trust my own judgement.
By day 14, it was working.
I was getting six hours of undisturbed sleep a night with a newborn and I could enjoy the simple things again.
I had time to do my hair and make-up, eat a leisurely breakfast and get Felix outside in his pram without fretting about whether he was well rested.
Sticking firmly to the premise that my baby would fit into my life and not the other way around, I went to bars and restaurants at night with friends while Felix, still less than a month old, slept soundly in his pram.
I even took him on a date.
When Felix was three months old, I joined a parenting group, and the mums were slightly aghast when I told them I’d cracked sleep training so quickly.
“I could never do that!” one of the mothers told me.
But I refused to be awake at all hours.
Ironically, six months later, the same mum confessed how she had become so exhausted she had gone down the sleep training route too and was now reaping the benefits.
Now five, Felix still fits into my life and loves his sleep.
Co-sleeping is a big no-no — we live in a tiny flat in Kensington, West London, so I can always hear him anyway should he need me.
Felix’s bed routine always involves his daily medication and a book, then he’s out like a light without any fuss or protests.
The only time I deviate from the bedtime routine is to eat out but even that brings sarcastic comments and eye rolls.
It seems the locals don’t like kiddies on their turf.
But he’s well- behaved and it’s better than being stuck inside watching Peppa Pig.
If I had another baby I’d take the same approach to sleep.
And if knackered mums want to enjoy some longer snooze sessions, I think they should follow suit.
As my dear no-nonsense mum once said: “You will definitely thank me later.”
‘I can’t ignore baby’s cries’
By Mel Fallowfield
SINCE Rachel Coles gave birth to son Dougie two years ago, she’s been left “dizzy” with tiredness.
Dougie sleeps so badly that Rachel, 29, even feared her marriage to senior sales executive Tim, 28, might crack under the strain – but the marketing director insists Dougie’s needs come first.
She says: “Dougie isn’t refusing to sleep because he’s naughty – he’s crying because he needs us.”
Her son struggled to sleep from the beginning.
“Sometimes he’d wake up every 30 minutes,” says Rachel, from Brentwood, Essex.
“I was breastfeeding and he wanted to feed all night, so we ended up co-sleeping.
“We’d do anything to stop him crying, even driving him around in the car at 3am.
“Tim and I were absolutely shattered.
“Sometimes we were so snappy, I thought we’d break up.”
In desperation, they left their son to “cry it out” when he was six months old.
‘IT FELT CRUEL’
Rachel recalls: “After ten minutes, we couldn’t take it any more – it felt cruel.
“We went in and he’d got his legs stuck in his cot – he was trapped.
“It showed me how wrong it is to ignore a baby’s cries.”
The couple have now adapted to fit around Dougie.
Rachel says: “After his bath, one of us stays with him and cuddles him to sleep.
“But at some point he’ll wake up, so we alternate going in to cuddle him back to sleep.
“Sleep training has worked for friends, but every child is different.”