I worked with parents and babies for years as a lactation consultant, and I have written many articles about the trials and tribulations about baby sleep, but I have a confession to make: I never sleep trained my kids. I never tried it — not even for a night. In fact, I never tried anything different than lying down with them, nursing them, or rocking them until they fell asleep.
Why is that a confession? Well, over the years, I have said things like, “Oh, sleep training just didn’t work for me.” I have even said that my babies would have just cried and cried if we tried any sort of sleep training on them. I still stand by that claim, based on my kids’ personalities. But I don’t have any hard evidence to prove that.
I have never said outright that I didn’t sleep train, mainly because I didn’t want to alienate anyone. I understand that parents feel judged by crunchy moms like me for sleep training their kids, and I know that some parents are able to sleep train in a gentler way, or in a way that they feel comfortable with.
But I also never shared it because I had an impression as a young parent that not sleep training your child meant that you didn't care about ensuring a good night’s sleep for your child, or that you were a lazy parent in some way.
I know that there are different kinds of sleep training, and not all types involve leaving your baby alone for hours, crying. But the truth is, for me personally, there was no type of sleep training that I felt comfortable with. It just always felt wrong — it went against my instincts to expect my child to fall asleep without a parent present.
So, I never tried it.
Again, except in cases where a baby was left for long periods alone and crying to the point of vomiting, I really don’t judge other parents who tried some method of sleep training. Perhaps they just felt different than I did.
But I also want parents to know that you don’t have to sleep train your child if it goes against every instinct in your being, as it did for me. I had the kinds of babies who cried anytime I put them down, they loved snuggling up to me or my husband while falling asleep, and I just truly didn’t see the problem in continuing that way. After all, they are only this little and needful for so long, I told myself.
Yes, bedtime was a long, drawn-out mess for many years. Yes, my children took forever to finally sleep through the night, but not sleep training them was not harmful. I think parents need to know this, because there is a lot of pressure out there to sleep train — not just so parents can get more sleep, but because people think this is how your kids turn into “good sleepers.”
Besides the fact that there’s no evidence/research out there that I’m aware of to show that sleep training turns kids into better sleepers, I have personal evidence that kids can be untrained in every way and still end up sleeping just fine once they are past the “little kid” stage.
I did not sleep train either of my two boys, and they both fall asleep easily and stay asleep all night. This started once they turned 5 or so. They just figured out the sleep thing and started sleeping all night.
By now, my teenager doesn’t even need to be tucked in at all, and he sleeps so soundly I can barely get him to wake up on time for school! Imagine that.
So that’s that. I never sleep trained my kids. I never considered doing it. And I have zero regrets. But I do have many special memories of cozying up with a child as they drifted off to sleep in my arms.
