I remember when my daughters were babies that I was so jealous of those parents that announced their baby was sleeping soundly through the night, every night! Why couldn't mine? It wasn't so much that I wanted my baby asleep, but more that I desperately needed sleep, and the only way I could get it was to make sure my baby was sound asleep.

This however proved to be more difficult than I expected!

How could my baby possibly be wide awake at three in the morning having been awake most of the previous day? How could this possibly go on and on? Well it did, but I am glad to be able to say that both daughters have survived, and in fact now love to sleep! Mind you they are now young ladies, and don't require me to feed them any more!

After giving birth for the first time, I soon realized that every baby is different, and what works for one mom doesn't necessarily work for another. In my case, we tried lots of different techniques, and none of them worked with any degree of success. We tried swaddling our daughter, you know, wrapping her with her arms and legs close to her body so that the arms wouldn't move around and startle her. I wasn't sure about this method, but the nurses swear by it, and for some younger babies (under 6 months) it seems to work well, provided the swaddling doesn't restrict breathing of course. But it didn't work well for us!

We tried the baby swing, and while she was swinging, she would doze a little, but as soon as the swing stopped, so did the nap, and the winding mechanism was noisy in those days, so rewinding it woke her too. Again, for some babies it worked like a charm, but not for us!

We tried the good old rocking chair, which got me dozing in no time at all, but my baby stayed awake. Again, it works really well for some, but not for us! We would have tried driving our baby in the car, but neither adult was fit to drive by that stage. These days of course it would be too expensive with gas the price it is, and it causes too much pollution too.

Then there's the routine that babies like, and adults too, you know the bath before bed routine, a last feed, and then sleep. Guess what? That rarely worked either. But never give up hope, because one of these days, your baby will sleep soundly through the night, and you'll probably stay awake worrying that something is wrong!

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