One brilliant toy to recommend before more on the getting-baby-to-sleep debate: The Tiny Love Playground. Luca loves it. Or at least he lies still and stares intently at the monkey for a bit. At two weeks old, that counts as love:
Anyway, back to sleep. Two people recommend that I read Gina Ford, the baby guru who says routine is a sure route to more sleep and happier families. I started reading The Complete Sleep Guide for Contented Babies and Toddlers before Luca was born and must admit I found it a little bossy. She is single-minded and tends to divide opinion, but her methods are popular enough that I feel obliged to read more.
The temptation at 2am is to do anything it takes to get Luca to sleep, which so far means letting him sleep on top of Mum or in between the two of us. On the first night, this freaked me out a bit.
Posters in St George's maternity ward say it increases the risk of cot death, but when we asked the midwife she said this only applied if we were drunk.
Militant Gina Ford routine or go with instinct? We're going to err on the side of instinct, at least in the early days. This was better summed up by dad of a few weeks James:
'She was sleeping so good at first and then went through a bad patch of not wanting to go down. In the end we discovered the only way is to spoil her (from the reading material this seems to be ok for first 6 weeks). Carry them everywhere, let them sleep on you (as they still feel kind of connected to a body) and feed them all the time.'
My sister Aiscia, mother of 2 boys aged 1-18 months, agrees:
'Tread lightly amongst the literature brother, there is a lot of mud to wade through. My advice: if it gets you through, its the right thing to do!'
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