by Cj Luddeni

Created on: June 23, 2009   Last Updated: June 24, 2009

Although I am not an expert, I have had a bit of experience in this department. Keeping Jr. in his or her crib at night, all night is quite an undertaking and not for the faint of heart. You, as a new parent will have to develop a spine as strong as Rambo's, a never say die spirit, and a ton and a half of patience.

As long as your child can see you, everything is rosy. But the moment you are out of his sight, as far as the baby is concerned, you are gone forever. Babies don't have the concept of just leaving the room for a moment. Don't believe me? Set Jr. down and let him watch you leave the room.

Jr. has to see you to know you are here. So you can imagine the difficulty of getting her to sleep in her own crib at night.

For my first child, I was a 25-year-old newbie who did not have a clue. I would rock my son, then lay him in his crib, I would tell him a story and then get up to leave. Here is where the trouble started. He was happy with the rocking and the story, but the leaving? He wanted no part of it. I would explain in quiet smiling terms that I was coming back and he should lay down. Being a few weeks old, he didn't grasp my meaning. So I would stay, and he would eventually close his eyes. Then I would sneak out. But his ESP would kick in and within minutes he would alert my neighbors and myself that he wanted company. So, after a hour of this, I would give in and lay him in my bed with me, hoping he would fall asleep before I did. This worked sometimes. Not always. After a few months of me giving in I decided to take a stand and let him cry. (I was a mean daddy)

The first night he wailed for two hours. I worried that maybe he was thirsty or hungry or scared. I would retrieve him and we would retreat to my bed.

After weeks of this I was exhausted and finally developed that backbone of steel. But in the interim, I created a monster that knew how to play me. It took everything from me to not run when he cried. But in the end I won. The entire process took close to a year for me to realize all my past mistakes and correct them.

His brother arrived almost five years later, he was a different story, I had learned from my earlier mistake and he slept in his crib right away, I don't know if I was better prepared or he was secure sleeping in the same room as his older brother, but this child worked properly. Except that he seemed to always be hungry, He was hungry every two hours, all day and all night. I used up a lot of patience with him.

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