When my first born was around 4 months old I started my research about sleep training him as I was approaching my return to work date. I’ve read some books, asked his paediatrician for advice, friends and family members had their opinions and soon enough I was feeling so confused and overwhelmed by the contradicting information that I didn’t know which path to go.

I gave some of them a shot but nothing seemed to work. Pressured by time, I came across the “cry it out method” and I thought to give it a try! It was one of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever encountered, I ended up crying probably as much if not more than my son, and although it improved the situation a little, it never fully worked.

Soon after I returned to work I went through 2 knees surgeries within 3 months, which made me pretty much stuck in bed, with very little mobility for a long period of time. I was forced to take my son back in bed with me. Going back to co sleeping and breastfeeding to sleep amplified my guilt of putting him through the ordeal of sleep training in the first place. I made peace somehow with it until I got pregnant with my second son.

I knew now that I had a bigger problem in my hands, but one thing I knew for sure, that I would not put any of my kids or myself through anything like the “cry it out” method. I started an even more serious research about sleep and training methods, read pretty much all the books on gentle methods, bought program after program, and by the time my second son was born, four weeks prematurely, I thought I had it all figured out.

Boy was I wrong? This new baby was totally different than his brother and his sleep was even more challenging. Now I was left with a toddler that was recently transitioned to his room and big boy bed, freshly potty trained, still dependent on a parent to put him to sleep and super jealous of the “new addition” to the family and a premature colicky baby, that didn’t show as much interest in breastfeeding like his brother, didn’t want to lay in bed with me at night, but neither did he want to sleep in his crib.

At this point I wouldn’t be able to get any sleep at all, as the entire night I would attend one child to sleep and soon after the other one and so on. Sleep deprivation soon caught up with me, and I literally wasn’t able to function properly anymore. My patience was slim, my guilt of not being a good enough mother/wife/person was growing every day, my relationship with my husband was on the rocks and I felt severely depressed. I knew I had to do something to improve everybody sleep and well-being.