Lindsay Arnold and her daughters.Photo:Lindsay Arnold/Instagram
Lindsay Arnold/Instagram
Lindsay Arnoldis opening up about a controversial topic.
“Get ready with me while I talk about night one of sleep training our 5-month-old,” Arnold says at the beginning of the video while she starts putting makeup on.
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“June is almost 5 1/2 months. We started sleep training Sage around the exact same time. In my opinion, the four-month sleep regression is so real and to me, it’s like there’s really no point in starting sleep training before that.”
“That I can’t have it,” her daughter responds. “Is he telling you we need to take a break from it?” Arnold asks her daughter.
“Then we gotta listen to our daddy because he’s trying to help us, okay?” she says, laughing as her daughter runs out of the room. “There’s a glimpse at the terrible threes.”
“Anyways, I feel like it’s the perfect time to start as soon as you feel like you’re out of that fourth-month sleep regression moment. And this is kind of how we go about things.”
“Let me tell you a little bit about June’s sleep schedule before we start doing this,” the mom of two says. “She was waking up three times in the night to eat at the start of the fourth-month regression. I could tell she was really hungry. She ate every ounce of the bottle and I could just tell, maybe she was growing through a growth spurt.”
Arnold then reveals that this past week and a half, her daughter drank only a little bit of the bottle and then went straight to sleep. The dancer says that she thinks her daughter has now just gotten into the habit of waking herself up for food instead of actually being hungry.
“My biggest thing with sleep training is getting them to be able to fall asleep on their own,” Arnold says. “Now that we’re sleep training, I will feed her her bottle, I’ll burp her, and then I’ll lay her down in her crib because I want her to learn how to naturally fall asleep on her own.”
Going through the events of the previous night, Arnold says that June started crying when her binky fell out. She let her cry for five minutes before going back in and putting the binky back. She rubbed her belly to “let her feel that I’m there but I don’t actually pick her up.”
The process repeated two more times, and on the third time when Arnold left the room, her daughter finally fell asleep. “I call that a very successful attempt because Sage was not like that,” the mom of two says. “Very proud of June, she did a good job.”
Arnold had to return to June’s room later in the evening but celebrated a win because she already surpassed two feedings she would normally have to do. At 4:15 in the morning, she fed her daughter after she woke herself up and put June back to bed, rejoicing that she slept in until 8:45.
“That is the latest she’s slept in in like over a month and a half so it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. That is night one of sleep training. Every single night could be totally different and honestly I’m not getting my hopes up. But I do have to say that was a pretty strong start.”
“Everyone is different. If you don’t believe in sleep training your babies, then don’t do it. If it’s not for you and for your family, then don’t do it. It works for us, it’s something that I feel like is beneficial.”
“I’m here to say that moms, if sleep training is what works for you to get your sanity, to get your sleep, then do it and don’t feel guilty about it.”
source: people.com
