Baby Steps with the Pantley Pull Off

After the awful experience of 'sleep training' a couple of weeks ago, I've gone back to what I've always believed. Only gentle ways to encourage Aaron to learn to sleep on his own. No more fast forwarding the process.

Elizabeth Pantley's book 'The No Cry Sleep Solution' has a huge following and plenty of online forums dedicated to the discussion of it. There really is no crying involved in the various methods that she uses but they all need patience and perseverance. I wish I didn't get impatient and try to merge Pantley and Ferber (he's the father of controlled crying).

I've been using the Pantley Pull Off for several months BUT I was not consistent. I had no patience nor perseverance. The PPO is a strategy of unlatching the baby at progressively earlier times. You start off unlatching when the baby is fully asleep. If the baby wakes, then you just let him/her latch on again (no fuss/crying). 30-60 seconds later, you unlatch. After about 3-5 times, the baby will get the idea and just continue sleeping. So, you keep doing this at every sleep until the baby does not root for the breast when you unlatch. Then you move up the unlatching to when the baby is only half asleep and repeat the same process. After that, its when the baby is drowsy and then finally, no feeding to sleep. Voila! Its supposedly as simple as that but you can see how it takes patience and perseverance.

Well, I'm determined to give this method a proper go. No more cheating. I'm up to the half asleep baby now and I think Aaron's cold is helping out because his stuffy nose is making it hard for him to suck anyway.