Must Have a Sleep Plan, This is THE ONE

Out of everything we did in preparation of having our first born, the most important was picking a sleep training program. There were a gazillion things for us to think about and consider when we found out we were having a baby, but the one thing Sarah and I agreed early on was the most important thing to us was sleep, and making sure we got sleep. Nobody wants to sleep poorly, and nothing will ensure you do sleep poorly like a poorly sleeping baby. Sarah wakes up at 5:30am and works a 12-hour shift as a nurse. Her not getting good sleep isn't an option. So it was a no-brainer for us to quickly arrive at the conclusion that we were going to use a sleep training plan. That was not something we were gonna try to wing.

I'll tell you a very critical reason why you need to do this too. There are so many variables when it comes to what to do to get your baby to sleep. There are a myriad of different choices and decisions you can make, and what you think might be the right thing to do may not be what your partner thinks is the right thing to do. The last thing you want is to be up at 3:25am arguing about what you should do with a hysterically crying baby who will not go back to sleep. If you make the decision to sleep train, you and your partner will research all the different ones that are out there until you find one that you both agree upon. Then once you agree on it, you put it into practice, and that's where the magic is, because since you've both agreed on it, it's what you will always default to. So there are no late night arguments on what you think you should do versus what your partner thinks. The decision has been made in the sleep program you agreed upon. And this is why the sleep program you pick is crucial. We had about 3-4 different books on sleep training, they were all the big ones. But they just didn't connect with us for a plethora of reasons. Most importantly they weren't user-friendly. We wanted step-by-step easy to use somebody actually TELLING us and SHOWING us what to do. We didn't want theories, studies and case examples. We wanted the goods.

The we stumbled on Taking Cara Babies. Cara was a pediatric nurse who struggled with her baby not sleeping well. She read all the books and tried all the strategies, and then came up with her own. Cara has the x-factor when it gets baby's to sleep, she's a baby whisperer. She put all of her learning into video courses to teach others how, she put it out there and it spread like wildfire. It spread because it works. Her online video courses range from 3-7 minute videos. They're easy to watch, Cara is great in them, super relatable and super smart. They're catalogued great so they're easy to reference when you need to. She shows you actual hands on techniques for how to "lay a healthy sleep foundation—and keep it." We loved learning her techniques and putting them into practice, and we always marveled at how it always worked. The other great thing to is that every once in awhile you encounter something specific to your kid that you might not see covered in a video. That happened to us once or twice, but the awesome thing about Taking Cara Babies is her and her team are accessible. You can just shoot them a message and they'll get back to you pretty quickly with an answer, they're awesome and totally sympathetic to whatever issue you might be having. (You can also purchase a private consultation if you're having issues you cant get through, but it wasn't something we ever felt even close to doing. But its good that its there.) Speaking of price, it's not cheap, not crazy expensive, and we're not the kind of couple that spends money on things unless we have to, we're pretty frugal. We tossed and turned on whether we were going to cough up a couple of hundred dollars get the courses. But because they have a money back guarantee we decided to give it a try. I'm here to tell you, it was the best money we spent on anything baby related up until this day -- and we're over three years into it now.

We did the First 5 Months Bundle, and that's the one we did and 100% recommend. We also did the 5-24 Month Collection, but to be honest, we didn't need it. We bought it because we were drinking the Kool-Aid, but we set such a strong foundation we really didn't need it. I'd wait on that one and only buy unless you're having issues you cant seem to get through after those first two years.

I strongly strongly STRONGLY advise you to not wing it! Sleep is too important to lose out on. You can't be zombies trying to get through this. You need to be firing on all cylinders, parenting is hard enough, especially those first two years, Close friends of ours had a baby around the same time as us. They didn't use a sleep training program. They had so many issues. The father would have to drive their baby around at 3am every night to get the baby to sleep. No exaggeration. (The dad was a Marine, he was in bed by 6p, it didn't bother him. He's built different. We're not. Don't leave this to chance!)

Let Cara take care of you too...