But you basically cannot defeat a crying baby with hard work. There may be some things that improve this in the moment, but babies cry—some of them cry a lot—and there is often really nothing you can do. In a sense, the most important thing to understand is that you are not alone and that your baby is not broken.

And we did sleep train Penelope, working roughly out of the Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child playbook.

The Bottom Line “Cry it out” methods are effective at encouraging nighttime sleep. There is evidence that using these methods improves outcomes for parents, including less depression and better general mental health. There is no evidence of long- or short-term harm to infants; if anything, there may be some evidence of short-term benefits. There is

The Bottom Line There are some broad guidelines for a sleep schedule. Longer nighttime sleep develops around two months. Move to three regular naps around four months. Move to two regular naps around nine months. Move to one regular nap around fifteen to eighteen months. Drop napping around age three. There is tremendous variability across children

For these reasons, many doctors are reasonably lax about children’s germ exposure after infancy. But virtually all doctors will suggest you try to avoid exposure to illness in the baby’s first couple of months. One reason for this is simply that the smaller the child, the more vulnerable they are to serious complications. But a second reason is tha

Many cultures have a tradition of women basically doing nothing for a month or so after birth, while older women in their family take care of them. This isn’t common in the US, but it does give a sense of what this time is like. Just because some fit-pregnancy blogger is back to CrossFit ten days after giving birth does not mean her recovery is typ

Generally, it will be easier to sleep train a six-month-old than a three-month-old, and probably harder to train a two-year-old. But these methods seem to work on a variety of ages.

Notably, there does not seem to be any elevated risk from co-sleeping after three months if both parents are not drinking or smoking.

We can say, for example, that one year of parental leave versus two years doesn’t influence a child’s high school test scores or earnings in early adulthood.