Welcoming a newly born baby is the best feeling for a family. But, the new baby also becomes a cause for a mother's swollen eyes and a father's tired legs while on his way to office due to the sleepless nights it gives them. But, this mother had some other plans, when she came up with an idea which was successful in a creating a win-win situation for both the parents and the baby.
A woman just accepted the fate of her not getting a full night's sleep, after she gave birth to her second baby. Amazingly, when her baby was just three months old, she discovered a fail-safe way of getting her to settle.
Amelia was born to Laura Gerson, who lived with her partner Steve Martin and her daughter, Abigail in Essex, England. The family were happy to welcome the newest addition to their family in early,2017
The family was very happy after the arrival of Amelia. But, Gerson and Martin too got used to the common problem of sleepless nights. As a matter of fact, Gerson had to attend to her baby every hour throughout the night for the first three months.
Eventually, Laura decided to find the cause of her baby not sleeping properly at night. The routine had started to take a toll on her. She used to remain exhausted throughout the day.So, she turned to her baby’s video monitor for clues.
Gerson realized that Amelia started to cry when she awoke without a pacifier. “We’ve got a video monitor and was watching her one night trying to find her dummy when she woke up and couldn’t find it,” Gerson told the Mirror Online in January 2018.
Gerson came to the conclusion that her daughter only cried for her pacifier. And, used to stop in an instant on getting it back.“Ninety-nine percent of the time she just wanted her dummy to soothe her back to sleep,” Gerson explained.
Gerson couldn't take it anymore and started to think of any possible solution, which would help her family get a proper night's sleep. She came up with an idea of leaving a few pacifiers in Amelia's crib while she was asleep. This worked out, as, not finding a pacifier on waking up was the reason for her daughter crying in the middle of the night.
Gerson, initially just gave it a shot to check whether her idea worked or not. She needed to work out how many pacifiers she required for her theory to work. “I just put a couple in there,” she explained. “But we lost one down the side of the cot. So over the next few nights, I just put more in there.”
Eventually, Gerson worked out how many pacifiers were required exactly. She left four of them directly above Amelia’s head and scattered six randomly at the top of the crib. In this arrangement, there was always a pacifier in reach.
The trick seemed to work perfectly for Gerson and her family.They witnessed the fact that Amelia was able to quickly find what she was looking for. “She feels around, finds a dummy, sticks it in and she’s sorted,” Gerson told HuffPost in January 2018.
The parents keep a look at their baby's monitor in case she needs something else than a pacifier.Amelia is now one and sleeps about 12 hours every night. The idea worked perfectly and the family was able to take proper rest at night.
Gerson thought of sharing the trick with other parents, as, she realized that it was a common problem with which each parent with a newborn suffered from. Introducing her idea to The Motherload Facebook group, Gerson wrote, “Weird bedtime routine that’s worked.”
She continued, “Since my little one was about three months old she’s gone to bed with roughly 10 dummies in with her. I found that when she cried on a night all she wanted was a dummy then she’d go back off.”
Gerson added, “[I] realized that if she had one to hand then she would just find it… [I] haven’t had to go into her on a night for about eight months now… WINNING! I don’t even wanna think about the time when the ‘Dummy Fairy’ comes to take them away though.”
The idea was an instant hit, as, Gerson’s post took off on the parenting advice group. It had attracted a whopping amount of more than 1,000 reactions from the community on The Motherload.
Some of the post’s readers were even inspired to go and try the bedtime routine themselves. “This will be me tonight! Sleep training has started. Wish me luck!” wrote one user. Meanwhile, another added, “This is amazing. Wish I had thought of this when mine was younger!”
Not all the reaction from the people were good. Some criticized by saying, “You could never [have] introduced the pacifier and not ever have this battle. Four kids, zero pacifiers. I hated the thought of giving them something unnecessary that I’d just have to take away later.”
However, Gerson was quick to defend herself against such comments. “She isn’t a total dummy fiend and doesn’t even have them through the day really,” she told indy100 in January 2018. “But it really soothes her having them through the night. Having more in there makes it easy for her to find one, and hold one (or two).”
Some accused her by saying it was not her who invented the trick. In her response, she claimed she was simply trying to share the wisdom. “I know it’s not a new idea. Some people have done it before but there are lots that haven’t,” she told Indy100.
In the end, Gerson was just happy to help other parents out, even if some didn’t appreciate her advice. “Our thinking is that if one of 100 families can get a good night’s sleep from a post that we put up because it was cute and humorous then it’s fantastic,” she said.