I ask this as I just finished rocking my 15-month old son to sleep for his nap. There are so many theories and books out there on sleep and how to put your child to sIeep. From the Ferber Method to Baby Wise to The Baby Whisperer, I have read them all. If I could afford $10,000 for the Baby Whisperer to come to my house to train my son to sleep I would have. Trust me. But, I had to figure this one out on my own…and in the end, I went the “rock him to sleep” route. Not the most popular method out there.

Somewhere around 12 months my son decided that he didn’t want to be rocked. It was great! I could finally just lay him in his crib and after about 5 minutes of fussing, he was asleep! Viol-ah! I was SO happy and for selfish reasons felt so “free”. It no longer took 30 minutes to an hour of me rocking, singing, or dancing around his room with him to have him fall asleep. Yeah!

Fast forward to today. Without knowing what I am doing, I find myself rocking him to sleep even though I know he doesn’t need it. I think I rock him partly because I know that the more he grows the less he will want to “cuddle” so I am taking advantage of the time I have now. But by me doing this, and not being consistent with his sleep method, am I creating for him a mess of psychological problems that will surface years from now? I like to think I am just sending him a message that his mamá loves him and wants to hold and cuddle him…I will never stop wanting this.

-Victoria