How to Get Your High Need Baby to Sleep

Because Parents Need Sleep, Too!

As the mother of a high need baby, I soon learned that she needed me around the clock. Sleeping problems are exaggerated in high need babies, and harder to manage. Dr. William Sears, author of numerous parenting books, and proponent of attachment parenting, first defined the term "high need baby." Identifying a baby as high needs is easy: the baby is fussy, wants to be held constantly, the parents are exhausted, and the house is a mess. (Ever tried to mop one handed? It is possible; I did it for eight months!) Sometimes high-need babies are identified as colicky: the difference is, a high-need baby can be soothed, if you give him what he wants! Sleep problems in high need babies are especially troublesome, because a high need baby may want to be in constant physical contact with another person, and may want to be in constant motion!

In order to better explain how sleep problems are different in high need babies, let me share my own experience with my high needs baby. Whenever we put our baby down, our baby would start to wail. I do not mean a normal infant cry: it sounded like she was actually in pain. At first, the adults took shifts holding her while she slept, but it soon became apparent that after my husband went back to work and my mother went back home that another solution would be necessary. By the time I stumbled upon a solution, I was so sleep-deprived that I had lost my peripheral vision. I lay down in bed to feed the baby, promising myself that I would not fall asleep. I woke up five hours later, with the baby safe and still asleep in my arms.