Update (2026): Four years ago, I wrote about how my baby’s brain needed to be “ready” before she could learn to fall asleep solo. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I was talking about brain plasticity.

Now I write about the neuroscience behind everything I learned as a mother — how kids’ brains learn so fast, why cravings are so hard to resist, what addiction really is, and what “readiness” actually means at the level of dopamine and neural circuits.

My new newsletter is called Here is your brain… — still full of stories about my daughters (now 5 and 2), but with the brain science that explains why it all works. (And the baby from this post is now my illustrator.)

Why “Part 1” when there are (at present) no more parts to this story? Because it simply feels too cocky to declare that my sleep problems are over. I’m sure this is just the beginning of a glorious and lifelong battle of wits between my daughter and I over our precious zzz’s. 

The good news is that things have markedly improved. The luggage under my eyes has returned to bags, and I no longer traipse through my days in a zombie-like stupor. 

The effects of sleep deprivation on your body and your brain

My criteria for helping my 3.5 month old daughter learn how to fall asleep was simply this:

No crying it out. (I’m not tough enough to withstand more than even a minute of her crying.)

So here is what we did.

After winding down with a couple of books, go into baby’s room and turn off the light, turn on the air-conditioner and soft lamp. Start playing a lullaby and white noise (in the background). We chose an orchestral version of “Tale as old as time” from Beauty and the Beast.

Lay baby down on change table and change nappy (if necessary) and dress in sleep suit (or swaddle). Hum/sing loudly to the lullaby if baby already begins fussing.

Pick baby up and hold/sway/cuddle baby while lullaby plays. The goal here is to get baby calm and drowsy to the point where you see a drooping eyelid or two.

Put baby down in crib and say a chosen key sleepy phrase with a weighted press of your hand to their chest. Our sleepy phrase was (and is), “Time for sleep now. Night night. I love you.” Then turn off the lullaby and hide out of sight.

Give Baby A Chance (see below) for 15 minutes if putting down for a nap, 30 minutes if putting down at bedtime or 10 minutes if handling a premature wakeup.

Wait a few minutes to confirm baby is actually asleep and ninja creep out of the room.

You’ve just put baby down in their crib. One of three things will instantly happen. In order of most to least desirable, they are:

  1. Baby stays blissfully quiet and puts herself to sleep (VICTORY!)

  2. Baby starts fussing, or

  3. Baby starts balls-to-the-wall crying interspersed with screaming.

If (1), internally high-five yourself and sneak out of that room. If (2), here is what you do.

Let baby fuss for a maximum of 5 minutes.

Their sleeping conditions have changed. They’re allowed to be a little grumpy about it! You’re giving them space to see what they do.

Again, one of those three things will happen:

  1. Baby will quieten and fall asleep (VICTORY!),

  2. Baby will fuss for the full five minutes, or

  3. Baby will begin screaming for you.

If (1), let the internal high fives ensue. If (2), here is where you and baby do a little dance.

Basically, you’re going to play calm chicken with him.

Using as minimal intervention as possible, calm baby in the crib. Stop as soon as she quietens for more than a second or two. If baby starts fussing again, repeat. Keep going until the allotted time mentioned above has passed or until baby falls asleep (VICTORY!). The calming method we found that worked best was butt pats combined with shushes. (Our girl is a tummy sleeper.)

Now, what do you do if (3): baby’s fussing escalates to crying and screaming? Well, this violated my self-imposed “No crying it out” criteria. So if at any point my daughter went from grumpy fussing to I-need-you crying, I pulled the plug, picked her up and reassured her using whatever means necessary until she was calm. Then I did whatever it took to get her to have the nap. Wore her. Nursed her to sleep. Went for a drive. Whatever it took.

If you read the above and scoffed at the “calm baby in the crib” part, you’re not alone. I also scoffed whenever I read something similar in various other sleep coaching methods. 

The scoffing was because I was still scarred from a recent attempt at some gentle method of sleep training which involved me implementing the instructions and my daughter screaming her darling head off. But I now know there was a reason for that.

She wasn’t ready. 

Just like baby’s neck needs strengthening first before she can master the art of rolling, baby’s brain needs “strengthening” before she can master the art of falling asleep solo. Until then, she needs you. 

So if you try to Give Baby A Chance and he starts emitting that blood-curdling, heart-wrenching distraught scream, his brain is not ready yet. As brutal as it feels to say it, it is even more brutal to hear it. He still needs you to fall asleep and stay asleep.

I know - the prospect of continuing to wade through the thick fog of sleep-deprivation with no end in sight can feel like a punch to the guts. But do not despair, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Babies develop at an alarming rate. A lot can change in even a week. A week of growth to your baby is like a year to you. So give it one week. Then Give Baby A Chance again. She might just surprise you.

In the spirit of the “it takes a village,” I meticulously documented our progress so that I could share that knowledge with new (and soon-to-be) mothers. Here is the rundown.

We successfully attempted Give Baby A Chance when she was 14 weeks old, starting with naps. On our very first attempt, she fussed for the full 5 minutes, so I had to play calm chicken with her. Surprisingly, it worked after only 5 minutes! Ladies and gentlemen, on her very first go, my daughter had taken that last crucial step - falling asleep - all by herself! 

Within 2 days, my little cherub miraculously started connecting sleep cycles. I was having to wake her from naps for the first time in my (and her) life! 

By week 4, she was fussing for less than 3 minutes when put down for naps. And by week 5, I only needed to play calm chicken with her for 1 out of every 5 naps. 

At the 6 week mark, she didn’t fuss at all and went down a dream for nearly all naps. (It was a rare put down where she fussed, and this was mom’s fault - I misjudged the wake window.)

Overall, it took about 9 weeks to go from my daughter essentially yelling “Like hell I’m going to sleep in that barren crib without you!” to calmly asking “Please put me down already mom, I’m tired and want to go to sleep!” 

In those 9 weeks, she fussed for a total of 174 minutes. She was never once left to cry. 

If you’re thinking of giving your own baby a chance, make sure you nail those wake windows. I used the Huckleberry app and found it was pretty darn accurate for most of them. Of course, my daughter’s cues trumped the app. If she started getting red around around the eyes or staring blankly off into the distance, I put her down toot sweet. 

Our little girl is now just shy of 9 months old. Did Give Baby A Chance solve all our sleep problems? Not forever. No strategy ever does. I’ve found that baby sleep is a constantly moving target because babies themselves are constantly moving targets. You need to be prepared to weather the storms of teeth, sickness, travel and leaps. 

But Give Baby A Chance did give us back our sanity and some precious zzz’s. 

And I hope it will do the same for you.

When I wrote this post in 2020, I was figuring out baby sleep through trial and error. I knew my daughter’s brain needed to be “ready” — I just didn’t know why.

Four years later, I’ve gone down a neuroscience rabbit hole trying to answer that question (and about a hundred others that came up along the way).

Turns out, “Give Baby A Chance” was really “Give Baby’s Brain A Chance To Wire The New Pattern.” What I called “strengthening” was actually synaptic plasticity. The “5 minute fuss window” aligned with how long dopamine’s learning window stays open. The calm chicken game? That was me accidentally implementing the exact protocol neuroscientists use to study habit formation.

I wish I’d known the mechanisms then. It would have made me so much more confident in what I was doing.

So now I write about the brain science behind learning, motivation, habits, and behaviour change — still through the lens of a mother watching two tiny human brains develop at warp speed.

My new newsletter is called Here is your brain... and it’s where I break down:

The practical advice, empathy, and data tracking are all still there. I’ve just added the neuroscience that explains why it works.

I hope to see you over there.