It’s been about a week being back in New York now, and Kaia still has not slept in her crib for more than 1.5-2 hours at a time. Her morning naps during the weekdays have been on top of our nanny’s chest and stomach; her afternoon naps have been in a stroller. At night, she’s been sleeping on top of our bed. And while everyone loves to be judgmental about this, we need to sleep, too, because we have work, so it’s not like we can just spend all night soothing her in her crib.

We let her “cry it out” over the weekend for a record 1-hour, and it resulted in… absolutely nothing. All she did was stand at the edge of the crib and cry endlessly, the fattest tears you could possibly imagine streaming down her face and all over her sleep sack/onesie.

I spoke with a Cleo “sleep expert” about this issue this afternoon, and she said that the first thing we needed to address was getting her reacquainted and liking her crib again. We need to make her realize that her bedroom and crib are a safe space, so we need to start putting her in it, just a few minutes at a time, when she’s clean, fed and full, and happy, and not needing to sleep yet. We could play peek-a-boo with her in it; sing songs; make faces, and just do it for a few minutes, to five, to ten, to fifteen, until she was fully comfortable being awake in the crib. Once she is happy being in the crib while awake, she will realize that it could be a safe place to fall asleep in.

“She needs to build trust with the crib first,” the sleep expert said.

Okay, well… we’ll try that. Baby steps, right?