Babies: Can't live with 'em, Can't leave 'em on a curb

Of course we don't MEAN THAT! We would never, ever condone leaving a baby on the curb. However, some of the bleary-eyed new parents among you have probably contemplated that, or at least sleeping on the curb yourself and leaving your little bundle to her own devices.

Here we will attempt to lay down some baby sleeping ground rules for you.

Baby Rule #1: This is not about you. Your baby doesn't care that you are a nuclear physicist or an astronaut (not, we hope, the crazy, stalking, murderous diaper-wearing type of astronaut) or a Starbucks barista or anyone else who is incredibly important and rules the world. Your baby doesn't care that you need to get up at 5AM to make your latte or have your jog or get the bus. Your baby doesn't care that you didn't sleep the entire last trimester of your pregnancy because she, the baby, was bouncing on your bladder ALL NIGHT LONG. So, you need to make a grown-up decision right now and resolve to stop whining about how you didn't get any sleep.

When you have a baby -- and this news may rock your world -- you may have to change some things in your life. You may not be able to watch TV until midnight. You may need to go to bed at 10, or 9, or even, GASP, 8. We know that this will cut into your time on the Internet looking for that perfect pair of cork-heel wedges on eBay or getting your fix of Wonkette or Style.com or Googling your creepy neighbor; surfing the Internet is what work is for. No, you cannot have sex with your partner (or with anyone else for that matter.) No, you cannot have adult conversations with other adults. You need to go to sleep.

Baby rule number 2 is also pretty straightforward: get the baby out of your bed. It is our opinion that co-sleeping equals no-sleeping. Not for anyone. When the baby moves, you wake up. Guess what: when you move, the baby wakes up. This makes for a cranky baby.

We don't understand the controversy over this topic. If you want to sleep with your baby, then that's fine. You will have poor sleep, and so will anyone else who is in the bed. So, return to rule #1 and stop whining about it and accept it as a fact.

If you are nursing, get one of those little attached beds or a bassinet. The car seat even works well at the beginning. But, really, how big is your house? Oh, you have a mansion? How nice for you. Then you probably can afford to have people do all sorts of things for you, like surf the Internet and watch Conan O'Brien so that you don't have to. For the rest of you: after week 6 of life, get the baby out of your bed. Keep him in the room with you if you must. You will all sleep better.

Baby Rule #3 is tied in with the breastfeeding issue: weaning and sleep problems are two different things. We recently counselled 2 women who complained that their children have difficulty maintaining sleep. Turns out that both women are actually having difficulty weaning their children from nursing. So, bambino wakes and is inconsolable unless she is allowed to nurse. Mom tries to withhold and bambino gets very, very testy. Even though this scenario is taking place at 1AM, this is not a sleeping problem; this is a weaning problem.

Finally, Baby Rule #4 is about scheduling. It is so easy to want the baby to sleep when it is convenient for you. And, hey, it would be great if the little darling would sleep blissfully for, oh, 18 hours a day and wake up just to look cute and coo and eat and let you dress him in cute outfits. Babies do sleep a lot. And you do have some control over when they sleep. If you want your bebe to sleep later in the morning, it's ok to push bedtime back a little, especially if it gives you a little more time with your evening routine. It is NOT ok to expect your cherub to sleep past 7 or to put him or her to bed much past 8 - 8:30.

We remember a new mom who was having some trouble coping with her own disrupted sleep and her main complaint was that she (the mom) liked to sleep until, um, 8 or 9 in the morning and, well, the baby just didn't. What this mom could do, though, was to switch nap times slightly so that baby was waking from an afternoon nap at around 4- 4:30 and then putting him to bed around 8-8:30. Baby then woke up around 6:30-7. This worked fine for Mom, who started going to bed by 10:30.

There, see how easy that was?