When you have a baby you enter a world until then unknown in which theories and methods are explained to make living with children more enjoyable. Well, this is the theory, because some methods seem to make it harder, at least in the way of doing things.
After knowing the Ferber method, later renamed in Spain as Estivill method, which aims to make children sleep alone in their rooms as soon as possible, I had the bright (or absurd) idea of creating the Bastida method, whose goal was to get our children would always sleep with us. The pity is that just when I was about to write a book with my method the tragedy was consumed: my method had failed.
How the Bastida method worked
The truth is that more than a book was for a pamphlet, because the instructions were tremendously simple. He Bastida method It consisted of ignoring the bassinet and the crib, both day and night, and having your child always sleeping with the parents. If it was nap time, sleep with the method that works best at all times (chest, arms, dance, ...) and then sit with the child in our arms, together until he woke up. If instead it was at night, sleep again with the method that works best and not change it, that is, leave it sleeping in bed with parents.
Unlike the Estivill method, with my method, if the child cried because he did not want to be with us, he could always put a crib next to the bed, to avoid the contact that could bother him so much. However, this was just theory that I was going to be part of a chapter, because in my case and in my house nothing similar ever happened.
The basics of the Bastida method
Now, going into the subject and speaking in the present, as if I were really going to write that book, I will explain what the Basics of the Bastida method. The goal of the method is to spend more time with children better, as long as children want, of course. So parents can spend time with their children (fabulous especially for parents who spend little time with them during the day), they can curl up beside them, they can hug them, kiss them and smell them, they can comb that soft hair that contrasts so much with our rough hands and can look at them stunned in the middle of the night, watching their sweet breathing and the magnificent rise and fall of their tiny rib cages gracefully wrapped in those bear pajamas and similar motifs that make them look so funny.
You will not deny me that the objective is not magnificent. Well, to get it, as I say, nothing more important than making it possible. You have to be constants, dad and mom have to go at one o'clock, because if you doubt, if you start to think that the child would sleep better alone in his room, there is a risk that the child hears our doubts, or that he feels that something is happening , that we are not convinced, he goes to his bed one night and likes it so much that he never wants to return.
It is important to be constant and to be empathized
I insist, going both by one you can get the children to always sleep with their parents. It is interesting to put effort into it, creating habits that are hard to get rid of. Well, creating is a way of saying it, because most children believe them alone ... the fact is that you have to take advantage of their need for us to sleep, to make the thing eternal.
As you will have read on occasion, breast milk contains amino acids that induce babies' sleep, so it is highly recommended (in addition to logical), to breastfeed them to sleep. Only with this you already have one or two years of children in bed, because as children love suction and help them calm down, they fall asleep better than anywhere else. Another option is to put a pacifier, so that they suck equally, however the pacifier is loose, is not part of mom or dad, and could help the child to sleep alone, this (perhaps) being the first stone to make him believe that he will be better Only accompanied.
They can also be used to sleep other methods such as singing nannies by lying next to us and stroking their hair, ears and face or rocking them in our arms. Is wonderful to have your son asleep in your arms, noting that you are totally relaxed and calm, knowing that you are in good hands. It is wonderful because it shows you that he trusts you blindly, that he feels safe, that with you he is so good, that he is able to disconnect totally from the outside world because he knows that nothing can happen to him.
But in my family the thing came out of grief
As far as it went, the theory seemed perfect, in addition to those explained, there were other methods to get children to sleep with us and not want to sleep alone and not even sleep in their beds, and the thing finally came out of grief. It's funny because it's my own method and I was sure that I was going to make my children always sleep with us ... in fact I even had a lot of inputs from abroad who supported my theories and encouraged me day after day to achieve my goal: "Do they sleep with you? Well, you won't take them out until they get married," "I know one who has a 14-year-old son who still sleeps with her," "Once you put them in bed there is no way to get them out," they told me.
However, the thing went wrong. Already the first, at about two years, left us a little restless. Miriam was in bed about to breastfeed, leaving him a bit of freedom until he wanted to grab his chest, when after turning and staying still, he observed that he had slept alone (ARRRGHHHH!). He was in our bed, and that reassured us a lot, but it was the first time he slept without our help and that seemed like a bad symptom. Luck that at night he kept asking for chest.
Then time passed, she stopped breastfeeding when Miriam became pregnant and we consoled ourselves to see that she still did not ask us for her bed to sleep (yes, she had a bed, because as everyone said she had to have one… yes, I know, we left to convince and in a way we encouraged him to want to sleep there, just for the sake of buying it).
Aran was born and happiness was absolute because we were four in bed. Time passed and Guim arrived, the fifth, and then there were five of us in bed. Well, to be honest, we were five in the beds, because we have two beds together, a large subway fifty and a small one, as a child.
The problem is that we could not solve a problem that originated. Jon woke up with some of Guim's awakenings and in the morning he was more tired than ever. So we think that, just as some parents skip the Estivill method when the children are bad and put them in bed, we could someday skip the Bastida method, to see if it improved their sleep.
And the same thing happened with those children, who are once with parents one night and then want to be there forever. That is, he slept one night in his bed and since then he always sleeps there. He hasn't returned, not a single day, so the method has proved to be a failure.
In fact, it has been a total failure, because Aran, the medium one, has also gone to sleep with the elder for more than one night. Of course, it's our fault for buying bunk beds. That is, in more than one night we have seen three in bed and the other two sleeping peacefully in their rooms, one with 6 years and the other with 3. Now they are 7 and 4 and still do many nights, so I have already written a book explaining the method because it doesn't make much sense. So much to believe that we were going to get them with us until they got married, so much to believe that one day they would get out of bed to say "Goodbye dad, I'm leaving, I have to go do the mili" (well, I didn't believe it because I already there is no mili, it is a saying) and it turns out that my children, the children of the creator of the Bastida method to teach children to always sleep with their parents, they ended up sleeping alone.
Although thinking about it, I could always write the book and then say that, "You know, at the blacksmith's house ...".
Final note
As a clarification, to say that, obviously, this story is not real, because it is the narration of our nights made up in an ironic way. The only method that has been followed in my house, at night, is the one that consists of Listen to the needs of our children. Apparently, when everything is done naturally, without forcing anything, life and customs flow without major traumas or headaches. It's all about respect, patience and dialogue. Respect to wait for the right moment, patience, to understand that when they are children they need us, but when they are older they are able to sleep alone and dialogue because when they grow up they are able to reason and understand, and make our work as parents and more pleasant and sensible. educators
