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Best baby sleep book for your family: a quiz

by Anya Dunham, PhD

Find the best baby sleep book – for your particular situation – using this free short quiz.

Sleep can be one of the biggest challenges of the early parenting months – or even years. Pediatricians get asked about sleep challenges all the time, and yet most of them have very minimal training in children’s sleep.^1-3 So we turn to books and online baby sleep programs. There, we find a lot of advice about baby sleep and sleep training, ranging from the slow and gentle “no cry” solutions to detached but efficient “extinction” or “cry it out”.

But what is the best baby sleep book? And can you avoid ending up with a bookshelf full of books, none of which are a goof fit for your baby and your family?

"Best baby sleep book" quiz

Well, I did end up purchasing many baby sleep books… And I have not only read them all, but I also read the original scientific research papers to learn about the science of baby sleep, wrote my book Baby Ecology, and navigated the first year with my three babies. So I put together this quiz to help you choose the book that is most likely to resonate with you and help your baby sleep soundly.

A note: In developing this quiz I decided to focus on books - and not online programs - because published books are less fluid and more likely to stand the test of time. That being said, if you have your eyes set on a particular online program, ask the developers of the program which published method their approach most closely resembles. If their program is solid, they should be able to give you an answer easily. Why? Because even though there are many branded names, there are only a few core methods to help babies sleep soundly. All of these methods have the same goal: arriving at a point where baby goes back to sleep on her own after a night waking (because self-settling is the only key to sound sleep). The difference between the methods is the path they propose to getting to that point. In other words, the methods differ in how the baby gets to a point of self-settling during wakings when he has no need greater than sleep. Whether and how much crying will be involved depends on the approach you choose and on your baby’s temperament.

The quiz is free, and you won’t even need to go through the annoying step of entering your e-mail at the end to get your results. (But you are more than welcome to subscribe to KidEcology Newsletter if you like).

Ready to try it? Let’s get started!

Open quiz ↓

You might also be interested in:

When it comes to baby sleep, waiting-it-out doesn't work

3 key elements to help baby sleep

References

1. Mindell JA et al (1994) Pediatricians and sleep disorders: training and practice. Pediatrics 94(2 Pt 1): 194-200

2. Owens JA (2001) The practice of pediatric sleep medicine: results of a community survey. Pediatrics 108(3): E51

3. Boreman CD et al (2007) Resident training in developmental/behavioral pediatrics: where do we stand? Clinical Pediatrics 46(2): 135-145

Using hundreds of scientific studies, Baby Ecology connects the dots to help you create the best environment for sleep, feeding, care, and play for your baby.

Book cover with baby on green grass and text Baby Ecology

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Warmly,

Anya

Hi! My name is Dr. Anya Dunham. I'm a scientist with a PhD in Biology, an award-winning author, and a mom to three young kids. Here and in my book, Baby Ecology, I analyze the research on baby's first year to find the optimal nurturing environment — the (usually wide) range of good options — to help you choose what works best for your baby and your family. Let's find the answers to new parent questions that are too complex to google.

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