In my capacity as a Parent Of Excellence, I wanted to share the secrets of my astounding success with you desperate plebs in regards to the method of getting your child to sleep at nighttime. I know. I’m generous to a fault. Please, you can thank me later.

First, a brief questionnaire to see if you are ready to become a Parent Of Excellence.

When you see this picture:

An unhappy baby. Bet you're glad it's not yours!

Do you – a) Want to pick the child up and soothe it?

b) Want to pick the child up and throw it out of the window?

c) Want to scream, ‘Shit!’ and run for the hills?

If you answered b) or c), then congratulations, you are already on the journey to join me in Excellence. Here’s hoping my expert and well-practised advice will give you just that extra nudge you need on your way.

The Bedtime Routine

So here’s what you do. And bear in mind, this is the ONLY routine you’ll ever need! It’s simple –  the trick to this routine is, there IS NO ROUTINE. That’s right, you read that correctly. There is no routine. Instead, flout convention by regularly changing what you do with the baby each evening until the little darling doesn’t know whether they’re coming or going! The confusion will be enough to transport them into a sleepy mood. Gave them a bath the previous evening? They don’t need another one, do they? How dirty do babies get, seriously? No, forsake the bath and make them watch Hollyoaks with you instead. Then you don’t miss your favourite teen soap and the baby is educated at the same time, and won’t even need a bedtime story. Win.

When You Go to Bed

Now this is the tricky part. I totally advocate sleeping in the same room as your baby, it means when they cry in the night they’ll hear you shouting ‘Shut the fuck up!’ at them, whereas this may not be the case if you’re in a different room. When you’ve finished that third bottle of gin and there’s no Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food left in the house, it’s definitely bedtime for you, so my advice is to creep upstairs, quickly brush your teeth, and then creep into your room, where the baby will no doubt be restless and snuffling in their cot. Now if the baby wakes and sits up and sees you, it’s always best to say, ‘Hello, baby, hello my ducky wucky’ rather than just shushing it or ignoring it, because then the child knows that you love it and want to cuddle it, even though it’s the middle of the night. If the baby is soundly asleep and you still want to cuddle it, the best way to achieve this is to stub your toe on something and loudly say, ‘Shit fuck ow ow ow’ whilst hopping up and down and falling over things. Then when baby is awake, you can cuddle it and move onto the next step.

Bringing Baby into Bed With You

Ah, now this little practice is something I like to call ‘baby-wrestling’ and it is certainly popular in my household. Once the baby is in bed with you (and I definitely recommend having a single bed, it makes the baby-wrestling that bit more thrilling and dangerous) then there are several methods you can apply to ensure it goes back to sleep. Baby-wrestling is the most popular and effective. Basically it involves 3 simple moves:

• holding the baby’s arms down so it doesn’t flail around
• holding the baby’s legs down, ditto
• holding the baby close to your own body, pinioning arms AND legs at the same time

Now, babies can be wriggly little bastards, so I really suggest a tight grip here, and watch those heads – they’ll try anything to escape, and might even head butt you in the attempt! Bless them. I find it also helps to try shushing them at this point, rather than actually talking to them, and if you can get an edge of hysterical desperation in your voice as well, even better.

NOTE: If by this point, the baby seems wide awake and keen to play, may I suggest you indulge it. Keeping a bottle of gin under the cot is a good way of coping here.

Early Morning Manoeuvres

I’m assuming that the baby-wrestling has worked and your baby has finally fallen asleep gently cuddled up to you. By now you’ve realised that the baby is resting on your arm and in about 2 minutes time that arm will be full of pins and needles and completely unbearable. You have two options: a) suck it up, and lie awake till 6am – who needs two arms, anyway, or b) move the baby off your arm, waking it up in the process. Well, if you opt for b), there is something you can do: having slid the baby from your aching arm, find the most inconvenient position you can for the baby, which is also the most comfortable for it, and leave it there – guaranteed it will not wake up and what’s more, sleep the whole night through. This generally means the baby sleeping at right angles to you, so it’s feet are either in your ribs or your face, and if it moves at all, you get kicked and battered. Ease this minor incovenience by moving yourself to the edge of the bed, and try to get some sleep balanced on a sliver of mattress, while the baby snores away peacefully in the majority of the bed. Result.

Troubleshooting

By now, you’ll be worshipping my name in purpose-built shrines across the country, but there are still some sticky little issues to clear up, which I am more than happy to help with. These are the most troublesome, I find:

1) once assigned to your sliver of mattress, you are in totally the wrong place for the alarm clock light to shine in your eyes. The answer? Throw your pillow at it so it falls to the floor. If you’re lucky, the pillow will also drop ON it and absorb any residual light.

2) the baby wakes at the crack of dawn and wants to play. Now, conventional wisdom would suggest getting blackout blinds but I find these tend to work TOO well and we don’t get up till 3 in the afternoon. Instead, what I like to do is completely call the baby’s bluff, get up, take it downstairs, turn the TV on and bore it back to sleep with the breakfast news, which just plays on a loop until about 9am.

3) the baby is crying and won’t stop. Oh, I’ve heard all about ‘controlled crying’ but this seems a little unnecessary and cruel to me. What I like to do is, once I hear the baby crying on the monitor, switch it off and go down the pub. Invariably by the time I get back, I can’t hear any crying, and I’ve saved battery power on the monitor, too. Success!

Final Words of Wisdom

Really, people, it needn’t be so hard getting your child to sleep at bedtime. Just follow my advice and soon you’ll be laughing at all the other mums and dads who are still traipsing up and down the stairs each evening as their child whimpers and squawks from the comfort of their rooms. And if all else fails, there’s always earplugs. And gin.

Go on. You can thank me now.