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Writer's pictureLindsay Leighton-Smith

Red Light Green Light sleep training at it's finest...

So you would think we would have the sleep training thing down by the fourth kid right? Yeah, well I thought we did too. After the third child, she was amazing, all we had were these sound machines that blocked out all the sound. She slept like an angel in her Doc-a-toc, which I swear by to this day! How hard could it be we thought? She was an easy sleeper, there's no way we can't do one more and have him sleep through the night. Well, the joke was on us! We should have known better that everything was going to be different with this one, especially since he came an entire month early.


He wanted nothing to do with the Doc-a-Toc that the previous little was obsessed with, we had to buy her the bigger version of it! I resorted to what I had done with my older girls and turned his room into a spa: I had lullaby music going, humidifier going, sound machine, black-out curtains, everything but the kitchen sink I threw at this kid. Nothing was working...this mom and dad were coming to their wits end, oh it was ugly at our house. I finally listened to the program Taking Care of Babies Sleep Training, and finally, we found some success.


Fast forward to the last couple of months, my husband is working nights on patrol and I'm working his days off, so we are two ships passing in the night. Our five-year-old will coyly ask every night if "Daddy is working" That's code for "Mom I'm coming in your bed tonight." This nighttime ritual has continued for months, lord we might be going on a year now. We recently switched the littlest out of a crib and into a toddler bed, and well that was a brilliant move because now, I have two coming in in the middle of the night, one sleeping in my bed, and the other asking "Mommy you sleep in my Chair?" So cute, you think, but when you are working nights like my husband and I, and getting old like us, you start to see stars and little leprechauns dancing in the middle of the night and wake up barely able to move since you were cuddled in a chair all night. One night, I think I walked back and forth from my son's room to my room and my daughter had just climbed right in and made herself comfortable. I thought to myself this has got to stop! That is when I searched on Amazon for sleep aids and found the Hatch and ordered two-STAT!


I tried explaining to the littles, as we call them, that when the light is red we don't get out of bed, and when the light is green we are good to go! We went over and over this, and I thought for sure, oh they got this! They understand this, life as we know it is going to change! I had found the secret. My husband is going to think I have saved the day!


The day had come when they arrived, I set them up, which for the not-so-tech savvy, was fairly easy. I connected them to our wifi and set the timer for when I wanted the "wind down" to begin. For us, that was just an estimate, because in this house these kids can fall asleep anywhere from at the dinner table to 8 pm. The mood lighting was set, game on kids I have you figured out! This mama was ready for a full night's rest, her players were prepped, and the game plan was set in motion. I was ready!


And then something unexpected happened...they both froze in the moment and forgot what red light meant, and got scared and thought that a monster was going to come out of their light. Wait? What? My husband laughed in my face and said, "What do the directions say now?" Ummm....monster what are you guys talking about? So back to square one, we went. Guys, no monsters are coming out of the red light, green light still means you can get out of bed. Well, the five-year-old wasn't convinced, so now we have rainbow colors in her room overnight, it basically looks like a lava lamp, and at 0700 it turns green. The three-year-old, well I'm still sitting in his room overnight, despite the red light, he doesn't care.


I think if we had started using the Hatch products sooner when they were younger this would have been very successful, but the only red light it works for is us not leaving my son's room. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, the five-year-old loves the rainbow colors, and she stays in her bed about 75% of the time, so I'll call that a success. There are so many options with this sound machine you can have music, lullabies, storytime, the time on the bottom, and a variety of sounds for sleeping, and you can time it to go off at certain times each day. You are also able to program it, to not go off on the weekends as well, which I find comical because what little one understands the concept of sleeping in on the weekend? We had a glitch one night, my husband came to me and said the hatch is telling a story and should be making sounds for sleep. With a twittle of my nose and a click of my heels, I was able to easily switch it over from the nighttime story time to the sounds of the night from my phone. All in all although not entirely successful for us, I bet for those who are just starting that this would be very successful, and you wouldn't have any monsters come out of yours. My family is giving the green light to the Hatch system and also a very comfortable chair and blanket to go with the toddler in his room. Cheers, my loves!






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