For the first three months of her life, Rada fell asleep easily at night. Then she had a fever, followed by a nursing strike. Several nights in a row, I sang and rocked her to sleep in my arms, then gently moved her into her bed. It was the beginning of a nightmare.

After she was well, each evening, I put her in her bed, hoping to break the habit of falling asleep in my arms. I read her fairytales and not-so-fairy ones, rocked her, sang to her, and when I got tired, my husband took over. And so it went for two or three hours – Rada fighting the sleep that weighed her eyelids, my husband and I growing tired and frustrated, until we gave up and I placed her in the sling where she fell asleep within three minutes. Soon, we were at the end of our rope, and I was turning every cyberstone for a solution.

Here’s what I found out: After each period of REM sleep, people slowly resurface near consciousness. At this time, still half-asleep, we make sure everything in our environment is ok. Unless we smell an odd odour, hear troublesome sounds or sense any other irregularity, we reposition ourselves and return to deep sleep. But imagine that, in the middle of the night, you stir and you find your pillow missing. You feel around for it, and discover you’re not actually in your bed, but on the kitchen floor. Now you’re fully awake and perplexed and possibly upset.

Basically, this is what was going on with Rada. She fell asleep in the warmth of my embrace, to the tune of a lullaby, sucking away on her soother and woke up alone in her bed, in the semi-dark and quiet bedroom, her soother missing (it fell off when she slipped into deep sleep). She had developed a certain set of sleep associations and they were all absent whenever she stirred.

I decided that I needed to teach Rada to fall asleep on her own in desired and realistic conditions. I placed her in bed at the same time every evening, following a nighttime ritual that consisted of a bath, followed by massage, dressing for sleep, feeding, playing some in bed, two songs, a good night kiss, lights out, night lamp on and I walk out of the room.

Yes, she cried. And I don’t know which was harder to bear – her cries of anger and disappointment or the sobs of resignation that ended them. But I stuck to the plan. I went back into the room at increasing intervals to reassure her that I was still here to love her and care for her, then made a point to leave while she was still awake. I checked in after three minutes, then after five. I was to go in 10 minutes later, but she had fallen asleep. The next night it took her a single check-in and 15 minutes to fall asleep. The third night she hardly protested. For the last 10 days, she has been falling asleep easily and quietly on her own. She’s grown to love her bedtime ritual, especially the songs, which she finds inexplicably funny. Now the last sound I hear before she goes to sleep is a happy squeal.