Sleep Now

I'm not certain I would ever have preferred any method of putting my daughter to sleep other than slowly swaying/dancing around our living room with her head nestled under my chin and me singing "Never Die Young" with James. But . . . there were those nights when I had to sit outside her door in order to keep her mother from going in to answer her heartbreaking cries of "Mooooooommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyy." Hey, I don't know where that advice came from, and I'm not sure whether I was any more in favor of it than my wife. I think I was more like the crew that was tasked with lashing Odysseus to the mast and stuffing their own ears with wax. Only no wax for Dad, and don't think a father's heart is any less torn by those baby siren cries.

If only the Dream Team had existed then. With a mission of "Creating a World of Great Sleepers . . . One baby at a time," here's what they have to say:

We know how confusing it is to be a parent these days--especially when it comes to the "right" way to get your baby to sleep. When our children were born we read an exhaustive number of sleep books, tried almost every sleep method in existence and found ourselves with babies who were mediocre sleepers.

After we finally "figured it out" (and exited the fog of sleep-deprivation) we realized that helping your child be a good sleeper can be simple and anguish-free. So, we formed Dream Team and dedicated ourselves to helping other parents figure out their child's sleep. The result? Well rested, happy children and parents who feel confident, recharged, and connected.

If you have a baby between 4 months and 2 years of age, you should check out their web site. If your babies have aged out of that bracket like mine, you should check it out just to see the most brilliantly innovative consulting gig I've seen yet (and to lament how much easier your life might have been if only they'd been around then). Co-founder and very smart mom Conner Herman is a colleague from my blissful days in the graduate English program at U.Va., but something tells me reading The Canterbury Tales aloud in Middle English at bedtime isn't what this is all about. Check it out.

(And hopefully, John DeVille will appreciate the title's nod to his inferior-to-The-Matrix-but-still-interesting Dark City.)