Sometimes when I lay awake at night, I come up with plans or ideas, and at that hour I always feel like anything is possible. Usually morning comes and another day begins and somewhere between the school drop offs and the baby classes the plan fizzles. But last night after I finished typing my post on my phone, I emailed it to my husband and I went to sleep. I woke up with a reply from him, “AMAZING!!! why are you doing this at 1:30 am??” With his encouragement, I created a blog and published my first post.

My family and friends were IMMEDIATELY supportive and here I am writing a second post. As I promised last night – here are my remaining modifications to 12 by 12.

Before I list them, I will give a very brief overview on the book’s main concepts.

Once a baby is at least 9 pounds, eats at least 24 oz in 24 hours and is at least 4 weeks old (different guidelines for twins and triplets) the training can start. The very first step of the book is to pick your 12 hour window that you want your baby to be in the crib at night – I chose 7 pm – 7 am. You then divide your day into 4 feeds, 7am, 11am, 3pm and 7pm. It is very tempting to start with the night feeds first, but you have to get your day set before you can start doing anything with night feeds.

Here is where a modification comes in – at the beginning of training I follow the book and I DO the feed AT 7pm, but a short while later I move the feed earlier and earlier so that my baby is in the crib at 7 pm, not eating at 7 pm. The time will differ for each baby and how long the baby takes to eat. The book says 6:45 pm last feed, but if I fed at 6:45, I would not be able to have my baby fed, changed into an overnight diaper, sleepsack (i LOVE the sleep sack) and in the crib all in 15 minutes.

The key is, and the book is very clear about this – you want your baby to be AWAKE when they go in the crib, so you need to give yourself enough time to have the nighttime routine done, including the feeding, and have the baby awake in the crib BY 7PM.

Modification: Once the baby has their day schedule set and the night feeds are reduced, Move the last feed early enough to have the baby in the crib by 7PM – don’t start the feed at 7PM.

When I started this post my baby was napping and my toddler playing and I thought I would have time to get through my modifications, but the day is getting away from me and I have to get ready for my son’s swimming lesson, so I will be back!

Food Log