Nikki Bella is Sleep Training Baby Matteo Before 2 Months Old & The Internet is Freaking Out
New mom Nikki Bella — along with her identical twin and fellow new mom Brie Bella — has spent her early weeks of motherhood being totally transparent with her Instagram followers. But that transparency, let us remind y’all, should not be taken as a cue to butt into Bella’s parenting plans with your own unsolicited advice. That holds true regarding her choice to forgo childcare, and it holds true of her choice to start sleep training her newborn son Matteo Artemovich at a mere six weeks old.
But, of course, “butting out” of other people’s business is not the Instagram way.
Bella posted a sweet pic on Sunday of Mini Artem — er, baby Matteo — along with an update on his intro to sleep training.
A post shared by Nikki Bella (@thenikkibella) on Sep 13, 2020 at 11:14am PDT
“Mama introduce[d] Matteo to the first day of sleep training and I got the major Yo Ma Fuggedaboutit lol,” Bella wrote. But it wasn’t a total disaster (not like some of our first nights of sleep training — hi, guilty): “Once he realized it’s not so bad he was all smiles!” Bella added.
She also passed along info on which particular sleep training process she’s following: “Obsessed with @takingcarababies program!” she wrote. “Brie used it with Birdie and now Buddy and got amazing results and already is getting amazing results. Here’s to eventually sleeping through the night!!”
Commenters whizzed right past the fact that Bella’s nephew Buddy, who is practically the same age as Mateo, is already “getting amazing results” from the program and skipped right to the criticism: “Sleep training at 1 Mo is terrible,” wrote a commenter along with a sad-face emoji.
“Isn’t he too young for sleep training? Go with the flow at this age,” urged another.
“Little babies don’t sleep through the night. It’s normal,” insisted another.
But who’s right, Bella or the IG beasts? Spoiler: They all are! Because how to raise / feed / sleep train a baby is every parent’s unique choice! Ta-da.
“It’s clear that there’s no absolute right way to do it,” children’s sleep expert Dr. Jodi Mindell told SheKnows about sleep training. “If you look at every sleep training method, they all have the exact same mechanism… The mechanism is that that you want that golden moment of your child falling asleep on his or her own. How you get to that moment doesn’t seem to matter.”
And it’s clear that what works great for one baby can turn out an epic fail for another. We particularly love one of Bella’s commenters who shut down the “go with the flow” trolls:
“I ‘went with the flow’ as others are suggesting with my second,” she writes. “She is 5 and just now learned to put herself to sleep.” Eeeeesh. “The truth is, some babies need more help learning to go to sleep and stay asleep.”
Hear that, anti-sleep-training hordes? To each their own — and that goes for babies, too.
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