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This Mom's Viral Bedtime Hack Is So Simple, Parents Everywhere Will Be Using It

If your baby is having trouble sleeping, this mom's viral bedtime hack may be exactly what you need to help your little one snooze throughout the night. Clever mom Laura Gerson shared the bedtime routine she does with her young daughter on The Motherload — a "supportive community and blog" based in the United Kingdom — and it quickly went very, very viral. In turn, she's received an outpouring of reactions from fellow parents because it's such a simple, yet brilliant idea.

Gerson's 11-month-year-old daughter Amelia was having trouble sleeping whenever her pacifier would fall out, as she shared on the official Facebook page for The Motherload recently. Gerson said that she would watch her baby girl on a monitor, struggling to find her pacifier at night, and this is when she came up with an idea to keep Amelia happy in her crib. Since Amelia was constantly searching for her pacifier, what if she was just surrounded by them? With more pacifiers within reach, Amelia could easily find what she was looking for. And so, her mother decided to scatter 10 of them in the crib as Amelia slept. Genius, right? You bet, since posting her bedtime routine, Gerson's pacifier idea has gone incredibly viral, being shared on various parenting sites here in the United States and across the pond.

But, before we get into Gerson's first-hand account of how her parenting hack was born and how it's worked for her thus far, keep in mind that she is from the United Kingdom, where they refer to pacifiers as dummies. Let's not get confused here.

Courtesy of Laura Gerson
Courtesy of Laura Gerson
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In Gerson's original online post, which caught the eye of thousands on The Motherload's Facebook page and even more when it was later shared on The Motherload's website, she wrote:

Weird bedtime routine that’s worked… Lol. Since my little one was about 3 months old she’s gone to bed with roughly 10 dummies in with her. Found that when she cried of a night all she wanted was a dummy then she’d go back off. Realized that if she had one to hand then she would just find it of a night, trial and error with her losing a few down the side but 99% of the time she feels around, finds a dummy, sticks it in and she’s sorted! Haven’t had to go into her of a night for about 8 months now…

When speaking with Babble about her discovery, Gerson discussed how she initially came up with the idea to load up her daughter's crib with pacifiers. "We’ve got a video monitor and we were watching her one night trying to find her dummy when she woke up and couldn’t find it," she told the site. "So I just put a couple in there the next night, and she lost one down the side of the cot. So over the next few nights just put more in there."

Gerson expanded on her genius pacifier idea in an interview with PopSugar as well, explaining that all her daughter seemed to want was her pacifier in order to "soothe her back to sleep." So, putting a bunch of pacifiers in her crib created a calm atmosphere for her little girl. Gerson told PopSugar that her daughter would even fall asleep with the pacifiers in her hands as well. "[Amelia] isn't a total dummy-fiend and doesn't even have them through the day really, but it really soothes her having them through the night, and having more in there makes it easy for her to find one and hold one (or two)," Gerson told PopSugar, adding that her daughter sleeps 12 to 13 hours each night.

There's a reason that this hack works well for many. According to the Mayo Clinic some babies are most at peace when they have something to suck on in their mouths. What's more, Jennifer Shu, M.D. told Parents that sucking on a pacifier can actually help prevent SIDS. "The periodic movement of your baby's mouth while sucking keeps him in a lighter state of sleep, so there is less of a chance that he will stop breathing," she explained to Parents. "Plus, having a paci in your baby's mouth helps to keep his airway open."

While some mothers have said they've already used this hack, as HuffPost reported, others responded by saying they hadn't thought of it yet and couldn't wait to try the tactic with their little ones.

There are so many reasons to give it a try, so, let it rain pacifiers! It might just work for you.

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