WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Training babies to sleep through the night

For the first time, 4-month-old Wes Ohlandt is going to sleep without his parents rocking or swaddling him.

"This is definitely the most crying we've seen," dad Alex said.

These new parents want him on a sleep schedule because mom Cristin is heading back to work.

"Getting up in the middle of the night is really what gets to me," she said.

So they hired a group of sleep professionals. "Dream Team Baby" comes into the home and helps infants and toddlers learn to fall asleep on their own and soothe themselves back to sleep during the night. Consultants organize a daytime napping and feeding schedule, so a child will be sleepy at bedtime and not hungry during the night. They also create the right sleep environment.

"What we want him to do is bond with one favorite sleep toy," said Conner Herman of Dream Team Baby. "We always have a white noise machine in the room... temperature is between 68 and 72 degrees."

There's lots of crying but Wes is asleep within 12 minutes.

"Cry it out is a method that parents use that assumes tears are going to teach your baby," Herman explained. "That is not what we're doing here... We're going to teach the parents how to interact with him, how to know if something is wrong so they can go in."

Wes gets up a few more times but gets himself to sleep again.

"Alex and I just tried not to cry and let him kind of work it out and he fell back to sleep," Cristin Ohlandt said.

And one week later, everyone is sleeping through the night.

Those consultations run from $650 to $1,700.

Sleep training is not recommended for babies under 4 months old. And parents should always talk to their pediatrician before they start training.