We assembled the crib before she was born. She slept in it for fifteen minutes.

I run a site about baby sleep, so people assume my own children slept by the book. They did not.

We bought the crib early, put it together, made the bed. My daughter slept in it for fifteen minutes - and then not once for the next six months. Later it worked, but only for naps, only in winter, and only in a snowsuit with the window open. At night she slept next to me, for years.

I wrote the whole thing down because almost every parent has trouble with sleep and almost no one admits it. We blame ourselves twice: first for not having the willpower to get the baby into the crib, and then for the opposite - for fearing that not going to her will leave a mark. Half of those nights were made of those two fears.

If your crib worked from the first night, I would genuinely like to hear how. (The full story is in Russian.)