Mom's Lullaby

But for Giordano's converts, it's not just about their own sleep. It's about giving their babies the first building block of life: the gift of the complete zonk-out. That's what Giordano tells them, from day one, and there is a comfort in that.

"If you just want to have a baby nurse or a night nurse where the goal is really 'I need to sleep,' this is not what having Suzy is about," Shipman says. "You're getting your child to learn how to sleep. . . . Sleep is so important. It's teaching your child a basic life skill."

A Cottage Industry

It's bath time in the Schneider household in Falls Church and Abigail is fussy. "Fussy" is that word people use as a euphemism for babies who won't stop crying or wailing or expressing some endless sense of frustration.

"I think maybe she's had some gas today," Abigail's mom, Donna Schneider, explains to Giordano. Abigail and her twin sister, Elizabeth, are 4 months old.

Giordano's work is essentially finished here, and the Schneiders will soon be sent off gently into slumber. For the first 11 weeks of their lives, Giordano -- or one of the extended family members or friends she has trained to help manage her burgeoning business -- spent four nights a week with the Schneiders (Donna is a producer at NBC; her husband, Paul, is a chef), working with the babies from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

That is not a cheap proposition -- Giordano's prices were $25 per hour for twins, $22 for singletons, but with increasing demand, she's planning to offer consulting or overnight care packages that can range as high as $2,910 per week. But even though Paul Schneider recently left his restaurant position to start his own home chef business, the couple believed it would be money well spent.

"We saw it as a good investment," says Paul Schneider, who hired Giordano under the old pricing schedule.

Let's face it: getting babies to sleep is a cottage industry. There is Ferberization -- let them cry, cry, cry until they learn. There are the co-sleeping advocates, who believe babies should be in bed with Mom and Dad for bonding purposes. There are people who believe in this schedule or that one, this feeding process, that response.

Giordano's goal is to teach the parents her process and let them learn how to implement it, though she's happy to do most of the night work for them as well. So for some families, she only does a consultation and a night or two of training; for others, she'll stay seven nights a week until the babies are trained.

According to Giordano, there are two basic tasks to accomplish before the big sleep can be achieved. The first is to shift babies to a schedule where they consume enough breast milk or formula during the day to sustain a night without feedings. The second is to teach the baby to self-soothe, so that he or she can get back to sleep without assistance, and even stay happily in the crib in the morning until mom or dad arrives for breakfast.

"The key is to just slow down the parents so they can have a better vision of the responsibility," Giordano says.

So there are feeding logs and plans based on a baby's weight and age. By about eight weeks, as long as a baby has passed the nine-pound milestone, Giardano shifts into what she calls "baby boot camp," when nighttime feedings are gradually spaced apart and phased out, and late-night and early-morning wakings are handled without the baby getting picked up and held. Instead she rubs the babies, pats their bellies, helps gently move them into more comfortable positions.