Mom's Lullaby

"I never let it escalate to the point where they actually wake up," she says.

She works with whatever schedule matches a family. Many want the standard 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. breakdown, or 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. She worked for a musician who wanted 11 p.m. to 11 a.m. so he could see his baby before bed despite his late hours. Parents who work long hours often like later bedtimes, so there is baby bonding time in the evening.

"My own feeling is that I would like to follow the baby rather than superimpose our needs on the baby," says T. Berry Brazelton, a child-care expert and the co-author of "Sleep: The Brazelton Way." "But on the other hand, I understand in working families, when both parents have jobs, the stress is so great that this is the way they try to preserve the parent-child relationship."

Most of Giordano's clients are parents who both work -- Shipman is planning to go back to ABC in early August; Schneider returned to work at NBC in early June.

Giordano also recognizes the value of her own sleep -- which takes place during daytime hours -- in the process. "Because I'm not tired," she says, "I don't make the mistakes people usually make."

Not that it's always easy. Out of her bath, Abigail is pajama'd first and she wants her bottle -- or maybe it's the gas, or maybe it's something else? Giordano walks her, whispers to her, lets her have a pacifier. ("I call them the necessary evil," Giordano says.) But that makes her drift toward sleep -- without her bedtime feeding -- so Giordano takes it away, and Abigail is mad, mad, mad.

"It's tough, I know, I know," she whispers to the red-faced infant. "Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhhh." She pats Abigail's leg. "It's a tough job being a baby. It's a tough job. I understand that. There you go. I know."

She rubs Abigail's stomach.

"She does have gas, I can feel it," Giordano says.

"And she's so tired," mom says.

This is the delicate point, the time when the parents worry. What if the magic leaves when Suzy leaves? Abigail and Elizabeth have been doing pretty well. Asleep by 10 every night, up around 8:30 or so. Maybe not quite 12 hours, but far better than the new parents had hoped.

"We really didn't know what we were doing," Donna Schneider says. "Suzy told us that the first four weeks would be this, then four, five and six would be this. . . . When you're at the beginning and you think that they're not ever going to sleep through the night -- "