Danielle and Marcello love their 2-year-old daughter, Mia, and 9-month-old daughter, Emily (nicknamed "Emmy"). The couple is just having one little issue: Neither of their daughters, especially Mia, can sleep on their own. Cameras in the nursery show Mia screaming, yelling, and crying out for her parent's bed in the middle of the night. Danielle and Marcello admit they have a hard time hearing their daughter sound so distressed. Most nights, they'll pick Mia up and let her sleep in their room.
"Between midnight and 2 a.m., she's screaming so loud that I am afraid she is going to wake Emmy up and I am afraid she is going to hurt herself," Danielle told ABC. "So at that point the only thing that consoled her [in the past] was giving her a bottle and bringing her into bed with us."
The couple, who wasn't sleeping either, hired sleep consultants from Dream Team Baby. Sleep experts Conner Herman and Kira Ryan came to the family's home for an overnight stay. They blacked out the windows of Mia's nursery and turned on a white noise machine. The two consultants slept in the same room as Mia. Then, came the hard part — Danielle and Marcello were not allowed to check in on Mia. Mia threw a fit the entire night — no one slept. The technique is called the "Cry-it-out" method that researchers in the journal Pediatrics and more recently, Flinders University in Australia believe is effective and not harmful to the child.
The first night was rough, but after two weeks of letting Mia cry it out, she could sleep in her room like a big girl.
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