Help For Sleepless Parents

Sleep Training Big Business Fueled By Exhausted Parents

(CBS)  Sham and Dean Ansari are pediatric specialists. She delivers babies and he operates on them.

But they still couldn't get their own five-month-old son Jaden to sleep.

As CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, it takes them an average of three hours to get him to sleep.

Just when they thought he was out, it started all over again.

So they called in emergency help. Enter Los Angeles sleep specialists Jill Spivack and Jennifer Waldburger.

"I'm not as able to let him cry as my husband, so when I put him in the crib and he starts whimpering a little bit, I immediately pick him up and start again," says Sham Ansari.

"That is very typical," says Spivack.

Sleep training may sound silly but it's big, big business fueled by exhausted parents lining up to spend $500 for the program.

"Parents have said, 'I would pay a million dollars if I could just have a decent night's sleep,'" says Waldburger.

That's just where the Ansari's have found themselves.

"We were so exhausted we are barely able to function ourselves, we have nothing left at the end of the day," says Sham.

It was a wacky routine that included jazz lullabies, reading and bouncing on an exercise ball. Sometimes it lasted all night.

Asked who's in control here, Dean says: "Jaden is sort of running the show."

Call it baby's first therapist - a minute-by-minute schedule worked out just for Jaden, which included a little bit of crying time mixed with intervals of checking on Jaden but no touching

While to a lot of people it may sound like these parents are lacking common sense, Spivack says that's the not the case.

"It's not that they lack common sense, it's that they have big hearts," she says. "They love their children."

And who can blame them. For years so-called experts have advised letting baby set the schedule for feeding and sleeping. A growing number of sleep experts are advising a routine set by the parents is better.

"A child who isn't getting enough sleep isn't getting good sleep nutrition," says Waldburger. "A well rested baby is a happy baby."

For the Ansaris it took one week of hard work, but it worked.

"He's a completely different child," says his mother.

And now they have they'll have the "rest" of their lives.