Welcome to today’s edition of the ongoing epic saga: Will Lydia Louise Kos ever sleep?

Here is the current situation: Lydia will *only* fall asleep if she is walked to sleep in her stroller.

So what do I do? I walk her to sleep in her stroller.

Twice a day, every day, I attach her car seat to the stroller, walk her to sleep, and bring the car seat in the house. During the day, I just leave her in the car seat while she naps. At night, I leave her in the car seat until I go to bed, and then I bring her into bed with me.

I’m trying to get my 10,000 steps a day anyway, so I don’t mind the walking. And with this method, Lydia is going down between 7:30-8:00pm and only waking up 1-2 times per night, which is a HUGE improvement for us.

The only problem is that I feel so guilty. Like, this can’t be the right way to deal with this. Like, I should not be reinforcing bad sleep associations. It cannot be good for her to spend so much time sleeping in her car seat. Right?

But, you see, I’ve tried every stupid piece of sleep advice I’ve ever gotten. I’ve sleep-trained a million times. I’ve done the same bedtime ritual for over a year. I’ve tried rocking her, and nursing her, and not nursing her, and keeping an iron-clad schedule, and doing calming activities, and laying down in bed with her, and sitting by her crib, and introducing a “comfort object,” and letting her stay up until she’s exhausted, and straight up letting her cry (which no longer works at all). What the hell else am I supposed to do?

My friend Lara says her parenting philosophy is “whatever works.” Oh my gosh, I hope Lara is right.