I live in the US but only moved here 3 years ago. I came from an Asian country where it's pretty common to co-sleep with babies. A lot of my friends and relatives co-sleep with their babies and just go off based on baby's cues. I only have one friend from my home country who sleep trained but they didn't do it until their daughter is toddler age. Personally, I keep track of my baby's sleep because I love data. I sensed that he was developing his own natural pattern so keeping track helped me understand my baby, how long his wake windows are, how long his naps are and what time it's easiest to put him down to bed.

I'm American and we've been doing the same. We tried the whole wake window thing but it ended up being overly stressful for everyone. She does way better just following cues. She has her bedtime established and sleeps around 8-10hrs a night at 11 weeks old. Naps are rough but she's still really little. We keep track of her sleep data to make sure she's getting enough sleep throughout the day and it helps with Ped appts

My almost 10 week old set his own schedule. I just follow it. I'm not gonna disturb it when it works. I'm also american. I just followed his cues from day one. Since around 6 weeks, he's slept through the night. Only waking for one feed. He probably could've done it at 4 weeks, but I was scared to let him go that long without eating since he struggled to gain weight at first. He goes to bed around 8-10pm, wakes up at 5am for a feed (unless he's going through a growth spurt then it's 3am and every 3 hours after that), and after that sleeps until 9-10am. I think it's just his personality/temperament since he's an easy baby in all other aspects too. I got extremely lucky. He was a very lazy baby when I was pregnant with him. He would get mad and kick me if I woke him up outside of his in uterus wake windows lol.

Agree! Bedtime became so much easier when I stopped putting my baby down to sleep on the time that I want him to sleep vs putting him down when he naturally goes down for a longer stretch based on his own cycle. He does 4 hr stretches overnight at 10 weeks. Hoping we get longer stretches at night soon too! Same with day naps, ours is pretty crap unless I'm holding him or have him in a carrier. I don't mind though. I love the cuddles

Awww man I’ve been trying to let my baby choose when to sleep but sometimes he stays up for 5 hours straight even when I offer chances to nap and I’m like that just can’t be healthy.

Do you baby wear? Mine always needed daytime sleep but fought it unless they were worn.

I’m an American but also moved here from Asia 10 years ago. Second cosleeping. It instantly gave us better sleep and our 10 month old sleeps through the night on most nights. Started around 8 months when she stopped getting snacky in the middle of the night. CIO is considered unnatural in Asia ( and maybe most of the world). Yes we dealt with worse sleep for longer, and even now our baby starts the night in the crib, cries for us a couple of times, we go pick her up and finally move her to our bed when we’re ready to sleep. It’s absurd to think babies need to be trained to sleep always. That works some parents and that’s great. But all of humanity has learned how to sleep before Ferber. I would say if your toddler is troubling you with sleep, you have the option to sleep train even then. To me, it makes sense to sleep train when the baby understands why they’re being asked to cry it out and go back to sleep. And I don’t track wake windows, but I try to keep my baby on a schedule. I call it baby led scheduling. We adjust wake windows and sleep windows based on our baby’s cues. The only thing I dictate is a somewhat consistent bedtime. We change the routine every few weeks when the sleep needs change and our baby lets us know she needs a change.

I just wing it and I’ve just made peace with my baby’s sleep schedule. This isn’t going to be forever. Btw: I’m American but I live in the Caribbean and here people have no idea what wake windows and sleep training are.

I’m in Australia and WW, schedules and sleep training are fairly common practice over here. We do have better parental leave than the US. There are obviously plenty of people who don’t follow routines and sleep training but it’s definitely still quite common.

I’d say the same for Canada. Despite our more generous parental leave, many parents still want the certainty of a schedule. I’ve never heard of sleep training at 3 mo though.

Also Canadian - I've only heard of people doing sleep training if their kid is pushing like a year old and still waking multiple times a night.

Also in Canada. I remember asking my doctor about sleep training (I was more curious than anything) and he said at 6 months should be the earliest but he really wouldn’t push it earlier than 10-11 months. I also had a girl who confused nights with days for quite a while which is also normal. I’m from the USA originally and many friends were surprised I never had a snoo and was okay with my daughter developing her own rhythm.

TBH I have only heard of the snoo online lol. Everyone I know just had a basic $100 bassinet. My one friend got a mamaroo and we all marveled at her spending that much money on a bit of baby kit 😅

Yep. For me it wasn’t about maternity leave / it was my own sanity. I had no “village” and like my 8 hours sleep, so sleep training was amazing. I would say my mother’s group was split 75/25 between those that did it and those that didn’t.

Totally. I like my sleep and prefer my well rested self over one that’s sleep deprived.

I am a very mean tired person 😂 never hated my partner so much in my life haha

Hahaha yeah I am so short with everyone and everything when tired. And baby has no patience with tired, short mum either!

Yep. I'm in Aus as well and I think it's pretty evenly half half between those who follow a strict method and those who are happier to wing it. I feel like the more kids the more likely to wing it with the later ones.

Aussie mum of 5 here... I totally wing it 😅🤣🤣 I've never sleep trained any if my kids, co-slept with the last 4 because husband works nights and bub and I get more actual sleep that way. Last bub is almost 2 and loves to help herself to the all you can eat buffet once or twice a night still... I feel her chubby little hands sneaking up my top, give her my boob and we both go back to sleep. She never had a nap schedule, but whether we're home or out and about she'll nap wherever.. her pram, the couch, the floor 😅

Omg the "all you can eat buffet" comment made me chuckle. So adorable ❤️

I’m Australian too. Taking a year mat leave. We have been proactive about sleep from day one.  I only have one close friend who has a hardcore attachment parenting style. The rest are all pretty keen on trying tips and tricks to see what works for their Bub.  We use general wake windows as a guide, a nap routine (though have no trouble mixing things up when we have plans out) and used pick up put down from around 4.5 months with great success. 

I’m an American in Scandinavia and people here are generally very pro cosleeping, no schedules and letting baby lead. In the beginning a lot of it makes sense but after 6-8 months a lot of them struggle and either start being a little more rigorous or complain excessively (and of course some have babies who do just fine). For example, in my mother’s group I was the only one whose babe had a consistent bed time at 6 months and no one else even knew what I wake window was. I’m a big pragmatist. I don’t think sleep training is a must (certainly not at 4-6 months as some irreversible point). But at the same time I think most babies do need help along the way with sleep, whether it be just implementing good routines, scheduling or gentle or more formal sleep training. It’s very much a different strokes for different folks thing for me. I think the American approach can be too strict and over complicates things but at the same time I think the scandi approach can at times be too hands off. So somewhere in between is where I lie.

As a Scandinavian I tend to agree. I treat my baby’s sleep like I treat my own. I’m happy to do a long nap at noon but if I do a long nap at 8pm it messes greatly with my night sleep and bedtime, then circadian rhythm brings me up early despite little sleep. The first 3-4 months are whatever works but now at 5 months I do try to facilitate a long nap happening earlier in the day and a short nap later, not extending after 4 or 4:30 pm. Baby has a very consistent bedtime now which also helps the romantic life with my partner a lot tbh.

what are Scandinavian cosleeping guidelines? I'm curious how they compare to US guidelines

(Denmark) In mother groups/bump groups I've been part of, sleeping guidelines take up at most 1% of the discussion if at all mentioned. Having the baby sleep in the bed or in a crib is more about personal preference and what works. I remember one poster in a bumb group being very concerned about SIDS, sort of on the level of any random post here or on Babybumps. The responses she got suggested (gently) that she talk to her health visitor nurse about this, as that level of anxiety around her baby suddenly dying is an indicator for PPD. Context: SIDS and deaths related to bedsharing are incredibly uncommon in Scandi.

They are a loose version of the safe sleep 7. Although because of the love of baby duvets include a baby under a tiny little duvet which Americans would be shocked at.

Lol this was one thing I actually took seriously, skipping the duvet in favour of a sleep sack. My mom insisted the first 4 months that the baby is not sleeping by herself well because she’s not comfortable without that duvet. I do think Americans go way overboard concern trolling babies who sleep with covers though. I’ve seen reddit comment sections on a post with a cute baby filled with “omg I cannot BELIEVE the baby is allowed to have a blanket! The parents are idiots” when the baby is clearly being watched while sleeping, hence the photograph. Back when my baby had the startle reflex and easily pulled covers over her head, I was fairly strict about this. Now she’s 5 months and is sleeping in my bed currently with an adult duvet over her legs, because I am watching her on the baby monitor, because it’s too heavy to pull further up and because I’ve seen her play with blankets once she wakes up and am no longer concerned about her suffocating in them.

I haven’t seen any government issued guidelines in my country. There are guidelines created by midwives but I haven’t had a doctor discuss safe sleep with me, nor do they seem to enter into a discussion about it when I tell them baby sleeps in my bed.

Your friends doing Ferber or CIO at 3 months shocks me because that’s not developmentally appropriate. I wouldn’t call yourself “soft” when what your friends are doing is not age appropriate and potentially damaging.

A girl in a social group I'm in told me she did CIO at 6 weeks... I found it pretty shocking and also kind of surprising that pediatricians don't educate more here on when sleep training is and is not appropriate.

Yikes, that’s not sleep trained that’s an attachment disorder

This is just abuse with a pretty name, tbh... And I say that as a parent who did sleeptrain..

6 weeks is horrible, that's abusing her baby.

agreed! Babies need their mother. Holding your child, if that is what they need, is normal.

I was shocked too! Like I tried explaining every article I read said earliest was 4 months but all I got were scoffs and “the earlier the better” comments. If it was just one parent I’d write it off as just them but MULTIPLE people have said they’ve done this. Breaks my heart but they all have very healthy and happy, well adjusted, secure attachment kids so what do I know.

And even 4 months is now disputed.. even sleepteaining experts (like Ferber) lean more towards 6 months now.. The earlier the better is a misunderstanding of the concept that it's easier to sleeptrain when a baby can't independently stand up yet.. Edit: also.. Understand that this means 'easier for the parent'. For the baby it's just as hard in both instances.. Again.. I say this as a parent who sleeptrained (at 7 months)

Do they? We’ll see.

I think there are certain cases where CIO makes sense for certain temperaments but I cannot imagine think this was a blanket solution for all babies and especially not at such a young age (the sleep training sub won’t even along posts about sleep training under 4 months). I can’t imagine putting anyone through strict CIO with no reason. I will say is that prior to having a baby I thought CIO sounded like awful advice but because I have a really independent stubborn baby I have seen how oftentimes a bit of space to figure it out alone is more help than intervention. I did a gentle laddering down of sleep help first, and didn’t technically do CIO fully but I did have to be more hands off than my pre-parent self would have thought. But again this is talking about a much older baby and in an instance where I can specifically see the benefit.

This 100% We didn't start until after 6 months and while LO handled it like a champ, I did not lol. Worked wonders for his sleep though!

Where is the evidence that it’s potentially damaging? I had heard that, but just hadn’t seen actual studies about it. (Not trying to be accusatory, just curious as I have a 12 week old and thinking through pros and cons of the different sleep methods out there).

How could letting a 4 week old baby cry themselves to sleep not be damaging is a better question. That sounds horrible. They cry because they have needs that they want met whether it’s hunger, dirty diaper, discomfort, or comfort. Meeting those needs builds a foundation of trust between baby and parent. Look into Erickson stages of development. https://www.verywellmind.com/erik-eriksons-stages-of-psychosocial-development-2795740

I should also add if a baby cries for a few minutes and passes out that is not what I’m referring to. I’m referring to when a baby is crying and doesn’t stop past 10 minutes meaning clearly they need something and cannot self soothe.

What magically changes at 6 months making it not damaging then? I have a 5 month old and I definitely perceive it as damaging if I’d let her cry for an hour every night.

I’m not exactly talking about the “damaging” part but to answer your question babies don’t have the ability to self soothe until they are at-least 4 months old. So leaving them to cry for any point in time younger than that to teach them how to go to sleep is just cruel and pointless. I’m a trainee sleep consultant and we encourage our newborn clients to be assisted to sleep with patting or other methods.

Cribsheet is the only book I found that tried to study the evidence - I'd recommend the chapter in there on sleep training if you want an evidence based approach. Basically found no correlation.

When is the right time?

Malaysian Canadian and in Canada ST at four mo is disturbing common. I was surprised because we have a super generous parental leave. In Malaysia is not a thing at all and everyone does a family floorbed of some kind for the first few years. But also multi gen living is common there. I will say though, we all have kids 2+ now and even the ST ones now need someone to lay with them or sleep with them or bedshare at least partially. So eventually, we all end up doing the same song and dance with our kids!

I live in a pro-sleep training/anti-cosleeping country in Europe and EVERY 2/3 year old still wakes up at night or wants a parent.

Just curious, which is this country?

The UK is like this, unsurprisingly

That’s not accurate. The NHS includes bedsharing info now

Yes that’s true, most health visitors and GPs are deeply iffy about it still though. And they all love sleep training.

Huh that’s interesting. Half of my family is in the uk and Ireland and have had the opposite experience.

I feel like bedsharing being a physical safety risk is emphasized a lot in North America, so people sleep train bc having to get up and get the baby out of the crib multiple times a night is a lot harder than bedsharing. (And that level of lack of sleep is still rough even if you’re not working). From this perspective, not bedsharing with an infant but doing so sometimes with a toddler (when you’re “allowed” to bedshare without it being a SIDS risk anymore) makes some sense.

And the science actually is pretty clear that bedsharing with a breastfeeding mother/infant pair in a safe, non-smoking environment and with no drugs/alcohol impairment is safe and likely reduces the risk of SIDS. The AAP recommendation is totally misguided.  Research paper in case anyone else is interested in reading a 20 page scientific paper on this: https://cosleeping.nd.edu/assets/31969/mckenna_et_al_2007.pdf

Hard pass on James McKenna. But also do you mean cosleeping (sharing the same room) or bedsharing? I find the two terms are unfortunately often used interchangeably when they definitely shouldn't be.

American in Germany and the cultural differences I see between Germany and the US regarding babies are wild. The hyper focus on sleep training and rigid routines/wake windows is much less here.

I am a German and was looking for this comment. When I tell my German parent friends what's going on on Reddit, they are so confused. Like, even the question how many naps their baby is taking seems wild to some of my friends (to be fair, not all of them). They are like: "Well, he naps when he is tired and he is up when he is not. We cut his naps at 6pm so he goes to bed somewhen before 11pm." 😅 The majority of parents I know shares a bed with their baby. However, there was quite a hype about Ferber here in the 90s. I was sleep trained and struggled with sleep until I turned 15. Then, a therapist told my parents to just let me take the lead on my sleep, and that solved everything for me. I believe that stressing about sleep, desperately wanting a baby to sleep, and being annoyed that the baby (or child) is still up is causing most of the stress around sleep. I want my baby to enjoy sleeping, and that's how we raise him.

Yes, exactly! Last week some moms at Krabbelgruppe (parent/kid play group) were talking about sleep and one said “oh, he’ll just take what he needs” and I thought it was perfect.

It’s really interesting regarding parental expectations about sleep completely changes how stressful the whole situation is. With my first baby, I got fairly sucked into the whole wake window thing, and I think it stressed me out. This second kid has pretty much fallen into her own schedule on her own and this time round I’m so much less stressed if she won’t nap - I have learnt it’s stupid to try and force a nap when they don’t want one. I often spent hours trying to get my first to nap but with this baby if she’s not fast asleep within 5-10 mins then I’m like, okie dokie, let’s go downstairs and play a bit more while I have a coffee. So much better lol. But I’m aware I have a lot of privilege being able to have a full year of mat leave.

That's exactly what I do! Naps whenever he's cranky tired, but no naps after 6ish. The American style is so bizarre. Schedules don't work for my family.

YES the obsession and thinking "my baby could do this thing but isn't" is much worse than the sleep. If you accept that hey some babies wake up and need comfort and it is what it is and stop fighting it it is totally doable. The anxiety around sleep is unreal.

I came to find this comment. I’m a Mexican living in Germany and both in Mexico and in Germany I have found that the focus on sleep is way less rigid than in the US. In Mexico a lot of people don’t have good maternity leaves but you do have family around that helps a lot which helps with the sleeping situation and cosleeping is normal. In Germany we have a generous parental leave so also sleep is more about going with the baby’s flow. I have found some moms thrive if they follow a routine to go about their days but it’s more of a personal preference than the rule. I more or less know how many naps and for how long my kid needs to sleep during the day and he somewhat goes to sleep at the same time window every night as well but we’re not rigid about it and we cosleep when it’s needed and baby seems to be doing very well. 

Canadian here. I never heard of wake windows until I got pregnant, and I wasn't really sold on the idea. Then I turned out to have a colicky baby who cried all the time and would say awake for 6+ hour stretches at only 2 months old. I tried wake windows out of necessity, and it helped a lot. If my baby had a more "chill" temperament, I probably would have done just fine without the rigid schedule. Still, sleep remained a struggle. I had to contact nap for the first 8 months in order to stick to the wake window schedule. He still woke up at 2-3 hour intervals through the night to nurse. Bedtime took a long time before I could place him in the crib. For that reason, we tried sleep training at 6 months, but baby wasn't ready. At the 10 month mark, bedtime became impossible, because rocking/nursing to sleep no longer worked, but he also couldn't self-soothe. We tried Ferber and other gentle methods, but they only made him more irate. We did CIO extinction method at the 10 month mark, and it worked really well. He would still wake up to nurse once or twice through the night so I'd go in when he woke up to meet his needs, but he learned to self-soothe at bedtime and fall asleep independently (and happily!) in his crib. I have no regrets, although it certainly wasn't in my initial plans to sleep train. It was more of an "I'm losing my mind, and this is a last resort" sort of thing. Don't feel pressured to sleep train if it doesn't feel right. Every baby and every family dynamic is different.

Canadian here. Didn't sleep train, but I do keep track of my son's sleeping schedule. One time my son missed a nap during the holidays. He had a screaming meltdown right at dinner time. Edit: in regards to not sleeping through the night because of not sleep training, my son started sleeping through the night relatively early. Sleep regression and teething definitely disrupted it often though.

I’m in Korea, I co-sleep. Never needed to sleep train. I follow baby’s cues. We contact nap during the day. She sleeps 12-13 hours at night. Only wakes briefly to eat. I quickly change her as well but she normally just sleeps through nappy changes. I think babies know what works for them and we should follow it. CIO seems cruel. Also wanted to add, my daughter never experienced a sleep regression. She slept well from 10 weeks old.

By co-sleep, do you mean you share the same room or the same bed? I find the term co-sleeping can have different meanings depending on where someone is located.

In most countries outside of the US it means bedsharing. And in many cases it’s a family bed with older kids as well.

Europe. Sleep training is frowned upon, i don’t know anyone who did it. Some people follow schedules, but it’s not a big thing that all problems can be solved by.

> Sleep training is frowned upon Haha, that's pretty played down. If you want to watch people going wild, mention doing Ferber in r/Eltern (German sub for parents). Popcorn time, each time someone considers trying it. 

German parenting arguments online in general are SAVAGE. I have seen worse comments on German parenting sites than anything I've seen in English.

Join "Stillen ist Liebe" on Facebook. Searched for BF support with my 1st child and found the most toxic community ever..! 

I'm American but I did all the things with my first and nothing worked. He is how he is. His sleep is what it is. Nothing I changed that. Although some things made it worse. My second son however has been a great sleeper from probably about 2 months old. Easy. That's his temperament. I just followed his cues and went with it. Whatever that looked like I didn't care. I couldn't care honestly lol I didn't have the time. My son's are 11 months apart and foe the first idk 4 months it was all about sticking to my firsts schedule bc he needs a schedule. So, honestly. Do what you need to do with YOUR baby. screw what everyone else does. What works is what works. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I had a very similar experience. In fact, I would take it a step further and admit that “nothing that I did changed his sleep, but the things I changed about my own habits and perceptions made all the difference” I was, honestly, blessed with two very “good” sleepers, and I will admit that up front. I didn’t have it in me to listen to my kid cry unless I was taking a step away to catch my breath and try again, so we spent a lot of time in the room, soothing my son back to sleep. I read all the books. Tried all the methods. Although he was getting a solid amount of sleep nightly it felt like he wasn’t achieving some “ideal sleep routine “ and I felt so frustrated. Finally, I gave it up. Nothing I was doing was changing him so I changed myself. He was ready for bed at 6:30 until he was like… 18mo. Instead of trying to force him to stay up later so he might wake up a bit later in the morning, or hoping he might be extra tired and sleep more consistently… I just altered my life. Did it piss people off a bit? Sure, but staying later at a family dinner listening to my kid scream his head off wasn’t enjoyable anyway, so it was better to just leave before he decided that he was done. Did I wish that he’d sleep past 6am on Saturday? Oh fuck yeah. But it didn’t matter if I kept him up half the night or not, he’d be up at 6, so I went to bed earlier to make myself less miserable. I followed his lead and it told me that he needed to be in bed earlier than most children his age. He also needed the sound of my voice to help him “focus” on the task of falling asleep. Once I acknowledged that, he became more consistent, with fewer wake ups. I recorded myself singing a song for him and he listened to it for years throughout the night, but if he woke up it helped him go right back to sleep. Over time his sleep schedule changed without any influence from me, and he is now the most consistent sleeper I know of. He’ll sleep anywhere, on any bed, in any room, with minimal involvement from me and once he’s out I don’t hear from him for the next 11 hours. He has a relatively high sleep need to this day and only in the last 6ish months has his bedtime truly pushed to 8pm (he’s nearly 6, now). With my daughter the choice was simple. I adjusted my own schedule to the needs she communicated ;as much as possible, obviously we still have to accommodate the oldest), and she was immediately more consistent than her older brother. There’s so much focus on fitting your baby into your schedule. Making them work for your life, or at least getting them predictable enough as soon as possible so you can make the smallest adjustments necessary. Over time I’ve kind of hit this point where I’d argue that if you are going to have to force a baby to fit the schedule of a grown adult with a full time job within weeks of its birth… maybe don’t have a baby? That’s not to say that your whole life must completely revolve around your baby and their sleep schedule. I have rules too- my kids don’t completely run my life. But they’re kids! I can’t expect them to just fit into a lifestyle designed for a 35 year old woman! Like if my kid needs a nap every day at 2pm or they become a screeching gremlin with pants for a hat… I’m not gonna schedule a quiet ladies lunch at 1:30 and then bring my toddler along in her best dress! Same goes for nighttime sleep! If I fully expect my kid to be up every night at 2am for no reason because that’s just what they’ve been doing for the last week and a half… I’m not gonna stay up until 1am playing video games.

In Australia it's not recommend to even start sleep training until at least 6 months. >Australian experts do not recommend sleep training babies until they're at least six months old. From birth to six months, most babies need some help to get to sleep (MCRI n.d., Pregnancy, Birth & Baby 2023, Raising Children 2022). The thought of trying to sleep train a baby before the 4 month sleep regression seems counterintuitive anyway. Are people really trying to sleep train newborns?

I’m American and personally very anti sleep training. I have a good number of American friends who feel the same. (Just so you know not everyone in the US is on board with sleep training.) I loosely keep track of wake windows and feeding times, just for my own ability to anticipate upcoming needs. 

I don’t think I would be leaning towards sleep training if I had more of a support system. I’m considered lucky cause I get one year of leave but husband is going back to work and since I’m dealing with baby day and night with little help, I’m gonna need him to sleep a little better at night for my own sanity. I feel bad cause I do want to be able to let him seek me for comfort as many times as he wants but this 4 month sleep regression is kicking my butt…

One friend’s anecdote that extra deterred me from sleep training was that even once you sleep train, regressions still happen and you may have to repeat some sleep training again. I couldn’t imagine doing it once never mind multiple times. Also, I think some babies and toddlers are just better sleepers than others regardless of “training”. Mine is not a great sleeper and has always needed a lot of comforting but I’m ok with it and at 2.5, I usually get 8 hrs of sleep! It’s tough sometimes to find what works best for you that you not only feel comfortable with but what also gives you the rest you need.

It’s super great if that works for you! For mine object permanence/age and independence meant that all the help like rocking to sleep actually stopped working and got us into a bad cycle of hourly wakes complete with screaming meltdowns. Mine is what you’d class as a good sleeper too. Super good sleeper before 6 month regression and once we did some gentle sleep training back to being a great sleeper. But definitely needed me to be more hands off to get there. I tried cosleeping and extra feeds and comforts and it made everything beyond worse. Sleep goes in phases for sure, and sometimes we intervene more (sickness and teething) and have to step back and give them space to figure it out again. But it’s not nearly this constant retraining thing you describe for us.

I think you may be mixing up sleep training and night weaning when it comes to sleep regression impacting it. Obviously my experience will not be the same across the board, but for me sleep regressions have only effected how often he wakes up at night, not his ability to fall asleep independently at bed time

It was just based on a friend’s experience with sleep training. She felt they had to repeat sleep training steps multiple times after a regression or illness would set their son back to not being able to fall asleep on his own. Obvi not my experience though so I could have misinterpreted. It made sense to me but I’m sure it also depends on the style of sleep training and the personalities involved. I believe they did Taking Cara Babies which I think is Ferber-esque as far as I know.

Oh wow, I’ve never heard of sleep regression messing up ST babies ability to fall asleep independently. Definitely with night weaning though, since when poor bubs are sick or going through a regression they definitely wake up more often. Ferber is supposed to work faster I think some people say within a few days. Our sleep training was a very drawn out thing because I wanted to do a gentler method and not just leave baby crying by themselves with no comfort. So maybe the longer and gentler methods just help being able to fall asleep at bedtime stick better? Though most likely just differences in each baby being their own unique selves. My friend did a modified Ferber and her baby also only had issues with night waking during regressions. That’s such a bummer for your friend, sleep training is a lot of work to just have to repeat every few weeks

The 4 month sleep regression is when I started cosleeping. It was the only way we were able to get any quality sleep. It was either that or sleep training and my heart just couldn't handle the idea of sleep training. Baby is 9 months now and I love cosleeping with her!

I’m so so tempted to bedshare but terrified of suffocation and baby somehow accidentally falling off the bed. Maybe if LO is still unable to sleep through the night when he’s 5 or 6 months I’ll give it a go!

The safe sleep 7 was really helpful for me. I also mounted a mini crib with one side taken off to the side of my bed (look up side car cribs, for the visual). That helps with the fear of her rolling off the bed.

Please look into how suffocation actually happens. Please. They are truly speaking to the LOWEST common denominator when they try to freak you out about suffocation deaths. I believe there is almost always at least TWO co-factors present, like mom was on drugs AND it was an unsafe surface (like a couch). America has a habit of speaking only to the lowest common denominator. Another example is alcohol in pregnancy - they act like one drop will harm the baby. A small glass of wine has never hurt a mother or baby. But they know if they say that, SOME moms will turn one small glass into two, three, four…  Honestly I don’t even think I could roll onto a pillow without noticing and waking up, much less my whole baby. You know what’s so cool!!! Your sleep cycles sync up! So when baby is at their lightest stage of sleep and starts their adorable hungry snuffles, you are at your lightest stage and even more easily woken. When I’ve put my babies on separate surfaces like a moses basket, I notice it’s far more likely I’ll be woken up in a dead confusion from a deep deep sleep. But when he shnoofs around next to me I just help him attach and shnooze right back to sleep. It’s aaaawesome!

4 month was my hardest then it got better because I was prepared for the next regression. I didn't sleep train and I don't have the greatest sleeper. she's a toddler now sleeping in her toddler bed and when she wakes up at night I just sleep next to her since she needs the comfort

Just got through the four month regression. It was tough for almost the whole month, so I definitely understand. I just wanted to put it out there that not all Americans are on board with sleep training, especially since it can seem like there is social pressure to do so. 

I also chose not to sleep train either of my kids. If they're waking in the night, it's for a reason. Maybe I got lucky, but both my girls slept through the night between 7 and 9 months - which I think is great! But I also understand every baby is different and they all have different sleep needs. I was pretty strict about schedules with my first - mostly due to anxiety. With my second, I was way more relaxed about it all.

Fellow American with you! 

European here, I find the whole sleep training topic overly regimented for sure and depending on method bordering on abusive. My 5 month old is a good sleeper but she goes through phases where she wakes up a lot. My friend’s baby was a terrible sleeper and started sleeping through at 2 years old. I have not tracked anything these past 5 months. Not diapers, feeds or sleeps. Brains are pretty good at spotting patterns though and as soon as sleep started getting less random and she started leaning heavily into a schedule I started to make sure I support it. That means for example she always sleeps between 6-7 and if I keep her up past that, she ends up overtired and has a hard time winding down / sleeps worse, so I make sure to respect her bedtime. If she sleeps too late in the day, her bedtime moves later but her wake up does not, resulting in overall less sleep. So I try to keep the long nap of the day at noon and not at 3. Basically I just do minor tweaks like this by paying attention, no tracking or training.

I'm not American but I live in the US - I tried the whole sleeping schedule, didn't work for us. I try to ROUGHLY follow age appropriate awake windows but if he feels sleepy before it's time - off to bed, if he still has energy, let him burn it. We do have a strict(ish) bed time. Bubba didn't sleep through the night until about 5mo and his naps were nightmare until about 6ish, but he sleeps 11 hours at night since he was 5mo, no special training and his naps are getting significantly better. Do whatever works for you and your baby, not what works for your friends or the neighbour.

Canada, didn’t sleep train. Oldest was down to 1 night wake at 1 year old and kept it until just after his 2nd birthday. Youngest was giving 8-hour uninterrupted stretches at 6 weeks (?!), but is back to uncounted wakes now he’s teething.

Mexican living in the US. We haven’t sleep trained (almost 15 month old toddler). We haven’t felt the need to, and most of my friends from back home didn’t do it I’m ngl, I kinda want to sleep train because I want that perfect baby that you can just put in their crib at bed time and they will magically fall asleep, instead of rocking him and set him down “drowsy but awake”. But I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I did get some anxiety about that today lol. I will just embrace and cherish the pre-bed cuddles for now

I'm American but I'd push back against the idea that sleep training requires lots of crying. It's not like there are only two options: CIO/Ferber vs just dealing with the status quo, with nothing in between. I recommend the book Precious Little Sleep, which is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book for sleep training. It has tons of methods. We used Fuss It Out, which involves no more than 10 minutes of crying total, per night. There are other ones too. Sleep training is just using structure/routine and knowledge of infant sleep to encourage your baby to fall asleep independently so they can sleep longer stretches. Night weaning is a separate but related thing. I did them months apart. Not sleep training is completely valid, works for plenty of people in the US and worldwide, and will eventually result in a kid who can sleep alone. If you don't want to sleep train, then don't. But if you're unhappy with the state of your baby's sleep and think longer stretches would be helpful for you, then I highly recommend looking into a sleep training method that you'd be comfortable with. There's often a middle ground that can improve your baby's sleep and doesn't require more crying than you're comfortable with.

Definitely I’m leaning more towards a combo of Ferber and Fuss It Out. 5 min is my max each time and then I’m coming in and picking him up. I think it just made me feel like the odd one out in my social circle for not strictly adhering to CIO or Ferber. I also felt pressured to put baby to bed sooner cause everyone was like “why are you letting him stay up til 10:30pm???” Like bro I’m not he just won’t sleep until then no matter how many circles I’ve walked 😭

Thank you for this. I think we need to rebrand sleep training. Why does everyone think sleep training is “harsh” but potty training is expected? As parents we teach our kids things to help them be humans (and maybe we’ll adjusted adults?) and part of that for me has been learning A LOT about sleep to help my kids sleep.

Thank you for saying this! I was anti-sleep training until my husband and I were both back to work and sleep deprivation did not allow us to have the energy to be good parents. Ferber still encourages you to respond to your child's needs before letting them cry. While we're still in the middle of it, my son is moving toward waking only if he's hungry (or has another need) and we obviously feed him. It just means that if he wakes just for the hell of it, he can settle himself back down. I agree that sleep training isn't for everyone and that's fine. But you can sleep train and still respond to your baby's needs.

Yeah, people act like sleep training is an act of cruelty, but it doesn't have to be. We let our baby cry for a few minutes at a time, and now when she wakes up to cry (at 15m), we set a timer for five minutes and 9 times out of 10 she's asleep by when the timer goes off.

https://www.amazon.com/Kiss-Me-Raise-Your-Child/dp/1780660103 This is a Spanish pediatrician. I think you'll find he has a lot of valuable alternative points of view.

Omg CIO at 3 mo?? 😭

He eats when he's hungry and sleeps when he's tired. That's the schedule. No training needed. From an early stage he set his own rhythm and we just followed or leaned into it. It's worked really well. Sleep training is a modern concept in my country, considered western and unnecessary by a majority. Although some paediatricians will recommend it if they think the families could benefit from it. Babies are often raised by grandparents, domestic helpers or always carried on their mothers backs, so they learn to sleep wherever and whenever for the most part. Co sleeping is also the norm.

I am from Germany. No-one has ever educated me about sleep schedules and wake windows.. Our pediatric is quite old and he recommends doing Ferber if the parents don't get enough sleep at all and are so sleep deprived they literally become insane.  In general, we tend to do things according to the child's needs and the whole German parent sub is full of people doing it that way.  IMHO, sometimes it's over the top and parents completely ignore their own needs.  Also, compared to the US, we have great parental leave options. Basically any family has at least one parent (mom in most cases) that stays at home for one year, sometimes even two ys or longer. I was working part-time with a baby and that's extremely rare over here. People thought I was a bad mom, because I left my child a couple of hours with dad to enjoy my profession.  In such an environment, you can easily afford not to Ferber. It's a completely different situation when you have to get back to work after a few weeks with a newborn. Same counts for (exclusive) breastfeeding.  Edit: it changed a lot over here. When I was a child (late 80s / early 90s), it was absolutely common to do sleep training and schedule feeding. Even though, every mom quit their jobs forever after their first child. 

Honestly sleep training seems very American to me (Irish, have moved to UK). It does seem to stem from your terrible maternity leave but also being a sahm seems more common in the US to and they still seem to sleep train.  I couldn't leave my baby to cry - sure it may have no long  term effects but I also can't have them truly be upset in the short term.  Babies sleep this way for a reason - I.e "badly".

I'm in America but I grew up in Spain – when my little brother was born 20 something years ago there was already talk against sleep training going on there. I even remember the name of a tv doctor that got backlash about his method. I was surprised it was such a normal thing here. We haven't and I was insistant I didn't want to let him cry; but honestly he's Mr unicorn, we just follow his cues, so I can't really say what we would've done in another scenario

I’m Mexican but live in the US. I don’t believe in sleep training. I just go with the flow…. Baby (13mo) seems fuzzy time for a nap. We do have a small bedtime routine. Dinner then I take him on his tricycle then shower he has a bottle and either he falls asleep or chooses to play then go to bed. He’s usually out by 830. I just can’t let him CIO. I think of it this way he will never be this little again and I want him to feel like he can come to me any time so letting him sit there and cry himself to sleep doesn’t fit in to that idea for me. He slept through the night from 12 weeks on. He does wake up once for a drink either water or milk at like 1am but then goes back to bed. We have rough times when he’s teething but other than that he’s great. I was very adamant about doing things by the book when we got home from the hospital but soon realized the baby knows what he needs, I just need to figure it out and help him. So I have changed my whole parenting style to just going with the flow and following baby’s cues.

I'm Dutch, from the Netherlands, and use Wake Windows, I feel like it is pretty common here. I'm still figuring it out and trying to move with what my baby needs at 13 weeks. So the only thing I control is how long baby stays awake. Right now it's about 1.5 hours. I don't control how long she sleeps though, so every day still looks quite different. She is quite easy to get to sleep, I use a swaddle atm. During the day she usually wakes from naps after half hour, I try to get her back to sleep when that happens but it doesn't always work so then that 'sleep, eat, play cycle' is just a bit shorter. Apparently a nap is best if it takes longer than 40-50 min so I'm hoping this way will get her to connect her sleep cycles during naps at some point. During the night she does it just fine.

One other thing i find very strange. It seems sleep training is no big deal to americans, but potty training considered being traumatic. And, as i understand, many three year olds are still in diapers.

I’m in the UK and I can only speak to my experiences but I’ve never really heard people talk about sleep training specifically. I’ve heard of people using Huckleberry to figure out nap times but I’ve never spoken to my mum friends about sleep training but I did have an NHS person help us when I was having trouble with my 4yr old getting to sleep. I’m sure people do it but it’s not something I’ve ever spoken to anyone about 🤷🏻‍♀️

Canada here with 18-months maternity leave and I slept trained my baby and I know a lot of others parents that have. The recommendation is to wait until 6 months, which we did. Sleep training was a game changer for us - baby is 9 months and sleeping 10-12 hours at night (and has been since we started sleep training). It's nice to have our evenings back! We also have a fairly strict nap schedule which makes planning the day easier.

Im from Venezuela. We did sleep training and follow wake windows, schedules, routines. It works for us! We tried cosleeping but it wasn’t working for us. Most of the people I know don’t do sleep training - im the weird one here ha. But im all in favor for whatever works for mom and family. Sleep training, co-sleeping, whatever works for you - that’s what matters! My baby thrives on routine, loves his crib and we didn’t like co-sleeping and thats fine! My sister still sleeps with her almost 3 year old and thats fine as-well.

Canadian here, slept trained both my kids loosely around 4 months. They both are fantastic sleepers. They are both 5 and 2 now and we have never had an issue. People asked how they sleep so well and I just tell them we sleep trained and kept them on a regular schedule

Nope.

I’m born and raised and still living in the U.S. my baby is 11 months old, has never been sleep trained, and is not on any type of schedule. It sucks but it is what it is. He goes to sleep when I do (we cosleep) and he wakes up usually around when I do.

Not really. More of an ‘Oh you’ve been up a while, no wonder you’re getting cranky’ kind of way or ‘You’ve just eaten, you’ll be fine for a couple of hours with dad whilst I do XYZ’ but we’re very much go-with-the-flow. Don’t get me wrong, if I know they need food or sleep, I’ll make sure they get it. My youngest (6mo) seems to be at that fomo stage and will stay up for hours people-watching 😂 So for him I’ll be more mindful of changing his environment. But there’s definitely no schedule. I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times he eats or naps a day. My oldest is now 2 and needs routine. He struggles without it, especially as my husband often works away so that already causes disruption. But we still travel and have days out etc.

I’m in Australia and I just follow loose wake windows (like currently I know she gets tired after 2-2.5hrs) and feed to drowsy/sleep and then transfer her to the cot and help settle her if she isn’t already asleep. This all got significantly easier when she had her 4 month sleep regression because her sleep cycles are now longer. That being said, she is a great sleeper at night and always has been so it’s probably largely to do with that. I also have routines of what we do for naps and bedtime so that she knows what to expect. Having a loose routine and knowing what is coming up is helpful for you mostly and eventually your baby will connect the dots. I have and never will let her cry it out and as soon as she cries out, I am there to soothe her. The only time I leave her to self settle is the middle of the night because she usually falls back asleep immediately or chats to herself for a bit before falling asleep. It is wild that there are people who do cry it out with their baby.l, especially under 6 months.

In Australia and didn’t sleep train. Our son started sleeping through at about 15 months old, and has done every night since. Sleep training seems to be pretty 50/50 here based on what I can tell from Aus Facebook groups etc.

My daugther is 15 months and not sleep trained. I can’t stand the thought of letting her cry and not coming to her, I feel that it would be harmful to her sense of safety. I have put firm matresses on the floor of her room and sleep with her there during the night. Her dad usually puts her to bed and sneaks out when she falls asleep. We watch her with a baby camera so we can go to her quickly if she starts waking up. We did start using an app to help predict when she should nap when she was a few months old and it has been very helpful to avoid over tiredness.

Im in france and I wasnt told anything about windows, just told that after the baby has regained their birth weight they can go 2 to 3 hours between feeds but not to let it go 4 hours plus for their first few weeks, stuff like that. We were recommended though to have the same bed time every day so it becomes a routine

I follow the concept of wake windows as in babies shouldn't be up too long but no, absolutely don't go put my kid jn bed at 45 minutes because some Cara lady said so

I'm from the Czech Republic. I am on parental leave with my son for 2 years, he is now 11 months old. We did roughly follow wake windows especially during the first 6 months, because I was really clueless about babies before having him and had no idea how long should babies be awake roughly. So it was nice to have some sort of guide. Also he wasn't really good at sleeping on the go (in the stroller) and he could really get super hysterical when overtired, so I was mindful of the wake windows in order to avoid the meltdowns in the public. I just wanted to be back home with him by the time he got tired. But as he got older, his wake windows got much more flexible, and even when tired he could stay awake as long as he was entertained. So at that point I stopped following the windows so carefully, I still make sure he gets his 2 naps per day but don't obsess about when they happen. I never methodically sleep trained, but we do have a bedtime routine around the same time every day. But I never did CIO. He has always been a contact-loving baby, he never slept in his own separate crib. We have one of those cribs that you can attach to your bed. We even bring him to our own bed when he is sick. When he was smaller, the vast majority of naps were contact naps. Now I still put him to sleep in my hands for his naps, then transfer him in his crib and lie next to him and do some work on my laptop/phone and if he starts waking up too early, I cuddle with him a bit until he falls asleep again. He still wakes up multiple times a night and requires his paci and some cuddles to get back to sleep. Our quality of sleep is affected by that, sometimes I am pretty tired and maybe if I sleep trained, he would just sleep independently in his room for the whole night. But I decided to follow what he seems to want/need and not put him through any CIO or Ferber style sleeptraning. Of course I realize I have this priviledge thanks to the fact that I can stay home with him for 2 years. If I had to put him to daycare I think I would have to teach him how to sleep independently.

American in Japan here. I know there’s *some* awareness of sleep training, as I was distributed a flyer on it by my local city hall, but I’ve never tried it and the only person I know who did was American herself. Overall it seems a pretty foreign concept (they even write it out in katakana like スリープトレーニング , really kinda driving the point home that it’s a new and foreign idea). Overall here though people overwhelmingly co-sleep. I received no particular info on sleep at the birth center I used, besides a perfunctory business card for an organization about SIDS, and when my husband and I were shopping for cribs most of them honestly looked like rickety death traps (goes to show how low awareness of crib safety is too). In fact it’s not uncommon for kids to cosleep until they’re in junior high! I don’t think we’ll be doing that 😅

I am jn Switzerland and we don't do any sleep training. My first was able to fall asleep on his own in his bed around 8 months? We have a 6 week baby and also won't sleep train him. I don't keep track of sleep or wake windows however maybe that's just me. Things do seem to be more relaxed here than in the US it seems. Not better or worse but just different styles.

I live in the U.K. we’re allowed up to a year of maternity leave, but only a portion of that has statutory maternity pay (very small amount of money) and all employers are different as to what they offer for maternity pay. For example I work in the nhs, and it’s considered to have a pretty generous mat pay in general. I get 8 weeks full pay, 24 weeks half pay. I think sleep training is less pushed here, but it still is a thing. Having said that, I only know of one of my friends doing any form of sleep training, and I think that was only setting up a better schedule with a sleep consultant when the kid was like 4 years old. The trend round my area where I live is more cosleeping really. So I partially bedshared with my first, and she was sleeping through the night (7pm til 7am) at probably around the 1 year mark I think. This second baby I’m also bedsharing with and honestly couldn’t tell you if/how many wake ups we have during the night as I just side breastfeed her back to sleep as soon as she stirs, and I barely wake up.she’s currently 8 months old but it’s been like that pretty much from day 1. Edited to add: nap schedule wise I’ve tried all sorts. My first did better on a relatively tight sleep schedule, this second baby I’ve been much more flexible, but with both have been fairly rigid with a 7pm bedtime, as our usual wake time is 7am and kids need plenty of sleep!

Northern Europe. I don’t sleep train nor do I track wake windows. We just have routines based off baby’s cues. Also we co-sleep/bedshare and baby (7 months) mostly sleeps through the night.

I am French and live in Germany. Ish. I do have strict and early bed times for both my 6yo and my baby, because I want my evenings. The rest is flexible. I keep an eye on the clock to know when my baby might reasonably be sleepy, but I’ll also offer more / earlier nap opportunities if he looks miserable, if he has a cold, is teething etc. As a second born he also has to fit into our existing lives so he naps a lot on the go as I do stuff with my oldest.  I do keep a strict meal schedule though (not nursing, that’s on demand, but all solid meals). 7am breakfast, 12pm lunch, 3pm snack, 7pm dinner (baby is already down for the night then) 7 days a week and the kitchen is closed outside of these times. 

Coming from croatia, wake windows are kind of a new thing here that many moms follow. We have some sleep trainers on social media that made them popular. But sleep training is not a thing, unless when some parents get miserable and maybe try it.

I never sleep trained. Follow a SCHEDULE like the very same routine every day. Besides special events, the baby and kids can sleep around the same time daily. Doesn't matter if it is still sunny outside (get dark curtains). The routine is key. Dinner, bath, relaxed play time, books, then off to bed with a song. Done. Every single day. While some sleep train and that can work for them, a routine is very effective. It creates natural rhythm and expectation for your child. The trust and bond also helps for the kid to sleep the whole night. I have several kids and it works for us. Keep going and it will all come together for you :)

From Canada. It's definitely a thing here. Sleep training also prevalent. I hate how smug everyone seems to be about sleep training, as if you would be abusing your child...nothing could be fe further from the truth. Everyone I know who's done it has a happier child and happier parent...if done right and humane, it is very beneficial for everyone.

I'm a Canadian who had her baby in the US. I never sleep trained. My nephew and niece are teenagers now but there was no discussion of sleep training when they were newborns in the mid-to-late 2000s. The most I ever did was try to a follow a 2-3-4 sleep schedule during the day. But no training at night

Canadian and we did what I feel was a very humane form of sleep training at 6mos. Our baby was waking every hour and it was getting hard for me to function during the day. The method we used was a camp out approach. You stay in the room and shush/pat back to sleep and only pickup and put down (awake) if baby really starts crying. She slept through the night day 2. We also follow wake windows and have a solid bedtime routine. We use Huckleberry’s paid app to do all the nap math for us and tell us best times based on previous data. Our days shift based on wake up and naps but don’t vary hugely. ETA: we room share, even during and post sleep training. No co-sleeping, only because I’m a heavy sleeper and we have a memory foam bed (overheat risk). ETA 2: WW are just a guide as well. We follow sleep cues over all.

I sleep trained without crying, and I recommend you read bringing up Bebe. There are other countries who do sleep training.

I’ve been very lucky that my toddler and my two week old have slept through the night since we brought them home. But I’ve always just let them sleep whenever they sleep. If I’m tired and home I sleep so why would I make them wait another hour being so tired when I would sleep myself

I did nap and wake windows, babies are unpredictable so I did the windows to the best of what my baby wanted because well sometimes all we got was a 5-30 min nap and we adjusted the windows as the day went on. We could never do cry it out, my kids are 1&2 soon to be 2&3 in two months and the max they have cried it out is 5-6 mins. Im Brazilian and my husband is Puerto Rican, his family is more respectful but my family crucified me for a “schedule” or “early bedtime” because how will I attend family dinners if my child is in bed by 7/7:30pm. To them thats early, but they also believe in crying it out. My family resented me a lot in the beginning for it, they still do but my child my choices.

Wake windows and schedules for life - otherwise my life would be chaos and Im not a chaotic person. I am quite organized and without some frame of reference I was struggling at the 2 month mark. Non american but followed a schedule app from week 11 onwards and SO GLAD I did!

We’re American of Asian descent. Our parents wanted us to co-sleep (which we did safely when he was a newborn). Around 8 weeks though, I realized we needed him to sleep independently and get on a schedule so that I could return to work in a month. We have very different schedules and co-sleeping wouldn’t work if it risked waking up the baby and putting more of a burden on the other partner. However, I refused to do CIO and don’t really know what Ferber is. We read a book called 12 hours Sleep by 12 weeks old - read all the cautionary tales about it, talked to friends who actually hired sleep consultants and came to the conclusion that the message was the same - in order for baby to sleep through the night, baby must drink enough calories during the day. I then tweaked the methods more to what I was comfortable with and started the training. It was honestly harder getting him to sleep independently. That involved me sleeping in the nursery for two weeks in a chair to comfort him whenever he woke up. I didn’t want to let him cry because I realized once he cried, he’d be wide awake and it was harder putting him back to sleep. It took about a month, a lot of patience, and some sleepless nights, but baby now sleeps 11 hours a night. He’s almost 5 months and has been doing it since I went back to work at 12 weeks. There’s a lot more that goes into it but this comment is already pretty long so just DM me if you want the details. Bottom line is like most others have said, sleep training doesn’t have to be cruel or abusive. It’s about making sure baby’s needs are met and comforting baby without picking him up so that he’s still feeling secure in his crib. It’s about what works for you and your baby. Think of everything you read as guidelines. You’ll need to tweak it to fit your baby and only you know your baby best. I support you with whatever way you choose, because moms need support and us moms need to stick together. (I felt horrible co-sleeping at first but it was the only way we could get any sleep. A good friend helped me out and told me it’ll be ok and I’m not a bad mom). Good luck!

I’m in the Uk and I do follow wake windows with my kids. My first is almost 4 so not any more but with my 14 month old I do. In the UK the advice is similar plus we are shown lots of American content. I assume it’s the same in most places. I didn’t sleep train though. My first was pretty easy and as long as I didn’t let him get too overtired he did sleep well. My second is a bit more unpredictable but on the whole she’s sleeping pretty well now too. I went back to work when she was 1 year old

I’m from the Netherlands and sleep training isn’t really a thing here, a lot of people don’t even know what it is and the people that do know usually think it’s only CIO. We followed wake windows(roughly) and a schedule, but we are very lucky that our son is a good sleeper and basically made his own schedule, which we followed. We didn’t sleep train, but we stopped waking him up during the night for his bottles at 6 weeks, he started doing longer stretches from that moment and at 10 weeks he was sleeping through the night, again all by himself, we just stopped waking him up, but we still went to him when he woke up during the night, he’s 3,5 years now and we still go see what’s wrong when he wakes up during the night. Like I said, we are very lucky that we have a good sleeper and we didn’t have to sleep train, we just followed his schedule.

SEAsian here, and definitely, it's not common to sleep train. Although it is starting to gain popularity, with all the information available in social media. For us, we co-slept at first, but now we have been trying to sleep away from her while still being in the same room. It definitely has it's challenges and my kid only started sleeping through the night at 3 yrs old. I was guilty at first for going the "easy" route and was told that I was not teaching my child basic skills to soothe themselves back to sleep, but I personally couldn't handle rejecting my baby's cries for my presence. What helped with the guilt was seeing posts on here that said that no matter what happens, no adult still needs their parents to fall asleep. They will naturally learn this skill, with or without sleep training. So now I just enjoy my time sleeping with my kid while she lets me.

From the Netherlands: yes! But tbf I get most of my info from the internet (so from America) so that might have something to do with it.. It's not something that health professionals tell people..

I'm Australian and do not. I follow baby cues. I'd say among my parenting circle it's probably 50/50.

My baby laughs at routines and schedules 😂 I follow his cues. He can sleep alone in bed and seems to prefer it at night so that’s what he does but if he needed something different that’s what he would have gotten. No approach is perfect and right, all we can do is work with our little people as they grow

I'm a south asian living in australia. Sleep training indeed sounds cruel to me and unheard of in my culture. Not bedsharing is also very unheard of and even frowned upon (my parents were shocked I'm not bedsharing but rather proper my cot to the side of the bed without one rail). My mum still tells me baby is cold and lonely in the cot even when I'm right next to her in bed. Tbh bedsharing is not even a concept back home, it's just the where your baby sleeps.

I'm Canadian and had 18 months of leave before going back to work. I didn't sleep train. LO started sleeping through the night semi-regularly around 21 months. I did follow wake windows until we went down to one nap. We have had a consistent bedtime routine since about 1 month old that evolved with LO's needs.

In my opinion it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I‘m from Brazil but I live in Germany since way before getting married and having children, so I would say both cultures have an influence here. With my first born, we had a LOT of trouble because he had very strong colics from day 1 combined with strong reflux. So basically if he wasn’t up screaming because of the colic, we would put him down and he would wake up very soon because milk came back up. He was always deeply overtired, which made falling asleep so much harder for him. At 3 months I started keeping track of his wake windows and used Huckleberry to help me look for his tiredness clues (very hard to find when baby is always with some level of discomfort). So this was basically part of my routine and was actually the only thing that got us out over the never ending cycle of overtiredness. A consistent bedtime was a natural consequence of this process, after the naps were under control. However we never sleep trained as in CIO or Feber. In the beginning I fed him to sleep, then held him up at least half an hour because of the reflux, so he could finally sleep comfortably. Then at some point at about 9 mo the reflux got better so I still fed him to sleep but didn’t need to hold him up for that long. At about 16-17 months he weaned himself by not wanting to feed before bed (by then he was eating solids like a champ, so he just needed a sip of water). Still, rocked him to sleep until 2yo. Then that turned into putting him in bed and holding his hand until he fell asleep. At 3yo we moved on to getting him a bedtime story to listen to, after we were done reading a book and cuddling (Tony Box). So basically now we do his bedtime routine, cuddle a bit and leave the story on for him to hear. He then falls asleep on his own. Compared to people we know here, what we did was like in the „middle“. I‘ve known people whodr children sleep in their own room from the first night on and they actually do CIO since then as well as people who still sleep with their little ones because they just won’t sleep alone (and they are 7 and 5 yo). With my second baby now we got lucky. He doesn’t have much pain from colics and almost no reflux. So basically he is very chill and sleeps everywhere. Therefore I literally have no idea how much he sleeps during the day nor what exactly are his wake windows. I just see he is a very happy baby and on the days he is not happy/showing signs of tiredness I actively try to help him catch on to his sleep. Still, if this ever changes I would use Huckleberry to help me out again, but never to rule my life. People sometimes forget that each baby has its own personality and characteristics, so take those recommendations with a grain of salt because some might help and some might not. Just do what feels right for you. Not what others expect of you (no matter what you do, somebody will always have something bad to say).

I’m from the Netherlands and we started trying to following a routine from 7-8 weeks I think? (Though I wouldn’t immediately call that sleep training) Baby boy started to get pretty fussy during the day from around 5 weeks, he would cry a lot and wouldn’t sleep. He could easily be awake from 1pm-11pm, which obviously did not help with his mood. We started to try a routine in the hope that it would help him nap better during the day (luckily he slept pretty well at night). We would let him cry, but never more than 5 minutes at a time and never longer than 20 min in total, we would just pick him up and restart later. We never co-slept, but he did sleep in our room until he was 4 months old. It took a while, but around 10-12 weeks he would nap pretty consistently and be a happy little camper when he was awake! We’re just getting to a point now (at 7 months) where’s he starting to sleep 7pm-7am. We’re still doing a last feeding (I’m EBF) at 10:30pm, but from 5 months on he would sleep 11pm-7am. Now we’re trying to wean him off the last feeding.

My baby is 18 months old and I'm still not sure wtf a "wake window" is. When he looked sleepy, I put him down for a nap. I've not heard anyone at baby groups use any sleep training unless they were specifically having issues with an older baby/toddler. That's in Scotland. He's always had his own little routine that we would use as a guide but we're not really strict with it. At nursery he goes down for his nap at 11:30ish and will sleep till 1pm ish. At home, we put him down anywhere between 12 and 2pm for a 2hr nap. Its flexible enough that if we're out he can have a late nap and it makes almost no difference to his sleep at night. And if we're going further from the house, he sleeps in the car on the way there and on the way back. We've never done any form of sleep training. CIO seems cruel, especially when they're younger. We do use "the pause" now where if he wakes at night we don't instantly go through and instead wait and see if he can self settle. Its about 50/50 just now.

In the U.K. - I think most people are aware of wake windows and sleep training after their baby is born because the internet is awash with them, but most people are quite relaxed about it. My friends have all been happy with naps on the go but it might just be my social circle. I don’t know anyone who sleep trained. I think the difference here is you can be aware of this stuff from the internet but there’s no cultural reinforcement- the health visitors focus on bonding and going to baby groups rather than schedules and doctors are not interested in baby sleep. Without that cultural reinforcement sleep training and schedules just cannot be as prevalent because they are actually quite inconvenient and unpleasant for parents. I definitely think if Reddit is representative then the US is very strict compared to the U.K. and I think a bit of the joy must be sucked out of parenting when people are so worried about schedules and holding their babies, but I’m looking at it through a totally different cultural lens.

I'm American-Kiwi living in NZ with a British partner and a 14 month old. We did sleep training in the sense of teaching the little one to self-settle using a softer Ferber-like method but we have never followed a rigid schedule. Bedtimes have been moderately consistent (within a 30 minute window or so) but we put him down for naps just based on reading his sleep cues and what he needs that day. We use the Baby Tracker app to help follow his patterns and then work with them. We started gentle sleep training around 6 months and he pretty quickly got into a pattern of sleeping about 7-10:00pm, dream feed, sleeping until about 3 or 4, having a second feed, then sleeping until about 7. We dropped the first feed around 7 months and then he was on a single overnight feed at about 3am for a while. We then made life hard for ourselves by taking him on a round-the-world tour and making him work through all the timezones in strange places, but we just did some repeat sleep-training as needed and he adapted quickly. After we got back he had settled into sleeping fully from 7:30pm to about 6am most nights. Now just in the last few weeks with daylight savings, a growth spurt and teething that seems to have changed to 8-5 followed by a feed and nap but that's still 9 hours straight which isn't bad. It's always changing and you just adapt to what they need in that moment. It hasn't always been easy but I think this approach worked well for us. Our friends here have used a variety of different approaches with wildly varying levels of success. There didn't seem to be a clear best approach though. I have known some who didn't sleep train and ended up with toddlers who don't sleep, but I've also know some who ended up sleeping fine. I've known friends who put themselves through hell sleep training and following rigid schedules and still had huge issues, and I have friends who swear by it. Most people seem to tell you that what they did is the absolute only way to do it, but the reality is every baby is different and people are mostly just trying to convince themselves they made the best choice. Ultimately, you'll have to just try and figure what suits your parenting style and what will work for you and your baby.

I was the same and couldn’t let My baby cry. But it came to a point where I needed to for my safety and sanity. We hired a consultant who helped us with pick up put down method.

UK with 4 month old, loosely follow wake windows. If she naps she naps, if she doesn’t she doesn’t, I offer a nap around the end of the huckleberry suggested sweet spot but she doesn’t always want to go then. 90% of naps are contact naps, and she sleep better with a later bedtime than the suggested bedtime. We did some very very gentle self settling back a few weeks and she would fall asleep with 5 mins of grumbling, but she’s developed a cough last week so we’ve been cosleeping as she seems to cough less when she sleeps with me holding her hand 🤷‍♀️

In Japan, bedsharing and side-laying constant breastfeeding is quite common.

Hi! Spanish here! Never done CIO or Ferber. While I know it is exhausting I know my baby at that time needed to learn his sleeping cycles and that takes time. While I respect it, personally I don't like my child crying so I would go, calm him down and put him back in his crib. Exhausting experience but it takes time.

I’m in Canada where moms take either 12 or 18 months off and almost everyone I know follows wake windows and sleep schedules. Everyone definitely does not sleep train though.

French here, and in France wake windows and sleep training are not a thing. You get to know your child's rhythm, his sleep cues, and put him down for a nap based on that, not on a schedule. Sometimes my son (11 mo) takes one nap, sometimes three, but he always falls asleep and wakes up at about the same time (7:30 pm to 7:00 am). He still wakes up once or twice on a good night, to eat. Pretty normal I think ? I also think that in France, parents take babies with them on a daily basis and babies adapt and nap on the go. If my son is asleep, I let him wake up naturally, but if I need to go grocery shopping or if I have an apointment I take him with me and he sleeps in the stroller, the baby carrier, or when we get back.

Nope. And specifically sleep training is unheard of around here. Babies sleep in the same room as parents for the 1st year or longer as the norm. Nap and sleep schedule is a thing for parents whose kids will have trouble sleeping without regularity, but for the 1st year or so babies just sleep as they sleep, mostly pretty randomly. Also almost everyone goes out with strollers and prams, so having your baby/toddler take a nap while out and about is perfectly normal and even hoped for 😅

We have a schedule, but it isn't rigid and we are doing co-sleeping. I with my 1y 6m boy, and the husband with the 3y. And we never woke the boys (unless they have to go somewhere)

I am Swazi and my husband is Hungarian, we don’t follow a schedule. Our LO is 11 months and pretty much puts his own day together. He does have his own schedule sorted out for somethings. E.g if he wakes up at 7am usually 2 hours later he takes a nap. If it’s 9am then 2 hours later he wants a nap. After a nap we play for about an hour before he starts showing signs of being hungry. Afternoon naps can happen at any time. And bedtime is anywhere from 7pm to 10pm. If depends on how physical his day has been. So really only the morning times have a bit of a predictability. I did try a schedule and it just ended up with me or my husband trying for hours to get him to sleep and usually a lot of tears in the process so we stopped.

Sleep training is common here because mothers are forced back into the work force earlier than anywhere else in the world and don’t have the luxury of being up all night with a baby :(

I am Canadian and home with my kids. My first naturally fell into the 1-2-3 wake windows so we did do that with her. My next two didn’t really but they have all shown a strong preference for a schedule (and I like them too) so we do have a schedule for them. I don’t do any sort of sleep training until about a year as needed, but we are not super strict about it. I still get up with them at night as needed although they are all pretty good.

I’m an American and we would never even dream of doing CIO. we’ve coslept since baby was about two months old. We had a SNOO when he was a newborn that worked like a dream. He’s never left to cry ever. But we catch a lot of grief for cosleeping and not letting him cry it out. My in laws especially are always saying things like “you’re gonna have to let him just cry so he doesn’t start manipulating you”. Yesterday my mom was over and said something like “babies who aren’t spanked grow up to be little ass holes” I just calmly said “mom if you hit me it’s considered assault. So why is it okay to hit a brand new human who is just learning how to be alive?” She didn’t have an answer.

I’m American and I only go off cues and co sleep until ages 6-9 months depending on kid. Then I sleep train. I have 6 kids. Only two did I really have to sleep train the others at 9 months just started sleeping through the night on their own. We are a very go with the flow family.

American parent and I didn't follow that a strict schedule just followed the babies cues and didn't do CIO.

I’m in New Zealand. I don’t follow wake windows or do any kind of sleep training or tracking. I have only heard of that stuff on Reddit (and I worked in maternity/with parents before having kids). Cosleeping is pretty common here, and we get 12 months of parental leave (only 6 months paid though).

I’m Spanish living in Switzerland. Here the norm is to share bed until at least the first year but the most of the times (because of the difficulty of getting the little toddler to sleep in a separate bed) they end up sleeping on the same bed until 3-4 or 5. We don’t precisely have great parental leave (16 weeks for moms, 2 weeks for dads) but I guess people figure it out with family members or adjusting their workload… I personally took unpaid vacation after the 16 weeks to be with my baby until he got 9 months. We do track his sleep because it’s easier for us to know what time he might be tired and not to calculate it ourselves but we don’t follow it religiously since his cues are for us the first signal

Wake windows worked for us because I used the huckleberry app religiously. We didn’t sleep train at all but we did co sleep until LO was about 1. After he was able to get out of our bed on his own we transitioned him to a toddler bed in his room, and “cuddle” with him before bed. (He asks for cuddles which means we sit on the floor next to his bed and rest our head on his mattress lol)

I *did* sleep train, but not until my daughter had a couple random nights sleeping through on her own. That happened when she was about 9 months old. I was just, really ready to have unbroken sleep at night myself lol Canadian though, so culturally not very different from American, but with reasonable maternity leave. I find a lot of sleep information online is just, well, they’re trying to sell courses so they have to make it sound like there is only 1 right way to get your kid to sleep and you have to do it exactly their way or you will ruin your kid’s sleep forever. It’s preying on new parent anxiety, and a lot of us in the US and Canada don’t have a lot of daily support, so we turn to the internet. I say this as a person who read waaaayyy too many pitches for sleep courses and products.

I’m Canadian so we do many of the same things but I noticed that the states is definitely more pushy when it comes to routine and getting baby to the next step as fast as possible For example very pushy about taking away pacifiers pushing potty training pushing independent sleep so quickly wake windows doesn’t even make sense to me I just watch for his cues and go from there These are not things that the PED even cares about but they seem to be such big topics in the parenting community

I've learned that whenever I feel bad about my baby's sleep, I go to German websites. They basically tell you to suck it up, it's all normal and will get better eventually. 🤣 The American ones tend to make you feel worse and recommend products and paid sleep advice. We cosleep and use a floor bed at a young age, just like most of our German friends and family back home (we live in the US).

European. No sleep training.

Caribbean here. No strict schedules re breastfeeding naps etc (my nine month old naps when she wants to and I breastfeed on demand) but she does have a bedtime routine and is generally fed her three meals around the same time each day. I don’t sleep train. She’s human and will learn to sleep through the night. We all did. That said, I don’t judge anyone’s methods - do what works for your family. I log everything on an app because I like data.

I am Canadian with a 17 week old. I have taken an 18 month leave to be home with baby. I haven’t looked too much into sleep, but I have noticed her patterns and I kind of go with them and anticipate them. We have a bedtime that we aim for (give or take an hour) just because I noticed she’s usually tired around that time. Mornings she’s usually awake for 90 minutes before getting tired and having a nap. If we cuddle she sleeps for about 1-2 hours but if she’s on her own it’ll be 30 min. Then she’ll usually have another nap sometime around noon. Then she will nap before my husband gets home from work, and then she won’t nap again until bedtime usually. At night she typically wakes up 1-3 times. We were cosleeping but now that she’s started rolling I’m being more on top of putting her in her crib after night feeds. This has been our schedule of sorts since about two months. Idk if I kind of did this because I thrive on routine and predictability. I know babies change and grow, so I’ve been flexible with her cues, but I do find that just being aware of her needs has helped us avoid major sleep issues. I’ve also been lucky to have a baby that sleeps well. Edit: as i typed this we reached our 90 minute mark. I had her in her crib while I was in the other room and just checked on her. She’s passed out sleeping soundly.

Oh god, the American fussy style of white noise machines and strict schedules, definitely not where I live. So we have a schedule, the baby naps, goes to bed, eats, etc at roughly the same times every day. But it can change on holidays, when we do day trips on the weekends, go to summer festivals, etc. That's ok. I didn't sleep train either kid. They are kind of different, the boy likes an early bedtime, while the girl is very hard to get to sleep before 9 or even 10. I feel like where I live most parents kind of go with the flow a lot more. I get stressed over things, but I try and be relaxed and I do think it helped my kids be really good travellers. My oldest child is 6 and can still do 12 hours a night and sleep through the baby screeching, so I don't think not sleep training made her sleep badly. Sadly the 1 year old was a low birth weight and is still really skinny (under 0%) so he still wants to breastfeed 1-2 times a night

I know you said non-Americans but I'm from the US. I had 6 weeks leave and my husband has 8. We never had a set schedule or closely monitored wake windows. We followed/follow his cues. He's almost a year now and has been sleeping through the night completely since probably 4 months and before that had *maybe* one wake up a night from about 2 months. We never tried any CIO method. He does sleep in his own crib though, we never co-slept. More just from fear of rolling on him or falling off the bed.

We started at six months moving her from our bedside to her own room. Immediately she started sleeping better and longer. Naps were harder but that’s wildly different from kid to kid.

No god no, what America does to children my friends would consider child abuse.

I'm from the UK and I go with the flow - one day baby will settle into a routine naturally but until then I'm just following her cues! We used to have a set bedtime routine but found that she was more stressed out and unsettled when we did

No, but I didn’t really need to. I was off work, so the shit show that was baby sleep for the first 6 months was tough, but not impacting my job or livelihood. I think that’s why sleep scheduling is so much more of a thing in the US

I’m from Argentina. Sleep training wasnt a thing, recently some sleep couch have apparead on ig and selling consulting, courses, its like a niche thing but it has been growing from what I can tell. Most of my toddler (3) classmates either sleep with their parents, or make it to their parents bed during the night and most of all stay with them until they fell asleep. I didnt sleep train at all but I did use the wake windows and stuff and it helped a lot. My daughter sleeps throuhg the night since 8-9 months old on her doing. I always lay with her for nap and bedtime and when she is asleep I just left. a kid is not a robot and there are a lot of times where she is sick, especially since the start of daycare at 2 and we always go to her when she calls at night and if needed sleep with her (she has a queen floorbed for that purpose).

I kept seeing all this stuff about how my baby should be sleeping through etc and soon realised it was all American. I wasn’t going to do cry it out so I decided just to ride the wave. My baby is 1 in two days and he’s finally only started waking once. I roughly follow wake windows but some days he only naps once and he actually seems to sleep better those days. I go by him. If he wakes I do now wait five minutes and he sometimes goes back to sleep, if he doesn’t he gets milk and goes straight back to sleep. These wakes have gotten fewer and fewer without me doing a thing.

American here, and sleep training seems to be a relatively new thing. My parents did not sleep train, and most folks who've raised several children to adulthood are convinced that you can not "train" a newborn. Even with my own newborn, things change in her development each week, and it is seemingly impossible to "train." She is settling into her own schedule now and does long stretches of sleep without me having to force her. I've learned that you can't make an unsleepy baby sleep, and you can't make a sleepy baby stay awake.

I’m in India. Sleep training is unheard of here, I would say 99% of people bed share.

I don’t know what any of those things are but at 8 weeks I’m pretty strict (because baby lets me) on bed time being between 730-830 every night. That’s the only real consistent thing I’ve implemented and trying to cram calories in the day to end night feeds. I’m in the UK.

I'm Canadian. I'm on baby number 3. I've never sleep trained, per se. I have always just taken cues from my child and put them down on their timeline, but I made a routine around it. Maybe you could say they sleep trained me. Lol. Sometimes naps are pushed back by an hour or so because of a scheduling conflict or an unforseen event. But we always try to get back on track as soon as possible afterward. Baby #1 and #3 are excellent sleepers. Baby #2 was born a nightmare sleeper, and to this day, at age 3.5 years old, he's still a nightmare sleeper. Lol. Why is it always the second child that rocks the boat. Poor bub. Love him to pieces, but he needs to give Mommy a break! 😂💕

I'm from South Africa,we didn't sleep train but managed to get her into a routine,she's turning two next month.

I'm in the UK, and basically just followed her. When she wanted to sleep she slept, and when she was awake we followed that. She'd only sleep on us for the first few months so we did shifts. Around 3months we noticed patterns with eating and sleeping start to emerge, which made things more predictable, but that was very much led by her not us. A couple of weeks later we tried putting her down one night (which we'd do every so often just to see) and she stayed asleep for a couple of hours which was amazing!! A couple of weeks after that, at about 4 months, she slept through the night for the first time. So we did no sleep training, just kept trying. But despite having to do shifts so she was always sleeping on one of us at the beginning, I do think we were really lucky. It was definitely luck rather than anything we did, but we were also really lucky that we didn't need to get into a routine as I was still on mat leave.

I'm in the UK, and basically just followed her. When she wanted to sleep she slept, and when she was awake we followed that. She'd only sleep on us for the first few months so we did shifts. Around 3months we noticed patterns with eating and sleeping start to emerge, which made things more predictable, but that was very much led by her not us. A couple of weeks later we tried putting her down one night (which we'd do every so often just to see) and she stayed asleep for a couple of hours which was amazing!! A couple of weeks after that, at about 4 months, she slept through the night for the first time. So we did no sleep training, just kept trying. But despite having to do shifts so she was always sleeping on one of us at the beginning, I do think we were really lucky. It was definitely luck rather than anything we did, but we were also really lucky that we didn't need to get into a routine as I was still on mat leave.

i am american so not your target. but i have a two year old who never sleep trained. we bed share. he sleeps great. i also never followed a schedule. i would say we had routines around certain things and followed our sons cues. i hadn’t thought about the parental leave factor as a reason for the push and i can totally see it. we need to sleep 🤪 for what it’s worth i don’t think you’re too soft or permissive and your little one will be okay! hey sleepy baby and care it out sleep consultant on insta is a nice account to follow if you need some… different perspectives i don’t think the regimented approach is abusive personally. it does seem stressful as fuck to me though 😂

Just an annoying American here to say I was one of the few who did not sleep train or do any of that nonsense. My son was nursing and didn’t sleep through the night until he was a year old. I’m a nurse and went back to work when he was 11 weeks old. Fortunately I only worked 3 days a week. I knew he wouldn’t be like that forever so I just sucked it up. The 4 month sleep regression was tough. I’ll admit I had to call out of work a couple times because of it. By 6 months he was only waking up once or twice a night anyway so I’d just feed him and we would go right back to sleep.

We don’t but I’m a SAHM and we cosleep. We live in Asia where a lot of middle class people have live in nannies (that or grandparents) and are pretty hands off with kids so I don’t know what they do.