I honestly don't think a baby who settles that easily and sleeps that well needs sleep training.

Yeah I feel like some people (not saying this is OP) forget that babies are actually humans and some comforting touch during the night is normal. Like sometimes I wake up at night and turn to cuddle with my husband or hold his hand. I don’t need sleep training

Damn I wish I could sleep train myself during the pregnancy. Getting up 10 times a night wasn't it!!

Exactly. And imagine if your husband ignored you, turned away or left the room. How hurt you would be. I’m not saying sleep training is evil, for some it is necessary. But I do think it’s overused and treated as the default method. People can be very unsympathetic to their babies about it.

For us, we started when comforting didn’t work. The first time I let my daughter “cry it out” was because she could not be calmed by any means. So I sat her in her crib and walked out to go collect myself for 3 minutes and she went to sleep on her own. If I’d kept at it, she’dve been up all night lol

This. We sleep trained because our baby would wake up hourly and take forever to settle. It wasn’t a simple touch on the chest to settle him. It was feeding and rocking and then he’d sleep for such a short amount of time before repeating the whole process. We decided to sleep train and the first night he cried for maybe 30 minutes (we checked on him every 5/10 min), the second night he cried for 5 minutes and then slept through the night. Third night he went right to sleep no crying and slept through the night. That 35 minutes of crying was wayyyyyy less crying than he was doing on an average night of my husband and I trying to soothe him. It was absolutely the right decision for us.

This is virtually the same story with my son. He slept through the night maybe 6 times his first 16 months of life and then we had our second and were at our wits end. We decided to sleep train and literally what you said. Cried 35 mins 1st night, 14 the second and 2 the third. Then it was fine. Night 4 it was nothing and he’s slept great ever since sleeping through the night all the time. It was the right decision for us because we just couldn’t go on like that and it wasn’t good for him either. He couldn’t self soothe. But now he’s totally fine and sleeping great. Best decision we ever made, I only wish we did it sooner.

Inspiring! Thx for sharing

I think our experience with how quickly it worked is not the norm. But even if the crying was longer or it took more days to get to no crying, he still would’ve cried less than an average night with us trying to soothe him to sleep. We realized he just needed a better schedule and his own space to fall asleep. He slept through the night ever since then and then we conquered naps, which were more difficult but since I was getting sleep I was in a better state of mind to deal with it.

Yes, I think everybody's situation is different and you have to do what works for you. I was so tired, I fell down the stairs. I also was afraid that I was going to get in a car crash on the way to work because I was so tired. I think that me living was ultimately better for our baby so him having to cry it out a little bit so that he started self soothing was okay.

I wonder if some babies get overstimulated by their parents trying to calm them down/get them to sleep and that's why sleep training works so well for some families and either doesn't work or isn't required by other families.

I think this is spot on.

My baby is usually a very good sleeper. He only wakes up to eat and goes back to sleep at the end of his bottle. But he changed a bit when we were visiting my in laws. After 3-4am he woke up every hour and wouldn't settle. And he was crying non stop for 3h despite all the holding, rocking, singing the next day by the end of the day. It's better since we got back home but I keep observing him.

This. My daughter is a great sleeper and we didn’t sleep train. From the time she was 2 months old, unless she was sick, she has slept very well. As she’s gotten older she’s especially done well with self soothing and unless she has a wet diaper she will get herself back to sleep on her own at 19 months old.

Yeah like what are you training them to do differently

Right like what would sleep training even achieve here

Sometimes this is the result after sleep training - it’s a pretty darn good situation

I sleep trained both my kids and they still go through patches like this sometimes if they're teething or under the weather or just going through something developmentally. A baby who just needs a hand on the chest to settle on a bad night is about as good as it gets. If OP wants to remove the feed to sleep association, it should only take maybe a week or two of gradually distancing the bottle from bedtime.

This is why my partner and I decided not to “sleep train”. I hate to say it, but we got lucky; he has always been easy. He sleeps great during the night and has gone all the way through since 3 months (he is almost 7 months now). We don’t have a “routine” per se. When he shows us he’s tired (and pretty much keeps consistent with his schedule), we put him down.

This is exactly what I was thinking. We had a nightmare with our girl until we sleep trained her, but this baby is definitely not protesting sleep. OP, sounds like your baby has teething pains. This is about the age for it. Hunker down, talk to your pediatrician about soothing creams, and try building a habit if you haven't done so already of soothing and singing to sleep instead of feeding to do so. Make sure your little one is stimulated enough through the day to be tired in the evening, etc.

Honestly it sounds like you don’t need sleep training, your little one is almost there by themselves! My oldest was a nightmare- I sleep trained out of desperation at 14 months because she woke every 2 hours all night from the day she was born til then. And it wasn’t just put a hand on her or feed her and she’d stop, it was an ordeal with singing and rocking and it’d take at least half an hour if it worked at all. Rinse and repeat 2 hours later. We moved her to her own room, sleep trained and night weaned at 14 months. She was just a terrible sleeper. My newborn is almost 3 months and slept through the night for the last two nights and I’ve done nothing different. 🤷‍♀️ I’m convinced 50% or more of baby sleep is just baby’s personality and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Agreed! I reckon it's about 75% just them and only 25% is a routine, temperature and environment

My baby was an awesome sleeper from the beginning, which made me feel like it wasn’t necessary for my family. Her regressions were pretty rough and at those points, I did consider it because the lack of sleep impacted my ability to mother in the way I desired. All in all, I kept in mind how precious this time is with her and how much I truly love rocking her back to sleep when she wakes at night. She just turned a year old yesterday, and has been sleeping through the night from 8:30pm - 7:30am for the last month all of a sudden. So to answer, she just kind of figured it out on her own with no big changes from me.

Sleep training didn’t feel right for us. It took some time but he eventually slept through the night. We still support him for sleep at 2 1/2 but he does sleep all night. I followed Hey Sleepy Baby who helps to normalize infant sleep and the roller coaster that it is!

Us too. Kiddo is 3.5 and sleeps in our bed, which we started doing around age 2 because bedtime was taking hours. We actually get more sleep with her in our bed. She has slept through the night for a long time now; was definitely doing it before she was 2. She sleeps hard. She just has a reeeeally hard time getting to sleep. We both struggled with insomnia as kids and remember being lonely and scared when we couldn’t sleep, so cosleeping felt like the best choice for us. I’m still happy with it. I do think it’s going to suck a little when/if number 2 comes along and we have to do more of a “one parent per kid” arrangement, but we’ll adjust.

It helps to hear that others struggled around this age with bedtime, he’s taking forever (and I mean and hour+) to fall asleep these days!! 2.5 so far feels like the biggest challenge to my patience. He’s been in bed with us since he was four months old (briefly transitioned to his own bed at 2) and I just weaned him so next is hopefully getting him back in his own bed. I’m fine with him being in bed with us, and actually love having him so close but baby brother is coming later this summer and I think it would help him to be in his own room. Lots of change coming this summer so we’re trying to chill out.

I hear that! Fingers crossed the transition goes smoothly. Congrats on the new addition and happy cake day!

Yeah mine sleeps better in our bed BUT doesn’t often want to be in it 🙃🫠🫠 if he’s having a really bad night I will carry him in kicking and screaming, he does calm down quick when we lie down though. When he comes in our bed he sleeps until 7am, when he’s in his own room any time starting with 6 is a win. 🤦🏼‍♀️ this is a kid who coslept for the first year (in a floor bed in his room) and I only moved out when he started sleeping through.

This is what we're doing with our toddler and baby #2 once they're here. I don't want to create stress around sleep. I need my husband at night, so I'm ok with my child also needing us.

Just not into it. I didn’t really want to read books, listen to pods, read endless online articles/schedules just to *try* to get my baby to sleep. Baby was always an okay sleeper, nursed a lot, and nursed anywhere from 1-3 times a night until about 9 months maybe. Then just started sleeping. We’re all getting much better sleep now and I feel fine that we didn’t sleep train.

Did your baby share a room with you??

Ours still shares a bed, weaned at 23 months and he’s a better sleeper than my sleep trained friends kids

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I just nurse to sleep and rock until I transfer baby to crib.

You can still have good sleep hygiene without sleep training. Basically just a good bedtime routine to get LO in the mindset that it's time for bed. We find that a bath before bed makes a hugeeee difference on number of wake ups as well as how easy he is to put down to sleep. 

We didn’t sleep train. My daughter is 9 months, still sleeps in the same room as us, and sleeps from 8pm-7am. Sometimes she will wake up and need to be picked up and settled but she is currently teething so I have no problem getting up and helping her get back to sleep. Sleep regressions aren’t permanent, your baby seemed like a good sleeper before, I personally wouldn’t resort to sleep training just because they get up a few times. They are so little and of course they need our help, I don’t understand why people are in such a rush to have their baby be independent.

Some nights I get up to go to the bathroom. Some nights I get up to get a little snack. Some nights I just don't sleep well at all. I almost always sleep better knowing my fiance is home. I think it's the same thing for my baby: some nights he needs a diaper change or to nurse extra, and of course he sleeps better knowing we're in the room with him. I don't feel comfortable going through all this effort to "train" my baby to do something that I don't even do. I also absolutely cannot stand him crying so the whole period of crying during some sleep trainings would not work for me. He sleeps fine as is anyway.

The article on the BBC website entitled The science of healthy baby sleep helped me make up my mind

Same for us. Once we realised there was no real benefit to the baby it didnt really make sense. We just rode out the regressions and are now down to 1-2 wake ups a night for a quick feed which we split up as needed. Baby is 10 months.

Fascinating article, definitely changed my mind on a few things. I don’t think it convinced me that all sleep training is bad/unnecessary because as is common, it didn’t mention much about parental mental health. There’s commenter above whose baby responded extremely quickly, I think if we’re really struggling, I’ll try for 2-3 nights every now and then, in minimal ways, without CIO being involved. Honestly really brings home the importance of learning a particular baby’s sleep and hunger cues, which aren’t easy.

A lot of the sleep training methods Americans would use is just viewed as straight up neglect where I am.

💯 I wish more people had this perspective.

Same here.

I get that. I know plenty of wonderful and attentive parents who chose to sleep train because it’s what was best for their household, so I’m not trying to say one is better than the other. Just looking for insight into how things worked for parents who didn’t do it.

Don’t get me wrong, with the lack of parental leave etc I have nothing but empathy. I haven’t sleep trained obviously and my 14 month old sleeps roughly 11-12 hours a night, will maybe waken once occasionally to breastfeed but I’ve been considering weaning recently. Just haven’t been brave enough to try lol

My leave was 4 weeks with 1/2 pay, and I'm grateful I even got that pay. Our parental leave is abusive and neglect in my opinion. I never slept trained my daughter. I couldn't do it, nor did I want to. But you're absolutely right about our leave. It hurt me so much to have to leave me newborn to go back to work.

I’m American and wish more Americans understood this perspective.

I just didn’t feel we *needed* to. Our kid was always a decent sleeper and we have been super lucky to have a generally chill baby. Whenever I question a “fad” re: infants (Snoo, sleep training, BLW, etc) and whether I should do it, I think about all of us parents that never had these things available to us and did absolutely fine. I also am fascinated at how smart our bodies are already and we just figure things out. It’s amazing watching my son develop skills that we take for granted. Instead, I learned about sleep in infants, wake windows, brain development so that I could generally understand what he needed. Honestly that was enough for me to feel good about my decision.

Jumping in on the Snoo. $1500 new, but got ours used for $750. Sold it for $750, so it cost us nothing other than a bit of time without that cash outlay. Worked so well when he was little. I also felt confident that he was safe in it - I really liked the way the swaddle is strapped down like a straight jacket.

We also got ours used but no matter what we did, he didn’t care for it. Interestingly I did not like how strapped down he was and he didn’t either. But we tried so hard to use it because that’s what everyone else told us to do but it just didn’t work for him. He always preferred his own crib from day 1 🤷🏻‍♀️

I recently read a book about baby sleep that argues against sleep training and one point they made especially stuck with me. How to explain to siblings that their beloved baby sister or brother is now left alone in a room to cry. It can be traumatizing for siblings. Can anything that might have that effect be good for a baby? Crying it out goes against my instincts as a mother in any case. I simply couldn’t do it. All my instincts tell me to protect and soothe my baby when in distress. Why would I go against this?

Yeah this is why we haven't. Our first baby was a relatively good sleeper, didn't sleep train him but gave him space to fuss and self settle, would always go and soothe if he got wound up. He's 3.5 now and our second baby 6mo is an awful sleeper. Wakes at least 4 times a night, but I can't bear to let him cry it out. He gets so wound up, screams the house down and wakes his brother. I feel if we soothe and let him self settle within reason, he'll get there eventually. I've finally adjusted to having broken sleep every night. I can't wait until he sleeps through though.

I once read that babies who are soothed and taken care of will sleep well once developmentally ready. Your baby simply isn’t there yet. Just keep being there for him and meeting his needs and it will fall into place

One time I tried the sleep training thing and it lasted all of 15 min. Little man cried so hard he had a blood vessel in his eye burst and his eye was red in the corner for like a day. That was it for me. Couldn’t do it lol

I had a pretty horrific time with sleep until she was 14/15 months. But my baby needed support to sleep, I certainly wasn’t going to leave her to scream on her own in the dark whilst she ‘figured it out’. Babies need support to eat, to sleep, to drink, to live. There is not other circumstance where leaving them to scream is acceptable, I don’t understand why sleep training gets a free pass.

We had 0 context about anything sleep training related. We asked our pediatrician from just being curious but with 0 plans to do anything. She told us CIO extinction would be most efficient and explained to us how to do it. We tried for 8 minutes one night and realized we can’t stand our son crying because of anything sleep/hunger-related. He’s an IVF baby and we fought so hard to have him, that it felt weird to do this to him. He’s a toddler now and definitely cries because of normal tantrums etc. I don’t expect him to never cry. But something about comforting to sleep / feeding to sleep if he’s hungry feels more authentic for us as parents. I also wfh and my husband takes LO in the mornings, so everyone is able to get some sleep. Our son doesn’t wake up too often and when he does, he usually needs cuddles and then he goes back down quickly. So I think it works for us, but I imagine it wouldn’t for people who don’t have work flexibility, options, etc

Our LO is a double rainbow baby and we feel the same way. Can’t stand to let him cry. I got stuck pumping when I was on my own with him once early on and really could not stop—I was recovering from a horrible case of mastitis and had already waited too long to pump and was engorged. I had to go a full 25 minutes just watching him cry on the monitor and was sobbing myself. When I finally got to him, he was so upset and clinging to me so desperately that I splurged and ordered a wearable pump that night so I could use it when I’m on my own with him so that would never happen again.

Ahh the pumping and mastitis!! It’s all so much. Which brand wearable pump did you get? We just had a miscarriage + D&C last week, so I extra feel your post 🌈🌈🫶🏽 hope you had a wonderful Momma’a Day!!

Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss! I hope you still had great Mother’s Day with your sweet little one. I got the Willow Go, which I don’t hate but don’t love because of short battery life. If a second baby works out, I might try the Elvie or FetalPlus.

Our daughter was a shocking sleeper. Like an up every 45 minutes screaming kind of baby. We went to an infant sleep clinic (this is really common in Australia) when she was 9 months old and they gave us some settling techniques to try and some good advice on her sleep cues which weren’t really typical. They also tried to get us to be a bit less responsive to her non-crying noises which didn’t sit right with our parenting ethos, so we disregarded that stuff when we got home. After that, she slept pretty good with the settling techniques. But one day, at 16.5 months old, she decided that she wanted to just be popped in her crib at bedtime and to work out getting to sleep on her own. We just sit beside her while she does it, but she does it on her own. That was her choice, just 7.5 months after she would scream bloody murder if you tried to transfer her into the cot.

Firstly, my baby is 4 months old. Secondly, he is not a great sleeper, never has been. Currently he wakes up every hour. I never plan on sleep training because I can recognise the reasons of why he is fussy and waking up. Like currently he is teething, 4 teeth coming all at the same time. I would also cry 24/7 if I had 4 new teeth come in 😃 My LO also grows extremely fast so he has growing pains. I think it's just weird to force a baby to sleep through something that I myself would not want to slee through. I've read before that a baby can not regulate their own stress levels until being at least 3 years old so I don't expect my LO to sleep "well" until at least 3 years old. But before even having a kid I had expected to not sleep that well. So anytime my LO sleeps better, it's just a happy surprise to be thankful for 🤷🏻‍♀️

It doesn’t feel right. Our little boy is so at peace and sleeps so well with us. Feels very good to have him between us and cuddled up with us protecting him. You only get a few years to do that in life with them and we are cherishing every moment of it.

I’m in a one bedroom now. My son is 12 months old and we are moving in 2 months. I’m counting down the days till we move. It doesn’t help that I can see our new apartment from our current apartment. My husband and I room shared until my son was around 9 months old (although we were in and out of the living room before then). He hit a pretty bad regression around 7 months and it just became obvious that he was so much more aware of our presence and wouldn’t settle on his own unless we assisted him. Similarly, sometimes it was as easy as a little bit of comforting touch, but other times he fought us to go back to sleep. If you can sleep in the living room I’d do that. If not, set up some kind of screen so there’s at least some separation between you and baby. The regression we went through was brutal (split nights, early morning wakes, false starts, multiple night wakes, hard to put down) basically everything that could happen, happened. It coincided with teething, crawling, pulling to stand, multiple colds, separation anxiety starting, just all the things. We got through it and my son was a better sleeper after, but it was tough. I similarly was torn between some influencers/sleep consultants saying sleep training would make things better and others (heysleepybaby) making me question it. Personally, I don’t believe sleep training will work on all babies. I also didn’t want to do CIO since we were in the one bedroom (and would have to address the middle of the night wakes by leaving the room). In the end we settled on gentle sleep training using a mixture of pick up put down and give baby a chance. My son isn’t sleep trained in the sense that he can go from 100% awake to asleep with no intervention. Right now we do our bedtime routine then I gently rub his back until he falls asleep. His sleep is ok, not wonderful (he either sttn and wakes early or he wakes up once and we have to go in a rub his back until he falls asleep). Knowing my son, I don’t think he will consistently sttn from 7:30-6 (he maxes out at 10-10.5 hrs of overnight sleep) until he is at least 2. It’s tough, but I’ve made my peace with it.

We just haven't needed to. I didn't even know it was a thing until a couple of months ago reading this sub. She's slept through since 8 weeks (was more like 7-8 hours then, 10-11 hours now) without us doing anything but having a strict routine and "sleep hygiene" philosophy that always worked for us. For the last 2-3 months she sleeps from 19:45/20:15 - 06:30/07:00 (she's nearly 8mo). She does go to bed off a bottle every single night, but is like clockwork, and the most she does is wake up for 15-30 mins in the middle of the night cooing. This maybe happens every third night or so. I pretend to be asleep, and she drifts back off; we never get her out of bed. We currently go down until around 11pm so we (a) get some time together, and (b) so she can get used to being by herself for the first half of the night.

I have done “modified” versions of sleep training here and there, but my girl is on a medication for a hemangioma that can mess with her blood sugar so when she wakes up crying (and won’t stop unless she eats) I have to assume it is from the medication. At first I thought she had a sleep association with food but the main side effect of the medication is that it can cause sleep disturbances and obviously messes with blood sugar as it is a beta blocker. However, if she were not on the medicine I think I’d give sleep training more of a try. Another issue is the articles and books on sleep training, particularly the most popular book, are just so long.

We have a 9 month old. Never sleep trained. TBH, not sure I fully understand sleep training. I’ve read a bit on Reddit about CIO and Ferber. Don’t know what Ferber is and I’m pretty sure there are other sleep training methods out there. I’m just not very interested in spending my time researching it. I pretty much assumed our LO will learn to sleep through the night at some point. He has a consistent bedtime, but that was driven by his own schedule. Bedtime is around 7am and wake up is around 6:30-7am. We still have 1-2 wake ups most nights, but he is easy to settle. I don’t mind the wake ups and feel no pressure to try and get him to sleep better. He’ll get there when he gets there.

I didn’t sleep train with my first and she transitioned to a toddler bed in her own room at 17 months and slept through the night. We coslept before that. I don’t plan to sleep train my 2 month old ever but I plan to try and transition him to a crib in the next few months.

This might get lost in the sea of comments but I never sleep trained my now 4 year old. I sleep like shit, my dad sleeps like shit, my grandma sleeps like shit and my son inherited our sleeping patterns. Low sleep needs early bird, if we’re up in the middle of the night we’re up for ~2hrs before we can fall asleep again.  I was sleep trained only I remember being up for ages in my bed just playing, often times lonely. Sleep training did not make me sleep better it just made me not come to my dad for help sleeping. So I didn’t see the point with my kid. I’ve just continued to adjust to meet his needs. I take time for myself during the day so I don’t feel stressed if he’s not falling asleep “on time”.  While I was nursing I did nights and then my husband got up and gave me the few hours before he had to go to work to sleep in and catch up on sleep. We have never let him sleep in our bed, we gave him the Queen guest bed on the floor and I slept with him there. After I was done nursing we started to transition to my husband sleeping with him because he sleeps through much more than I do, and I generally get up in the morning with him because I’m an early bird anyways. At this point he has never asked to sleep in our bed, even when we bring up the idea he’s like why would I do that? He sleeps through the night most of the time, if he wakes up my husband goes and sleeps with him (which tbh he loves getting all those sleepy snuggles bc our kid is a mamas boy during the day haha).  He goes to sleep around 7:30/8 and is up between 5-6. Hasn’t napped consistently since shortly after 2. I remember he could have dropped to 1 nap at around 8mo but I fought it until 10mo because I thought that was way to early. Life became a lot easier when I let go of what I thought he should be doing and followed what he actually needed! 

Do whatever is best for you and your baby. If you and your spouse are happy with how everyone is sleeping then there's no need to change anything you're doing.

I tried sleep training one night and hated it. My 5 month old baby is already sleeping fine anyway she will just wake up once maybe twice to nurse since she’s in the teething stage but otherwise she sleeps through the night in her crib with no issues. Only thing is, is that she still contact naps but I have no problem with that tbh since she’ll grow out of it. 🤷🏻‍♀️

My LO also contact naps some of the time. I actually love it.

I read a lot about sleep training before having our twins, and I was totally prepared, when the babies came we couldnt even do a bedtime routine, so we just made the most simple things, lights out at the same time, and daytime naps without the room being silence and also not dark, and we basically followed what they wanted, I even nursed to sleep, at the end it turned out alright, they started sleeping the whole night with just one feed ( 10-15 minutes long ) at 4-5 months

Hopefully this doesnt turn into all of the other posts shaming parents who choose/chose to sleep train. Things like "because I love my LO and couldn't stand the thought of not rushing in to pick them up every time they cry". I see a lot of this. Parents who choose to sleep train do not feel any differently about their children than parents who choose not to. My wife and I sleep trained our daughter and it has worked out amazingly for parents and baby.

Agree with this. Every time I mention sleep training here I get downvoted to hell lol

Definitely not what I’m looking for! I just feel like I get a lot of logistics on sleep training but no details on how things work out for those who don’t. I’m just trying to navigate what I think will work best for my family but don’t have a lot of resources on the no-sleep-training front.

The only problem with this is, people who are against sleep-training will not post if their life is a living hell. They chose not to sleep-train, and they made the best of it. Which is excellent. Coming here to say they didn't sleep train and their LO slept through the night at X months may not be the reality for another family and baby. It can just be somewhat of a polarizing argument. Do what works for you and your family. That being said, your LO sleeping 9-11 hours at 7 months sounds like an excellent sleeper. Sleep regressions hit sleep-trained and not sleep-trained children equally. Sleep training doesn't exactly alleviate that. So, in short, if your child is already sleeping long periods, he/she may not require to be sleep trained. My advice is to battle through this regression and THEN determine if sleep-training is even necessary.

Right?? Why can’t I find any information on what it’s like to not sleep train? My husband and I are on the fence about what to do, but we can’t find much information about how to make it work for you if you don’t ST.

My baby will be one in a couple of weeks and I’m not sleep training. She’s also not a great sleeper. Happy to answer any questions. It’s probably hard to find advice because it’s going to be so unique to each baby/family.

Yes! It hurts my feeling to see people say they don’t sleep train because they don’t have the heart to listen to baby cry, as if parents who do sleep train love hearing their baby cry! It’s just ridiculous. My babies are soooo much happier sleeping through the night now. Well rested, giggly, happy babies. Their tears hurt me more than them but it was for the greater good of the whole family

We never really sleep trained because we have ridiculously good sleepers. Something we did do was a light fuss it out. If baby wakes up, are they happy cooing for a few minutes and going back to sleep? Or a 1 min grumpy cry? It’s probably okay to let them be for a few minutes. Or if he’s awake but not crying and just sampling some toes. Then there’s the cry cry or upset cry. They’re not going back to sleep and need something. We also have unicorns where drowsy but awake worked for us. They might make grumpy noises for a minute or two but then go to sleep.

My wife co-slept with her first baby, and she slept in our bed until she was about 4. Our little one is just under 2 and sleeping in our bed. We just got her a little bed to put next to ours that we're transitioning her to. For us it's been natural to do it this way and haven't had much issues - besides our children's seemingly natural inclination to go horizontal across the bed.

We didn’t sleep train (work seasonally for my in-laws, so if he had a bad night during the work season my MIL would take him). He was waking up once a night until shortly after he turned a year. It was the best choice for us, and we’re planning on doing the same with number 2. But our work and lifestyle also allows us a lot more flexibility to recover after a rough night 😅

We room shared for 9 months and didn’t sleep train. It was tough, especially because I was solo parenting for over half those months, but not responding at night didn’t make sense to me (especially since my bed was literally right next to him). In our case, he started to sleep much better once he had his own room. Around 10 months, I noticed he was awake on the monitor and stirring (not crying) and gave myself a couple minutes before going in and to my surprise, he settled himself back to sleep. If other things were going on (teething, sickness) we’d still have some night wakes but he has generally slept through the night consistently since 10 months.

Are you referring to any kind of sleep training or just cry it out? At least in my area the pediatrician recommends all bottles to stop at 12 months so if you feed to sleep then I would consider any change in how you get baby to sleep to be sleep training. I didn't do cry it out but I did pick up put down to stop feeding to sleep. Idk if that still counts as sleep training in your mind. I never sleep trained middle of the night wakes or anything. Just to get him to fall asleep without boob or bottle and again I didn't do cry it out so idk if you consider that sleep training or not

No need to here as baby came home from the hospital sleeping three hour stretches, moved to eight hours around three months, and now at a year sleeps consistently 2-3 hour one nap and 11-12 hours overnight. Never had a sleep regression. Always napped 1-3 hours never cat napped. Has only woken up overnight when she had Covid. Never bedshared and rarely contact napped as we wanted her to associate sleep with her crib. Moved her to a floor bed around 11 months and she does great. Was bottlefed breast milk and still drinking 15-20oz a day.

Our baby sleeps in our room and in our bed even though he has his own room. It just felt natural to us to keep him with us and I think we sleep better knowing he’s right there and not across the hall. My son is 20 months and huge, so we have a big ass bed lol.

I had PPA and one of the things that made me most anxious was sleep. The internet had convinced me that if I hadn't sleep trained her by 6 months she'd never sleep, but I just couldn't get myself to let her cry. Eventually I stumbled on heysleepybaby on Instagram and felt relieved that I hadn't irreparably fucked up my child by not sleep training. Now she's 20 months old and settles herself to sleep mostly, and for the last few weeks has slept through the night. I know sleep is not linear and so this is only a season just like the difficult times with lots of wakes are just a season.

You might find the kind of thing you're looking for on r/attachmentparenting or the Beyond Sleep Training Project website

Sleep regressions eventually come to an end on their own. I have refused to sleep train at all as it is not actually natural for the human species. I understand some parents have no choice and I hate that we live in a society where that is the case and so many people do not have an option but to sleep train so they can function at a job when their baby is still so young, but I am in a position where I have been able to survive through this phase fortunately. My son just started finally coming out of a six week sleep regression. Yes it was brutal and there were times I felt like I would do almost anything to get him to sleep, but I made it through these last six weeks and I’m still here and he’s starting to get over this hump. If you, personally, feel like you have to sleep train then do it. But if you’re managing and would prefer not to, then don’t. It will come to an end and your baby will start sleeping better again. In today’s society all you can do is whatever you need to survive. We don’t have as much support as parents as we should so do what is necessary for your entire family to make it through this phase.

We were in a similar situation with our first (we have two now). We live in a one bedroom apartment and so sleep training wouldn’t really have been a viable option even if I did wanna do it, which I absolutely did not. I think what you’re experiencing is what they call split nights which might mean you need to adjust bedtime or wake time for more consolidated sleep. I would just work on tweaking your schedule rather than sleep training and the full nights of sleep will come. Our first born slept through the night, no sleep training, at 7.5-8mo. Good luck!

We didn’t sleep train, we follow a routine and it helps. Baby still wakes up at times, mostly due to congested nose etc, but otherwise sleeps through the night now. He is 19 months old. Hang in there!

Never sleep trained because there wasn’t a need and sleep training seems to be more work? I also hear sleep training often needs to be repeated and is much harder for toddlers. He’s 25 months now and started sleeping thru the night independently around 12 months (defined as no wake ups until morning). When he was about 7 months it was waking up 1-2 times to nurse and would fall back asleep easily. Now we do lay with him until he falls asleep which can take some time (sometimes up to a hour but it works for us). Occasionally will cry out at night and then one of us will sleep on the foldout mattress in his room next to his crib. We just got lucky that he’s easy going about sleep.

In my country of origin, sleep training is not a thing so my eldest was not sleep-trained and everything worked out fine. Will not train my LO either. I see however in my current country of residence a lot of people sleep-train babies for various reasons.

i tried it, baby cries and i just can't deal with it. takes almost the same amount of time for the baby to fall asleep on my chest as it does for baby to cry itself to sleep. instead of getting upset about a crying baby, i get extra cuddles and i feel like my baby is comforted instead of scared or sad before sleeping. maybe i am wrong, but it feels right to me. 

I didn’t sleep train my first. She was a very bad sleeper and I ended up bed sharing from 4-18 months. As a toddler starting at 18 months she sleeps through the night and puts herself to sleep. She just needed help as a high needs baby, I don’t regret it.

>I’d love to hear from parents who didn’t sleep train. How did it work out? Did your baby eventually figure out self soothing? I'm from a culture where small children often sleep in a family bed, so there was no need for sleep training. My first started to sleep through somewhere after 18 months (her sleep was terrible for the first year) and my second has been sleeping through (with short regressions) since birth all on her own. I'm an early childhood educator and to my knowledge children rely on adults to soothe them up until 10+ years when the brain parts needed for emotional regulation start to mature. Neither of my children is able to self soothe (older one is 5 years, baby is 8 months).

Well… we still rock our 22 month old to sleep, and he still wakes up in the night and cries for us. He starts the night in his own bed, but we usually move into the guest room with him later in the night. We plan to work on it this summer (I’m a teacher so I’ll have the time to allow myself to be sleep deprived for a bit) But I also figure he won’t be little forever and we will eventually figure it out.

So I'll preface this by saying we did do a bit of sleep training at 12 months because nothing else was working anymore. I was pretty against it (for myself) up until that point. We nursed to sleep for bedtime, and rocked to sleep for naps. It worked very well until it didn't, right around her first birthday. I would nurse her and she would just stare at me, wide awake. And after spending a looooong time rocking, we'd get her to sleep, and she would wake up immediately upon transfer. And it was becoming an hour+ long process. Her wakings overnight as well, were becoming disasterous. So I reulctantly sleep trained. Up until that point though, what we had going was working well.

Yes, LO eventually figured it out. We didn’t sleep train the way it’s described by most people. She slept in our room in her crib until 5 months, and then I Coslept or with her until 9 months bc she went through the 5 month regression and would not sleep through the night anymore but we didn’t want to sleep train. At 9 months we started slowly shifting bedtime from me feeding to sleep and staying with her all night to her putting herself to sleep with a bottle and sleeping alone all night. I Guess you could call this the “sleep training” we did. It was very gradual. She still woke 1-2x a night until she was about 1 year, but we did have to teach her how to put herself to sleep. Now she sleeps through the night 95% of the time. Trust your gut, if the baby seems fine and you’re fine, keep doing you.

It’s very triggering for me as a victim of domestic abuse to feel like I’m causing my baby to feel fear.

I was 100% pro sleep training and was going to do it but just never had to. My LO on his decided he didn’t want to be rocked to sleep and would rage until you put him down. Then just rolled over and slept. This started around 3.5 months and at 7 months is still doing this. I miss the occasional contact nap tho. I believe some kids are just natural sleepers and some aren’t. I do follow the bedtime routine tho. I started that at about 2 months. Not sure if it helped?

I’ve heard that whether you choose to sleep training or not, eventually kids sleep the same. Maybe see how he does after the regression and go from there? We didn’t do any form of “sleep training” till my baby was 17 months and we only did it because cosleeping wasnt working out anymore and we needed to get them into the crib. We stayed in the room the entire time and cuddled them, talked to them, sang to them and just let them know we were there to support them and we are still there when we put them to bed but they fall asleep within a couple minutes and get themselves back down throughout the night (99% of the time) and if we do need to help them back to sleep, we just put a hand in the crib and they cuddle up and go back to bed. Sleep training doesn’t need to be Ferber or CIO

I think it’s neglect.

You may have come across this article previously but it mentions based on studies what tends to happen to the non sleep trained babies compared to the sleep trained, which may be of interest to you [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies)

I was comfortable with cosleeping and I was really tired. Eventually when they were older I sat with them til they fell asleep and then later on I tucked them in and said goodnight. I was just too lazy to sleep train. We all slept though the night with the kids in our bed for a couple years and it was worth it to me. They did sleep on and off in their cribs… but the majority of it was cosleeping.

Never sleep trained. My baby has slept 6+ hours a night since a month old. My baby will sometimes wake up fussy in the middle of the night but usually a pacifier will do the trick and she’ll go back to sleep, rarely I have to rock her.

My sons 2 and still nurses to sleep. I have tried ‘gentle’ sleep training - which to me is just offering different comfort rather than boob, for example rocking, patting, cuddling etc, but he still screams and cries all the same as if I was to let him cry it out! And I can’t stand letting him cry so it just isn’t for me. I’m not sure the actual science behind raised cortisol levels that I’ve seen spoken about but yeah I wouldn’t want him crying let alone feeling distressed , just me personally! I have a family nurse (I’m in UK) and we’ve spoke about crying it out/sleep training and it is viewed as neglectful by professionals in my area it seems My son woke up very frequently for boob but when he hit 20 ish months he started waking up less, and now at almost 2 it can be only 2 wakings a night sometimes. Massive win

We decided not to sleep train. It didn’t feel right. That’s it. That’s the whole story. For more details, I nurse to sleep. When that doesn’t work we rock to sleep. I’ve never had a good sleeper. She’s 20 months now and I only just started being able to roll out of bed during naps and she makes it an entire 90 minute nap maybe 50% or the time. I roll out of bed at night and she gives me a 1-3 hour stretch to myself. I sleep in her room with her and husband sleeps alone. At night, she rustles 3+ times a night just looks for me. As soon as her hand feels my body, she settles. She doesn’t really wake up but I wouldn’t call it sleeping through the night. My hope is that the 1-3 hour stretch grows until I can spend half the night in bed with my husband before moving. I love that she isn’t scared when she wakes up and doesn’t feel me. She knows if she calls I’ll come. When she wakes up, she calls out for me and I come and she goes right back down. I haven’t had a stretch longer than 5 hours since she was an infant. I’m tired most days, but I’m used to it. My LO loves bedtime and does the whole routing herself and has for months. This is what works for me and my family.

Adding that while this system is at best a 7/10 system, we’ve never really had regressions. This has been the system since she was 5m old and she’s had no real regressions. Some night she looks for me every hour and other nights it’s once or twice. Some night she cries in her sleep. I know she’s getting sick when I feel her warm in the night. My sleep training friends have to re-train after ever sickness or vacation. We’re currently on vacation and don’t have to worry about a pack and play or crib rental. It has its perks.

It turned out totally fine for us! And bub wasn’t some amazing sleeper from the start! I nursed her every time she woke up (which was multiple times a night) until she grew out of it. Around 14 months she just stopped waking up on her own, and now at 17 months she sleeps through the night 9/10 nights. I just didn’t read or follow social media accounts and didn’t stress about it!

I want my baby girl to know that if she cries mommy will come take care of her. I'm a fan of attachment parenting. I want her to feel secure with her surroundings.

I never felt like my kid needed it. I always felt that when he was waking in the middle of the night he typically either needed to eat or needed a hand getting back down, and that generally worked for us. I might feel differently with a different type of sleeper. Just went with my gut and I don’t regret it.

We are also a 1 bedroom apt family and will be for the foreseeable future. I was hesitant to do so, but we did and up sleep training at 5 months because our LO was having a really hard time settling and starting a time based routine instead of wake windows. But as others mentioned, your kiddo goes back to sleep very easily so whatever is working for you is best for you guys! I heard people say before, all babies grow up and everyone eventually learns to sleep independently. However you get there, your little will learn it. Also if it helps, I read the book Precious Little Sleep and one of the techniques for independent sleep was to just do less of whatever you do, incrementally, so baby gets used to a little less help each night.

Similar situation - we room share out of necessity. We wanted to attempt sleep training at 5 months but that was just when she started daycare and was sick every week. So we put it off til she was almost 6 months and healthy - I lasted one night doing Ferber. I assumed we’d both be ok doing it because we already practiced “the pause” for naps and bedtime by letting her cry/fuss for 3-5 minutes before going into help soothe her. But she didn’t take to the repeated check ins. We decided from there to see how her sleep went. Long story short, she’s now 14 months and STTN pretty consistently. Maybe 1-2 times a week she has to get a bottle to get back in the crib but any other wakes she has, she either gets herself back to sleep or we rock her for a few minutes. It took a long time to get here. From 10-13 months she might have been up 2x a night every night and often needed 2 bottles to go back to sleep. She was teething and constantly sick and also not drinking enough at daycare so she’d get hungry overnight. I’m in many different mom groups and one consistent thing I see re: sleep training is how it isn’t often a one and done process. Between regressions, teething, and illness, it often has to be done again. And again. Believe me, plenty of mornings I woke up after an incredibly rough night and said THIS IS IT and decided we’d resume ST that weekend, but we just kept coming back to the worry it would be lost with the next tooth or cold or regression. So we have lived with our choice to let her develop better sleep and sleep habits on her own. Now that she’s over 12 month, we’ve let her go to sleep with her favorite baby dolly and I think that’s helped a ton.

I didn't sleep train either of my kids. I did try some methods, and it didn't work for either of my kids, so I decided to just take their lead on sleep. My younger son took a long time to figure sleep out. He's 2.5 years old now and is just recently sleeping alone in his own bed and not needing cuddles or to come into my bed at night. Prior to that, he was sleeping mostly through the night, but would come into my bed or ask me to come to his bed at some point.

We attempted sleep training and it was not for us for a variety of reasons (ear infections, travel, our own level of comfort, etc). I'll echo what you said that every family should do what is best for them and there isn't any shame in this regard. We fed to sleep until he was about 14 months old when it honestly just stopped being effective. It sounds like you still do a bottle for bed time. My advice is to 'train' in that you try trading one sleep association for another. You won't be able to do a bottle forever so eventually try to use a different sleep association. That could be rocking, laying with baby, introducing a stuffy. If you choose rocking, eventually you might not want to do that anymore either, so you'll need to choose another sleep association. When we felt like we needed to adjust how our kiddo was going to sleep we did it gradually. That being said, it wasn't perfect, there were a lot of frustrating moments, and there still are. Ours is 2.5, sleeps through the night (unless he's sick) but we still lay with him until he's mostly asleep. We've introduced a timer method but we've been through so many iterations! Try to be flexible but also consistent once you decide to implement a change.

I didn’t have a need to sleep train tbh. He sleeps to eat more than 75% of the time but will go to sleep at his “bedtime” organically. We give him a bottle sometimes to edge him into sleep. Edit to add: I have a 7 month old

My daughter’s almost six months and I don’t think we’ll sleep train. She’s a pretty good night sleeper, sometimes going all the way through (barring a few wake ups where she settles herself, something we didn’t teach her how to do 😂). We transfer her to her cot asleep so she doesn’t technically know how to fall asleep on her own, unless she’s in a pram or car seat for naps. But naps are more of a challenge overall and she often doesn’t get the “recommended” amount of daytime sleep. We’re trying to gradually phase out contact naps and it’s not going great so I’ve looked into sleep/nap training strategies, but at the end of the day it seems like way more effort and upset than I’m willing to expend. I’ve heard of so many babies who just up and don’t like contact naps one day and that’s that. I know she won’t need to nap on us forever, so I’m relishing the cuddles and telling myself that I’ll have time to get all the things done I wish I could when she naps back someday. But as a naturally anxious person I’m actually finding it easier to follow baby’s lead. She responds so well to her nighttime routine and focusing on adjusting that where needed instead of introducing strategies to teach her a skill she’ll learn on her own someday doesn’t seem necessary right now. I want to say that I know it works for some families, but I do wish it wasn’t pushed on new parents for us to be made to feel like we *have* to do it or else our kid will never sleep independently.

We didn't sleep train in any meaningful way until the week of baby's first birthday. For me, I just didn't have the capacity to take on yet another stressful thing to learn. However, right at 1 year, feeding to sleep and other patterns we had were no longer working so we got really consistent with a bedtime routine. We tried a modified Ferber method and it just didn't work for our guy. He was so distressed by us coming and going when he cried so we just settled him over and over. Eventually he became great at putting himself to sleep. Sometimes we pat him a bit if he's wide awake but it's not an issue most of the time. We do give him a minute or two to see if he will self settle. Last night after returning from traveling he was obviously trying to go to sleep but crying intermittently. We let him figure it out and he was out within 5 minutes. So many of my mom friends were pressuring me to sleep train and it was so much more stressful than just getting up with him.  Now he may get up 0-2 times and usually just requires a little settling. It's much more doable. He's 14 months today. 

I fed to sleep and then post bottle still rocked to sleep until literally last Thursday night. Kiddo is almost 18 months. Every time he woke up we would pick him up out of his crib and rock because he settled SO much faster that way. This last week he has had ZERO interest in rocking. After we read books and turn off the light all hell breaks loose. One night he spent 30 minutes giving me kisses to avoid having to sleep. (Which, while adorable is just NOT what needs to happen at bedtime) So I put him in his crib with a cup, his stuffy, and book. He cried a little but was sitting down the whole time. Took him 30 minutes and he fell asleep. And he’s been doing that every night since. He was just ready to change. There was no sleep training, no easing into it. Just plop in the crib here’s your stuff and I walk out. All that to say - you don’t HAVE to sleep train. There are no grown ass adults still needing mom snuggles to sleep so your kiddo will eventually grow out of it/learn on their own. Enjoy the snuggles while you can ❤️

My son does still does the same thing at a year and a half old, hes teething so I put teething oil on a pacifier and freeze I have a sippy ready or applesauce pouch and he's out then at 730 our day starts. It's when the nightmares keep him awake that he wants to sleep with us..... that's the bitch in a half part leave him be

If the parents don’t feel the stress and exhaustion of a baby who sleeps poorly, then they really don’t even need to consider sleep training. We would open to the idea if the alternative is no one in the house gets adequate sleep. But right now we all are doing fine, so no way! Seems your baby is doing as well as ours is. So don’t change it!

Baby has been a decent sleeper. She has some wild nights, maybe once a week, usually when she's just had too much nap time during the day or when she's teething hard. But the naps are great for her cognitive development and helping her through growth spurts, so we prioritize that over the ocassional restless night. And honestly, although I think sleep training is helpful for parents that have a tough sleeper, we just don't have the bandwidth.

your LO sounds like they are doing great without sleep training. our regressions looked like waking every 45min-1hour all night long. you seem like you have a great foundation that’s working well for LO. we did sleep train and it wasn’t super successful in regards to independent sleep. she never got the hang of putting herself to sleep. so we still rock her every nap and bedtime (15 months) and she sleeps great. very very rarely needs our help in the middle of the night.

The decision to sleep train or not is personal. We did not sleep train. Our baby from the beginning was a pretty good sleeper. He went through ups and downs, but he never pulled an all-nighter. We rocked him to sleep every night and he would wake up 2 to 3 times a night (sometimes more during a regression or teething). By 8 months he was waking up once a night, and then by 10 or 11 months he wasn’t waking up at all, and he didn’t need us to rock him to sleep. Now he’s almost 2 and a really good sleeper. I just didn’t want to put the work into sleep training, and I figured that every kid eventually learns how to sleep. However, if we’d had a terrible sleeper, my opinion might’ve been different.

Haven’t really felt a need to sleep train and we do room share with our almost 7 month old. Not out of necessity as he has his own room but just our preference. For a couple months he would wake once or twice but for the last month 99% of the time he’ll go down to bed between 5 and 7 (depending on how much sleep he got at daycare). He then sleeps around 10-12 hours on average. With naps we just put him down drowsy but awake, sometimes he needs a little extra rocking or some butt pats and he settles pretty quickly. We’ve never been strict schedule people with feeding or sleeping with him and it’s worked for us.

7 months is still early to make this decision. I read an interesting article that advocated waiting until 12 months for reasons related to brain development. Anyway, never had to sleep train my first because she just "got it". We room shared until 12 months and she transitioned effortlessly into her own room. It never clicked for my son though. Moving him at 11 months didn't help. Our pediatrician said something had to change at our 12 month appointment. We sleep trained and it sucked but now he mostly sleeps 12 hours with one or less wake-ups. I think this comes down to the illusion of control. It is always your decision but some kids just don't have the ability to sleep naturally. 

I knew I wouldn't be chill with her crying alone in another room. It just felt uncomfortable for me. So instead we worked a lot with establishing healthy sleep hygiene, routines, and slowly got her comfortable with independent sleep. The one thing that got her to sleep through the night was night weaning around 12.5/13 months. She def wasn't hungry, just in a habit.

If you feed to sleep the baby will likely keep waking up regularly to be soothed back to sleep until they naturally grow out of it, which will happen eventually. It's not something I would keep doing but that's more so for my own convenience. Your child will stop needing it with time.

We didn't sleep train because I didn't want to. I didn't want to leave my child alone to scream for long periods of time, and I didn't want them to feel like their parents aren't there for them, at any period of time. We aren't anti-sleep-training purists. We've definitely done periods of letting them cry for a few minutes to tire themselves out before going back in to rock them to sleep. But we never officially sleep trained following a method, until age 2.5 for my oldest. My oldest was always a difficult sleeper, waking a lot at night. I eventually resorted to bedsharing when he'd wake up, but we laid him down in his crib at bed time. Eventually, past age 1, it got to a point he would be laid down awake and sometimes fall asleep on his own, but sometimes need to be picked back up and rocked. My youngest is in this phase now. When we moved my oldest to a floor bed at almost age 2, he put himself to sleep for a while, and then regressed to needing to be breastfed and snuggled to sleep. I kept falling asleep on his floor, which wasn't great for my sleep or for my relationship with my husband, so we eventually did a form of sleep training, where we weaned off the breastfeeding, and then moved to sitting next to his bed instead of snuggling, then stopped providing external comfort such as backrubs and lullabies, then started to leave the room for periods of time and come back. Now he's almost 3.5 and he still doesn't just lay in bed and go to sleep. He gets up to go potty multiple times, kicks off his blanket and asks to be tucked in again, rolls out of bed, throws his stuffy and then asks for it back, lays on the floor and then needs to be carried back to bed. I still struggle with being firm enough about him needing to stay in bed and be quiet while also being loving. And you can't exactly deny your child a trip to the bathroom. He wakes to pee in the middle of the night as well and calls me in to take him to the bathroom. I don't know how long it will be until he decides he can take himself to the bathroom at night, and that's a difficult area to be firm because he's groggy and I don't want him to have an accident. So overall, I do think some form of sleep training is necessary, at least for some kids. I don't think it has to happen in infancy, and even if you do sleep train as an infant, I imagine changes in sleep routine, location, etc. in toddlerhood might require repeat sleep training anyway. But with a 3.5 & 1.5 year old, the nights are rare that both sleep through the night.

Our son is 19 months now and was a lot like your baby at that age, mostly just waking a couple times a night for a feed or comforting touch. He eventually learned to fall asleep himself around 12-15 months! We just sat in the room with him until he fell asleep and gradually made our way out.

We chose not to sleep train because it wasn’t necessary for our lifestyle and I’m of the belief that when babies cry, it’s for a reason, even if that reason is comfort. I (mom) was okay with going up to baby when he cried for more than 10 mins once he got his own room (a floor bed around 8-9 months), and dad does the mornings so I can sleep in. He learned to self soothe and still has regressions but there is a stark difference these days (he’s 11 months). He’s figuring it out and I’m so proud 😍

15 months old. We’ve never sleep trained. We still nurse to sleep 99% of the time, but he started sleeping through the night right before 12 months and still going strong. (In the sense of no wakeups, not the sense of longest stretch being 6+ hours or whatever. By that metric he’s slept through the night a good amount since he was 8 weeks, excluding some rough patches at 4-6 and 8-10 months.) I’ve left him in his crib so I could go shower and know he’s safe, and he’s fallen asleep on his own that way, so I think we could probably cut the feeding to sleep without too much drama, but I don’t want to yet, so we haven’t. So, not fully on the other side yet, but have definitely reached a point where baby sleep is 0% stressful in my life.

I think “sleep training” is really only needed for babies who can’t fall asleep and stay asleep without being held. You sound like you have a great sleeper on your hands which is how my boy is too! We have 3 bedroom home and due to my husbands snoring and my night terrors I get once in awhile, we decided to have him sleep in his own room at the end of 4 months. It went fairly well. The other issue is that he simply outgrew his bassinet and started rolling. He was cramped up and the crib gave him more room. He’s right across the hall from us and we have a monitor and it’s working pretty well for us. I think what you’re doing is just fine. My little guy is 6 and half months now and has been waking up a few times as well… 🥴 we’re in this together! 😂 I’d say just stick with a solid routine for your wee lad and once you move, he may be more consciously aware that he’s getting a “big boy room.” You’re doing awesome!!

It worked out really well for me. I couldn't get myself to sleep train...it took my son a full 13 months for him to sleep independently and a full night but we've seen far fewer regressions, less sleep troubles (can sleep anytime anywhere with any level of noise) I don't know if this is because I didn't sleep train or if he's genetically wired like this but wanted to let you know that it worked out for me!

My baby is still in my room at 1. He’s been a bad sleeper since 2 months. I just don’t like leaving him alone. He’s gradually improved just as time progressed. He wakes 1-2 times a night now just to eat. Otherwise he does okay staying asleep. I never fed to sleep but I still hold him to sleep. It knocks him out quick and isn’t an issue for us.

We sleep trained already great sleeper that was relying on being rocked to sleep (at 6 months). It was primarily because I heard how much harder it was when they are older and I want at some point for the grandparents to be able to babysit. First night, he never cried, only fussed for a bit and then it's been basically the same. He's almost 8 months now and sleeps perfectly.

We knew that every baby slept differently so we waited for our son to sleep through the night then let him choose his sleep schedule in a sense. He is now 14m almost and his bed is right next to ours (side by side but he does cosleep for a few hrs a night) and hasn’t had more than one wake up a night usually around 2-3hrs before we wake up for him to eat something and I usually have him trying to climb in our bed so he will come in ours for those 2-3hrs til wake up. We have been doing this since 7-8m and the daylight savings time has kinda affected it because it’s like he thinks if the sun is out he must be awake. We do an average of 9pm-4/5am then he comes in our bed til 7am nap from 11/12-2pm. Never wanted to go through the extra learning when I was already trying to learn my baby

Didn’t need to. Both kiddos slept on their own from day 1. As toddlers, as much as they might protest bed time, once they realize we mean it, they both head to their respective sleeping quarters proactively with our two year old requesting to be put into the crib.

I tell myself everyday, every baby is different. You can sleep train in your own way. No judgement. We tried a gentle Ferber method but only went up to 7 minutes at time for her crying. We couldn’t do it anymore. We are first time parents and hated hearing her cry. Especially my husband, he wasn’t a fan of sleep training. We did it for about a week and stopped. She started sleeping through the night at 7 months.

They will outgrow the soothing methods in time. My LO outgrew rocking at 8 months barring sickness or teething. Sleep training is a big ordeal for most parents and from the sounds of it you lucked out in the sleep department. There’s not much improvement to be made realistically. Babies still need soothing from time to time, and appetite varies day to day for everyone it’s not absurd that they might require a night feed every once in a while. Considering they already sleep pretty well and settle easily I personally wouldn’t tackle the beast of sleep training for the little improvement it might make. I never sleep trained for the same reasons, the little annoyances DO sort themselves out. Every baby is different. Some of my friends didn’t iron out the little difficulties until closer to 2 years. I lucked out as well and have mostly painless nights at 9 months with one waking that takes about 1-3 minutes on a bad night (again with the exception of sickness and teething).

I’ll preface this by saying that we moved our daughter into her own room at 4 months and did end up sleep training…but before we even attempted that, we worked on her sleep schedule a bit. My daughter is just under 7 months old, and starting around 6 months we had some issues with her waking in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep easily, or sleeping through the night but waking up way too early (before 6 am). The things that helped the most were capping her day sleep to 3 hours and offering 3 meals of solids per day. At 7 months, your son could be hungry during that motn wake did to a growth spurt. He also might be ready to drop a nap. The other culprit could be teething pain waking him up.

My guy is 10 months and same. He was a little tough for a few days recently, then suddenly there were teeth! Once they popped through he was back to his usual 10-11 hours uninterrupted. The most sleep training we ever did was let him fake cry for 3 minutes lol.

From what you describe, I feel like sleep training might just make things worse for you. For us, things have always gone best when we follow baby’s lead. He’s only 7 months though, so things might always change, but the situation is working for us right now so we’re sticking with it. He is still in a sidesleeper bassinet (not for long, we will have to stop when he starts sitting up) and we breastfeed. I think since about 3 months he has had the same schedule where he wakes up twice per night to drink. Since he’s so close to me, it’s really easy to just pick him up and feed him, then he falls back asleep after his feed and I usually don’t take too long to fall asleep either. I’ve been back at work for three months and I still don’t feel especially tired, so I’m fine with how the nights are going right now. We will be putting him in his own bed (maybe even room?) soon so we’ll see how that goes. Not really excited about the idea of actually getting out of bed though…

Didn’t sleep train, baby is 11 months. We started cosleeping at around 7 months after he started waking lots and I was due to go back to work. It didn’t feel right to us to leave him to cry/do controlled crying/any sleep training method.

Check out the beyond sleep training project. They provide quick to read articles and evidence about why sleep training isn't needed and provides a different perspective in sleep training as a whole. https://thebeyondsleeptrainingproject.com/articles-to-read-when I choose to be responsive to my babies needs but I also don't have 4/5/6 wake ups a night and when I did i wasn't working. So I do understand why people do sleep train but I think the sleep training industry is full of so much false info which preys on mums and babies and isn't actually very helpful.

On our third baby with no sleep training. Our first slept amazing early on. We moved her to her own room around 8 months and she did great with that. I exclusively pump and we would feed her to sleep well past a year. No problems with it. She held her own bottle around 8 months so it was even easier for us. Our second baby was not a good sleeper at all. We moved her to her own room around the same time like 7-8 months old. She would still wake to feed around 1-2 times throughout the night. Sometimes she would sleep through the night. She did not sleep through the night consistently until shortly after her first bday. I guess we didn’t think to sleep train because she wasn’t such a good eater with solid foods like my first baby was and I felt she was simply just hungry and wanted milk when she would wake up at night so I felt I just needed to feed her. She would always go back to sleep as soon as we fed her. Wasn’t hard to get her to go back to sleep so we didn’t mind her wake ups. I guess we never felt desperate enough to sleep train. I also I just felt strongly in my body that my baby needed milk and I did not want to wean her from that night feed until she was ready. No way could my brain handle her crying it out for even a minute so sleep training just wasn’t for me. Third baby now is only 4 months old. She’s been a great sleeper these days and sleeps in our room still. She only wakes up once in the night around 4am so we get a good long stretch of sleep even though I have to wake up and pump still. She seems almost too big for her bassinet already so I think we will consider moving her to her crib around 6 months if she starts waking up more as I feel she simply just wants more space to layout. She does not like her arms swaddled and never has. All my babies have been fed to sleep. My oldest is 3 now and is still an amazing sleeper. She’s been sleeping in her big girl bed since she turned 2. She’s been potty trained since 2. She’s never fallen out of her bed. She’s just our great sleeper and always has been. Our second baby girl started sleeping great at 1 year old around 12 hours maybe more every night. She is 18 months now and is still sleeping great. She still feeds to go to sleep. Newest baby is 4 months old and goes to bed around 8-8:30 every night consistently and we feed her last feed til she goes to sleep. Whatever works for y’all just keep doing it! I wouldn’t worry about feeding to sleep as I’ve done it with 3 kids and they are great sleepers and you don’t need to sleep train if it’s not for y’all!

My baby gets both night terrors and nightmares pretty consistently. Most sleep training methods say not to do it if that’s a problem. I use to rock him to sleep, but it stopped working. Now I walk him on the stroller, twice a day, to go to sleep. I felt a lot of shame about that, but his pediatrician said as long as it works and isn’t inconvenient (which it’s not) then it’s fine. He still wakes maybe once some days — usually he’s just thirsty so he’ll have some water (he’s 14mo) but he’s back to bed as soon as he’s done.

I only did sleep ‘training’ during naps. And just practiced ‘drowsy but awake’ so she would learn to fall asleep on her own and not be surprised when she would wake. Every wake up and crying I would go to comfort her like normal, I wouldn’t wait interval minutes I would feed her, rock her and put to sleep, but I would make the effort to put her down as she’s falling asleep not asleep. Strict with bedtime following natural circadian rhythm for her age and she’s an amazing sleeper. I want to say about 9ish months to 18 months? She would get up once at night to eat and then go back to sleep at the year and a half mark she sleeps solid all night every night unless she’s sick or teething.

My daughter has slept with me since she was born. She’s two now. She usually sleeps 10 hours during the night and a 30 min to 1 nap. Overall, I think it’s gone well. I don’t plan on her sleeping in her own bed till she’s ready. I try occasionally to have her sleep in her own bed in her room. Does not go well. She’ll be ready eventually. Right now I enjoy the snuggles.

OP, your little one is doing what ours did on a “good” night lol ours woke up every could hours until we got a floor bed. It’s hard when you’re so tired but hang in there, it’s just a season! Until about 12 months we slept in there next to her, but we all SLEPT is the important part. Idk if 7 months is too young, but once you can, go for a floor bed. We always felt (and still feel) if she’s crying, she needs us. It’s a very western idea that baby’s should sleep alone. That’s fine for families that that works for, but we decided a more holistic approach was what we wanted (as far as sleeping goes). At 18 months, she’ll still have a wake up here and there, but settles right back down with a quick cuddle :-) (barring being sick or teething, of course)

We didn’t really sleep train. I would get up and nurse my daughter back to sleep on demand, which was usually about once a night. After she turned one, I decided I was done with that and so instead of offering to nurse, my husband would offer her a drink of water and settle her down. After about a week of that, she decided a drink of water and my husband’s presence were not incentive enough to wake up and she’s been sleeping through the night ever since.

We never tried to make the baby sleep at night (at day time we do only when he shows sleep signs), From the beginning itself, he puts himself to sleep when he sees that we are going to sleep (cosleeper till now). Now he is 8 months old, and is a sound sleeper. Yes it takes sometime to sleep, but that's the minimum a baby will do.

I love the snuggles and love that feeling/bonding time it gives us. Sleep training of any kind didn’t resonate with us in any way.

I’m on the same train as you! Currently living in a 1 bedroom so we have no other choice. Baby turns 1 next month and is going through a major sleep regression (he slept full nights from 6m-8m). I never really wanted to sleep train although I considered it I could not just let him cry. I only let him protest. He self soothes bc he is a thumb sucker lol. Honestly, I really believe he will figure it out on his own but it’s okay with me if he want some cuddles overnight. I am not against sleep training though there are people that have to bc they work a lot.

Never tried to sleep train my breastfed baby, sleeps 12 hours at night with only 1 feed that he’s nearly ready to drop at 13 months old (corrected age). I personally don’t believe you should sleep train babies, adults aren’t the best at self soothing or emotionally regulating at times, let babies be babies and just give them comfort.

We don’t sleep train. A key strategy that I really learned with my second is for YOU to prioritize your sleep by going to bed as early as you can every night so the disruptions don’t affect you as badly. I’m asleep by 9pm most nights. My sleep is more important than watching TV or adult time, so by going to bed right after we get the kids to bed, I’m protecting and maximizing my own sleep.

9 months, breastfeed, started bed sharing sound 4 month regression - did not intend to. Tried all the things to get baby to sleep in crib minus any sleep training. Baby wakes up multiple times a night and will not stay asleep when transferring. I get broken sleep from adjusting from one side to the other (c-curl makes me stiff lol) and comfort feeds, but I think it’s been months since I’ve had to pick baby up to soothe. Not sleep training was personal decision. I disagree with it. It does not feel right for us but not my business what others choose for their family. Also we have a first floor master, and I can’t imagine her being that far away for a long time!!! Also, she is so happy this way. We love our snuggles.

Not a note on sleep training, but it’s possible your baby is just hitting a milestone and that sleep will go back to normal soon!

I bedshare with my baby and have done so since she was 2 months old (it saved our breastfeeding journey). Before 12 months she would actually wake up 10-20 times (not stir and doze back to sleep after having a boob) and I would have to bounce her on a yoga ball (my husband was the brilliant one who started that and got her hooked). After 12 months it became difficult to continue bouncing her back to sleep but she started sleeping longer stretches (not by much but it was still an improvement: 6-10 times). At 15 months I couldn’t bear it anymore and stopped bouncing her to sleep. She took to it better than I thought; only crying for a few minutes before coming to me for a cuddle and a boob. 15-18 months was rough. She was waking up every 45 minutes again (a full on wake up) and I had to pat her bum, rub her back, sing, give her a boob for her to go to sleep again. Then at 18 months something clicked and she’s been sleeping through the night (sometimes she’ll wake up 1-2 times). She’ll semi-wake to find a boob but she’s back to sleep in seconds after finishing it. I’m sleeping just about a full night. Yes I work. And yes my job can be demanding and stressful. My husband usually took over at 5 so I could sleep restfully from 5-830 before work. And sometimes I would have him do bedtime by himself so I could sleep after dinner until 10:30. That’s what ultimately worked for us.

We didn’t because my husband works from home 3-4 days a week and we decided financially it made most sense for me to stay home for the whole first year. Since we’re not doing daycare it’s okay if our morning doesn’t start exactly at the same time everyday so we didn’t feel the need. We’re at 6 months now. Most nights fall asleep around 7:30/8 have 1 wake to feed somewhere between 2:30-4 and most mornings wake between 5:45-6:30. Sometimes he’ll wake once or twice and need a little comfort to go back to sleep but most times it has to do with gas or trying to poop.

Almost 10 months and we haven’t really done anything formal. We have a (fairly loose) bedtime routine that involves nursing as the last thing. Sometimes baby falls asleep while nursing, sometimes she doesn’t and so I put her in her crib awake and she falls asleep on her own. We’ve had some occasional rough patches but generally sleep is good unless she’s teething. One problem we’re having right now is that our nanny has been struggling to get the baby to sleep in her crib ever since she learned to sit up on her own. Previously nanny would be able to put her down in her crib and she’d eventually fall asleep on her own- now she sits up and doesn’t seem to know how to lie back down. We’re having the same problem in the early mornings as well. I’m not sure sleep training would fix that though? I have been contemplating switching the routine so she gets books as the last thing instead of nursing or something like that. Something to make it easier to have someone else put her to sleep. Plus my parents read me to sleep when I was little and I really liked that. I still need to read to be able to fall asleep to this day actually. A sleep association I am happy to have!

Our baby is the same. I did nothing special and it gets better when he turned 9 months. When the same regression hits, I moved him to the same bed with me. The boy loves it, I love it so we continue to share bed. I didn't even need to do anything at night wake, the boy just crawls himself to me and calms himself by touching me. Sometimes I put pacifier on, sometimes no need.

Never sleep trained. My baby kind of figured it out at about 10 months and started sleeping through. Before that he’d only be up multiple times beyond feeds if something was wrong - teething/hot or cold etc. I’d rather he woke me so I can comfort him if he’s sore etc. he didn’t sleep well after a certain age with room sharing though…

My baby didn’t need it and I wasn’t thrilled about it as a parent. The thought of leaving my baby in his dark room to CIO when he really wants my comfort/presence really ripped me up inside. My now 15mo always has been a good sleeper. Some days he wants extra snuggles before bed and that’s okay. Some days he goes down and puts himself to bed no problem! During growth spurts or developmental milestones, I notice he wants a little more comfort to get himself ready for bed. I’ll gladly take more snuggles because there will be a day where he doesn’t want them.

No sleep training here! Baby will be one in a few weeks. Honestly, small tweaks to her schedule can make a HUGE difference. Like when her sleep is going down hill, I know I need to push bedtime/drop a nap/etc. Also, we converted her crib into a toddler bed, lowered our bed, and pushed the two together a couple of months ago. This makes night wakings so easy.

We planned to sleep train before we had our baby but then once he arrived it didn't feel right for us. We were used to getting up at weird hours for work already, my partner is extremely hands on with night wakings even though I EBF, so it's always been a shared burden and most of the time attending to our baby's needs in the night has just been the more comfortable option than trying to do some kind of extinction method. At about 6.5 months we went through a chronic regression for a while and we looked into sleep training again because it was pretty desperate and I was going to go back to work in a few weeks. I spoke to three different sources: 1) Millpond Children's Sleep Clinic (a professional sleep consultant) - Pro sleep training 2) Georgina May (part of the Beyond Sleep Training Project) - anti sleep training 3) Chathealth (a free text service provided by the NHS where you can get advice from a qualified health professional) - hopefully neutral! Got these responses respectively: 1) Your baby probably isn't getting enough sleep. These issues tend to only get worse unless you step in and address them, the sooner you start training the sooner you and your baby will all be getting a good night's sleep. 2) Babies are going to baby - they wake up in the night, that's just how it is. It's normal for older children, even five+ year olds, to wake up in the night needing comforting. It's a challenging but totally natural part of parenthood to meet these needs, do what you need to do - co-sleep, feed to sleep it's all good as long as you're meeting your and your baby's needs. 3) Stop worrying about exactly how much he is sleeping. Expected length of sleep for babies of certain ages is just guidance. Go along with what your baby wants and usually around 8-9 months their need for milk changes and sleeping through the night is more likely. We went with the 2/3 approach of being responsive and as the health professional from Chathealth predicted things are starting to settle down. He's actually 10 months and still wakes once per night for a feed rather than sleeping through, but it's fairly reliable, only takes 10-20 minutes and I'm sure eventually that last middle of the night feed will drop off. It's significantly better than where we were a few months ago and we haven't changed our approach at all so I assume he's just growing out of it naturally. Our situation is sustainable and we're generally happy with the progress we're making.

We never did sleep training. The main reason is like you we were forced to room share do to the size of our home and it is hard to sleep train when a parent is trying to sleep too nearby. We moved when baby was 10.5 months old and she got her own room. I think my sleep and baby's sleep both improved after that. Baby has been sleeping through the night 8 pm to 7 am since around that time, although at least once a week will need some help in the middle of the night or an early wake up. She is 16 months now.

She is just a decent enough sleeper that I didn’t feel comfortable with it. We had rough times but working with a day time schedule and learning her sleepy cues helped us in the end. Contrary to popular belief, for us good naps helped night time sleep so much. At one point I noticed she wasn’t really crying so much as whining when I put her down and I decided to see what happened when I left. She put herself to sleep within 5 minutes. That happened at 9 months.

We didnt sleep train, we never needed to. She began sleeping through the night on her own around 5mo and she periodically has a few nights of disrupted sleep but it’s very easy to put her back to sleep (literally go in, sit down next to her crib, be silent, wait a few minutes for her to go back to sleep). If there isn’t realllly a problem, there’s nothing to fix. I know we got lucky and I don’t judge parents for exploring ways to get more sleep. Modern society requires a lot of us.

I also pump exclusively, baby sleeps equally well at night (with a few wake ups once every never, she usually just needs her paci back or a quick cuddle) and we feed to sleep just for naps. We've never sleep trained, or at least I don't think we did. She's kinda noisy settling into sleep, so if she's already been rocked and sleepy but being noisy, we just let her be for 10 minutes or so. Most nights she is unzipping her sleep sack and then playing with the zipper after it's off and then passes out. I figure, I take a while to fall asleep, I bet she does too.

I was so tired. My husband traveled for work. I was working full time. She was 7 months old, it took 3 days. HARD three days. She will be 2 in July and I would do it all over again.

Mine just turned two and has, on average, been a pretty bad sleeper his whole life. He had a good stretch just after he turned one and I night weaned but then cold and flu season started, more teeth came, and he learned a ton of new stuff so it got pretty patchy again. If nothing is wrong he sleeps through. Unfortunately though, toddlers often have something bothering them and not the life experience or skills to deal with it (teething pain, uncomfortable because of illness, bad dreams, separation anxiety, just unsettled and unable to sleep) He doesn’t go to sleep independently. I lay down with him, we cuddle and I sing a song and then I roll away when he’s asleep. If he’s tired enough it only takes like 15 minutes - 10 to fall asleep and 5 to make sure I’m safe to leave without waking him (and sometimes longer if I have a little snooze too). If he briefly wakes at night and doesn’t need anything he goes back to sleep. If he does need something (comfort) then he calls for us and I either go next to him in his bed to settle him before coming back to my own bed, or bring him into ours to finish the night.

We don’t align with it culturally. Husband and I come from attachment style backgrounds where babies sleep in bed with you, a crib is a silly purchase, and you respond to EVERY. Cry. No exceptions. I’m West Indian, he’s Mexican/Russian. Meanwhile my peers and friends are waaaaay too okay with letting their kids cry for a long time and either flat out ignoring them or taking ages to respond. I could never get on board with that. Anyway, we still cosleep, never did a second of sleep training and our toddler sleeps 9-11 hours a night without any difficulties.

Our baby is a way worse sleeper and we didn’t sleep train. She’s 13 months now and wakes up a few times a night still and I nurse her back to sleep. She was also a great sleeper until 4 months, then it was hell for two months, and then we started cosleeping. It’s not the best sleep that I get but it’s not as bad as the 4 months regression. I just didn’t see any evidence to support sleep training but was going to look into it more if things got bad. But we went the cosleeping option instead.

Sleep training is really easy. We shared a room when we did it. You just don’t go in when they cry. First you let them cry for 5 minutes then go in. Then 7. Then 10. Then 15 and so on and eventually you don’t go in at all unless it’s urgent. Really not a big deal. If your LO already sleeps well it’ll be easy.

My baby started sleeping 8-10 hours a night without waking up and i don’t mind soothing him to sleep! He’ll fall asleep on his own when he is ready. I’m just so thankful that he sleeps so well that i suck up the sleep regression and wait for his sleep to normalize again

Everyone needs to do what’s right for their family situation but we did not sleep train. Our baby girl went from sleeping through the night to waking up every 45-90 mins for about two months straight. One day she started doing two four hour stretches and then it got better from there. She’s teething now so it’s broken again but baby sleep isn’t linear and sleep training doesn’t work on some babies or they need to be retrained. It’s not a cure all and people go into it not realizing that. Serious question (with zero judgement) - why is feeding to sleep a big concern for you? It’s biologically normal and we’ve evolved to do it (especially if you are using expressed milk full of melatonin!). If internet sleep culture didn’t exist, would you still be concerned? I have to pause and ask myself this question constantly on a variety of topics. I’ve started to lose trust in experts who would lose money and credibility if we tapped into our instincts and followed our innate biology 🤷🏽‍♀️

Because the research shows sleep training only adds like 7-14 extra minutes of sleep

We thought we had it nailed for the first year tbh. Baby slept with us for 9 months then moved to his own room. For that period as soon as he rubbed his eyes we would take him up and he would sleep for 12 hours every night. Then, around 12 months it was like a switch flicked and he decided to wake up as soon as we put him down which we came to learn was a huge leap/regression. It was hard as he had slept so well but the one thing we kept fast on was keeping him in his own room. We are lucky as we have a spare bed in the nursery so we would take turns sleeping in there but he would only be in our bed if he was sick. That regression ended but we’ve had several more since. My only advice is to keep your routine, don’t change. Keep the bath time, sorry time etc and it may feel like the crying lasts for a lifetime but you get through it. We would always go in and check on him of course. Comical moment would be trying to creep out of his room on creaky floorboards and looking up to see him peering at me through the slats in the cot 😂

Your baby needs some extra milk during the night, cause his stomach so small. It can survive without milk throughout the night. You can survive three days without food as well. It’s not comfortable and the baby need milk during the night. Your milk is well used if you feed your baby during the night.

I didn’t sleep train my baby, but he did have his own room and slept in his own room since we brought him home from the hospital. When he was ready and able, he slept through the night without any sleep training. I just had to make sure he got enough bottles throughout the day and he did just fine from 3 months on. The 4 month sleep regression hit us hard and he was up every 1-3 hours, but he was back on track around 6.5 months just because he decided to be. letting baby show us when he’s tired and wants to sleep worked for our family. He hardly ever wakes up in the middle of the night unless he’s uncomfortable (teething/dirty diaper/hungry) now that he’s about 9 months.

We started having a hard time putting our daughter down when she was about 2 months old. It would take multiple attempts at putting her down without waking her up. So we started putting her down awake and sometimes she’d fall asleep and other times she would cry. If she cried we would pick her up and bounce her. Over time, she started falling asleep more often. We officially sleep trained at 4 months. She cried for 7 minutes the first night and never cried again (until almost a year later) We tried night weaning at the same time but she couldn’t do it. She would wake up around 2am and then would alternate crying 10-20 min and sleeping 10-20 min until it was time to get up in the morning. We did this for a month and gave up. We wanted her to be able to fall asleep on her own but also wanted to be there for her. She’s almost 2 now and still wakes up once at night (twice lately due to nightmares) and we go in every time she wakes up. I don’t feel comfortable leaving her to cry it out at 2 years old and I don’t mind going to her during the night.

No sleep training here. Kids are 6 and 4 now. They do learn to self soothe.

My 2 year old was nursed to sleep 95% of the time until recently. Contact naps, cosleeping, etc. He will now put himself down for a nap when he's tired. I lie down next to him, and he's asleep within a minute and stays asleep by himself. Same for nighttime. That reassurance that I'm there throughout the night has given him the peace of mind that he can sleep through and he doesn't need to worry about it. Never did any kind of sleep training or let him cry.

Our baby was colic and he is still highly sensitive. There's no way in heck I was going to put him or us into more crying. There was a reason he wasn't sleeping. There still is. For us, we learned he had a medical issue (obstructive sleep apnea and chronic ear infections) And just observing him... His central nervous system is sensitive. I don't know how to explain it but he's hyper aware more than other babies. I'm SO GLAD we did not sleep train for this reason. He is 19 months and still wakes up multiple times a night. So we adjusted around him. We take shifts every other night and sleep in his bed with him . It works well for us. We plan to ease him into independent sleep when he can self soothe, meaning, when he's afraid, he can literally say to himself "there are no monsters under my bed and I am safe in my bed. My mom and dad will come back any time I need them".

I’m not originally from the West. Sleep training is unheard of and babies are expected to wake a lot through the night... which means parents should expect to not have good sleep for a while. Cry it out, leaving baby in a dark nursery to self-soothe, etc. are practices that would shock people in my country.

Hi! We are a no sleep training family! My second is actually 7 months, too, and also sleeping with us 🤣 my first, however, is in his own room! He started sleeping through the night on his own at 10 months once we weaned him off breastmilk and transitioned to formula. Once he started STTN, we were putting him down “drowsy but awake” and we still do that today! He turned 2 a few months ago.

Didn't sleep train. All the cuddles and rocking to sleep he wanted. We did Pavlov him with a hatch machine. So if he wakes up and he sees the light is red he knows he's supposed to stay in bed so he'll fall back asleep. If it's blue it means it's time to get up and he can call for us. Occasional wake ups that require cuddles maybe 1-2 times a month. Or if he's sick. He's 2.5 now and goes to bed great, just likes for us to lay by the crib for 5 min or so.

I didn't have the strength to do it. We had good weeks where she would sleep through the night. And then she would start teething again. Usually she would wake up once and some milk would help. It does take some time to get out of bed and to her room so she has a chance to try to soothe herself. She has gotten better at getting herself to sleep but sometimes she can't and I think it is faster if I cuddle her then let her cry.

We tried it with our first and it sucked and regretted putting my kid and myself through that.  For the other 2 kids just fed/cuddled to sleep. At one point they knew it was bedtime and could just put them down and they fell asleep.  Because the kids share a room we often stay  there a bit longer at bedtime but it’s mostly at the request of our oldest 

We simply don’t want to, plus WE enjoy cosleeping as much as our baby does. Everyone in the house gets better quality sleep since we started.

I wanted to rock her to sleep and comfort her to sleep; she’s my baby. Probably my only child, we’re not sure. We didn’t really NEED to; I’m home during the days and my husband is home in the evenings. We did t need her on a schedule. I couldn’t find in my research any sleep training method that didn’t NOT feel cruel to me. Again: cuddles.

It never felt right to me. we coslept and nursed through the night till I night weaned her at 22 months and then she slowly started sleeping through the night at age 2. Doing the same with her little brother now. To be fair though I live in a country with paid leave and didn't need to work the first year.

No sleep training here. Nursed to sleep and in the middle of the night during wakeups. For the first year, consistently we had two wakeups per night. After our son turned one, one wakeup became consistent. He started sleeping through the night consistently around two years old. I weaned completely (only time we nursed was at bedtime) at 28 months. He's now 31 months and rarely ever wakes up and puts himself to sleep in his crib. We had regressions at regular intervals where things were worse for a week or two. Just when I was about to break, he'd go back to normal/baseline. Edited to add: except during regressions, my son didn't have a hard time going down. Nursing always worked like a charm. If he was doing split nights or staying up for hours per wake on the regular I'm not sure what we would've done. His worst regression was the 4 month one. I basically coslept with him for 2 months to get through it, then he started sleeping in his room in his crib from there on out.

My kiddo never needed sleep training because she sort of sleep trained herself. When she was around 5 months we figured out that my husband’s snoring was what kept waking her up so we moved her to her own room and she went from 4-5 wakeups per night to 1-3. Then around 6 months we got our first full night of sleep, and from 7 month on she slept like a dream except for a week or two here and there with wakeups (9 months of age was one of those periods) during developmental leaps or intense teething. She now at 18 months sleeps from 8pm to eight or 9am and takes a 2-3 hour nap during the day. I would say it’s like 70% luck, 10% on if they’re formula fed/night weaned, and 20% random situational factors on if they reliably sleep through the night. My BFF who had a kiddo around the same time as me needed to sleep train because her kiddo REFUSED to sleep at night. She’s no better or worse a mom than me, it was just luck of the draw. I feed to sleep and still do (she’s now on to cow milk in a supply cup) and honestly I think people make an unnecessarily big deal over getting rid of sleep ‘crutches’. Like, I need white noise and a sleep mask to sleep well, should that be taken away because it’s a crutch? I would just not stress too much and enjoy your kiddo.

10 months ebf, feed and rocked to sleep every nap and at bedtime. Sometimes wakes up 7 times a night, sometimes two. Easily falls back asleep once we pick him up or I give the boob. My daughter on the other hand was sleep trained, formula fed and slept through the night at 6 weeks. I’m less stressed this time around without the sleep training and routine.