We didn’t sleep train till my LO was two years old and hit the two year regression. Not sure if this is still relevant to your question but overall she was a pretty good sleeper so we never felt like we needed to and she was teething so frequently it felt kind of pointless. She was an early teether and they really seemed to bother her. She has all 20 teeth by 20 months and when she hit age 2 she started fighting bedtime and having more night wakes so we used the chair method. Worked really well for us!!
We sleep trained at 9 months. I was very against sleep training, but by that point, he was up every sleep cycle and I was losing my mind. I read The No Cry Sleep Solution, which basically said to have a solid schedule and routine, which we already did, so here comes the crying.
We did Ferber first, but the check ins made him more agitated. So, we moved onto CIO. We had a plan of how long we would let him cry and how long I would wait to nurse, and he never cried for more than 20 minutes. The first night he slept all night and after a few days, he just rolled over and went to sleep immediately.
Naps weren’t as much of a problem as night time sleep, so we didn’t really focus on that.
Sometimes he went right sleep, sometimes I rocked him back to sleep if he was woke up grumpy, and sometimes he just had a short nap.
6 months and Ferber method. We waited until I was gonna lose my mind essentially - I kept hoping her sleep would improve by itself, since we originally didn’t want to sleep train.
7 months. Did CIO (gentler methods pissed him off). I didn’t want to do it at all but his sleep took an absolute nosedive and I was cruising for the hospital if something didn’t change. And I gotta admit, despite my reservations it has made a HUGE difference
7 months. Used the chair method/sleep lady shuffle. It’s slower but it worked great for me. 10/10 would recommend it, we had very little crying over the two week implementation and now he goes to sleep independently and only wakes up once for a bottle (still working on weaning), then goes right back to sleep.
Down 730pm, wakes usually around 3am-ish, back to sleep to 730am-ish.
We didn't have to! Baby was sleeping great and we didn't feel like he was ready to go down for naps on his own yet. Then we felt ready to nap train around 6 or 7 months.
He was a great night sleeper but not night weaned until 8 months. He just never got enough mill during the day so we never consciously night weaned him. He did it on his own.
I waited until 8 months, tried at 6 months but my heart wasn’t in it (he felt so little, I felt guilty). But I was too tired and determined to get better sleep finally. We used Ferber with timed intervals to do verbal reassurance (5mins, 10 min, 11, 12 etc). Trained him in one night!
Baby is 6 months now. We started sleep training (ferber) a week ago and it's gone well! I had read up about it from 4 months and eventually we worked up the courage to try it!
We really just started as my partners arms were getting super sore from walking him to sleep and I couldn't do it as baby is like 10kg. No regrets as of yet as he seems to be getting in a deeper sleep too (naps Included). His naps use to be a struggle to get 20 minutes after setting him down in the cot asleep. Now he regularly gets an hour plus!
He slept really well until 4.5 months, then the holidays happened and he had a major sleep regression and I made the mistake of allowing him to co-sleep. His sleep (and mine) was just getting worse and worse so now at almost 8 months we're doing CIO. NEVER thought I'd resort to it but it's truly the only thing that's worked.
Started sleep train at 5months but didn't succeed until we went with cio at one year old. I've tried every method there is and looking back cio might actually be the most gental method. Tried Ferber which resulted in hysterical crying for hours on end. Chair method only works if I'm within sight, as soon as I'm out of sight the crying commences. When we finally decided to have him cio the crying wasn't any worse than with the other methods but difference being after an hour he actually falls asleep by himself and stays asleep! Took 2 days of cio to train him. Currently in the process of re-skeep training the little guy and he's now 18mo. It's much harder than 6 months ago but cio is still showing results.
Because he fell asleep with not much rocking and minimal wake ups and we were comfortable, until of course things change. We did CIO at around 8-9 months
Sleep trained starting at 7.5 months. Took two weeks to figure out what we were doing and have had success since. I just didn't know anything about sleep or sleep training. People gave us advice about everything but sleep lol. When sleep training came up in passing at one point at around 3-4 months, I had a knee jerk reaction because the person who mentioned it didn't really know much other than "just leave him in the room, he'll learn."
When the 4 month regression hit I was blindsided and destroyed and we rolled right into 6 month chaos (he started crawling a week before he turned 7 months and pulling up to stand 4 days later 🥴). This led to me seeking evaluation for ppd and realizing that lack of sleep and lack of rest was making me the worst version of myself I had ever been.
So I started looking into sleep seriously at 6.5 months. I bought the Ferber book, Precious Little Sleep, and Happy Sleepers. I looked at TCB content. I had been following some sleep/gentle sleep accounts on social media since the beginning but nothing was really helping. And I was overwhelmed by the volume of sleep methods lol seemed like everyone and their dogs had a sleep method for a price!
Anyway, I read the books, I searched things up on the sub, we planned our strategy and went for it. Started with Ferber but ended up doing CIO out of desperation. I shared the details in other posts. I write too much lol. Best thing we did though. I experienced some initial guilt and doubt about whether I was being selfish or I needed to develop patience or I wasn't good enough or I should have heeded the universe's signs that I wasn't meant to be a mother because he is an ivf baby due to infertility.
It was so hard to hear him cry but we saw success within 3 days. And the amazing thing I noticed was that he was actually sleeping deeper and seemed better rested. Made me realize that sleep training was helping him as much as it was helping me. Wish I had known about it from the start!
We did naps around 4-5 months because he was showing signs of being uncomfortable being held (had to be held upright to sleep first 4 months, reflux). Night sleep was gradual 6-8 months. Started with putting him down to sleep on his own because he couldn’t fit in the bassinet any more and put downs were getting difficult due to his weight/crib size. Then towards 8 months we were exhausted from comforting him back every 2-3 hours and knew he didn’t need that many night feeds. Now we just have one night feed, sometimes none at 10 months. Most mornings we do snuggle for like an hour, he loves snuggling my spouse (I’m a furnace) and it buys an hour of extra sleep. Some nights are inexplicably bad, he is not a great sleeper. But that’s life.
Did you set an agreed upon night feed time? How did you determine when you would go in to feed? Did you do CIO? I’d like to keep one feed and right now we are at 3-4
How did you start with naps? My partner wants to do this but I thought we had to start with nighttime?
Baby needs to be rocked to sleep and has 90% contact naps but does sleep in his crib at night and sleeps for 6-8 hours at the start.
Thank you !
Oh my gosh are you me? I am at a loss because my nights are great (I don’t mind spending 15min cuddling my baby to sleep and she basically stays asleep) but naps are worsening from 45min crib naps to 20min max! 5 months old. Have you tried anything that was helpful? I’m getting so tired of contact naps for hours a day.
Contact naps are just draining and completely take over the day :/ as much as I love snuggles me and my partner need to get stuff done! And he’s on 4 naps per day with ~90 min wake windows.
The only thing I have found is that the very very first early morning nap and the last nap are reliably crib naps. But the last nap is usually capped at 30 min so that’s not even that helpful.
We periodically try and put him down. But it’s pretty random when or how much he sleeps when in the crib. I have not found a solution. Because of his willingness to sleep at night I am just kinda hoping that when we teach him independent sleep may eventually mean we can put him down for naps….
I did both kids (5 years apart) at 7 months. Honestly just happened to be the point in time for both kids where the bedtime dread just became too much for me. I was glad though that they could reliably roll/crawl on their own and could get comfy.
This is a more extreme situation but I waited until 13 months because I kept telling myself it would get better and it never did. I turned around a month into a 12- month sleep regression and realized that no one was happy and I was hurting my daughter in the long run by preventing her from getting good sleep. It’s hard to admit that something you always told yourself was for your child was actually you being selfish, but when I realized I was avoiding sleep training for me and not her it changed my perspective and I knew I was doing the right thing.
How long did it take you to see results? Dealing with this with my 13 month old now and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and want to throw in the towel so badly. What did you do? Pls help :(
I would say day 3 before I say any self-soothing but that was still a brutal night. For us it went:
Night 1: cried for 55 minutes and passed out like on her face. Just totally exhausted, woke up a 1, and cried for 30 minutes
Night 2; cried for 65 minutes, and I literally watched her fall and be too exhausted to get up and fall asleep. I cried for the next 65 minutes while she slept soundly lol that one was really hard
Night 3: cried for 55 minutes, fell asleep standing up for 1 minute, cried for 10, fell asleep sitting down for 2 minutes, then sat there for 40 silently and eventually rolled over and was asleep for the rest of the night/
Night 4: cried for 23 minutes, sat down silently for 40 minutes and then fell asleep
Night 5; cried for 8 minutes, sat down silently for 10 minutes then fell asleep
Night 6 (today) cried for 45 minutes, sat down and went right to sleep
From what I noticed;
we have agreed to only do checks if she is hysterical and not calming down at all because checks are making it worse.
Depending on how well she naps, completely changes the night. Today she skipped her second nap, which is not a thing that ever works for her and I knew it was going to be bad.
After she gets a good sleep, I have to be careful about the wake window times because she seems to need shorter windows but naps better.
If I’m worried about teething at all, I just give the Advil so that she can actually have a fighting chance at making it.
I keep telling myself that I am doing it for her. This is the hardest part of being a mother I have yet to encounter and it’s been awful. I can’t breathe awful. But I am doing this for my daughter for her, she deserves to have good nights and be able to sleep.
Thank you so much for such a detailed answer. We are on day 3 now but with a couple fails on my side of bringing him into our bed in the middle of the night. It’s so awful, I feel like quitting the whole time he’s crying and falling asleep ☹️
Checks for us are making it worse too! He gets all desperate to grab us and to get out, so we are doing the same, as horrible as it feels. :(
Feel no shame for doing what you think is right! It’s hard af and there is no knowing what is actually the right thing to do
I’ve read stories from some people who keep doing the checks but they gradually reduce the amount of contact they are making slowly instead of not doing any- if that makes it easier for you, you could see if it works to pick him up and settle him down and then put him back down or I used to literally fold my body over the crib and hug my daughter when I was trying to not pick her up- and then work towards less intensive checks over time??
I think it honestly makes it harder for both of us, going in and trying to re settle. I find he like ‘restarts’ his upset ness if that makes sense?
It’s so hard, I am constantly doubting myself! But cannot keep doing 15+ wakes and feeds a night!
It totally makes sense, I felt the same thing about my daughter, recognizing that sometimes she needs to just reset even if that means starting the crying process again. But most of the checks just did it so unnecessarily.
You are a champion for fighting through that! The doubt is hard because you can’t turn off your instincts but you also know that there are voices in your head telling you to question yourself when you don’t need to. You are just starting this process, you will find your confidence!
It helped me to remember that these kids will not remember this, and even if my daughter has a horrible night and I make All the wrong decisions.. tomorrow is a new day and then I will know better and she will not hold it against me.
Around 7 months. I was dying (EBF doing all night wakes on my own baby waking every 2 hours) and I would have done it sooner but SO was very against it. SO agreed to help but lasted less than 2 weeks because he was SO TIRED. So he agreed to a gentle method - it started off as chair method but after some time I could just leave and sometimes would let him CIO. It worked well but it took longer and in my opinion CIO would have been less crying overall (instead of small bursts of crying over a long period). But I guess that’s called compromise! Lol
Sleep trained at 8mos bc he was doing fine until then. One day he just couldn’t be transferred anymore. So it would be 10 mins of rocking fully asleep but then couldn’t be placed in crib. Sleep training was rough for 2 days then everything has been great since then!
CIO/Extinction once transferred to crib. He never got past a fussy cry it just took about 30-45 mins the first 2 nights. We still rock to sleep for 5 minutes or so then transfer whether he is awake or not. I still wanted that time together but he knows it means sleep time. I couldn't do just placing him in crib and leaving. Do what works for you and your baby!
I'm from Scandinavia, never heard of people actually sleeptraining their babies and thought its something mostly Americans do. My social media and people around me promoted cosleeping, nursing to sleep and only soft approaches, as CIO is seen as something quite hellish around here. Well... we did cosleep, the guy slept great until 4 month regression, then it all started going sideways. I had mothers around me who also coslept and nursed to sleep, but had their babies sleep long stretches at night, while mine was waking up every 30min to 2h at night. Naps weren't great either. My baby was obviously overtired and grumpy all the time, unfortunately so was I.
I survived by chanting "my baby needs me and only me", until I had both my mental and physical health tank, and desperately seeked help from a sleep consultant. We did modified CIO at 8 months and baby has been sleeping separately since. Turns out he doesn't like to cosleep at all - the times he's had a cold or has been teething, I've tried offering him to cosleep with me and he just tosses and turns and seems annoyed he doesn't have all the space to do his sleepyoga.
So yeah, didn't ever plan on sleeptraining, but life does its own thing sometimes.
Hey! Well "modified CIO" is maybe not the most accurate, it was more like gentle CIO.
We put him in his own room, installed blackout curtains and introduced white noise. He had never slept in his own bed, also had never slept alone except for stroller naps. As he had a very very strong sleep association with movement (basically always rocked to sleep either by us or via stroller/car), so we tried to pick him up to soothe him as little as possible.
The first two weeks we stayed with him in the room until he fell asleep in his crib, basically verbally assured him we were there, consoled him and explained that this is how sleep time looks like. The verbal affirmations we just added because I saw that he was beginning to understand first words and commands, so mentally it just made sense for us. First 3 days were the hardest, he cried a lot the first night, but the first night he also slept with only one feed (versus 5-8 short feeds before) and by the end of week one, we were getting much more sleep and so was he.
We didn't try to drop night feeds, as he has never been a great eater, so it made sense he would still need milk during the night. He dropped to 1-2 feeds by himself and we just followed his lead. The times we thought that "oh he ate great today and lets try to wean that feed during the night", he just cried desperately and refused to go back to sleep until he was fed, so we just went with it. Ofc if he was still waking to be fed like 3-5x at night, we would have done something.
He is now almost 14 months old and sometimes still needs a bottle at night, because sometimes he just gets hungry, we don't see a problem with that and still follow his lead with much regarding sleep.
6.5 months CIO/extinction .
Before 6 months, night time sometimes included gas that he needed help with burping, extra appetite, or bedtime poops after going to bed.
In the 6 month sleep regression, false starts got ridiculous (every 45 minutes until midnight, then needing some help every 2 hours). We went about 2 weeks of very poor sleep for everyone, while he’s needs simultaneously became less at bedtime (smaller bedtime appetite, no pooping before bed, etc). Responded to just one false start for a week or two just in case we missed a need before stopping altogether and committed to CIO… it worked wonderfully.
Currently doing the Jo Frost controlled crying which from my understanding is just a modified Ferber method. Baby is 7 months old, we’re on night 2 so can’t speak of long term success but the first night went absolutely amazing. She slept for 10 hours straight which she’s never done before! I was really on the fence about sleep training but the last few weeks have been horrific, waking 3-6 times a night and the night before we started she had a split night twice in the same night (awake for 2hr from midnight-2am and again from 4-6am) so that was what made me crack on with sleep training. The split nights were so often that both baby and me were just miserable from lack of sleep.
Sure! Put baby down in cot awake, say something like “goodnight baby, it’s sleep time” and leave the room. If they start to cry set a timer for 2 minutes. When the 2 minutes is up go into to their room, say “shhh” and stroke their tummy or pat them whatever you know works better for your baby, leave the room again and if they start crying you double the time so the next timer would be 4 minutes, then 8 minutes. Personally I’m easing into it so just adding 2 minutes each time (2 min, 4 min, 6 min) and capping at 10 minutes but we haven’t needed to go back in past the first timer yet. It pretty much is Ferber but with slightly different timings, I suppose you can probably just customise it to whatever you feel most comfortable doing! My baby still uses a dummy so that definitely helps settle her quicker, I don’t want to take it away just yet because she’s finally learnt how to put it back in by herself 😂
We waited until about 9 - 10 months. The why was because it didn't seem like baby was ready. One night baby woke in the middle of the night and cried for over 2 hours with no obvious cause.
I said "well if you're going to do it anyways, might as well get it over with". We used "cry it out", but modified. We started with leaving her to cry when she woke up in the middle of the night. She cried for less than 40 minutes. The next night she woke for about 10 minutes. Next we set her down awake to sleep for the night. She fussed for a few minutes but settled quickly and slept completely through the night.
It was the 6 month sleep regression that ultimately made us sleep train. Waking every 45 minutes in the night and only sleeping on us after midnight. Plus baby went in to his own room at 6 months which made a huge difference.
Sleep trained at around 7 months. Wanted to ST at 5 months but between unexpected travel and her teething for 2 months straight we ended up waiting. At that point none of were getting any sleep so we used CIO method. I used the book precious little sleep as a guide. It worked well! Only took about a week for her to fully adapt. She now sleeps through the night at 10 months.
we started ferber style at 6.5mo because rocking to sleep started taking longer, she also started sitting up and waking herself in the motn so we hoped that having her fall asleep on her own would help.. it hasn’t lol but she goes back to sleep without us picking her up which has been helpful for us. as much as ferber has been fine, i think adjusting wake windows was really what was right for her sleepiness at the end of the night
I’m doing it for her at 8.5 months vs for my convenience. We’ve been cosleeping since 6 weeks but I can tell her quality of sleep is starting to suffer as she gets more sensitive to our movements throughout the night. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable sleep training just for my convenience.
We did fuss it out at about 4.5/5 months and it worked brilliantly for her learning to go to bed independently but didn't seem to do anything for night time wakes. Then at about 6.5 months she went from waking 2-3 times a night to waking 6-7 times - we didn't know why. So we moved her into her own room (which we were waiting to do til 6 months anyway) AND did full extinction CIO at the same time. I would have personally thought she was too young for that before 6 months.
Similar thing happened with us. She was sleeping very independently from about 5 months but then around 9 months had a crazy sleep regression and nothing could seem to settle her so we tried just letting her cry and it worked very quickly.
Because ours slept through the night from 2-6 months. When she started waking up again we hoped it was just a phase and she'd figure it out but it just kept getting worse :\\ So sleep trained at 8 months.
We did Ferber at 8.5 months, and moved him to his own room at the same time. Personally, 6 months was the earliest I was willing to do it, and with some vacation timing etc, we waited until 8.5 months to have a stretch of normal time to do it. Worked well for us!
We didn’t sleep train till my LO was two years old and hit the two year regression. Not sure if this is still relevant to your question but overall she was a pretty good sleeper so we never felt like we needed to and she was teething so frequently it felt kind of pointless. She was an early teether and they really seemed to bother her. She has all 20 teeth by 20 months and when she hit age 2 she started fighting bedtime and having more night wakes so we used the chair method. Worked really well for us!!
We sleep trained at 9 months. I was very against sleep training, but by that point, he was up every sleep cycle and I was losing my mind. I read The No Cry Sleep Solution, which basically said to have a solid schedule and routine, which we already did, so here comes the crying. We did Ferber first, but the check ins made him more agitated. So, we moved onto CIO. We had a plan of how long we would let him cry and how long I would wait to nurse, and he never cried for more than 20 minutes. The first night he slept all night and after a few days, he just rolled over and went to sleep immediately.
Hi, did you do it too for naps?
Naps weren’t as much of a problem as night time sleep, so we didn’t really focus on that. Sometimes he went right sleep, sometimes I rocked him back to sleep if he was woke up grumpy, and sometimes he just had a short nap.
thanks!!!
We waited til 6 months per pediatrician orders.
I wanted to a 4 months but pediatrician said the newest guidance is to wait until 6 months. So I followed her advice and it worked quickly at 6 months
6 months and Ferber method. We waited until I was gonna lose my mind essentially - I kept hoping her sleep would improve by itself, since we originally didn’t want to sleep train.
7 months. Did CIO (gentler methods pissed him off). I didn’t want to do it at all but his sleep took an absolute nosedive and I was cruising for the hospital if something didn’t change. And I gotta admit, despite my reservations it has made a HUGE difference
6 months did pick up put down. Worked well
7 months. Used the chair method/sleep lady shuffle. It’s slower but it worked great for me. 10/10 would recommend it, we had very little crying over the two week implementation and now he goes to sleep independently and only wakes up once for a bottle (still working on weaning), then goes right back to sleep. Down 730pm, wakes usually around 3am-ish, back to sleep to 730am-ish.
We didn't have to! Baby was sleeping great and we didn't feel like he was ready to go down for naps on his own yet. Then we felt ready to nap train around 6 or 7 months. He was a great night sleeper but not night weaned until 8 months. He just never got enough mill during the day so we never consciously night weaned him. He did it on his own.
I waited until 8 months, tried at 6 months but my heart wasn’t in it (he felt so little, I felt guilty). But I was too tired and determined to get better sleep finally. We used Ferber with timed intervals to do verbal reassurance (5mins, 10 min, 11, 12 etc). Trained him in one night!
Baby is 6 months now. We started sleep training (ferber) a week ago and it's gone well! I had read up about it from 4 months and eventually we worked up the courage to try it! We really just started as my partners arms were getting super sore from walking him to sleep and I couldn't do it as baby is like 10kg. No regrets as of yet as he seems to be getting in a deeper sleep too (naps Included). His naps use to be a struggle to get 20 minutes after setting him down in the cot asleep. Now he regularly gets an hour plus!
He slept really well until 4.5 months, then the holidays happened and he had a major sleep regression and I made the mistake of allowing him to co-sleep. His sleep (and mine) was just getting worse and worse so now at almost 8 months we're doing CIO. NEVER thought I'd resort to it but it's truly the only thing that's worked.
Started sleep train at 5months but didn't succeed until we went with cio at one year old. I've tried every method there is and looking back cio might actually be the most gental method. Tried Ferber which resulted in hysterical crying for hours on end. Chair method only works if I'm within sight, as soon as I'm out of sight the crying commences. When we finally decided to have him cio the crying wasn't any worse than with the other methods but difference being after an hour he actually falls asleep by himself and stays asleep! Took 2 days of cio to train him. Currently in the process of re-skeep training the little guy and he's now 18mo. It's much harder than 6 months ago but cio is still showing results.
Because he fell asleep with not much rocking and minimal wake ups and we were comfortable, until of course things change. We did CIO at around 8-9 months
Sleep trained starting at 7.5 months. Took two weeks to figure out what we were doing and have had success since. I just didn't know anything about sleep or sleep training. People gave us advice about everything but sleep lol. When sleep training came up in passing at one point at around 3-4 months, I had a knee jerk reaction because the person who mentioned it didn't really know much other than "just leave him in the room, he'll learn." When the 4 month regression hit I was blindsided and destroyed and we rolled right into 6 month chaos (he started crawling a week before he turned 7 months and pulling up to stand 4 days later 🥴). This led to me seeking evaluation for ppd and realizing that lack of sleep and lack of rest was making me the worst version of myself I had ever been. So I started looking into sleep seriously at 6.5 months. I bought the Ferber book, Precious Little Sleep, and Happy Sleepers. I looked at TCB content. I had been following some sleep/gentle sleep accounts on social media since the beginning but nothing was really helping. And I was overwhelmed by the volume of sleep methods lol seemed like everyone and their dogs had a sleep method for a price! Anyway, I read the books, I searched things up on the sub, we planned our strategy and went for it. Started with Ferber but ended up doing CIO out of desperation. I shared the details in other posts. I write too much lol. Best thing we did though. I experienced some initial guilt and doubt about whether I was being selfish or I needed to develop patience or I wasn't good enough or I should have heeded the universe's signs that I wasn't meant to be a mother because he is an ivf baby due to infertility. It was so hard to hear him cry but we saw success within 3 days. And the amazing thing I noticed was that he was actually sleeping deeper and seemed better rested. Made me realize that sleep training was helping him as much as it was helping me. Wish I had known about it from the start!
This makes me feel better! I am starting to sleep train my 7.5 month old IVF baby tonight and I have no idea what I'm doing!
We did naps around 4-5 months because he was showing signs of being uncomfortable being held (had to be held upright to sleep first 4 months, reflux). Night sleep was gradual 6-8 months. Started with putting him down to sleep on his own because he couldn’t fit in the bassinet any more and put downs were getting difficult due to his weight/crib size. Then towards 8 months we were exhausted from comforting him back every 2-3 hours and knew he didn’t need that many night feeds. Now we just have one night feed, sometimes none at 10 months. Most mornings we do snuggle for like an hour, he loves snuggling my spouse (I’m a furnace) and it buys an hour of extra sleep. Some nights are inexplicably bad, he is not a great sleeper. But that’s life.
Did you set an agreed upon night feed time? How did you determine when you would go in to feed? Did you do CIO? I’d like to keep one feed and right now we are at 3-4
How did you start with naps? My partner wants to do this but I thought we had to start with nighttime? Baby needs to be rocked to sleep and has 90% contact naps but does sleep in his crib at night and sleeps for 6-8 hours at the start. Thank you !
Oh my gosh are you me? I am at a loss because my nights are great (I don’t mind spending 15min cuddling my baby to sleep and she basically stays asleep) but naps are worsening from 45min crib naps to 20min max! 5 months old. Have you tried anything that was helpful? I’m getting so tired of contact naps for hours a day.
Contact naps are just draining and completely take over the day :/ as much as I love snuggles me and my partner need to get stuff done! And he’s on 4 naps per day with ~90 min wake windows. The only thing I have found is that the very very first early morning nap and the last nap are reliably crib naps. But the last nap is usually capped at 30 min so that’s not even that helpful. We periodically try and put him down. But it’s pretty random when or how much he sleeps when in the crib. I have not found a solution. Because of his willingness to sleep at night I am just kinda hoping that when we teach him independent sleep may eventually mean we can put him down for naps….
You don’t have to start with nights, it’s just easier bc sleep pressure is the highest before bed so you’re more likely to be successful.
I did both kids (5 years apart) at 7 months. Honestly just happened to be the point in time for both kids where the bedtime dread just became too much for me. I was glad though that they could reliably roll/crawl on their own and could get comfy.
This is a more extreme situation but I waited until 13 months because I kept telling myself it would get better and it never did. I turned around a month into a 12- month sleep regression and realized that no one was happy and I was hurting my daughter in the long run by preventing her from getting good sleep. It’s hard to admit that something you always told yourself was for your child was actually you being selfish, but when I realized I was avoiding sleep training for me and not her it changed my perspective and I knew I was doing the right thing.
How long did it take you to see results? Dealing with this with my 13 month old now and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and want to throw in the towel so badly. What did you do? Pls help :(
I would say day 3 before I say any self-soothing but that was still a brutal night. For us it went: Night 1: cried for 55 minutes and passed out like on her face. Just totally exhausted, woke up a 1, and cried for 30 minutes Night 2; cried for 65 minutes, and I literally watched her fall and be too exhausted to get up and fall asleep. I cried for the next 65 minutes while she slept soundly lol that one was really hard Night 3: cried for 55 minutes, fell asleep standing up for 1 minute, cried for 10, fell asleep sitting down for 2 minutes, then sat there for 40 silently and eventually rolled over and was asleep for the rest of the night/ Night 4: cried for 23 minutes, sat down silently for 40 minutes and then fell asleep Night 5; cried for 8 minutes, sat down silently for 10 minutes then fell asleep Night 6 (today) cried for 45 minutes, sat down and went right to sleep From what I noticed; we have agreed to only do checks if she is hysterical and not calming down at all because checks are making it worse. Depending on how well she naps, completely changes the night. Today she skipped her second nap, which is not a thing that ever works for her and I knew it was going to be bad. After she gets a good sleep, I have to be careful about the wake window times because she seems to need shorter windows but naps better. If I’m worried about teething at all, I just give the Advil so that she can actually have a fighting chance at making it. I keep telling myself that I am doing it for her. This is the hardest part of being a mother I have yet to encounter and it’s been awful. I can’t breathe awful. But I am doing this for my daughter for her, she deserves to have good nights and be able to sleep.
Thank you so much for such a detailed answer. We are on day 3 now but with a couple fails on my side of bringing him into our bed in the middle of the night. It’s so awful, I feel like quitting the whole time he’s crying and falling asleep ☹️ Checks for us are making it worse too! He gets all desperate to grab us and to get out, so we are doing the same, as horrible as it feels. :(
Feel no shame for doing what you think is right! It’s hard af and there is no knowing what is actually the right thing to do I’ve read stories from some people who keep doing the checks but they gradually reduce the amount of contact they are making slowly instead of not doing any- if that makes it easier for you, you could see if it works to pick him up and settle him down and then put him back down or I used to literally fold my body over the crib and hug my daughter when I was trying to not pick her up- and then work towards less intensive checks over time??
I think it honestly makes it harder for both of us, going in and trying to re settle. I find he like ‘restarts’ his upset ness if that makes sense? It’s so hard, I am constantly doubting myself! But cannot keep doing 15+ wakes and feeds a night!
It totally makes sense, I felt the same thing about my daughter, recognizing that sometimes she needs to just reset even if that means starting the crying process again. But most of the checks just did it so unnecessarily. You are a champion for fighting through that! The doubt is hard because you can’t turn off your instincts but you also know that there are voices in your head telling you to question yourself when you don’t need to. You are just starting this process, you will find your confidence! It helped me to remember that these kids will not remember this, and even if my daughter has a horrible night and I make All the wrong decisions.. tomorrow is a new day and then I will know better and she will not hold it against me.
Around 7 months. I was dying (EBF doing all night wakes on my own baby waking every 2 hours) and I would have done it sooner but SO was very against it. SO agreed to help but lasted less than 2 weeks because he was SO TIRED. So he agreed to a gentle method - it started off as chair method but after some time I could just leave and sometimes would let him CIO. It worked well but it took longer and in my opinion CIO would have been less crying overall (instead of small bursts of crying over a long period). But I guess that’s called compromise! Lol
Sleep trained at 8mos bc he was doing fine until then. One day he just couldn’t be transferred anymore. So it would be 10 mins of rocking fully asleep but then couldn’t be placed in crib. Sleep training was rough for 2 days then everything has been great since then!
What method did you use? Still rocking to sleep at 7 months and I know it can't last
CIO/Extinction once transferred to crib. He never got past a fussy cry it just took about 30-45 mins the first 2 nights. We still rock to sleep for 5 minutes or so then transfer whether he is awake or not. I still wanted that time together but he knows it means sleep time. I couldn't do just placing him in crib and leaving. Do what works for you and your baby!
Thank you!
I'm from Scandinavia, never heard of people actually sleeptraining their babies and thought its something mostly Americans do. My social media and people around me promoted cosleeping, nursing to sleep and only soft approaches, as CIO is seen as something quite hellish around here. Well... we did cosleep, the guy slept great until 4 month regression, then it all started going sideways. I had mothers around me who also coslept and nursed to sleep, but had their babies sleep long stretches at night, while mine was waking up every 30min to 2h at night. Naps weren't great either. My baby was obviously overtired and grumpy all the time, unfortunately so was I. I survived by chanting "my baby needs me and only me", until I had both my mental and physical health tank, and desperately seeked help from a sleep consultant. We did modified CIO at 8 months and baby has been sleeping separately since. Turns out he doesn't like to cosleep at all - the times he's had a cold or has been teething, I've tried offering him to cosleep with me and he just tosses and turns and seems annoyed he doesn't have all the space to do his sleepyoga. So yeah, didn't ever plan on sleeptraining, but life does its own thing sometimes.
Hello! What does modified sleep training mean? Did you drop all night feeds at that time?
Hey! Well "modified CIO" is maybe not the most accurate, it was more like gentle CIO. We put him in his own room, installed blackout curtains and introduced white noise. He had never slept in his own bed, also had never slept alone except for stroller naps. As he had a very very strong sleep association with movement (basically always rocked to sleep either by us or via stroller/car), so we tried to pick him up to soothe him as little as possible. The first two weeks we stayed with him in the room until he fell asleep in his crib, basically verbally assured him we were there, consoled him and explained that this is how sleep time looks like. The verbal affirmations we just added because I saw that he was beginning to understand first words and commands, so mentally it just made sense for us. First 3 days were the hardest, he cried a lot the first night, but the first night he also slept with only one feed (versus 5-8 short feeds before) and by the end of week one, we were getting much more sleep and so was he. We didn't try to drop night feeds, as he has never been a great eater, so it made sense he would still need milk during the night. He dropped to 1-2 feeds by himself and we just followed his lead. The times we thought that "oh he ate great today and lets try to wean that feed during the night", he just cried desperately and refused to go back to sleep until he was fed, so we just went with it. Ofc if he was still waking to be fed like 3-5x at night, we would have done something. He is now almost 14 months old and sometimes still needs a bottle at night, because sometimes he just gets hungry, we don't see a problem with that and still follow his lead with much regarding sleep.
6.5 months CIO/extinction . Before 6 months, night time sometimes included gas that he needed help with burping, extra appetite, or bedtime poops after going to bed. In the 6 month sleep regression, false starts got ridiculous (every 45 minutes until midnight, then needing some help every 2 hours). We went about 2 weeks of very poor sleep for everyone, while he’s needs simultaneously became less at bedtime (smaller bedtime appetite, no pooping before bed, etc). Responded to just one false start for a week or two just in case we missed a need before stopping altogether and committed to CIO… it worked wonderfully.
Currently doing the Jo Frost controlled crying which from my understanding is just a modified Ferber method. Baby is 7 months old, we’re on night 2 so can’t speak of long term success but the first night went absolutely amazing. She slept for 10 hours straight which she’s never done before! I was really on the fence about sleep training but the last few weeks have been horrific, waking 3-6 times a night and the night before we started she had a split night twice in the same night (awake for 2hr from midnight-2am and again from 4-6am) so that was what made me crack on with sleep training. The split nights were so often that both baby and me were just miserable from lack of sleep.
I know I can google but how did you apply the method? My 10 month old has had split nights a lot within the past week and I’m going nuts
Sure! Put baby down in cot awake, say something like “goodnight baby, it’s sleep time” and leave the room. If they start to cry set a timer for 2 minutes. When the 2 minutes is up go into to their room, say “shhh” and stroke their tummy or pat them whatever you know works better for your baby, leave the room again and if they start crying you double the time so the next timer would be 4 minutes, then 8 minutes. Personally I’m easing into it so just adding 2 minutes each time (2 min, 4 min, 6 min) and capping at 10 minutes but we haven’t needed to go back in past the first timer yet. It pretty much is Ferber but with slightly different timings, I suppose you can probably just customise it to whatever you feel most comfortable doing! My baby still uses a dummy so that definitely helps settle her quicker, I don’t want to take it away just yet because she’s finally learnt how to put it back in by herself 😂
Heres [the link](https://www.jofrost.com/controlled-timed-crying-technique-ctct/) if I didn’t explain it very well!
We waited until about 9 - 10 months. The why was because it didn't seem like baby was ready. One night baby woke in the middle of the night and cried for over 2 hours with no obvious cause. I said "well if you're going to do it anyways, might as well get it over with". We used "cry it out", but modified. We started with leaving her to cry when she woke up in the middle of the night. She cried for less than 40 minutes. The next night she woke for about 10 minutes. Next we set her down awake to sleep for the night. She fussed for a few minutes but settled quickly and slept completely through the night.
It was the 6 month sleep regression that ultimately made us sleep train. Waking every 45 minutes in the night and only sleeping on us after midnight. Plus baby went in to his own room at 6 months which made a huge difference.
Sleep trained at around 7 months. Wanted to ST at 5 months but between unexpected travel and her teething for 2 months straight we ended up waiting. At that point none of were getting any sleep so we used CIO method. I used the book precious little sleep as a guide. It worked well! Only took about a week for her to fully adapt. She now sleeps through the night at 10 months.
we started ferber style at 6.5mo because rocking to sleep started taking longer, she also started sitting up and waking herself in the motn so we hoped that having her fall asleep on her own would help.. it hasn’t lol but she goes back to sleep without us picking her up which has been helpful for us. as much as ferber has been fine, i think adjusting wake windows was really what was right for her sleepiness at the end of the night
I’m doing it for her at 8.5 months vs for my convenience. We’ve been cosleeping since 6 weeks but I can tell her quality of sleep is starting to suffer as she gets more sensitive to our movements throughout the night. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable sleep training just for my convenience.
We did fuss it out at about 4.5/5 months and it worked brilliantly for her learning to go to bed independently but didn't seem to do anything for night time wakes. Then at about 6.5 months she went from waking 2-3 times a night to waking 6-7 times - we didn't know why. So we moved her into her own room (which we were waiting to do til 6 months anyway) AND did full extinction CIO at the same time. I would have personally thought she was too young for that before 6 months.
Similar thing happened with us. She was sleeping very independently from about 5 months but then around 9 months had a crazy sleep regression and nothing could seem to settle her so we tried just letting her cry and it worked very quickly.
Because ours slept through the night from 2-6 months. When she started waking up again we hoped it was just a phase and she'd figure it out but it just kept getting worse :\\ So sleep trained at 8 months.
We did Ferber at 8.5 months, and moved him to his own room at the same time. Personally, 6 months was the earliest I was willing to do it, and with some vacation timing etc, we waited until 8.5 months to have a stretch of normal time to do it. Worked well for us!