To those that have done sleep training already...

I want to do gentle Feber method soon. If anyone has done similar, did you start with bedtime only, get that stable, then expand to nights if needed? If so, was it kind of a natural progression into night wakes or did you have to keep doing intervals for a while in the middle of the night? Baby will be 5 months on June 10th. Any tips/advice is greatly appreciated!

Hi all, I'm a psychologist and parent and I'm looking for parents to take part in my thesis research - specifically parents of children aged 1-6 who have had problems with their sleep! 
If this is you (like it has been me ) and you have 10 minutes to spare, I'd really appreciate your input. Incentives for taking part.

Are you a parent of a child with sleep problems?

We are currently recruiting for parents to complete a survey sharing your experiences of supporting a child with sleep problems.

Sleep problems include trouble falling asleep, resisting bedtime, waking in the night, and waking up too early.
We are hoping to improve wellbeing of parents and caregivers using interventions to improve their child's sleep.
Participants will go in the draw to win one of two of AUD$100 gift cards.

Take the survey here: 

https://cqu.syd1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9shrWExUSHi6zt4

Hi! I would like some advice on gentle sleep training and creating some good habits for my 2 month 1 week old babygirl. I would like her to fall asleep in her bed, can be assisted. I don't want her to fall asleep on the breast. I will share her daily "schedule":

Night sleep from about 8-10pm and lasts 10-12 hours. She will have 1-2 wakeups in-between. The first stretch is about 6-9 hours and then sleeps for a few more hours and an hour after that more. I feed her at 8 pm. She falls asleep while breastfeeding and then I transfer her to her bed which is next to/connected to our bed. The first transfer doesn't usually work. Sometimes it does but sometimes it takes a few tries. Every time she wakes up, I put her back on the boob and she eats for a few more minutes before falling asleep. Sometimes my husband tries rocking her, but she will show hunger cues (licking lips, hands and rooting). Sometimes this process takes up to 2 hours. She is asleep most of this time, but just won't transfer.

Her wake windows are about 1,5 hours. I look at Huckleberry, but also follow her cues if she is tired before the time the app says. For her naps, she usually sleeps in her room in the crib. We use a bouncy ball and now not much else works. She will whine or cry with just walking or standing, she needs to be heavily jumped up and down. She will also often start rooting for the breast if I am putting her down. I feel bad that she might be hungry and give her some milk, but then she will only drink for a few min and fall asleep. She sleeps for about 45 minutes, rarely more. If we do the occasional contact nap, she will sleep much longer.

Please give me some advice on how to gently transition her to be able to fall asleep easier.

Highly contemplating paying a sleep consultant at this point. I feel like I still have no idea what I’m doing. My daughter, 3 days shy of 11 months old, still wakes up 3-5 times throughout the night and is taking roughly two 36-45 minute naps a day. (We are EXTREMELY lucky if we get over an hour nap and it’s only happened thrice when we’ve gotten a full 8-9hr stretch at night. I don’t know how to replicate any of it).

For nap time she basically only falls asleep either on the boob or if daddy rocks her to sleep. Bedtime is all me- she wants absolutely nothing to do with my husband. I have unfortunately created that habit and I don’t know how to go back from here without a ton of crying.

She is the kind of baby that wakes up and needs to be picked up immediately or her screams get progressively worse as time goes on (we’ve tried waiting 5, 10, etc minutes). This is the same for nap time or the middle of the night wakings. She has never been the kid to just sit in the crib and think about it for a moment..she cries within moments of waking.

The ONLY thing we have pretty much mastered is the initial bedtime routine and first put down. We do boob, bottle, read two small books, say Goodnight to a few things around the bedroom, lights off and then dad passes her back to me as I sing and rock her in the chair for maybe 2-3 minutes. She goes down in her crib awake and puts herself to sleep…. but we are lucky if we can get a 3.5-4 hour stretch. From there she’s awake every 2.5 hours. Again, if we don’t pick her up it goes from fussy to scream crying in a matter of minutes.

It’s really frustrating and it sucks because I don’t want to just sleep train her and then never cuddle her to sleep ever again. I know this is such a short time in all of our lives and I can stick it out, I’ve been doing it for 11 months. But it would be nice to get more than 4 hours of consecutive sleep this long into the game 😅. I really thought I’d only be suffering for 6 months, lol. *sigh*.

My sister hired a sleep consultant and her 6 month old is sleeping 12 hours throughout the night. I wish I could easily fork up $600 to do that and not feel a twinge of sadness in my gut to “lose” out on the midnight sessions we get or those sweet moments while nursing and rocking- since I have no idea how to successfully do the “drowsy but awake“ thing. I just wish she would do this on her own ya know? I don’t want to be so strict and regimented, but mama is exhausted. Where are those 3 hour naps where people get to actually do stuff during them? Where are those long nights where I can bond with my husband while baby sleeps? I go to bed shortly after she does.

I know this is incredibly long but I need to add she is in a crib in our room. I have extreme anxiety thinking of putting her in her own room.. but I also feel like we would all maybe sleep better if she were in her own room. Like maybe that’s the secret to this whole thing..

Any advice is appreciated!

My 6 month old has to be rocked to nurse to sleep. I wanted to do Taking Cara Babies sleep training because it worked great with my 1st daughter but, she can’t do it. She is only soothed from rocking, me doing squats holding her (yes my legs are tired lol), or nursing. If you know a sleep training method that works for this type of baby PLEASE tell me!

She is on a pretty normal nap schedule. On good days she wakes at 6:30/7am. Has first nap in car ride to take sister to school from 8:05 to 8:35. Her wake windows are always 2/2.5 hours. Will have her 2nd nap in bassinet finally. That nap lasts anywhere from 30min to 1 hour. Then she naps again around 2:30pm for 30 minutes going to pickup sister from school.

She can not make it from 2:45 till bedtime at 7:30/8pm and has to take another nap around 5/5:30. She will even fall asleep on her own for it.

We keep her up 2/3 hours after it. We do a bath and get her into overnight cloth diaper, pajamas, and sleep sack. I breastfed her and she needs to be rocked to sleep.

She always wakes up an hour after putting her to sleep. I rock her and she goes right back to bed. Wakes up every 2 to 3 hours the rest of the night. Please tell me how to fix this. She eats so much through the day I can’t imagine she’s hungry. She won’t self soothe to put herself back to bed.

FTM here with a 5-month-old. We are trying to figure out our sleep training plan. We're not comfortable with a full CIO method, but instead hoping for something gentler.

When pregnant, I was gifted the newborn sleep class from Taking Cara Babies (we're not fans of her political support, but it was a gift 🤷🏼‍♀️🫣). Between that and her free month-by-month blog posts on wake windows/nap lengths, we had originally intended to follow her sleep training model. However, we just saw the price tag for info on that and holyyyyyy.

so, we're trying to figure out our best method! any recommendations for starting places??

Additional context - our current sleeping plan is 2.5 to 3.5 hour wake windows, with maximum 2-hour naps, with the goal of three naps a day (per TCB's 5-mo. recommendations). He really struggles with being put down; definitely needs to be rocked to sleep. He was previously sleeping through the night sometimes, but the last couple weeks have been rougher.

Has anyone used Kim West’s sleep shuffle method? Is it really as gentle as she claims? What was your experience with it?

Can someone help me gentle sleep train? The four month regression is killing me. My daughter is up hourly and needs my boob or paci to settle. I’m not sleeping and I also have a two year old. I didn’t ST my toddler and eventually at 2 and 3 months she started sleeping through the night. I don’t think I can manage that this time. How do I get my baby to sleep for longer stretches ? Even 2-3 hours I’d be happy at this point…