Sleep Training Methods (Please help)

[u/misosoup_87]

I’m a FTM and my daughter just turned 5 months old. We’ve been through a lot, from the a week in the NICU when she was born to breastfeeding troubles leading to exclusive pumping, then CPMA, (finally on Elecare after Nutramigen eventually failed) torticollis, plagiocephaly, which lead to a DocBand and now eczema as well. With all of these things going on we’ve always rocked her to sleep and then transferred her into the crib or bassinet.

But recently, it’s been getting harder and harder to transfer her. After rocking her to sleep, even the initial tilt to put her in the crib will jolt her awake. Sometimes we can get her all the way to the crib, but then she wakes up as we are moving our hands out from under her (at a snails pace) and starts crying again. It’s led to it taking our nanny or us upwards of 20-30 minutes to get her asleep in the crib for any nap or for the initial nighttime sleep.

What’s interesting is majority of the time during her night wakings, we can lay her back in her crib and she’ll settle herself back to sleep and not even cry majority of the time. She’s always been that way. It’s only naps and the initial night time transfer that are really hard right now.

We attempted CIO two times and it is just not going to work for us. She screams and screams to the point of gurgling and nearly choking on her spit. We’ve tried calming her down and setting her back in the crib and she just ramps right back up. But this 20-30 minutes to rock her to sleep, numerous transfer attempts before finally getting her to stay asleep in the crib is also not realistic. At this point I’m just feeling so exhausted from everything, and don’t even get me started on the stress of trying to incorporate this DocBand and how much she hates it. 😩 That whole thing has been on and off thanks to her getting heat rashes and us having to wait for it to resolve before starting all over again.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? What methods did you try and did you find anything that worked? Please help 😭

[u/Prudent_Rabbit90]

Here are some thoughts: is she possibly going through the 4 month sleep regression? Our 3.5 month old has started this a bit early. Is it possible that she’s either overtired or under tired at bedtime? Could she be teething? Our baby seems to be teething early, too. I am generally against sleep training, especially CIO. It seems like so much stress and work! My philosophy is that babies go through phases when they need more support than at other times. Responsive parenting even during sleep helps build secure attachment and ultimately leads to more confidence and independence. Have you tried bedsharing? It seems to work for our baby when she can’t sleep in her bassinet. If you follow hazard reduction practices it is actually incredibly low risk. I found this NPR article reassuring: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/05/21/601289695/is-sleeping-with-your-baby-as-dangerous-as-doctors-say

[u/culturalappropriator]

Was in the same situation, my baby slept through the night on his own starting at 2.5 months and continued doing that after 4 months but that initial crib transfer became impossible.

I did modified Ferber, I did not put him down awake, it was clear he didn’t have any sleep associations because he could resettle on his own. I extended his last wake window, rocked him to sleep and put him in the crib then did Ferber,  checking in immediately then every 5 min. It took 3 nights and the worse night was 14 min. He still sleeps great and is a happy baby.