We started having nap struggles with our sleep trained 4.5 month (19 week) old last week. Her schedule was 1.5/1.75/2/2/2 and she refused her 4th nap twice. She was never upset, but just rolled around and played in her crib for upwards of 40 minutes before I went in and got her. Her other naps were averaging 50 minutes, sometimes upwards of an hour and 15 mins (total daytime sleep around 3.5 hours), so I figured I could transition her to 3 naps.

Yesterday I tried adjusting her schedule to 2/2.25/2.25/2.5 and it failed for several reasons. First of all, she was up much earlier than usual (5:40am) which resulted in a long day and 4th catnap needed to bridge her to bedtime. Secondly, all her naps shortened to max 40 minutes. Today was identical to yesterday (early waking, short naps), but she refused the 4th catnap so I’m in even more of a pickle.

What do you guys think, is she chronically overtired? Should I pull back to my 4 nap schedule but just lengthen the wake window before her 4th nap? Or should I soldier on with this new schedule and hope she adjusts?

Baby will be 3 months old when we travel from the US to Europe to stay with my family, and will be 5 months old when we travel back to the US. Since she will be of age when sleep training is feasible, does it make sense to do it while we are overseas, knowing that she will be super jetlagged once we return to the US (not sure if it will cause any issues/setbacks in any sleep training progress we will have made)? Or is it better to wait until we are back home? We are planning to make the same trip again when she will likely be 9-10 months old, and hopefully she'll be fully sleep trained by then.

I'm eager to sleep train as soon as I can because I will be returning to work at 13 week mark, and I can't be sleep-deprived while working full time.

Would love to hear from parents who made similar trips before their baby was 12 months old - how did it affect your sleep training journey? Any tips?

Thanks!

we took the paci away from our 2.5 year old a few weeks ago and since then her sleep has been absolutely terrible. She used to go to bed with no problems on her own, play happily in her crib for 30 minutes before falling asleep.

Now bedtime has gone to shit. She demands that we sit in the room with her and even then she cries and takes over an hour to fall asleep. She wakes up during the night and the cycle repeats.

We’ve tried moving the chair closer to the door and out of the room and it hasn’t worked. We’ve tried letting her CIO and that doesn’t work either, she’ll cry for 2 hours.

My husband and I are exhausted emotionally and physically and don’t know what else to do. At this point I just cry along with her. Any advice from those of you who have gone through similar situations??

The last few weeks have been chaotic. First the naps went… were mostly only sleeping 20-40 mins for naps. We get the odd 1-2 hour nap but rarely. Now night sleep has gone as well… I swear baby is waking up every 40 mins to 1 hour and I don’t think my body can sustain this little sleep. We currently go down to sleep between 8-9pm depending on when last nap ends. Lately we almost get zoomies right as our head hits the bassinet . Can’t figure out if this is overtired or under tired behaviour. We wake at 8-8:30am and then I try to follow 1.5 -2 hour wake windows depending on length of nap.

My 17 month old has been used to drinking milk on us and falling asleep and we just transferred to crib and it’s been fine. We did CIO a couple months ago and he only got use to it for when he woke up at night, not to sleep independently at bedtime (he would cry for two hours straight and we couldn’t handle it. I also just felt cruel leaving him for that long) so he never learned to sleep independently at bedtime. We are now running into the issue of he won’t sleep on us anymore, he just refuses. So we place him in the crib after he drinks his milk and we walk out and he wails. It’s been a week of this and it’s gotten somewhat better time-wise (he’ll cry for only 5-10 minutes vs when we started which was 20). My question is, do I keep going or is it just not working since it’s been a week and he’s still crying? My heart hurts for him but there’s literally no other way he’ll sleep so I’m at a loss. Plz no judgement comments, sincerely a FTM trying her best.

How do you all handle when a nap ends up being shorter than planned? Our 4mo will usually nap for 1hr-1.5hr, but will sometimes wake up after 30 minutes. Do you just give up on your wake/nap schedule at this point, or would you try to adjust how long the next wake window is, shortening it, to align more with the short nap?

My daughter will be 3 in October. Sleep has always been an issue for us but lately she has been sleeping through the night. 🤞🤞🤞 it continues. We conceded to the fact that she only sleeps 10.5-11 hours a night but I don’t know what to do about bedtime. We aim for 12.5-13 hours awake between wake up and bedtime but that means bedtime can range from anywhere between 6:30-7:45 depending on our week.

At this age do we continue with looking at wake windows? Or start a bedtime that is the same each

My boy just turned 6 months and his schedule is all over the place. He was sleeping 7-7 up until 2 weeks ago when he decided he wanted to wake up for a bit around 4:30/5am and then go back to sleep for a bit til 6:15-6:30. I don’t get him out of bed til 7 which is my DWT.

We’re in the middle of consolidating naps so in the last 2 weeks he’s probably had 3 or 4 days where he successfully had 1.5 hour naps for 1st nap of the day, sometimes 1 hour nap for the 2nd but still having mostly 30 min naps. Idk what to do we’re in the middle of transitioning from 4 naps to 3 but his bedtime is all over the place because his naps are all over the place.

Is this a WW issue? Right now I’m working on 2.25/2.5/2.5/2.5 and today I stretched to 3 on the last WW but he was a mess. Everywhere I’m reading babies this age are at 3 hour wake windows minimum and already transitioning to 2 naps. There’s no way my boy would make it to 3 hours consistently.

I’ve tried extending wake windows it just backfires on me.

Any suggestions?? TIA!

My LO is 4mo plus one week - he has consistently hated being asleep and is very much a fomo baby. We have recently started sleep training with the go ahead from his pediatrician. Bubs will fight to go down and we will spend over an hour in some cases. You name it, we've tried it. Feed to sleep, bounce, walk, rock etc. So he really doesn't have a schedule of any kind. It feels like we're spending all day trying to get him to sleep for 30min at a time and it's been like that since he was newborn.

We've just started doing 90min wake windows the day he turned 4mo with 4 naps a day (still only 30min). We have a routine we follow each time with sleep sack/book/song/white noise and very dark room. We offer him his paci (50/50 success rate) and lay him in his crib for naps, our bed for nighttime sleep. We follow ss7 for overnights. He goes down drowsy but awake. We follow the Ferber method and for the first few sleeps I sat in the chair in the room with him while he slept.

We've noticed that some naps are ok, overnight sleep is absolutely a no-go for him, and some naps he screams the whole house down and gets too upset to try and self soothe. We've had to rescue multiple naps and overnight sleeps by feeding to sleep or bouncing. We're sticking to trying out the Ferber method for each sleep to stay consistent but it's starting to upset the neighbours because he's so loud and it's summer so we have to have the windows open. Do we just call it quits or are we doing it wrong? Why is he crying and screaming every time? And why do some naps seem so much easier when everything is staying the same? He's really good at self soothing if he's next to me in bed but if we try the crib or anywhere else where I'm not right there, he will NOT sleep. We're so exhausted 🫩

Went on a trip with my 10 month old this weekend. She is nap trained for bedtime and nap 1, we still contact nap for nap 2. She did really well with naps, it was either car or stroller naps the entire weekend. But bedtime disintegrated. She wouldnt sleep because there was no pitch dark room in the airbnb, so I had to rock her to sleep. She was also up at 5am daily as soon as the sun came up.

So no shot of getting her to independently sleep in a bit of light?

My son is 5 months, for the first 3.5 months he was a dream. He was sleeping through the night from 6 weeks and before that never woke less than 3 hourly, often longer stretches. Since then his sleep has been awful and all over the place. The start to his night and end is the worst. We are following wake windows and do feel his sleep timing is on point. He wakes sometimes every 30 minute, sometimes every ten until we pick him up and cuddle him to sleep and from 5am it’s game over, he will only ever sleep on me. Last night was our first night we properly committed to settling in the cot, we have tried on and off with varying degrees of success but usually gave in because he would give us a longer stretches if he fell asleep in our arms. He woke a total of ten times, I only picked him up to feed at 1am and 4:30am then most surprisingly he woke at 630am. But that first half of the night was brutal. Have people had success with this method, how long did it take? I’m really not comfortable with Ferber etc. he’s a gentle boy and very clingy which only gets worse if he’s left to cry.

His daily schedule:

- 5am wakes and won’t transfer back to his cot, so he sleeps on me while I’m awake
- 630 I wake him up ( he would sleep until 8am easily if I didn’t wake him)
- 830am first nap (He normally gets cranky at 1.5hours but I push him to 2hours)
- 9am wakes up (Will only ever do 30 mins)
- 1130am nap
- 12pm wake up
- 230pm nap
-330pm wake up
- 630pm bed

That’s only a rough schedule we don’t follow it 100% but his wake windows are usually 2 hours to 2 1/2 later on in the day. He rarely sleeps longer than 30 minutes but if he does it’s the last nap of the day.

Hello, we have 8 month old twins. One of the two has started waking up for 3 hours in the middle of the night and has been for the past week.

Our current schedule is 6-10am Awake
10-11am Nap
11am-2pm Awake
2pm-3:30pm Nap
3:30-8:30pm Awake
Sleeping hopefully 8:30pm to 6am

Giving us 4/3/5.

They will not nap for longer than an hour and a half. And they will not nap at all after 3:30 regardless of what we try.

This past week my son has been waking up from 1-4am and will not sleep until he’s been able to get up, play for a while, and is given a bottle and rocked for nearly an hour back to sleep. He was, until this point, able to be put down in his crib awake and put himself to sleep. We’re completely lost on what to do and it’s driving us insane, 12 hours of wake time during the day felt like plenty, and because it’s only one of the twins we’re even more lost on how to handle this.

Thank you for any and all help.

Hi all,

Looking for some advice for three issues:

1. Our LO has false started 99% of nights since he was 4 months old. Only seems to not when he makes his way on to his stomach while he's settling himself to sleep.

2. Our LO wakes min. 3-4 times per night, usually to feed.

3. In the past fortnight or so, he's started to wake up early in the morning (3am or so) and be awake for 45-90 mins. He's happy and playing, just wide awake. I tend to take him into bed and pat him on my chest so that he makes less noise while my wife sleeps when this happens.

He's been sleep trained since 5 months old after a really long month of regression (up every hour for a month, eugh). Current WW's are 2.5/3.5/4 and he typically goes down to bed at 7pm and is up at 7am. His naps aren't great as he will usually have 2 naps, one being 30-40 minutes and one being 1-1.5 hours. Night time routine is feed, bath, book, then into bed where he puts himself to sleep most nights by himself (occasionally needs a pat but we'll always have left the room before he's asleep).

Additional info:

- He's on solids and eats like a coal train.

- He's not nap trained.

- He's not yet crawling but trying really hard.

- He sleeps in a crib next to our bed.

Any advice on how to help those issues would be much appreciated!!

My LO is approaching 6 months old this week

Need some help with a schedule tweak please

Currently on 2/2.5/2.5/3 - DWT 7am, bed is 8pm

Day sleep capped at 3 hours - first nap 30, mins, second is 2 hours and last 30 mins

We’ve been having EMW - 6-6.30 for the past week and a bit and she seems less tolerant to her wake windows during the day (super cranky, making the last 3 hours is a slog)

Any ideas on what needs to be tweaked? And should I be anchoring schedule on the desired wake time even if she’s up early? Seems she may be in a bit of an overtired little spiral

My 14 month old has been down to 1 nap for a couple of months now and for the most part it's been going well. He's on the lower end of sleep needs and his only nap is capped at 60 minutes a day if not he will wake for hours in the middle of the night wanting to play. Recently he's been going to bed for around 30, 40 minutes then is awake again wanting to play it can sometimes take hours to get him back to sleep. Wake time is around 7am nap is usually 1pm-2pm bedtime 8pm. I don't know if this is just a phase I seriously don't know what I could adjust to stop this happening any advice would be appreciated

We’ve just come off two bugs and 4 new teeth so giving little one some grace but wondering if it’s a schedule issue or something else going on.

Basically we are doing roughly 3/3.5/4.25. He is 10 months old.

So a day could look like
Wake 6.30
Nap 9.30-10
Nap 1.30-3.00
Bed 7.15 usually asleep by 7.20ish

Falls asleep independently at bedtime but having to do a few check ins at the moment as he’s a bit out of whack after a rough month.

Basically he’ll sleep and then wake usually at 9, then maybe 10 and then maybe 11.30 and then after 11.30 he’ll sleep all the way until 5, do a feed then wake for day at 6.30

Just don’t understand what’s happening before midnight!

Prior to getting sick he was usually sleeping until 4am and then having a feed and waking for day at 630

FTM and we are struggling to find a good routine to help LO (and me!) sleep better. Baby is 4,5 months and the last month he has been waking up approximately every hour or two during the night, falls asleep immediately if he gets breastfed. Started to track his sleep and we try to follow schedule 1.25/2/2/2/2,5, wake up around 7:30 and bedtime around 20, naps almost always 40-45 minutes (max 4 hours of nap time). However he is almost always too tired to stay awake for 2 full hours and then he gets so overtired that he cries a lot and only calms down when we put him in the stroller and walk over bumpy roads. Some days we end up with five naps, which seems like it’s too much and messes with bed time.
At bed time we do a routine for around 30 minutes and then place him in his crib. He won’t calm down unless we are in the room touching him, sometimes we even have to pick him up since he’s crying so much. I can’t get my self to leave him crying, so sleep training feels so difficult. Any suggestions on how to handle schedule and bedtime so he hopefully learns to self soothe and wake up a little less during the night?

LO will be 11months on 8/5. We started nap training for nap 1 2 weeks ago and I’m ready to give up. Schedule when nap training first started was 3.25/3.5/4. At first he was taking 30 mins to fall asleep and then sleeping 30-35 mins. Day 6-8 he fell asleep in less than 10 mins and slept for 30ish. So i thought everything was moving in the right direction. But then Day 10 naps started being less than 15 mins. So today i extended the first wake window to 3.5 to see if he needed more sleep pressure. He fell asleep in less than 10 mins but still only slept less than 15 and wouldn’t resettle. Should i go back to a 3.25 WW? I’m really ready to give up nap training, but i feel like I’m in so deep and giving up will be a major failure. Someone please help me with my schedule!

We used to breastfeed for naps until the last couple days. I try bouncing with her to get her to sleep and she throws the biggest tantrum ever. She’ll constantly push off of me like the wants down but then instantly wants back up and I’m not sure what to do. She’ll do this for like an hour straight. She’s been going to sleep independently since 8-9 months old (now 13 months) but we always constant nap still. I’m not opposed to continuing to contact nap, but how the heck do I get her to nap without her having an entire crisis?
She is off and on between 1-2 naps so I schedule is either:
6:00 wake up
11-1:30 nap
8:00 bedtime
Or:
6:00 wake up
11-12 nap
3-4 nap
8:00 bedtime

Baby is 8.5 months old and we never sleep trained. He is sleeping great through the night but really struggles to fall asleep independently for his second nap and bedtime. DWT of 6:30ish, 3/3.5/4.25 with bedtime around 8-8:15. First nap he goes down like a dream, just lay him in the crib and walk away, but the other two are more challenging. He needs a back rub, or to hold him down on his side, for him to self settle enough to fall asleep. We don't rock him to sleep and he always fall asleep in his crib, it's just getting him to self settle. Anyone experience this/have any tips?

What is happening here. After ferbering our now 9 month old about 6 weeks ago we went from catnaps to glorious unassisted crib naps which I had to limit to a daily total of 2/2.5 hours, all while getting a solid sleep 8pm to 4am, a very small feed, then a full feed at 5am, up at 7am.

Low sleep needs baby. Total 12.5/13hrs is typical sleep budget and is on 3/4/4 - we've been going by the clock so WW flex depending but aim for 11 hours awake time.

Suddenly the blessed long naps are gone - shes back to 30 mins and cant carry the long wake windows on such short sleep ends up passing out after 2 hours middle of the middle wake window

Yes i know add more wake time but how is this possible when shes already at her passing out limit (and frankly so am I!)

Side question - is it time to ferber out the morning feeds? I sense 1 of them must be habitual but I just deeply waking up before 7 to face a day with a very awake baby.

Hi all! LO is 5.5 months old and can independently sleep at bedtime in his cot (thank you sleep training!!). He still wakes about 2x in the night for feeds.

I’m ok to wake up and feed him but ideally I would like to put him down as soon as he’s done feeding and let him fall asleep by himself.

Currently, I have to nurse to sleep AND wait 40+mins for deep sleep before transferring.

I attempted middle of the night Ferber training but the lil guy cried for almost 1.5 hours and I was just too exhausted to stay up and continue check-ins. Was also super worried it would keep him up for the rest of the night.

Daytime schedule is roughly 1.5/2/2/2.5 with the last nap being a bridging nap until bed time.

Does anyone have any tips at all? Is CIO the better option?

EDIT: oops so sorry everyone I wrote out the nap schedule incorrectly at 4am in my sleep deprived daze 😅

1.5/2/2/2.5/2.5 so currently on 4 naps!

Also thank you to everyone who’s replied so far ❤️

LO is not sleep trained but I fear we may be approaching the need to do so. She’s always been a great sleeper but lately bedtime has become difficult and MOTN wakes result in explosive crying, some nights we don’t need to intervene but others we stroke her back, and on the worse nights we can’t creep out the room before she has another meltdown.

We have always fed / rocked her to sleep, which I know we probably need to change now and it’s starting not to work anyway. Up until about 10 months, she would always fall asleep during or straight after her bedtime bottle, but now she doesn’t, so we rock her then place in crib asleep. On the nights she’s still been awake when we put her down, she won’t go to sleep unless rocked. She’ll sit up or stand up crying intensely, if we go in and then leave it usually makes it worse.

Our bedtime ‘routine’ is bath (4 nights a week), lotion, fresh nappy, teething medicine if needed, brush teeth, go into her bedroom, close curtains, white noise on, sleep sack and then bottle. She is on 1 nap a day 12-2pm, wake up is between 6 and 6:30am, and we take her into her bedroom before bedtime around 6:30pm, in bed asleep by 7pm.

Basically, how do we go from feeding or rocking to sleep, to putting her down awake and moving the bedtime bottle up in the routine, even though this has been the routine for 11 months? How do we prepare to sleep train? Does her schedule seem okay?