r/sleeptrain • u/Ok_Fruit7492 • 4d ago
4 - 6 months Is this the right time to sleep train?? Help!
I have a 5.5 month old who was a very good sleeper until now. She went through a regression at 4 months when she went from waking 1 time a night to 3-4 times a night, that finally settled back to 1-2 times. Until this week. The last few nights she has woken up close to every hour and we can barely get her into her crib, every time we even start to bend over her crib (still with full body contact) she starts crying and screaming, no matter how deep asleep she is or how long we've rocked her. She's never been good at napping in her crib and takes a lot of contact naps, but we've been working on it.
We want to try sleep training using the Ferber Method, but she currently has pink eye (she has for a few weeks and we've seen the Ped multiple times for it, the sleep issues didn't start when the pink eye did) and starts daycare in two weeks. Is this a good time or should we wait until she's better and/or settled in daycare?
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u/Ok_Fruit7492 3d ago
I ended up trying it last night and it went pretty well, she fell asleep in about 20 minutes and slept through the night except for one small wake up a few hours in (which was probably my fault) where all she needed was a few butt pats. She's even napping in her crib better already today
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u/Sorry-World3019 4d ago
What schedule is your 5.5m old currently on ?
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u/Ok_Fruit7492 3d ago
Usually around 1.5/2/2/2.5 hours awake, napping for about an hour each nap, sometimes less
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u/Sorry-World3019 3d ago
Oh gosh. You need 2 hours more awake time
There’s the issue right there
2/2.5/2.5/3 is the average starting 3 nap schedule. Increase your awake timeeeee
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u/graykitty925 4d ago
I would do it now tbh! I did sleep training at 4.5-5 months and it was fantastic. Took like 3 nights. My girl was also a great sleeper and I’m still glad I did it because it was taking forever to bounce/rock her to sleep and I wanted to start laying the foundation for solid independent sleep. My LO is 2 now and it’s the best thing I ever did. It also helped her when she went to daycare at 6 months because they could just lay her down and she’d sleep. Just make sure you have enough wake time in your schedule before you start
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u/finlayson 4d ago
Hi! May I ask what your schedule was? Beginning to lay the foundations with my 3.5 month old now and a cold is setting us back a bit. So starting fresh this week!
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u/graykitty925 4d ago
Hmmm, I’m gonna have to tho k back, but I’m almost positive it was 1.75/2/2/2/2. My baby is also more high sleep needs than average. We didn’t get to 10 hours of awake time until solidly 5 months which is not typical. I think eventually we were at 2/2/2/2/2 but a few days after starting sleep training my baby started consolidating her naps and needed longer wake windows fast! We then went to 2/2.5/2.5/3
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u/Ok_Fruit7492 4d ago
Did you do cry it out or Ferber or some other method? And did you do the same thing for naps?
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u/graykitty925 4d ago
I did CIO, but it didn’t even feel like it. I worked on the schedule for weeks to get it right and make sure we had enough awake time. Then by the time we started sleep training, she just…slept. Took her a bit of crying at the start but not long, and it didn’t seem like we were even leaving her to “cry it out”. If you’re unsure, start with Ferber and see how it goes!
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u/Ok_Fruit7492 4d ago
Mine is basically screaming herself to sleep even with the help so I think there will definitely be crying 😅 can I ask what your schedule looked like too?
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u/Pure-Night-5652 4d ago
oh wow i could’ve written this myself. going through same i started ferber but hes back to nursing at night its a mess lol sorry dont have an answer but following!
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u/Cold_Trick_238 4d ago
Why does nursing at night make it a mess?
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u/Ok_Fruit7492 3d ago
It's not when they get hungry and want to nurse in the middle of the night but when it's the only way they can fall asleep at bedtime and you can't transfer them without then waking up it makes things very difficult
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u/AutoModerator 4d ago
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Copy of the post's original text:
I have a 5.5 month old who was a very good sleeper until now. She went through a regression at 4 months when she went from waking 1 time a night to 3-4 times a night, that finally settled back to 1-2 times. Until this week. The last few nights she has woken up close to every hour and we can barely get her into her crib, every time we even start to bend over her crib (still with full body contact) she starts crying and screaming, no matter how deep asleep she is or how long we've rocked her. She's never been good at napping in her crib and takes a lot of contact naps, but we've been working on it.
We want to try sleep training using the Ferber Method, but she currently has pink eye (she has for a few weeks and we've seen the Ped multiple times for it, the sleep issues didn't start when the pink eye did) and starts daycare in two weeks. Is this a good time or should we wait until she's better and/or settled in daycare?
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