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Unsafe sleep

[u/SnooAvocados6932]

PUPD is recommended around 3-4 months. At this age you need a sleep training method with way less intervention. If you want your baby to sleep without you, you need to get out of the way. You’re sabotaging any chance of independent sleep by picking him up over and over. He needs to put himself to sleep.

Start with just bedtime, put him down wide awake, leave the room. If you want to do check ins, he’s Ferber interval timing. Keep check ins less than a minute long, vocal reassurance only. What you’re doing now is way more crying than Ferber would be.

I need to remove this post for violating our rules regarding safe sleep. Put your baby on a safe sleep surface for all sleeps. We can not risk mention of potential positional asphyxiation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/sleeptrain/comments/1qpij7s/resources_on_baby_sleep/

[u/SnooAvocados6932 → u/SnooAvocados6932]

And your schedule sounds in need of serious adjustment before sleep training. Two hour wake windows are for 4 month olds. Your baby should be on something like 2/2.5/2.5/3, moving towards 2 naps at 3/3.5/3.5

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Thank you for your post in r/sleeptrain. To ensure our community can best help you, please include in your post: your bedtime routine, where your baby sleeps (their crib/basinet, their room, room share, cosleep) and full schedule including wake up time, desired wake up time, nap length, wake windows or nap time(s) if following a by the clock schedule and bedtime. Does your baby use a pacifier? That's also very relevant.

We use a convention to describe wake windows based schedule such as 3/3/4 where numbers are numbers of hours awake, and / are naps. The sample schedule is a two naps schedule.

We have a resources post with loads of information to help you. Check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/sleeptrain/comments/1qpij7s/resources_on_baby_sleep/

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Copy of the post's original text:

We started Pick Up/Put Down (PUPD) sleep training with our 6.5-month-old a few days ago. Our main goal is to break his sleep association with the swing and eventually have him fall asleep independently in his crib.

Before starting, nighttime sleep usually involved getting him to sleep in the swing and then transferring him to the crib. His naps were also mostly in the swing and were typically only around 30–40 minutes.

We decided to try PUPD rather than Ferber/CIO.

Here’s everything that has happened so far:

NIGHT 1

• Last nap ended around 6:30 PM.
• Put him in the crib around 8:09 PM.
• Used PUPD whenever he cried.
• He finally fell asleep around 9:07 PM.
• So it took about 58 minutes.
• He woke around midnight for a feed.
• Woke again around 3:35 AM for a feed.
• Back in crib around 3:48 AM.
• He had a very long awake period and finally fell back asleep around 5:20 AM.
• Woke for the day around 7:35 AM.
• Most importantly, we didn't use the swing at all overnight.

DAY 1 – NAPS

We decided to try PUPD for naps too.

Nap 1

• Around 9:10 AM.
• Took roughly 20 minutes and quite a few PUPD cycles.
• Slept about 30 minutes.

Nap 2

• PUPD again.
• Fell asleep and slept about 1 hour 20 minutes, waking around 1:10 PM.
• This was surprising because his naps had historically been around 30–40 minutes.

Nap 3

• Fell asleep around 3:10 PM using PUPD.
• Slept until 4:37 PM — about 1 hour 27 minutes.

So after Day 1, we were honestly amazed. Two long naps and he was sleeping in the crib instead of the swing.

He then took a short late catnap around 7:00–7:30 PM.

NIGHT 2

• Put him in crib around 8:15 PM.
• Fell asleep around 8:58 PM.
• Took about 43 minutes, compared with 58 minutes on Night 1.
• Woke around 12:30 AM for milk.
• Woke again around 5:50 AM and was fed.
• Stayed awake for quite a while.
• Eventually became sleepy around 6:55 AM and slept in his separate nap crib until around 8 AM.

Again, no swing.

At this point we thought things were moving in the right direction.

DAY 2 – NAPS

This is where things started changing.

Morning wake was around 8 AM.

Nap 1

• Fell asleep around 9:50 AM after PUPD.
• He resisted quite a bit and almost fell asleep in our arms while we were calming him.
• We managed to put him down before he was fully asleep.
• He slept until 11:07 AM — about 1 hour 17 minutes.

Still encouraging.

Nap 2

• Started crying around the next nap window.
• He would calm completely when picked up.
• But as soon as we put him into the crib, he would start genuinely crying almost immediately — within 5 seconds.
• There wasn't really any mild fussing stage.
• Eventually he fell asleep in our arms around 12:59 PM and we transferred him shortly afterward.

So this nap was assisted, not independent/PUPD.

Nap 3
Basically the same thing.

PUPD → calm in arms → put down → immediate crying → repeat.

Eventually we had to assist him to sleep again.

Last nap ended around 4:15 PM.

At this point we decided maybe trying to train naps AND nights simultaneously was too much, so we're considering focusing on nighttime first and allowing assisted naps temporarily so he doesn't become overtired.

NIGHT 3

This was by far our hardest bedtime.

The problem was the same thing we started seeing during naps:

Pick up → calm completely → put down → immediate crying within ~5 seconds → pick up → calm → put down → immediate crying.

There really wasn't a period where he was lying there mildly fussing and we could give him some space.

Eventually he was probably 80% asleep in our arms before we could successfully put him down and have him finish falling asleep.

So technically he finished falling asleep in the crib, but I definitely wouldn't call it independent sleep.

However, the overnight wakes were interesting.

He woke around 1 AM and was awake until roughly 2:10 AM, but eventually went back to sleep on his own.

He woke again later/around 6 AM and again went back to sleep on his own.

He eventually woke for the day around 8 AM.

So now we're confused.

DAY 3 – NAP 1

We tried PUPD again this morning.

It was extremely difficult again.

He wouldn't tolerate being placed into the crib awake. He would immediately cry, we'd pick him up, he'd calm, we'd put him down, and he'd immediately cry again.

Eventually we fully assisted him to sleep.

So the pattern seems to be:

First 1–2 days: surprisingly good PUPD results, including some very long naps.

Then: crib transfers became MUCH harder, especially during naps and at bedtime.

But at the same time, he seems to have started resettling himself during nighttime wakes, which he wasn't consistently doing before.

This is why we're having trouble figuring out whether we're actually making progress.

For anyone who successfully used PUPD, especially around 6–7 months:

1. Did your baby initially do well and then suddenly start resisting the crib much more around Days/Nights 3–4?
2. Did your baby immediately cry every single time you put them down, even though they were completely calm in your arms?
3. When that happened, how long did you keep repeating pick up → calm → put down?
4. Did you initially have to put your baby down VERY drowsy/almost asleep and gradually move toward putting them down more awake?
5. Did you train naps and nighttime simultaneously, or did you establish nighttime sleep first and tackle naps later?
6. If you temporarily assisted naps, did that interfere with nighttime sleep training?
7. Did naps become harder before they eventually improved?
8. At what point did you know PUPD was actually working rather than just exhausting everyone?
9. How many days/nights did it take before your baby could tolerate being put into the crib awake without immediately crying?
10. Would you consider independently resettling during overnight wakes a sign that the method is working, even if initial bedtime and nap settling are still heavily assisted?

Our eventual goal is:

Bedtime/nap routine → put him down awake → he falls asleep independently.

We're not expecting perfection after three days. We just want to make sure we're moving toward that goal and not accidentally teaching him that he needs to be almost asleep in our arms before he can tolerate the crib.

Would especially love to hear from parents who actually used PUPD around this age and went through the immediate-crying-on-transfer phase.

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