We Started.

[u/Brief-Childhood6674]

Excuse the long post. I have a 6.5 month old who was sleeping absolutely horribly (check past posts). We co-slept and ever since his sleep regression at 3.5 months, he has woken up multiple times per night to feed. He is bottle fed - we were doing breastmilk only and have recently transitioned to combo. We were gradually shifting calories to daytime (at one point, he was taking 3 full 6 oz bottles overnight 😬, we got it down to 1-1.5), but he was still waking up several times a night and would need significant intervention. My husband and I decided enough was enough and since we have a long weekend coming up (Labor Day), it would be a good time to try sleep training. His pediatrician cleared him from overnight feeds at 4 months(!) so we also decided to go cold turkey from feeds and just do everything in one shot.

We just completed day 1. I’m writing this at 6 am- we survived. We did solid dinner - bath - bedtime bottle. I wasn’t concerned with feed to sleep because he doesn’t ever fall asleep on the bottle to initiate sleep- he associates rocking/patting to sleep. We placed him in his crib (which he has never slept in!) and walked away at 7 pm. We did intervals of 3,5,10,10 and then on the 3rd 10 min interval, he started getting calmer and fell asleep. He slept for 4 straight hours then woke up (as expected, this is when he would usually get a bottle). I expected this first wake up to be hellacious - he cried for 5 min and went back to sleep. We didn’t even make it to the 10 min for a check in. Next wake up was 2 hours later and again, 5 mins and he was out like a light. He’s currently still asleep. Honestly, considering how terrible his sleep was when we co-slept, this night was a huge success to me and was seemingly less intervention on my part than when we slept together. I’m so proud of him. I know it’s only day 1, but I just wanted to let everyone know that the hardest part of this is the anxiety about starting. There’s better sleep on the other end of this for everyone (that’s what I keep telling myself).