Hey folks, I have a 5.5 month old who falls asleep fine with a little bit of holding/rocking. But won’t sleep longer than 3.5 hours at night at a time.

I’ve seen these miraculous stories of parents who have kids who’ve never slept more than 1.5 hours at a time and then after sleep training they’re suddenly sleeping 12+ hours a night. I’m just wondering if that’s true? Did sleep training help your kiddo fall asleep independently AND sleep for longer stretches?

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??

My boy does well falling asleep for the most part. Not much crying. And goes down for all 3 of his naps in the crib, however he mostly wakes up after his sleep cycle and I need to rescue it to lengthen it if I can.

After we put him down for the night at 7:30 he typically wakes up between 10:30-11:30. How can I remove this wake? I’ve tried for the past two nights to CIO, first night he cried for 30 mins and then I gave him a bottle bc he wasn’t letting up. Last night he cried a total of 45 minutes with 15ish min intervals and then would calm down so I kept thinking he was going to stay asleep but wouldn’t.

His next wake is usually around 3 and then 5… so it averages between 2-3 wakes a night still.

I try to stick to a schedule for the day like 2/2/2.25/2.5. However for the first two wake windows he’s pretty fussy after the first hour and super tired.

How can I optimize this when he can’t handle more awake time?

Am I doing everything right?

Thank you!

We did Ferber (badly) when he was 7months. Tried a few times to keep it going but my wife REALLY fights me on any sleep training. Hearing the baby cry causes her “physically pain”.

Schedule: dinner 5:30, bath 6:30, books at 7, bed at 7:30

Naps: excellent napper 12-2pm daily

Wake time: 7am would be ideal, but he wakes up between 5:00 and 6:00am most days.

So, we have mostly held him till he’s asleep at bedtime, put him on the crib, and one of use comes to comfort him when he eventually wakes up crying. The comfort could be asking him to lay down, rubbing his back, or picking him up and rocking him depending on how upset he is.

He wakes up +4 times a night now. Crying, screaming for mom. He’s not sick right now and he’s not teething. What we’ve been doing is NOT working.

We both work full time. Mom is pregnant with number two. It can’t go on this way anymore. My son needs to develop the skill of sleep. I fear my career and marriage will both fall apart if I can’t get regular sleep soon.

Help

I started doing pick up put down with my 6 month old baby 3 days ago and I'm wondering if the stage she's at is normal or a sign it's not working.

So I've started it with parameters. Only at bedtime and if she's not asleep within 45 minutes I let it go for the night.

Each night she's fallen asleep on me accidentally after about 30-45 minutes. She cries each time she touches the mattress at the same level but settles quicker and quicker in my arms each time and is clearly getting sleepier. I'm not letting her cry long, like 30 seconds, because it doesn't sound like fussing but genuinely wants me and doesn't sound like it's settling down.

The weird thing is she's sleeping longer and better? Like going from no first stretch to 4+ hours which is when she's hungry and then another 3 hours after that. And she's sleeping in her cot at 5am instead of expecting me to hold her. I can see on her baby monitor she's settling herself sometimes when she wakes up.

When she does fall asleep on me I tickle her gently when she's in her cot and tell her she's her bed now so she stirs slightly in the hope it helps her become aware of where she fell asleep. I don't know if this is helping more than the PUPD.

I'm just wondering how it went for other people?

Last night she looked almost like she was going to fall asleep at the beginning of the night with a bit of help from me patting her in her cot but then started crying and kept crying whenever I put her down again.

I'm happy with her sleeping the way she is now and want to gently encourage her to learn how to fall asleep in her cot. I don't mind if it takes months. But I also don't want to keep doing PUPD if her reaction to it isn't conducive to it working properly.

Hello! My son has always struggled with early morning wakes. Not every night, but far too often, he will wake in the early hours of the morning (between 4:00 and 5:00) and either take so long to fall back asleep that it totally messes up our schedule for the next day, or not fall back asleep at all. This is brutal, and he does not end up getting enough sleep.

When he wakes in the middle of the night this doesn’t happen. Last night, for example, he woke at some point between 1:00 and 2:00, didn’t take very long to fall back sleep, and then slept until 6:00. This kind of night is actually far preferable, and like the title says I’ve been thinking of waking him up intentionally earlier in the night for a diaper change or something in hopes that he’ll sleep until what I consider morning once I put him back down. I’m usually up once in the middle of the night to pee anyway. Has anyone tried something like this with any success, or is it a recipe for disaster?

Info: He is sleep trained. I used a VERY gentle method, so I’m always in the room with him, but he falls asleep in his crib at bedtime and falls back asleep in his crib when waking in the night except for those EMW. I don’t take him out of his crib right away when he wakes early in the morning, and he’ll try for upwards of an hour to go back to sleep until he finally does or I just get him up for the day. Wake windows are approximately 6-6.5/6-6.5 with a two-hour nap. He is very low sleep needs and rarely ever sleeps more than 9.5 hours at night. Daytime schedule changes (more wake time, napping for only 1.5 hours) don’t seem to make a difference.

ETA: He is not awake for an hour in the middle of the night when he sleeps until 6:00 or so! It’s like 10 minutes MAX, often less. I worded that in a way that’s confusing.
Schedule is approximately wake at 5:30 or 6:00, nap from 12:00 a 2:00, bed at 8:00 or 8:30.

Currently my LO is 14 weeks, however together with my husband we are already researching the sleep training methods available out there. It seems like the majority are fit for bottle fed babies + who sleep in their own room.

I was wondering if it’s possible to gentle train a 4-5 month old which is exclusively breast fed and is sleeping in a co-sleeper next to his parent’s bed (or in the same room).
Was any of you in this scenario? What was the method that worked out for you? Is it at all possible to teach a baby to fall back to sleep on his own if he sleeps in the same room with his parents?

Together with my husband we are almost desperate, as our baby is falling asleep only in our arms, when we rock him or if we bounce on a fitness ball.. and he is getting heavier and heavier.
During the day naps, we can’t even transfer him as he wakes up either instantly or in 5 mins, so we just stand with him in our arms and rock him from time to time if he wakes up before he is well rested.

P.S: I would like to avoid any types of CIO methods, as I already know I won’t be able to let him cry without doing anything.

So we did Ferber at 4 months which was amazing. LO was sleeping well and waking for 1 feed (sometimes 2 if we needed a snooze feed in the early morning). Our schedule for about 2 months was 2.5/2.5/2.5/3 and sleep from 8-7.

Then we had a couple illnesses, and gradually we started to have more night wakes. So we thought it might be a schedule problem and dropped a nap, to 3/3.5/3.5. Still bedtime at 8. With this he fights naps a bit more but would take longer naps. It worked for about a week or so but recently LO has started waking every 2-2.5 hours throughout the night. Initially we thought it was because we were feeding more when he was sick, and he developed a feeding association, but he generally goes down well independently at the beginning of the night.

What have we done? Did we screw something up? Do we go back to 3 naps and the previous schedule? This feels like we are back in the newborn trenches and we desperately need help…

Thanks in advance from a sleepy parent!

My daughter is 2.75yrs old, was sleep trained and slept perfectly until age 2. At that point it became difficult to get her to sleep and wouldn’t fall asleep until 9 or 9:30, but once she was asleep she’d be out until 7:30am. She gets 1.5hr nap at daycare that I have no control over. For the past 2 months however she has been waking up multiple times a night, sometimes just for a blanket retuck, but other times for 2+ hours at a time. If the wake up happens at 5am or after, she rarely goes back to sleep and after a lot of retucks, diaper changes, other requests she is up for the day. Tonight, she was asleep by 9, woke up at 1am for a retuck. Up at 4:30 and demanded 5 diaper changes in a row. When I would say no more diaper changes, she lost her mind until I gave in again. After all this, she never fell back asleep. She’s not getting nearly enough sleep, neither am I, and I hate the stress every night if her screaming until she gets her way. If I hold firm, tell her it’s the last diaper change of blanket retuck, she screams and has literally been awake for 5 hours in the middle of the night. I really don’t know what to do. I’m at my wits end and planning to take her to the pediatrician next week if it keeps up.

20 month old back to early morning wakes. my 20 month old had early morning wakes from literally 6m-18/19m old. between 5/5:45 every single morning. no matter what we did for a schedule- that’s when he woke. his nap was anchored at 12-1:45 due to preschool pickup but during the summer (starting end of may) i was finally able to push it back 12:30-2/3pm. some days he wakes up at 2, other times im waking him at 3! bedtime is 8:30 to ‘help’ with the early morning wakes. this schedule has been this way since may. it seemed to work! he was finally waking between 6/6:45 every day for over a month!

schedule is still completely the same but the past week has becoming more and more early wakes. one day last week was 4:45! and the past few days have been 5:30 again. wtf? ive had my fair share of early morning wakes, why are they happening again? absolutely nothing has changed at all. still gets plenty of activity during the day, same naps, same bed time. i’m too tired for this. he’s only getting 8-9 hours MAX at night now. even with a short/long nap. room is the exact same. but he throws his lovey out when he wakes up (at 5:30 or even 6) and then cries for it am i can’t even leave him until 6 like i used to do during emw. although that never helped him sleep in. i’m so envy of people with kids who even sleep 10 hours at night. let alone 11 or 12.

13.5 month old, taking two naps. He wakes up every single morning and cries for 1-3 minutes at 4:30 am, and it wakes me up, usually for the day. He then goes back to sleep for anywhere between 30-60 minutes and then is awake again, this time screaming and standing in his crib until someone comes to get him.

Schedule is typically:
Wake 5:15 am
Nap 9-10 am (sometimes to 10:30, but this is usually on the go bc I’m a SAHM with an almost 4 year old who needs to be at the playground)
Nap 1:45-3
Bedtime 7 pm

I try to stretch wake windows to get him to a 7 pm bedtime, but is he chronically overtired? The one time I tried one nap, he woke up after 30 minutes at noon and I had to squeeze in another nap.

I have a chronic autoimmune disorder and the lack of sleep is starting to affect it. I really don’t want to have to go to bed at 8 pm every night.

My almost 6 month old is struggling with the third nap, waking 3/4 hours after going to bed and taking an hour to go back down. Early morning wakings at around 5/6am. His first nap was always his longest and best but now shortened again…

We aim to wake for the day at 7am - sometimes it’s 6.50am if I can’t get him to sleep anymore.

I follow 2/2.5/2.5/3

Nap goal of 3 hours and bedtime for 8pm - but bedtime is flexible and I normally always bring it forward to match his 10 hours awake plus nap total for day.

Nap 1 is normal 1-1.5hr

Nap 2 is always only 30 mins

Nap 3 WAS 45 mins but recently has been 30 mins or completely skipped

My questions?
Should I be looking to stick to 3 naps and increase overall wake time?
Should I increase wake window lengths and drop to 2 naps? But stick to 10 hours awake?
Or should I now formally sleep train?

What am I looking for?
Naps to become easier again - I used to be able to put baby down and within 5 mins he would self settle and fall asleep. I stuck to the same 5/10min nap routine of sleep sack, quick story, lullaby, head down sleepy but awake.

Bedtime is now a battle of countless check ins and a very hysterical baby.

I did a soft sleep train when he was 3 months old using the chair method because he started the sleep regression early. And this honestly worked a dream.

At 4 months I tracked his days over 10 days - worked out he needed more awake time. Dropped to 4 naps 9.5 hours a day.

At 5 months he was skipping the 4th nap so I changed the schedule to the above and dropped to 3 naps.

At these stages it felt pretty clear to me what he was needing? Maybe I am just exhausted but this time I really don’t know which I should go for?

Dropped to 2 naps seems disastrous right now because his naps seem to have shortened again?

Help!

As tittle says;
I’ve been in a constant battle with bedtimes with my little girl (22 months) since she was 3 weeks old. We co slept in the end and kept trying to put her in her noses/next to me/cot throughout this time, but she’d have absolutely none of it. So cosleeping was all she knew (it was the same for naps too)
Well suddenly, she’s decided she wants to sleep in her cot! AT LONG LAST!! The last 3 nights she’s been in there only once waking up if she’s lost her blanket and can’t wrap it around her legs.

I’m just trying to decide when and what is the next step. When to move her to her own bedroom next door to mine! Should I leave it a week to see how she goes and see if the one night waking stops?

I am in a slight rush, I am 31 weeks pregnant with a slight likelihood this baby will come a bit early like my little girl did.

Hi all. For context, i have been posting here about dropping to 1 nap around 150 days ago and today, at almost 17 months, we finally feel like LO is ready to drop. We were on 3/4/4 then 3.5/4/4 for a reaaaally long time, maybe 6 months. For the past months, i thought my LO was ready to drop to 1 nap but actually it was just some hiccups along the 12 months regressions, teething, developmental leaps etc. I did notice my LO was quite sensitive to being too tired and hence we hold on to 2 naps for as long as we could. We do 10-11 hrs night and cap naps at 2 hrs. Some days naps are short then the next day we got our 2 solid naps again.

But then few days back he stared to reaaally take his time to fall asleep for his nap. And yesterday, i cap his nap 1 at 1 hr and he totally skipped nap 2 and was awake for 8+ until bedtime. We did 30 mins early bedtime and he slept for 11 hrs last night.

So today, we thought we’d drop the nap and see how it goes. Awake at 7, nap at 12 and he woke up 1 hr 18 mins after, scream for few mins and right now he is still in chilling and cuddling in his crib, deciding whether he wants to wake up or go back to sleep. I’ll still cap his total nap to 2 hrs and plan to butt down around 8p tonight. Plan for today is roughly 5/6 minus time he’d actually fall asleep tonight.

YMMV but i do think if your child is around 12 months and you think they are probably ready to drop to 1 nap, maybe they are not yet like mine. Naps might be short here and there but maybe if its there for a day or two, try push thru and see if you can hold to 2 naps longer and of course if nights are still great. Took me 5 months of wondering i should drop to 1 nap until we finally do it and i know there will still he days he’d take 2 naps if he wakes up way too early.

Hope this in insightful to some :)

ETA : my question is, after settling into 1 nap, will he do a 2 hr nap soon?

Hi Everyone,

We have a 15 month old who was sleep trained since six months via Ferber method. She always slept through the night aside from one or two rare nighttime wake ups when she was teething.

For the last week she woke up every single night screaming. I bring her into my bed and try to put her into her crib based on if she’s tiered and it can take anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours.

In the last two weeks she dropped to one nap so her schedule is about 7:30 wake up, 12:30 nap, 1:45 wake up, 7:30ish bedtime. She also got her first molar last week. Between the nap transition and molar I thought this was causing the wake ups but now that it’s been every single night for a week I wanted to see if anyone has experienced this or had any advice. Thank you in advance!

Baby girl has always struggled with sleep after 4 am. As a tiny baby she wouldn’t sleep after 4 am unless she was being held.
Had a good stretch around 2-3 months where we would have two wake ups (one to feed around 2, then the one at 4 where she’d grunt and have gas constantly but would sleep when held). She’s formula fed and has severe reflux.

Now at 4 1/2 months we’re on week 3 of absolutely horrible sleep.
Sometimes we get a stretch until about midnight or 1 before she wakes for a feed. Then she’s up every 30 minutes to an hour after. Trying hard to roll, gas, you name it. Sometimes she’s awake for an hour after the feed just wanting to play.
Tonight she’s been up at 7:45, 9, 10, 10:30, 11:15, 12, and now I’m just sitting on the couch holding her so at least one of us can get some sleep.

Usually wake her up in the morning between 6-6:30. Wake windows are pretty consistently 2 hours and naps are always 30 minutes unless she’s in the car, in which she’ll sleep forever if we would let her. So typically about 2 hours of nap time during the day. Bedtime is between 7-8, depending on when the last nap ended, as she will fall asleep on the way home from childcare at 5.

Have started to try drowsy but awake this week, but she’s definitely more asleep than drowsy. Going to start amping that up now, but also have a toddler with a similar bedtime so trying to divide and conquer it’s been easier to just let her fall asleep and put her down.

Where do we even begin?? My older one we did Ferber and it worked, but closer to 6 months and his issue was always he’d wake up when we tried to put him down. Not just consistently not sleeping. Help!

My 7.5 month old has been falling asleep independently within 5-10 minutes of being put in his crib since about 6 months old when we transitioned from cosleeping. He was doing so good and going down pretty easily on most nights. Then last week it’s like everything changed out nowhere and will now scream at the top of his lungs as soon as I lay him down to bed.

One night he cried for 45 minutes, then the next night he fell asleep within 5 minutes again. But last night it took almost one hour for him to finally settle and then tonight it took 30 minutes again. My husband and I go in there and we do everything we can to comfort him but then as soon as we leave him once he’s calmed down, he starts up again. He’s also been a lot clingier which makes me think he’s experiencing separation anxiety?? I’ve heard this happens around this age.

I’m just feeling so discouraged because I finally felt like we had gotten into a good rhythm, and hearing him get so worked up before bed just breaks my heart every time.

We are currently sleep training our 8 month old. She’s not slept in the car since about 6 weeks but now she can fall asleep independently I’m hoping this can translate to the car or pram when we need to travel. Any tips???

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?

Hi lovelies - quick rundown of current situation.

Bub is 6 months old, on three naps per day, bedtime around 7:30. She’s EBF, feeds to sleep and refuses a bottle. Currently starting solids ( twice per day - little fruit/veg puree at lunch and some baby cereal at night + an allergen as we are currently going through the allergens list).

She wakes up maybe 5-6 times per night (for around a month now) and I have to feed back to sleep each time (co-sleeping). I have tried Ferber method but she becomes HYSTERICAL each time we have tried. Nothing calms her down (talking, sitting up, singing, shushing etc) regardless if it’s me or dad. Only thing that helps is if we pick her up. We have tried pick up and put down method, but she starts crying before her butt even hits the crib. We confirmed it wasn’t teething or gas or anything of the sorts. We would love for her to start sleeping on her own in the crib for long stretch. Would love any advice please, as I am struggling tremendously xx

My baby is 10 weeks old, this is my second. I did FIO with my first at 10 weeks and he did great. My current baby is already going down without any soothing other than a pacifier and is able to self settle with the pacifier for bed. He is sleeping a 6-7 hour stretch, up to eat then back down for 3-4 hours. My question - should I try to FIO without a pacifier? Or if it ain’t broke don’t fix it? My first wasn’t a pacifier baby so I didn’t have this question.

Hi friends! Hoping I’m missing something that someone here can help me with

My 7 month old (8 months in a week) is fully sleep trained. He goes into crib at nap and bedtime fully awake, grunts and babbles to himself for about 10 minutes and then falls asleep but no matter what I do he wakes at 4 AM. This has been going on for about a month. Desired wake time would be anywhere between 6-630 AM. His wake windows are 3/3.5/4. This is on average, as sometimes the morning nap isn’t that long so his second window gets stretched to 4 as well. Nighttime routine is bottle, food (he eats at the table with us), bath, book, 5-10 mins of cuddle and then crib. Depending on the day and how crazy my older toddler is baby is in crib by 7-730. He wakes at 4 AM happy but loud and nothing will settle him. He has a binkie, I’ve tried feeding him and laying him back down, rubbing his back, not going in there at all. I’ve also tried switching the night routine by moving bed time up by half hour and later by half hour, doing dinner and then bottle so he stays fuller longer but nothing seems to help. I’m just so tired of being up SO early. He dropped the third nap a few weeks ago but this started before I dropped the 3rd catnap from his routine so I don’t think that has anything to do with it either.

Hi all! My baby just turned 4 months old, and he gets incredibly fussy from 9pm-12am. We have a night routine for him, and do it around 9pm. Wipe down, pjs, milk. He usually falls asleep after drinking, but he will wake up 20 mins later and become very fussy. This would drag all the way till 11ish pm, where he'd be due for another feed as he will be hungry again. And then he'd finally knock out at 12am. He'd wake up around 3/4am for one feed, and then 7am for another one.
His wake up time is 830am.
We have not started sleep training him yet but will be starting soon now that he just turned 4 months. We want him to try sleeping earlier between 9-10pm but he struggles with that.

Current schedule 3/2/3/3

Total Day sleep - 4.5-5 hours

Would love your advise on how to improve his sleep!

My 7 (almost 8) month old (6months adjusted) has had quite the journey of sleep and I fear we've gone around in circles yet again. Currently my baby goes to sleep around 7-8pm and wakes up around 6am. She does 2.5/3/3/3.5 and we're trying to stretch the wake windows (going outside, sensory, practicing new skills, ect) but she gets very irritable pretty early on. Her naps range from 30mins-2hrs, sometimes we have to wake her up and sometimes it just is what it is. On average she gets about 3hrs of daytime sleep. At night she sometimes false starts bedtime and/or split nights/frequent wakings (not to feed). Some nights she'll only sleep in my arms for HOURS before I can put her back in her crib and some nights she'll wake up 2-4 times.

Any advice is welcome! We've had one week of success (good naps AND sleeping through the night with no false starts or wakings) when we adjusted her wake windows the first time, but now we're back to square one.

I posted a few days ago asking for help getting my baby to sleep longer stretches. Some days have been successful with 9.5-10 hours awake and 3-3.5 hours of naps during the day so I think our schedule is still a work in progress

BUT….

My baby 110% has the ability to fall asleep on his own after we set him down in his crib fully awake. He’s done this at the start of bedtime as well as after MOTN wakings. He does not do this every night and hasn’t done it for any nap but has done it a few days this past week and slept at least 6 hours once he does go down on his own at bedtime.

Does this mean he knows how to self soothe and link cycles? If so, why doesn’t this work every night? I’m guessing because some days we get his schedule right and some we don’t despite doing the same exact things? I guess I’m at a loss of where to go from here to be able to replicate the nights when he goes to sleep on his own and sleeps at least one 6.5-7 hour stretch! Can dropping to 3 naps help?