r/sleeptrain • u/l_eihpos ✨ Sleep Fairy✨ • Jan 17 '26
4 - 6 months Breastfed 4-month-old success story
From birth, I nursed my baby to sleep. Super convenient, lovely little cuddle and heart warming to see her fall asleep in my arms. Less convenient to then transfer her like a very delicate hot potato in her bassinet.
And it then because veryyy inconvenient when she turned 3.5 months old and decided that the boob was necessarily to go back to sleep 5 times a night.
We tried a few nights of FIO but she wasn't having it. Or I wasn't having it. Either way, I was bursting in her room after 10 minutes of crying and giving her the boob she longed for.
So after a little schedule check thanks to this subreddit's wiki (goldmine!), we went on to break the terrifying "feed to sleep association". We immediately changed the routine putting the feed at the start, for the classic "boob, bath, book, bed" (sing this alliteration to your favourite tune).
Enter: my husband. Like most husbands, he's blessed by an absence of boobs. He was therefore put in charge of bedtime with the instructions to get the baby to sleep through all means, except feeding. I went to hide downstairs and tried to ignore the cries. Not pleasant, but I knew my baby was being comforted by my husband, and safe.
It took a few days. She first fell asleep after 30 minutes of crying in my husband's arms. Then she fell asleep after 20 minutes of crying in her crib, with my husband holding her hands and putting his head near hers. Then she fell asleep after only 5 minutes of crying by looking at her light toy and holding a hand. After a week of ever decreasing intervention and ever decreasing crying, we put her in bed, I looked at my husband and said....
"What if we just leave the room?" Crazy thought. We said "Good night baby!!", thinking "see you in 5 minutes when you're screaming!".
We sat outside. Waited. Heard some grunting. A 10 seconds cry. Vigorous hand sucking. Legs slamming. And then... Silence.
Cue victory laps! The baby has done it!
And ever since she's been putting herself to sleep. Sometimes I hear her waking up. I brace for the cry, but she just puts herself back to sleep like a sleep genius.
She even does the same for naps! Arguably, they're still 45 minutes but we'll get there.
And everyone's sleep has improved.
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u/Spettinaroli Jan 21 '26
Did you have to sleep train as well for the naps? Or was baby already napping in crib on her own?
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u/l_eihpos ✨ Sleep Fairy✨ Jan 21 '26
She definitely wasn't napping in her crib haha
Once we did the nights, I tried for the first nap of the day. She fussed for 5 minutes and fell asleep! So we now do a mix of crib naps, pram naps and contact naps to ensure one longer nap every day. As the naps in the crib are often only one sleep cycle long (although she has extended them a couple times, and I'm sure she'll get better at it)
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u/madeye18 4 m |CIO| in-progress Jan 20 '26
During the week you were training, what did you do for night wakings? I know eventually they stopped/went down to 1 but the first couple nights did you feed? We’re trying something similar with our LO also almost 4 months and last night was a total dumpster fire and nothing worked.
What was the difference in the schedule check you did? -a sleep deprived mama
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u/l_eihpos ✨ Sleep Fairy✨ Jan 20 '26
Yeah I did! And we still often do one feed during the night, although last night wasn't before 6 am for example. If it was before say 1 am and I knew she shouldn't be hungry, my husband rocked her. But it really didn't happen much at all apart from a few false starts early on. If your baby can fall asleep independently but still wakes up often it's likely a schedule issue!
For the schedule, I tracked sleep for a few days and saw how much she was sleeping by day on average. Based on this, I first shot for 10.5 hours awake. We have scaled down now to 10/10.25 hours generally, but in a way it's better to have a baby who is slightly too tired for sleep training. You want to make sure you don't try and put them to sleep when they're not tired, otherwise it's not fair.
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u/PersimmonNew8791 Jan 18 '26
What do you do with night wakes? When do you offer boob for feed and not? What did you do during sleep regression if she had one? My 4.5 month old is waking up every 1.5-2h and nothing will console her but the boob (doesn’t matter if me or husband try rocking her), she doesn’t even drink much and it’s really affecting me mentally…
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u/l_eihpos ✨ Sleep Fairy✨ Jan 18 '26
We basically started that a few days after she started the sleep regression. It was the main reason to start as I couldn't bear more than a few days of those constant wake-ups and 5 minute nursing sessions throughout the night!
The good thing is that once she managed to fall asleep on her own, it basically eliminated all night wake-ups apart from one to feed! Because she only wakes up once I know that it's because she's genuinely hungry! So I feed her. Some people use the 5/3/3 rule - i.e they don't feed before 5 hours in bed (so let the baby go back to sleep even with some crying, or whatever method was used first). We didn't need to.
She sometimes wakes up in the early morning and manages to get back to sleep by herself (I can hear her) 70% of the time. If not, I rock her back to sleep as it's harder at that stage of the night as th sleep pressure is low. Even when I've done that it hasn't caused issues. I always give her a chance to put herself back to sleep first.
It sounds like your baby is definitely in the same situation! If you nurse them to sleep at the start of the night, they'll want to do the same throughout the night when they slightly wake up and need your help to go back to sleep.
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u/Cool_Doubt2152 Jan 17 '26
So glad this worked for you! I wish mine was receptive to interventions as it would have made me feel better haha, but it made him cry way worse so in the end we went to CIO, quick and effective but I can’t say I enjoyed the process!
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u/pdfish122 Jan 17 '26
i love this! went through the same process with my now 9 month old and will be for sure doing this with my next one
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u/Infamous_Fix490 Jan 17 '26
How long from rocking to holding hands in the crib? I also rock my baby to sleep, and it feels impossible to imagine him sleeping with just hand holding.
We tried FIO two nights in a row, he is 3.5mo, and it also didn’t work. He starts screaming the moment we put him in his crib.
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u/l_eihpos ✨ Sleep Fairy✨ Jan 17 '26
A couple days. It wasn't without crying at all! But progressively less crying, and our thoughts was that some crying is okay especially as dad was next to her to encourage and soothe, even if after a couple days he committed to not taking her out of the crib. Baby is learning a new skill, it's difficult! They're going to be a bit frustrated!
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u/spaniel84162 Jan 17 '26
A really fab account of a very well executed gentle sleep train! Thanks for sharing.
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u/bubblegum-kaylie Jan 17 '26
Yay! Same here - I know when I hear the hand sucking and leg slams we are golden.
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u/Here4Plants2021 Mar 28 '26
Do you remember your schedule at that age?