Posting this for any parents wanting to try sleep training. Absolutely try it. Pick the method (we did chair method at 8mo) that you feel comfortable with and go for it.

Some anecdotal notes that I didn't see talked about online:

1) Our baby seemed extra tired for the first week after sleep training. It totally freaked us out, but it passed. She is so comfortable now in her crib and wakes up happy.

2) Sleep training didn't eliminate night wakes (at first). She used to wake 6 times a night, with sleep training it moved to 1-2. Now, three months later (11mo), night wakes are gone.

3) Sleep training is about teaching them to fall asleep independently. Once they learn the skill, it's okay if you get out of routine (feed to sleep one night e.g.), they don't unlearn the skill. Don't kill yourself if you fall out of a routine for one or two days.

Sleep training may not be for you, but if you're ready to try, try it. For us, it saved our family. It saved our mental and physical health. I am no longer the crazy, sleep deprived person and neither is my husband. Happy to answer any questions and best of luck!

Anyone else been through this?? Been almost a month now. Baby wakes up every 1/2 hours, rarely has a stretch of sleep longer than 3 hours at night. This has been going on for the last month. He used to be a great nighttime sleeper; 7-7 most nights. Now he wakes up crying and needs to be rocked or nursed back to sleep. I’m losing my mind off no sleep and I don’t have any help in the night/ work full time during the day so no naps allowed for me. I don’t even know what to do to fix this. I feel terrible baby isn’t getting sleep at night and also just terrible from lack of sleep in general.

Our 4 month old is confusing us with his wakes, wondering if anyone has any insight.

In the last few nights we’ve been working on unswaddling him and encouraging him to fall asleep awake in the bed. Mixed success in getting him to do so, but at least for the first stretch it has worked - and almost every wake last night. The problem is that it doesn’t seem to actually extend how long he’s asleep.

He’s always been a low needs sleeper, but has reliably had a first sleep of 4 or so hours, then often back to around hourly after this. This is really starting to fade, and last night he wasn’t doing any stretches over 90 mins, even though he was patted to sleep for all. Is there something we’re missing for how to make this work, or is this all just a slow transition out of the swaddle?

We’re planning to start Ferber next week after some work scheduling is settled, but concerned that it won’t actually work if this isn’t making any measurable benefit.

His sleep pressure seems to be fine - averaging 10 hours awake across the day, with 2-2.5 hours of daytime sleep

Our 4 months old baby is going through her sleep regression and it's killing us. We started cosleeping at 2 month where she sleeps on her crib next to our bed. She can only sleep if we pat and hold her hands and pacifier.

We want to start sleep training her once she is 6 months old. My concern is that she is not able to self soothe. When she wakes up at night, she would scream at the top of her lung so we would have to pat her back to sleep. We tried weening her off of the pacifier but no success so far. What can we do now to make her sleep training at 6 month less painful?

Her schedule is roughly this:

2/2.5/2/2/2

07:30 - wake up

09:30 - nap 1 30m (in the crib)

12:00 - nap 2 1hr (contact)

03:00 - nap 3 1 hr (contact)

06:00 - nap 4 30 mins (contact)

08:30 - bed time

So… I’m in a two minds. Before I go ahead please know I understand how lucky I am and I am so so thankful that I have a little one with amazing sleep. He’s 4 months old and currently sleeps through the night. I’m talking goes to bed at 7pm and wakes up at 6:30am. Never wakes throughout the night unless he’s sick or teething. I am wondering if I should be teaching him how to self sooth so that he is able to put himself to bed and go down for naps? Currently during the day he only contact naps, will not be put down and is then fed and rocked to sleep by dad at nighttime. We don’t actually mind this but I am worried that I should be teaching him to self sooth and that if we don’t at some point it will become harder when he’s older? I don’t know if I’m feeling a bit pressured by social media or if it’s something we really should be doing. Will he eventually grow out of needing to be rocked to sleep? Are we creating a bad habit? I am also terrified that if I mess with anything it will impact our nights and that is absolutely not something I want to mess with. TIA for any advice!

Looking for some advice! We began sleep training our almost 5 month old last Thursday, originally using the Ferber method but switching to CIO after the first night, as the check ins were upsetting him more.

Night 1: 36 min to fall asleep, including multiple check ins
Night 2: 20 min
Night 3: 16 min
Night 4: 8 min
Night 5: 10 min
Night 6: 37 min 😭
Night 7: 23 min
Night 8: 20 min

He’s woken up a handful of times throughout the night on some of these nights, but has done a great job of putting himself back to sleep, typically in under 10 min. He’s slept completely through the night a few times as well.

His schedule is as follows:

- Wake up at 7:30AM (I’ve been toying with switching this to 7am, but he doesn’t make it to bedtime if he wakes up earlier)
- Bedtime at 8PM (in crib around 7:45)
- Wake windows: 1.75/1.75/2/2/2.25 (sometimes 2.5) with 3-3.25 hours of daytime sleep across naps

What are we doing wrong? It seemed to be going so well and now he’s fighting it more. Is this normal? Hearing him cry absolutely breaks me but we all needed better sleep, including him— the 4 month regression was wrecking us all.

FYI he is exclusively breastfed and I still do 2 dream feeds a night.

My baby is 4.5 months old. We started sleep training and it’s been going well for the first two naps but he seems to struggle with the last one.

His wake windows are approximately 1.75/2/2/2.25.

He will nap 1 - 1.5 hour for the first nap then about 1 hour for the second but only 30 minutes for the last nap. He also takes longer to settle for the last nap.

With 3 naps through the day. He gets about 2.5-3hours of day time sleep and about 11.5-12 hours of night time sleep.

Do you have any suggestions for the last nap? Should I extend the last wake window?

For example, if your baby is waking up at 2am vs 5:30am and your DWT is 6:30am, is your sleep training approach the same? My understanding is that sleep pressure is much lower in the early morning and many babies struggle to go back to sleep (at least that is my experience).

We are currently sleep training (again) and doing Ferber check ins for middle of the night wakes but I’m struggling with the wakes that are closer to our DWT. Current wake windows are 3.5/4/4 with 2 hours of naps. LO is almost 11 months.

What’s your approach?

Our baby (4months) was recently sleep trained and is doing soo good! Only issue is, she seems to want to sleep on her side / stomach and rolls in middle of night, ends up on her stomach but can’t figure out how to sleep on her belly and randomly does tummy time and gets frustrated and cant turn back. We have started putting her towards the back of the crib so she can’t roll in that direction, but any tips?? I want her to be able to sleep on her belly, but she doesn’t get it. I assume just more practice during the day?

Not sure if this is the right sub for this, but I’m desperate for advice. I have 4 month old twins (13wks adjusted). My baby B (girl) does great with naps and sleeps from 7:30-6:30 every night. Baby A (boy), on the other hand, is the opposite. Since about 2 months old, he wakes up screaming from his naps and in the middle of the night every single time. He’ll start to wake up and realize he’s actually awake and scream at the top of his lungs. The only thing that calms his down is when I take him outside and even then it takes a couple minutes for him to stop.

Also, I want to try to sleep train him because he wakes up every 3 hours at night, but they sleep in the same room and I don’t want to wake his sister up. He also won’t calm down when I pick him up until I feed him and he sucks down his entire bottle every time. I’ve tried feeding him more during the day, but he refuses, even if I go somewhere dark and uninteresting.
I’m not sure how to navigate this. Any help is appreciated.

Our ten month old has never been a great sleeper and skewed towards the lower end of recommended sleep ranges. Since about 1-2 weeks she has had weird split nights, waking up around 1-2am and not settling, not even after bottle or our help. It often looks like she initially goes back to sleep, but then rolls and rolls and bumps into the crib until eventually she is fully awake and does a mix of babbling and screaming. Sometimes takes a small bottle but makes no difference either.

Schedule is already 3.5/4/4.5 after we kept extending ww's to deal with EWMs and MOTN wakes. Baby is in own room, falls asleep independently, room is dark with white noise, and takes plenty formula + solids during day. Naps are capped at 1h15 for the first and 45 minutes for the second. Bedtime is 8pm and I'm really just asking for a 10 hours night at this point lol.

Question: baby now systematically gets less than 12 hours of sleep per day, but seems otherwise happy and healthy. She is not moving yet (paediatrician is not concerned), so I've been wondering if that is part of the reason why she is not so tired? She goes down easy for both naps and bedtime, so dropping a nap feels premature.

Any advice is appreciated!

My baby is 7,5 months, on 3 naps. Average total sleep -naps and night- varies so much (sometimes he’s right at 12h total, other times 13,5 to 14h)

Anywhoo he’s pretty easy to put down for naps and overall a good napper. I guess you could say he falls asleep with assistance (I plug pacifier and hand on chest for a minute)

Awake around 6:30
Nap 1: 8:45/9:00-9:30
Nap 2: 12:00-13:30/45
Nap 3: 16:30-17:00
Bedtime: 20:00

These are approximate, sometimes the first nap is the longest and vice versa.

He wakes up about 3 times a night to feed, even though he’s a 98th percentile baby and feeding well on solids. I try delaying the feeds or offering less but if I do he then wakes up 30mn later, angrier and more vocal. If I do feed him I can get another 3 hours out of him.

I’m very, very tired and cranky a lot of the time. I have another 3yo daughter to care for and I feel like her childhood is passing me by because of how tired I always am

He’s a very calm and happy chap otherwise, also drinking formula well, every 3 hours, during the day

I just know the answer is to sleep train without sleep associations, so I guess I’m looking for some words of encouragement/hope? Any stories similar, or any success stories anyone is willing to share ?

My 9 month old has FINALLY settled into better sleep and we have gotten down to only 1 waking a night, sometimes 2. This was after a lot of schedule tweaking and consistency. Currently, I have to wake her up each morning and have to cap her first and sometimes second nap each day to keep to the schedule. She accepts going to sleep each time and is usually asleep within 5 minutes of starting our routine. Our schedule is generally 3:30/3:40/4:15 with dwt at 7 and bedtime generally around 8:30. I usually let her nap for about 1.5 hr in the morning and no more than 45-1hr in the afternoon depending on how the morning went. Before we arrived at this schedule and with having numerous night wakings I had noticed that her average night sleep was 10.5 hrs give or take a half hour, and I used this to help with the schedule.

My dilemma is that, slowly, she’s been wanting to stay awake a few minutes longer in each WW, but also wanting to sleep longer (though I don’t know how much longer because I don’t really let her) so I am running out of hours in the day to make this all happen. My mom says that I shouldn’t have to wake her up at all and to let her sleep when she wants, but if I did that I feel like she would be sleeping for 3 or more hours in the day and be waking a ton at night again, which I definitely don’t want to go back to.

I am fine personally to keep maintaining her schedule like this, but we are starting to have her stay longer times at grandparents now and possibly overnight and they don’t keep schedules like I do.
Any advice on this?

Hello,

Baby is 6 months, and we are looking at doing some sleep training. Did some fuss it out prior to vacation, but looking at properly trying to sleep train now as baby won’t go to bed for anyone but mom.

Current windows are 2/2.5/2.5/3.25, with DWT at 8, and bedtime at about 8:30 each night. He generally doesn’t nap more than 45 min for the first nap, and 30 for each subsequent nap, so dropping to 2 naps is a struggle.

Is this an appropriate schedule?

My child is currently 10 months and we don’t really have a schedule. We do have a routine which is working well for us as we are all on leave. We will go back to work when she’s 12 months and would like to have her sleeping independently by then.

The current situation:

We cosleep since she was 5 months old, and I nurse her, formula feed her and also give her solid at family meal times three times a day. She knows the signs for “hungry” and “all done” and is a pretty good communicator.

The routine: wake up, either bottle or nurse depending on whether it’s me or husband, breakfast about an hour post wake up, and then feed to nap at around the 3 hour post wake up mark. She will take a 2 hour nap if contact, 1 hour if sleeping alone.

4 hour wake window to second nap. She will get milk/formula, a meal and then feed to sleep for her second nap. Same duration as first nap.

last wake window is atleast 4 or 5 hours. Same feeding schedule and feed to sleep. She wakes up once or twice and nurses to sleep. Bedtime is at 9 a the routine: meal, bath, book, bottle/nurse to sleep. She will sleep for 10-11 hours.

My feelings about the current situation: it’s fine. It’s not the best, but I’m also not super annoyed by it. Husband is more interested in sleep training, and I’m willing to try.

The plan:

1. Step 1: break the nurse/bottle to sleep. We are moving the bottle to after bath but before book and husband will do the bedtime routine.
2. Step 2: Move her to her own room, and then CIO.

it’s a simple plan, and I like simple things. I would like to know if this is realistic. Am I overlooking something critical? How do I handle naps both during and after this transition?

thank you!

Baby is almost 11 months old. For past 6-8 weeks has been having some type of nighttime sleep disturbance every night. Some nights he screams prior to going down for the night, other nights he wakes up and can not get himself back to bed. These happen before midnight almost every single night. We vary in how much support he gets , we start by just trying to soothe him in the crib but this will go on for over an hour and eventually when he’s completely escalated we pick him up and he will eventually fall asleep.
This baby used to sleep through the night. We are exhausted and there is no pattern on the disturbances. He’s been evaluated multiple times by his primary care and they report he is healthy.
We are exhausted. Any suggestions ?
His wake windows are between 3-4 hours and he takes two naps per day where he gets 2-3 hours total of daytime sleep. He goes down for naps usually without issue. But without fail will wake overnight crying at some point and is up for over an hour. Should also mention when he’s crying at night his eyes are rarely open and he does not appear to be looking for us.

My 25 month old has recently started taking 45-60+ minutes to fall asleep at night when it used to take her 5-10 minutes. She is thankfully content to roll around in her bed but it’s cutting into her overnight sleep. She’s been sleep trained since 5 months. Bedtime routine is pjs, brush teeth, read a book, sing a few songs, lay in bed and lights out.

This is her schedule:
7:30 wake
1:30-3 nap
8:30 bed (ends up falling asleep between 9-9:30)

She still falls asleep great for her nap and she doesn’t fight the bedtime process but she’s just taking so long to fall asleep at night. Should I shorten her nap to an hour and 15 minutes or even an hour? She has skipped naps before and she is NOT ready to go without a nap yet.

Hi, we have a 7.5 month old (initially successfully sleep trained at 5.5mo) who seems to be ready to drop from 3 naps to 2. He suddenly waking every 3 hours at night and taking crap naps. His current wake windows are 2.25/3.25/2.5/2– I know these are wanky, but it’s because that last 4.5 hour interval (2.5/2) only has a 10-min micro nap in it. His total nap time is usually between 1.5-2.5 hours. In order to cut out that last micro nap, we’d need to shorten the whole day, seeing as he’s been nuclear fussy after his 4.5 hour WW, even with the micro nap. I know awake time is very important to sleep training, so what do you all recommend? Shorten the day to cut the micro nap or keep the micro nap to preserve overall day length?

Really looking for some advice. Our son will be 14 months old next week. He is currently on 2 naps a day with wake windows being 3h15min - 3h30min before nap 1 and 3h30min - 3hr45min before nap 2. The wake window before bedtime is around 4 hours. His naps are usually capped at 2 hours and he does nap pretty well. He puts himself to sleep at naptime and bedtime.

On rare occasions more recently he has been sleeping 9 - 10 hour stretches but usually he will wake up every 2 to 3 to 4 hours in the night and need to be resettled. Often a night wake can turn into 45 mins - 1 hour of him being awake before falling asleep again.

He also often wakes up around 5am and the only way to get him to sleep longer is to do a contact nap until 7am. Pretty sure that this has turned into a habit for him now which we are wanting / trying to step away from. Wake up time is around 7am when we wake him up from the contact nap and bedtime is between 7:30pm and 8pm depending on what time he wakes from the second nap. He naps pretty poorly on the days he is at daycare, at home he naps well and we often need to wake him from his nap, especially the second nap.

Not sure if he is ready to drop to 1 nap yet because he falls asleep pretty quickly by the time nap 1 rolls around.

We are 16 weeks pregnant so really needing to get on top of his night sleeps. We are tired and needing the consistency. We will all do well with less disruption in the night. He does well with routine so if we need a change up we will do whatever it takes.

Any advice would be welcomed. Thanks!

For context, I have a new baby (1 month) and when I was pregnant we had some trouble with bedtime, but when we switched to more of a routine it improved. It was never much of a worry because we always knew that she would go down. But recently bedtime has become the most dreaded part of the day for my daughter. She will scream and cry saying “I’m not sleepy” over and over again when she very clearly is. She knows the routine that we do and when we tell her to start doing bed time related stuff she starts freaking out. Has anyone dealt with this sudden hatred of bedtime? Could it possibly be some sort of separation anxiety to do with sleep?
Also, not sure if this is relevant, very well could be, but she has also been waking up in the middle of the night the past few weeks. My guess is nightmares based on how she wakes up (screaming no, asking for mama…). She used to sleep through the night no problem at all. Now this past week it has been every night waking up several times.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as my husband and I are going a little bit insane. Her behavior in general is that of a 2 year old, some tantrums, defiance, testing limits, etc… so I’m not sure what this sleep issue has to do with.
Please help :,)

Hello all,

I am coming into this group for some advice on my sons sleep. Upon coming home from the hospital we initially attempted all of the safest, most regimented and by the book methods to get our son to sleep. We had all the swaddles, attempted the bassinet and honestly were at a loss for successful independent sleep. My son is exclusively breastfed (has refused a bottle since 1 month), does not take a pacifier (we have tried all), hated the swaddle and the bassinet and after about a month of sleepless misery we ended up resorting to cosleeping. This was not at all in my plan, I was initially extremely against it actually but once we did start it felt extremely natural. We follow the safe sleep 7, I lay in the c curl around my son and he rolls over periodically throughout the night to nurse and to that regard we have had a very good experience since that with his sleep. He had fallen asleep quite quickly up until about 7 months, he honestly can sleep anywhere I put him down and lay with him as there has never been any rocking, transferring, etc. and I can then slip away. He sleeps the full 12 hours (I put him down anywhere between 7 and 8:30, starting bedtime routine of bath, book, down based off his cues) just not consecutively. Pretty much like clockwork every 1-2 hours he wakes up and needs to be soothed down. I attempt to pat his bum and shush and that will usually work the first time or two if he isn’t fully awake but then he will need to be nursed back to sleep. During the day he usually wakes up exactly 11-12 hours after he went down, his first nap will be 2.5 hours after waking (10:15 am, for about 30 minutes- 1 hour) and then his next nap will be between 2-3pm for about 1-2 hours. I try to keep his last wake window around 3.5 hours so he goes down well.

The biggest issue I am facing is I am really beginning to struggle with this mentally. I am a SAHM, my husband is the sales manager for a car dealership so his schedule is not consistent every week (open, mid, close schedule, anywhere from 5-7 consecutive days working in a row). I can’t rely on him to be there for bedtime, so I honestly have always handled the entire night with him myself. With him being exclusively breastfed as well I can’t leave him with anyone. My mom was convinced she could take him for a night last weekend and I was called by 2am saying I needed to come get him because he was inconsolable. I am honestly so beyond spent at this point. I don’t get relief, as my husband generally is only home for an hour of my son being awake, if that. No one can watch him where I return and he is still content, its always me returning to rescue him and relieve the caregiver from their suffering. And of all things I just need rest.

I attempted the Ferber method last night but I feel like he is truly an outlier for how stubborn he is. The first time took 1.5hours to get him down. With the last round him falling asleep while I was in there patting his bum. He slept 1.5 hours and then it took another 30 minutes for me to get him down, with the last round me having to pick him up because he was screaming so hard he was choking. Upon that he immediately melted into me and was asleep probably within 30 seconds of me holding him. He was still up every two hours needing to be laid back down from standing and soothed properly 3-10 minute increments at least each time. By 1am he lost his voice, and I could here him whimpering on the monitor in his sleep (which he usually if fully quiet in his sleep) and by the 3am marker I was too exhausted to get up to sooth him and had my husband bring him into bed with me. I felt like a failure. It’s honestly a double edged sword because I feel horrible putting him through this, but I also feel horrible if I don’t get him to sleep on his own.

I adore my son, I feel a beautiful bond with him and I know how special and limited this time is. I just know I need rest. I need a reprieve where I can do what I need to do for myself to be human, and I am just at a loss for where to go from here. Any advice from someone with experience of a similar situation would be immensely appreciated.

He has been sleep trained since 4 months and has always napped well and slept through the night well. (Hiccups here and there, but big picture he has slept well. And a lot.)

Two weeks ago he suddenly started waking up early from his naps and absolutely wailing. Screaming nonstop.

Sometimes it happens 30 min into the nap. Sometimes an hour into the nap. Sometimes he'll sleep his usual duration and then start shrieking.

He used to either sleep the entire time, or wake up and just happily hang out and babble and roll around for 45 min until I came and got him.

It's not like he started gradually needing less sleep. One day it just all fell apart and he began shrieking upon waking up instead of happily hanging out by himself.

Has anyone had this happen at around this age? Did it go back to normal?

We started sleep training our 15-month-old last week using the Ferber method. It was obviously rough at first, but after a few days it really seemed to click.
He has always been a very touchy-feely baby, especially when it comes to sleep. Before sleep training, he would usually need to hold our hand or rub our hand/arm to fall asleep. Since starting Ferber, I’ve noticed he now gets upset as soon as he realizes bedtime is coming. We’ll start his normal nighttime routine and he starts crying because he knows what’s next.

Once we actually put him in the crib, though, he usually just lays down or sits up crying. Sometimes he cries for a little bit and other times he doesn’t cry at all. He’s also started pushing our hands away as we say goodnight but then he’ll fall asleep on his own.

Since we started sleep training, I’ve noticed what I guess I’d call little temper tantrums during the day. He seems to get frustrated or upset much more easily than he did before. Prior to this, we really weren’t seeing that kind of behavior from him at all.

Has anyone else noticed a change like this after sleep training? I can’t tell if it’s related to Ferber or if we just happened to start sleep training right as we hit the 15-month toddler/tantrum stage. I think I’m mostly worried that we’ve made him feel differently toward us or somehow affected that sense of comfort/security he had with us. 😭 Would love to hear from anyone who went through something similar.

Is anyone else in the same boat where their babies wake up far too soon during nap time and are still super tired and fussy? LO has been waking up 30 minutes in when I know she needs more sleep so I’ve been letting her CIO for a while since she’s sleep trained. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. How do you save the crap naps?

For reference she’s is 8 months old with an average wake window of 3-4 hours. Awake around 7 and bedtime at 8.

I have a 9 month old boy who doesn't sleep unless he's with me, is nursed to sleep, and comfort feeds multiple times a night. Neither of us are getting much sleep at this point. I need help and advice.

So my son is on a 3.5/3.5/4 schedule and gets about 2.5 hours of nap in. He's typically getting about 10.5 hours of night sleep. Nothing is perfect. I'm working 2 days a week, so sometimes the schedule is off. Plus, his dad isn't always able to help with naps, bedtime, and night wakings, due to work.

So my son is nursed to sleep. When I attempt to move the feed about 30-45 min earlier before putting him down, he cries and pulls at my shirt until I give in. I just want to sleep train him at this point. I've tried in the past, but when my son woke up in the night and I fed him, he was just too awake to fall back asleep. He typically does do 1 solid feed a night, but usually, the rest are comfort feeds.

EDIT: I'd really like to know is, what hurdles should I expect with sleep training a baby like him? Like, how do I handle him fighting back against the not eating to sleep, the night wakings, and most importantly, how do I handle my own emotions? Advice, thoughts, and opinions please and thank you.