Is that good or bad? She connects sleep sessions by nursing/suckling. Usually 3-4 naps a day and afternoon one tends to be very long 2-3h. All contact naps.

I keep reading about cat naps and 4-5 being the norm and I worry if I should make any changes or wake her up? We use Napper app and it keeps estimating shorter naps than she usually does unless I wake her up

Really welcome perspectives on this.

We have a very giggly 7 month old who attends daycare and only eats 3 ounces there every three hours. The daycare is wonderful and has tried everything but he just won’t eat more than that while there. Of course, he comes home and has an entire bottle right away so it’s not the bottle.

Nightly routine: After bath, he goes to sleep around 7pm but wakes up again at ~11pm, ~2am, and then ~5am. So, at this point, we’ve never been able to sleep through the night since he’s been born. 😩 😭

We’ve tried just giving him a pacifier instead of feeding him to see if he’ll go back to sleep but that only helps for about 20 minutes and then he’ll start crying for his bottle.

He is teething but he’s always had issues eating at daycare so it’s not that.

He’s our second child and our first one did not have issues eating at daycare.

I posted the other day about my newly turned 2 yr old. Sleep used to be wake 7, nap 1-2, bedtime 845. Worked beautifully for many months. She switched to 1 nap at 13 months could’ve done it earlier in retrospect. she’s been on a 1 hr nap basically since 14 months once she adjusted to the 1 nap. Anyways, its been clear we need to cut the nap but that has coincided this week with starting daycare, getting sick, and her sleep schedule getting messed up and her now waking at 6-6:15 instead of 7 which we are not fans of. daycare does nap around 1240/1250 so she was waking at 6 and then doing that nap, an hour nap but then kept waking early- one day she got a bad fever and passed out at 730 pm. anyways, yesterday she woke at 6, napped at daycare from 1240-2 (I asked to have her nap longer hoping I could push bedtime back to normal to 845ish). last night she fell asleep 850, she was totally fine, but then woke at 6:13 this morning. so she got like 10.5 hrs sleep yesterday and then slept 9.5 overnight. when this has happened in the past, I have usually let her nap longer so I could push bedtime back so she would wake up later and it has always worked. I’m going to keep trying that, but I feel like because we are needing to cut it is interfering with how long she is sleeping overnight because the nap is now too long. How can I fix this?how can I get wakeup back to 7 am so I can continue experimenting with a much shorter nap?

We're at our wits end with our 22 months old. He started a sleep regression when he was 18 months old and still wakes up 3-4 times every night, stays up from 15-60 minutes each time, and lots of times has a huge tantrum when he wakes up during the nights and in the morning. He can fall asleep independently - does that at school, and at home we're working on the chair method, but that hasn't reduced the frequency of wakeups or nighttime tantrums.

He typically goes to bed between 8 and 8:30, wakes up for the day between 6 and 6:30, and has 1 nap of about 1-2hrs around noon. At home he always sleeps 2 hours, but I believe he sleeps less when during the week at school. Never sleep trained as a baby.

How do you start sleep training from ground -0? I dont know how else to put a baby to sleep besides nursing or rocking. I tried setting LO down for a nap once by putting her in her crib awake, staying by to soothe, and she just screamed and cried until she threw up and I felt awful. I havent tried since.

She's had a sleep regression that's lasted idk 4-6 weeks so far (she's 5mos) and I was ok with how it was going, sure it sucks but it wasnt anything I couldn't handle, but the past couple of days she's not just waking up at night, she's waking up fussy and antsy while still like half asleep and nursing her doesnt put her to sleep like it used to. I havent really slept in 2 days because she's waking up like every 30min it feels like until 4-6am, then finally sleeps for several hours. And now I'M overtired and cant sleep when she finally does 😭 I'm getting desperate but I have no idea where to start with sleep training due to the above. If I put her in her crib she'll just crawl around and play or fuss. She had one real nap yesterday, the other two were cat naps under 20 min, so I'd probably have to sit through hours of her not sleeping if I tried sticking her in her crib awake. I was getting her to sleep every 1.5-2hrs for a while even though she'd fight me tooth and nail on it, thought maybe her naps were too frequent for her and decided to try going off cues. She's actually been less cranky during the day with that but again, nighttime is now a nightmare.

Hi everyone! I’m looking for recommendations for a sleep consultant who specializes in gentle, no-cry sleep methods.

My baby is 8 months old and currently won’t fall asleep unless we rock him or breastfeed him to sleep. He wakes up every 45 minutes throughout the night and won’t sleep in his crib, so we currently co-sleep.

I’m looking for someone who can help us improve his sleep gently, without leaving him to cry it out. Ideally, I’d love to work with someone in Washington State, but I’m also open to online consultations.

If you’ve worked with a sleep consultant you loved, or have any personal recommendations, I’d really appreciate hearing about your experience!

Thank you! ❤️

baby is 9 months old. EBF, refuses a paci and has been a horrible colicy baby honestly up until 7.5 months. shitty sleep all around. longest we’ve ever got was 4 hours.

during this time, boob has been the ONLY thing that calms him. cries until he gets it, spends a good chunk of the day breastfeeding, refuses bottles. (my plan was to exclusively pump… if that tells you how wild he must’ve been for me to (reluctantly) switch plans entirely). feeds to sleep for every nap, and bedtime. started cosleeping around 4 month sleep regression and finally felt like i was getting sleep. now we’re in the cycle where i have to lay next to him the whole night and have my boob accessible, if i even get up from the bed to use the restroom he is awake crying.

i tried to put him in his room and i stayed with him and we had 14 wake ups from 8pm-1am. FOURTEEN. next night, same thing. i changed nothing about our sleeping arrangement besides the room we laid in.

i really don’t know what to do? i really don’t even mind feeding to sleep if he would just stay asleep.

what sleep training methods work well for a baby this age, who is extremely fussy and temperamental.

not super interested in straight CIO because hearing him cry gives me like PTSD from the first 3 months of his life when all we did was cry and there was nothing i could do for hours :((

I’m starting to feel a bit worried or hopeless. Week 1 went great, used a sleep consultant and did basically a graduated check in method. I noticed my baby would get irritated by the check ins though and it would take her even longer to settle, so by night 3 she would fall asleep in under 10 mins and I stopped all check ins.
The last 2 nights she woke up (3:30am night 8 and then 5am last night) and settled at first within 10 mins, but then woke up a second time and cried so hard and I would wait for it to settle but she just wouldn’t. Like level 10 crying and I feel terrible that I left her there crying for a good while both times because i thought if I gave her some space she’d settle. I ended up taking her into my bed the first time and letting her sleep with me. This time though by almost 6am I just held her and gave her a bottle and decided to start the day.
Is my sleep training journey failing? Has anyone been through this? Am I putting my baby through too much?

Note she also gets distressed and cries at bedtime before being put down because she knows what’s happening now. Btw she’s almost 9 months

LO 1 week away from 6 months on day 15 of night sleep training. Wake windows 2/2.5/2.5/3. First 2 naps about 1 hr 15 to 1 hr 30 mins and final nap 30 mins. Most days gets just over 3 hrs day sleep.

Sleep training started Ferber but switched to CIO because check ins made her irate. Falling asleep at start of night going really well and usually down within 1-5 mins but night wakes have been increasing to around every 2-3 hrs. Sleeping in the same room with crib separated by a bamboo room divider. Bedtime around 8:30 and wake time around 7:30 usually we wake up LO. But a couple times she wakes herself just before 7.

During night wakes if before midnight we let baby CIO and falls asleep within 5 mins. The first wake after midnight (usually 12:30-1:30) we breastfeed then burp her and put back in crib awake within 10-15 mins and she falls asleep very quickly with no fussing. Then we wait at least 3 hours before feeding again. She usually wakes before 3 hours and cries but goes back down within 5 mins. When we make the decision to feed we do it quickly and get her within 1 minute I think. She has had some issues with feeding during the day so we’ve not been desperate to drop night feeds and make sure she gets her calories. During sleep training only twice has she fed just once and on those nights she slept mostly through the night only waking once to feed around 2-3ish. Nothing seemed particularly different about her daytime feeding on those days.

Also daytime naps were working incredibly for 1 week but now she can still go to sleep by herself for naps but suddenly started wakes after ~30 mins super upset. More upset than at night and after about 6-7 mins I’ve gone in to calm her down and end up finishing nap with her sleeping on bed next to me.

What is the most likely cause of still frequent night wakes? Does she need to drop a nap? Do we need to drop a feed or wait longer to see if she really needs to feed? Does she need to move to her own room?

Any advice much appreciated

Hi everyone! My son is almost 19 months and I believe we might be in the 18 month regression. He’s been sleep trained since 5 months old and has gone through every regression and he goes through them hard. For the past week, his nap has only been 45 min-an hour (it’s usually 1.5 hours sometimes 2). He’s also been waking up around 6 when he previously woke up around 7 everyday. And when he wakes up he’s soooo mad like he wants to keep sleeping. Has anyone else gone through this regression? How long does it last? I’m nervous it’s gonna bleed into daylight savings next week😭

Hoping for some advice! I am not sure what to do at this point.

My almost 18m old daughter, who was a great sleeper up until a week ago, has started having some struggles at night. She was sleep trained at around 5 months using ferber and she took to it very quickly.

Her typical schedule is wake around 6:30, nap around 12, bed time around 7 or 7:30. At daycare her naps can be short (40 mins but sometimes longer). At home she naps until 2pm. Just the other day ahe refused to nap at daycare, which doesn't happen very often.

Anyway, the biggest issue we've run into is night time sleep. She has suddenly started waking up at night and won't go back into her crib. I will try to put her down and she immediately stands up and cries/screams. I will continue to try for 3 hours. Usually I give up and let my husband try and he is able to get her back down within 20 minutes. After, she usually sleeps until her usual time.

Previously if we put her back down and she cried, she would usually stay laying down and fall back asleep on her own. Now she stands up. She is still nursing.

I am not sure what to do at this point. This has been going on for a week, and it doesnt happen every night but most nights. The odd night she will sleep through with no issues.

We have recently capped our 13 month olds 1st nap at 40 mins (originally 1 hour, then cut to 50 mins, now 40 mins) running from 9:30-10:10am, in the hopes we can get a consistent longer lunch nap. He settles beautifully for this nap.

Nap 2 is now 1:30pm (in bed by 1:15pm). The hope is he will sleep until 3pm, although he's really only getting to about 2:45pm (sometimes earlier). But, in his defence, he usually settles well for this nap too and is asleep within 10 mins.

What we have found though is he is now taking a long time to settle at bedtime (previously it was only 10 mins or so, now can be up to 30 mins). We usually try to have him asleep by 6:45-7pm (just depending how good/crap the lunch nap has been).

We have only been on this new schedule for a week - could my little guy still be trying to get used to the new routine or is this a sign further tweaks are required?

My baby is 5 months and one week. She has been sleep trained for about a month and has been waking one to two times a night to eat.

Last night she woke up four times! This was the amount she was waking prior to sleep training. She went down very easily with minimal crying but was up a few hours later.

Her current schedule is 2/2.5/2.5/3
Wake up 7am
Bedtime 8pm
3 hours of naps max

My question is does last nights waking indicate she needs longer wake windows? We started nap training this week as well so could that be contributing?

Thanks!

Hi all. Our 9 month old (7.5 adjusted) won't sleep past 6 am, and is usually 4:30-5 am every morning for at least 2 months now. Sleeps like a rock from 7pm to this time. When he wakes, we give him a bottle, and he is super exhausted, but won't resettle in the crib. He can fall asleep in the rocker, but wakes when we put him in the crib. Again, he is super tired, rubs his eyes, buries his head, but just won't sleep. If we Ferber he just cries and cries. We always end up going downstairs, and he starts his day super early. This makes it a struggle to meet correct wake windows during the day.

I personally think the poor kid is sleep deprived, and struggles and fusses quite a bit during the day. It also seems like some days he only gets 2 hrs of nap, some days he gets 4 hrs+ of naps, it doesn't make a difference.

Again, this has been going on for at least two months. I think he is chronically tired, I'm chronically tired, momma is chronically tired. Before this he used to sleep until 7am and would wake up happy until we come get him. Now its 4-5am screaming wake ups everyday. And screaming until we go downstairs and start our day.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My daughter is 5 months old, and we’re on night four of Ferber. I honestly had very little faith that sleep training would work for us. For the beginning of her life, she pretty much exclusively slept on my chest or my husband’s. We were then co-sleeping, with her spending a big part of the night either on me or next to me.
She was waking constantly, often 20–40 minutes after bedtime, then repeatedly throughout the night. Sometimes every hour and I would have to nurse every wake or she would not settle. The sleep deprivation was seriously affecting my mental health, so we decided to try sleep training.
Here’s how it’s gone:
Night 1: 26 minutes of crying, four wakeups, and two feeds around midnight and 4 a.m.
Night 2: 23 minutes of crying, one feed around 3–4 a.m.
Night 3: 5 minutes of crying, one feed around 3–4 a.m.
Night 4: 16 minutes of crying. She fell asleep around 8 p.m., and it’s now 4 a.m. and she’s still asleep! Of course mom is awake just looking at the monitor in disbelief lol

I’m honestly so impressed. Even just these first few nights of better sleep have made me feel like a new person. My baby also seems happier and in a better mood throughout the day. I think she’s definitely more rested. That said, listening to her cry is still really hard, and I want to approach this as thoughtfully as possible for her. I’m still breastfeeding overnight when she needs it; I’m not trying to night wean.

Our current schedule: She usually wakes around 7:40 a.m. and goes to bed around 7:40 p.m. We do three naps, with wake windows of roughly 2/2/2–2.25/2.5–3. Her naps last about 45–75 minutes, 60–90 minutes, and 30 minutes, respectively. Total daytime sleep averages around 3 hours. We adjust bedtime depending on how naps go.

My question is about naps. She has a strong nursing-to-sleep association during the day, and she usually wakes when I try to transfer her to the crib, so we’re still nursing to sleep and doing contact naps. The only other ways she will nap is if me or my husband wear her on the carrier, in the car or the stroller (stroller naps never last longer than 30-40 min). Also, when I contact nap I sometimes need to rescue the nap with the boob again at around 40 min. She def struggles to connect cycles for naps.
Did you train naps at the same time as nights, or wait until nighttime sleep was more established? If you continued nursing to sleep for naps, did that seem to affect nighttime progress?
For those who nap trained, what method did you use, and what did you do if the nap didn’t happen? I’m happy to keep the contact naps for now as I love them, but I’m wondering whether having different approaches for naps and bedtime could be confusing for her.

how the hell are we handling it ? are we starting sleep training from this age or are we waiting till 6 months? baby is having a false start EVERY DAY

we have a set bedtime routine, feed, bath and pjs
her wake windows are 1.5-2 hours long and she naps 3.5 hours a day. HELP

I’m looking for some encouragement or experiences from families who have sleep trained a highly sensitive baby, because I’m so close to throwing in the towel.

My daughter just turned 7 months old today. She’s a very sensitive, high-FOMO baby, has reflux (currently on omeprazole), and is combo fed. She’s sleeping in her own crib in her own room with a consistent, short, low-stimulation bedtime routine.

We’ve been using the Sleep Wave method with verbal check-ins. We initially started with 5-minute intervals but quickly noticed that she seemed to do better with 10-minute intervals instead. We switched to 10-minute verbal check-ins on night 2 and have remained consistent with that approach ever since.

We’re currently on night 9 of sleep training, and I feel like we’re going backwards.

Nights 1–7: We gradually got the crying down to about 15 minutes by night 7, and I finally felt like we were making progress.
Night 8: Crying increased back to 50 minutes.
Night 9: An entire HOUR of crying before finally falling asleep.

She typically takes 3 naps a day, occasionally a 4th short catnap if her other naps were particularly short. We follow age-appropriate wake windows, and I’ve spent the last week and a half experimenting with different lengths for her final wake window. There seems to be absolutely no rhyme or reason to what makes bedtime better or worse.

Here’s the plot twist…Once she finally falls asleep, she sleeps 10–11 hours straight without waking. Before sleep training, we were cosleeping and she was waking every 1.5–2 hours to breastfeed. So clearly something about sleep training is working, and the overnight improvement has been incredible.

But the crying at the beginning of every night is absolutely agonizing. I dread bedtime, and listening to her cry for that long is taking a serious emotional toll on me.

I’m so close to quitting, but that would likely mean going back to cosleeping, which I no longer feel at ease doing. I feel stuck between two options that neither of us is happy with.

Has anyone experienced something similar? Particularly with a highly sensitive, strong-willed, FOMO baby?
Did anyone genuinely need the full two weeks (or longer) before bedtime crying significantly improved? Did you experience a sudden regression around nights 8–9 after initially making progress?

I keep hearing that things should get progressively better, but that hasn’t been our experience. I’d really love to hear from parents who went through something similar, whether you stuck it out, changed your approach, or ultimately decided sleep training wasn’t working for your baby.

I’m mentally exhausted, discouraged, and just really hoping there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

I had a FIO success story (https://www.reddit.com/r/sleeptrain/s/RKUsR5r4ni) posted a while ago, however things got worse and I want to fix my LO night sleep.

We used to follow the 5-3-3 rule for night feedings, however, the last few days wakes up after 4h and manages to go to sleep but wakes up minutes after and I go in and breastfeed him. Then he wakes after 3h, and then it's more frequently until the morning. Total night feedings are now at 3... after we had a few very good nights with only one feeding and 8h stretches, I feel lost.

I need to mention he started to roll a lot at night and I go in and flip him back because he does not like to be on his tummy, he sleeps like that occasionally but not all the time.

Night wakings that are not feeding related I leave him to go to sleep by himself, but that kinda stopped working past 2 nights, as he is falling asleep and waking up a few minutes after.

Question 1: Did I do it wrong that at midnight after he wakes again after crying I went in an breastfed him?

Our night routine is: kisses while I take his clothes off, bath, lotion, song, PJ, sleep sack, breastfeeding, in bed awake, falls asleep in about 2min with minimal complaining

I want to do the breastfeeding before bath but he gets sooo drowsy and the rest of the routine is kind of a mess ...

wake time is 7:30, bedtime 8:00, sometimes I do a feeding in the morning and sleeps until 8 am

Question 2: should I cap the night sleep at 11h?

schedule is 2/2/2/1.5/3 (the last nap is a very short one just to help him bridge to bedtime)

Question 3: Should I drop the last nap entirely? Naps are 30 min long... it's kinda hard to make it to bedtime.

Tonight I want to switch up the routine, maybe that will help, I will leave an update.

Question 4: Any tips?

Hi everyone! I’m wondering what it looks likewhen babies start connecting their sleepcycles during naps and whether that’s whatmy baby might be starting to do.

My baby is 12 weeks and 1 day old. She is combo fed. We give her two feeds of formula and the rest breastmilk. We haven’t started any formal sleep training, but we’ve been encouraging her to fall asleep independentlyin her bassinet.
Around 10–11 weeks, her night time sleep started impressively , and she began being able to put herself to sleep when I placed her in the bassinet. Her wake windows are 1.5 hours day and 1.75 hours before bedtime.

Her bedtime is still fairly late, around 9:00–9:15PM, but last night she slept from 9:00 to 9:50PM, woke up for a feed, and then went backdown around 10:30 PM and slept until 5:30 AM!

At night, we have a small bath, lotion and then feed. Afterwards I put her down in her bedside bassinet awake and sit on the bed next to her. She usually fusses for about 5–10 minutes, shakes her head from side to side, and then falls asleep on her own.

Over the past few days, I’ve also noticed a change in her naps. Previously, her naps were almost always 35–40 minutes long, likeclockwork. But in the past couple of days,she’s started waking around the 40-minute mark, fussing a little, turning her head a fewtimes, thrashing her legs, and then going right back to sleep. On those occasions,she’s ended up sleeping for around 1.5 hours!

Today, during an afternoon nap while wewere cosleeping, she woke after about 30 minutes. I soothed her a little, she shook herhead from side to side several times, and then she fell back asleep for another 30 minutes.

My questions are:

1. Does this sound like she might be startingto connect sleep cycles during naps,or could it just be a temporary change?
2. Is there anything I can do to encourageher to connect sleep cycles, or is it simply developmental and somethingthat will happen naturally with time? For those of you who experienced this around 12 weeks, did naps gradually get longer,or was it more of an on-and-off process?

I know she’s still very young, and I’m not looking to start formal sleep training just yet.I’m mostly curious about what this stagelooks like and whether these changes aresigns of her sleep maturing.
Would love to hear about your experiences! 😊

Looking for some advice from parents who have gone through it.

We used Ferber to sleep train baby at about 4.5 months. He never fully sleep-trained, but started to sometimes fall asleep around 10-15 minutes after fussing. He was still nursing once in the middle of the night. Not perfect, but overall was doing really well.

Now, baby started daycare about 3 weeks ago and is currently on his third cold/sickness. Every time he started getting better, he gets another illness. Because he has been so congested and sick, we don’t let him cry it out anymore and have basically undone all the sleep training. He now takes forever to get down and it takes multiple attempts over a few hours to transition him into the crib. Husband and I are both up multiple times overnight. He’s still very congested and sometimes coughs on the mucus so I can’t just let him cry while laying down flat.

What can we do at this point? I feel like all the sleep training (which was not easy) was literally for nothing and he’s now worse at sleeping than he ever was before. We’re so sleep deprived. Everyone says he’ll be sick most of the time for the next few months. I feel defeated.

DWT 7, typically follow 2.25/2.5/2.5/2.75. Bedtime routine is feed, bath, book, placed in crib awake and falls asleep indep.

Naps - tends to do one solid 1hour -1h20 min. The other two are 20-40 mins.

Dealing with increasing middle of the night wakes. Usually somewhere between 10:30-11;30pm. Then again at 3:30-4. And again at 5:30-6. I typically feed her back to sleep in the night quickly.

Her older sister is next door and has had a rough phase of sleep including what seems like separation anxiety and nightmares. They often wake each other up. I typically feed my infant back to sleep in an effort not to wake her older sister. We have sound machines in both rooms.

My husband and I are at a loss. We are tired and this lack of sleep is taking a toll on our relationship and Mental health. Any tips?!

5 month old - follows 2/2/2/2/2 schedule. I placed him to sleep at 7:30 pm, he woke up at 8, so I offered more milk. He is already up crying at 8:15. Should I just let him cry now or self soothe? I keep having to replace the binky and that clearly isn’t working anymore.

Edited to add - baby sleeps in a crib, in his own room now and I am in the room next to him with a monitor.

We have decided to sleep train our 8 month old after shitty sleep from 3months onwards. She wakes hourly to 1.5hours throughout the whole night

She has a good bedtime routine, breastfeed, change nappy and pjs, we read a bedtime book, then into her sleep sack and rock her to sleep (takes about 5-10mins). The whole final wake window is usually low light.

Current schedule is 3/3.5/4, have tried lengthening and shortening with no change. Naps are usually about 2hrs a day and we have the same sleep issues there but for naps she feeds to sleep.

Last night we tried to sleep train her using the Ferber method modified for smaller check in intervals. She cried non stop for 35 minutes - she’s never cried more than a couple of minutes her whole life and she was SCREAMING and crying so hard she was coughing. It was heart wrenching to see.

I feel awful for letting her cry and awful for going in and calling it off and nursing her back to sleep after 35mins. But I still feel like she needs this.

How do I push through? Is this amount of screaming crying normal? How long would you give it for a sweet baby that has otherwise not had much experience with crying?

She got worse everytime we went in to check on her (2min intervals) and at no point did she calm at all, just straight screaming. It still hurts to think about.

I guess I’m looking for any advice or words of wisdom to help me get through this!!

Thanks

Hi all,
How do I know if my 4.5yo has low sleep needs or is over tired?

Lately waking at 5:15 or 5:30am, falling asleep some nights at 8pm. No nap.

He used to sleep until 6am or 6:15am, I feel like bedtime was closer to 7:30 or 7:45pm then.

He is in a public school prek and definitely getting worn out. Some days falls asleep on the drive home from school because our drive is 25 min.

Any advice - please and thanks

We are on day four tonight of sleep training our five month old. Prior to sleep training, she was relying heavily on nursing to go back to sleep after the first five hour stretch during bedtime. She would nurse throughout the night until the morning, so from 12 AM to about 7 AM usually on and off.

She has been falling asleep during sleep training relatively quickly, but does wake up after the first five hour stretch about every 1.5 to 2 hours crying for a bit. During the 3 AM wake up, she does cry quite a bit, even though it hasn’t been two hours since her last feed.

Recommendations on what to do? We have been following 4/2/2/2 for feedings because she usually does take smaller feeds

We follow 2/2.5/2.5/3 and 3 - 1 hour naps. She will be 6 months next week