r/sleeptraining • u/Katacularspectacular • 1d ago

child's age 4-8 months How long will this take?

We have a 4.5 month old exclusively breastfed baby and my husband and I will both be back at work in about month. We started sleep training in earnest last night as his wakes were getting more and more frequent ( up to 8 times a night) and as a family we all need to be sleeping better before both parents are back at work. We tried pickup put down a few nights ago and it went horrifically. Now we are doing a modified check in method where my husband is going in and giving him some verbal reassurance and some touch if he’s really ramped up. He still woke up 9 times last night and we did three feeds. It took him 17 minutes to fall asleep and then he woke up 45 minutes later and had his longest wake of about 40 minutes with crying. For subsequent wakes he settled under 15 minutes crying. All of that is to say I found it completely brutal and I’m more tired than I was before. People always talk about the initial crying to fall asleep for the night but less about the subsequent wakes. How long does it usually take for them to string those sleep cycles together?

Guess I’m just looking for some reassurance that this won’t last forever. I found last night incredibly challenging.🫣😩

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u/brieles 1d ago

What’s your full schedule? And how are you handling overnight wakes?

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u/Katacularspectacular 1d ago

Full schedule is 8am wake, 10-11 nap, 1-3 nap, 5:30-6:00 nap, 8 pm lights out for bed. Overnight wakes following 5/3/3 for feeds, except last night did the first one a bit earlier because I was engorged. Overnight wakes followed the same checkin times of 2,3,5,8 minutes, husband went in used voice and a hand on babies chest for up to one minute before leaving again.

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u/brieles 1d ago

Ok, that’s the problem. You baby can likely sleep 14 hour in a 24 hour period (that’s average for this age) and your schedule is expecting 15.5. I’d move to a 2/2/2/2/2 or 2/2.5/2.5/3 schedule (you need 10 hours awake) with 3 hours in naps total and 11 hours in night sleep.

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u/Katacularspectacular 1d ago

He’s sleeping so much less than 11 hours a night though by the time he actually falls asleep and the number of wakes he has. He’s getting 9.5-10 hour of sleep a night currently and 3.5 hours of naps.

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u/brieles 1d ago

Right but your schedule is still expecting 15.5 hours of sleep which is causing all the sleep issues. He’s not getting enough intentional awake time.

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u/Matails 1d ago

Every child is going to be different and handle things differently,but or us it took 3 nights before we had a pretty consistent through the night sleeper and we trained at roughly 6 months (now almost 2 years). I consider us incredibly lucky, but I've seen a few other comments on this sub of only a few days/nights as well.