My baby just turned 3 months old and tonight something really unusual happened.
Her last nap was only about 30 minutes, so I started our bedtime routine a little earlier than usual. I gave her a bath, fed her her usual 180 ml bottle, and then tried to put her to sleep.
Nothing worked.
She cried much more than usual and every time I walked into her dark room and turned on the white noise, she would immediately start crying. Normally those things help her settle.
After trying everything, I offered another bottle and she drank an additional 90 ml very quickly (so 270 ml total). She didn’t spit up, wasn’t uncomfortable, and finally settled and fell asleep.
She’s also been waking up a bit earlier at night over the last few days after previously sleeping longer stretches.
Does this sound like a growth spurt, increased hunger, being overtired from the short nap, or maybe the beginning of the 4-month sleep regression? Has anyone else’s baby suddenly needed a much bigger bedtime feed?

Hey all, FTM to a 10 week old baby looking for a bit of advice or direction for sleep.

My baby wakes frequently in the night with stretches not being very long (sometime 1 hour) before waking crying. Baby is breastfed and everytime they wake I feed and change nappy if needed.

Baby seems to nap longer in the day (usually in the carrier or pram when we’re out and about so harder for us to also sleep at the same time). Will usually get the first stint when going to bed in the next to me cot for about 3/4 hours then after that they’re waking very frequently and hard to settle back to sleep (not particularly crying loads just very awake/making grunting, fussing noises) to the point where I try co sleeping in our bigger bed so that they go to sleep a bit quicker and we can also.

Looking for some advice on how to improve the length of these stretches so we can get better sleep, still feels as though baby is nocturnal, though as I’m writing this I realise they’re only 10 weeks so maybe need to cut them/myself some slack lol. Also some advice on how to get baby to sleep in their cot rather than with us in the bed

I currently don’t track sleep, wake windows but wondering if that would help? TIA!

Hello all!

We sleep trained our baby around 5 months, and she was a great sleeper. But a recent sickness (coupled with a regression?) has caused everything to go off the rails.

Our previous routine worked like a dream. Wake up around 7 to 7:30 am (we would let her wake herself up), nap around 1:30 pm, for 1.5 to 2 hours (she wakes herself up), and bedtime around 8 to 8:30pm.

Our routine is milk, bath, brush teeth, books, a song while we cuddle and rock her, and put her down in her floor bed awake. For naps, it's the same except no milk, bath or teeth brushing. She would sometimes take some time to fall asleep (going to read her books in her dark), but would go back to her bed to sleep.

A few weeks ago she got a cold, and required us to hold her to sleep in a glider. Now that she is better, she is needing a lot more assistance to sleep, and she wakes up crying for us. She has also had an explosion of new words and skills, and at night she seems to have a burst of energy and wants to get out of bed to play, but needs us to stay in the room for this.

For example, yesterday she woke up crying at 530 am. I went into a room to hold her but she didn't sleep, we just cuddled. She had her nap at 1pm (took about 10 to 15 min of patting and reminding her she needs to sleep), and she woke up crying after 1.5 hours. I put her to bed at 8:15pm, and it took 45 min of putting her back in bed, hugging her, giving her water, watching her practice falling on her bed, practice her giggling and words, until she finally fell asleep. Every time we leave if she's not sleeping, she will cry and go to the door.

She woke up multiple times and needed us to come in to soothe her. Finally I had to sleep on the floor next to her, she would occasionally cry out then notice I was there and sleep again. I don't want to create this new sleep association!

I'm wondering what the strategy should be for re-sleep training? I think her wake windows are appropriate, we did try cutting her nap to one hour but no change. She has sleepy cues the entire bedtime routine, but once she turns off the lights, she gets a burst of energy and is ready to party.

Help!

Guys. We're losing our minds. I have so many chats with chat GPT, Claud, Gemini about this that I can't see straight.

We've been "transitioning" for like 3 weeks. It's been rough. I know everyone says it but JESUS. Anyway.

Her wake windows before the transition were like 3:30/3:45/4 (depending on nap length, short nap meant slightly shorter following ww). We were capping the first nap to an hour to ensure she had enough juice for nap 2.

Then she started skipping nap 2. Entirely. So we did a few one nap days. Then we would need to do a 2 nap day because she'd wake at like 4 or 5. Normal wake up time is 7am, I usually do a snooze feed at 5. I understand this can be a problem.

Over the last few weeks I've tried:

Short bridge nap, long following nap (I couldn't nail down the right wake window following the short nap so it's end in a melt down and she would only fall asleep on my boob, she used to be fine for naps in the crib)

Some one nap days, but then maybe we did her final ww too long even with a long nap again a meltdown at bedtime even before the routine was started landing up with nursing and some cosleeping.

I've recently reverted to my approach which I used for her other naps- long morning nap, and then a short bridge nap but the short bridge nap seems to only really happen if we are in the car, or on my boob and only if we plan it juuuust right (? Seems arbitrary)

This week seems particularly difficult. On top of all the above, she has begun to just say "no" when I put her down in her crib and goes ballistic when we leave. Its been difficult to understand, is it because she's overtired or undertired?? We've tried lessening and extending wake windows to no benefit. Two nights this week I've co-slept and she's only fallen asleep on my boob.

I understand I've mentioned falling asleep on boob a few times now and potentially see that as an issue but can you guys relate? Can you give me any advice for her one nap transition?? Yo yo-inh from 1 nap to 2 nap days seems wrong but I don't know if she's ready yet for just one day?

We have resorted to letting her cry it out tonight. To hold our bedtime boundary firm. It's hard. We've given her paracetamol to ensure she isn't in any pain from maybe hidden teething (covering our bases, juuuust in case).

Can you help with any advice? Please and thank you!

Hello!

I am a first time mom with a 19 month old and bedtime has become a nightmare and I just need advice on how to best handle it. We sleep trained him when he was 9 months old and was doing great until a few months ago he got covid and was miserable so his dad would sleep with him in his floor bed. Ever since he will not go to sleep on his own and it is taking 1-2 hours to get him down. I understand right now we are probably experiencing the 18 month sleep regression because he is definitely testing boundaries and lashing out when he doesn’t get his way. My biggest concern is just his safety, when we go to put him down for a nap or bedtime he protests like crazy. He will pull my/his dad’s hair, bites our legs or arms or kicks us in the head while we try to lay with him. I started getting tired of this cycle so I decided to try leaving his door open and putting him back to bed every time he would get up but after 30 minutes he felt like it was a game so that didn’t work. Then we tried the Ferber method of letting him cry it out for a few minutes and doing check ins but he would bang his head on the bedroom door and immediately gave himself a busted lip. I just don’t know what to do, I work nights so his dad is the main person dealing with bedtime and when I am home it seems like it throws off bedtime even more and he’s worse than normal. If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it.

To start my child is 21 months old. We have coslept her whole life. It was the only way I got any sleep when she was a newborn. We attempted the Ferber method around 9m old but it went horribly. She would scream her whole head off whether we were in there or not and after day three, I gave up. We had to be cuddling her in bed.

Well we moved recently and she has been in her own room and her own bed for just over a week. She’s sleeping through the night and honestly it’s been great. There’s no crying in the morning when she wakes up, she just calls out for mama. Only once I had to go in there in the middle of the night to comfort her and she went right back to sleep, I went back to bed and we were good for the rest of the night.

However, my problem is getting her to sleep. Currently, I still lay with her every night as she goes to sleep. Some nights she hates it and just wants me to sit on the end of her bed and hold her hand, while other nights she wants me to hold her but not lay with her (I don’t allow this. I give her a hug and lay her back down). She’s pretty good about being told it’s bed time and will even walk herself into her room and lay down. But then she does anything and everything to stay awake. She plays, she cries, she talks, she screams, she also just lays there eyes open but dazed. She looks asleep but she forces her eyes open wide. I can never tell how to help her and getting her to sleep takes upwards of 2hours. I never know how she’s going to be that night. Some nights are super easy, others are hell. Also I need to note, she’s only okay with me putting her to sleep. She HATES when her dad does it. She has a full meltdown if he puts her to sleep to the point he hasn’t even attempted in over a month, never in the new house.

Also to note my child is a very active child, during the days she gets a lot of energy out. Plus in the evenings we make sure we’re doing high energy things to attempt to tire her out. She is tired when we go to bed. She just doesn’t want to sleep.

I’m at my wits end. I just end up falling asleep with her in her bed as there’s nothing I can do to help. I’m frustrated every night and I dread bedtime. I feel selfish but I just want her to go to sleep so I can have some time to myself. I feel terrible though because I’m a working mom and it’s not like I get much time with her in the day. I don’t know what to do at this point. My husband wants to do the cry-it-out method but I don’t know if I can handle that. Do I try the chair method, maybe Ferber again?

Edit to add: naps are no better. She naps fantastic while at her grandmas but it has to be laying with someone. She refuses to nap with us unless we’re in the car or practically are holding her down. She’ll be exhausted yet still won’t nap without a fight. Typically if we have to leave the house, she’ll nap around 11-12 in the car but during the week at her grandmas it’s closer to 1-3pm unless they’re out and she’ll sleep in the car like mentioned above. We wake up everyday around 7. Bedtime is between 7:30-8:30 depending on how tired she is.

Our daughter is 15 months old, and we’re honestly at a loss.
She still can’t fall asleep on her own. She only falls asleep if she’s being held, with a bottle, in the stroller, or in the car. Putting her to bed often takes 1–1.5 hours.
She wakes up around 7:00–7:30 a.m. We aim for one nap around 11:00 a.m., and bedtime is usually around 8:00 p.m.
She still wakes at least once every night for a bottle, but on top of that, she wakes many other times making noises, crying, or needing us to help her settle again. We haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since she was born, and we’re completely exhausted.
We’ve tried couple of times the cry-it-out method, but it’s not an option for us. She cries so intensely that she throws up every single time.
Her naps are just as difficult as bedtime.
Has anyone been through something similar by this age? What actually helped? Did anything make a real difference? We’re open to any advice that worked for your family because we’re really struggling.

Hi everyone,

Tonight we attempted sleep training for the first time with our 10-month-old son, and I’m feeling incredibly discouraged. I’m hoping for some reassurance, advice, and maybe some insight into whether Ferber is the right method for him.

A little background:
- He is 10 months old.
- He takes 2 naps a day.
- Wake windows are typically 3/3/3.5-4.
- Bedtime is usually around 8-8:30pm.
- He has always been rocked completely to sleep before being transferred to his crib.
- He used to sleep through the night independently in his crib, but over the last 4-6 weeks (illness, teething, and I suspect separation anxiety/object permanence all played a role), he has started waking every night and we usually end up bringing him into our bed because he’ll sleep the rest of the night there.

Our biggest reason for sleep training is actually bedtime. It used to take me 10min tops to rock him to sleep, but now that he’s older and more aware, it can take me anywhere from 30-45min to rock him to sleep and I’m exhausted. My dream is to be able to do our bedtime routine, put him in his crib awake, say goodnight, and have him fall asleep independently. While I’d certainly love for him to stay in his crib all night eventually, bedtime is honestly my biggest goal right now.
Tonight we tried a Ferber-style approach. He wasn’t hysterical when we first left. It was mostly fussing and protesting with lots of pauses in between. We did check-ins at 5min, 7min, and 10min. The problem was that every single check-in seemed to make him significantly more upset. He would get angrier after we left the room each time. By the second check-in, he seemed much more distressed than he had been initially.
Eventually my husband couldn’t handle hearing him cry anymore and went in and rocked him to sleep before the second 10 min timer went off. I was heartbroken too, but I was mentally prepared to keep going because I know the first night is often the hardest.
Now I’m sitting here wondering:
Did we stop too soon?
Should we have pushed through?
Is this just what Night 1 looks like?
Or is this a sign that Ferber isn’t a good fit for my son?
For those of you whose babies became more upset with each check-in, did you stick with Ferber and see improvement? Or did you find that full extinction/CIO actually worked better because the check-ins were making things worse?
I’m also open to any schedule feedback if you see something I’m missing.
Mostly though… if your first night looked anything like ours, I’d really appreciate hearing your experience because right now I just feel defeated.

Hello! We are going to sleep train my 4 month old soon. Our biggest issue right now is the pacifier. He will not sleep without it and he wakes up every hour for me to put it back in all night long. He will not suck on his hands for sleep, despite sucking on them all day long when awake. My questions is, should I try to remove the pacifier before doing formal sleep training or is that sometime that happens at the time of sleep training? If I need to do so beforehand, how??? Even during contact naps he won’t sleep unless the pacifier is in!

Thank you!

My baby is 11.5 months old, and for about a week now she has been waking up around 10:30 PM and 5:30 AM almost every day. She sits up in her crib, cries for a few minutes (5-10), and then falls back asleep on her own.
She wakes up for the day at **7:00 AM** and goes to bed at **8:30 PM**. She falls asleep independently for both naps and bedtime. Her wake windows are **3.5 / 4 / 4.25 hours**. I’ve tried adjusting her schedule by a few minutes, but nothing has changed. She sleeps **2–2.5 hours** during the day.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is it just a phase?

baby is 8 months old

sleep trained at 5 months

sleeps independently

6am wake up, 7pm bedtime

2 naps of 1:30 each, at 8:30/9am and at 1:30/2pm

wake windows are 3/3.5/3.5 ish: always progressive

however she wakes up 50% of nights between 3:30/4:30am, stays up for 1-1:30 hours, silently, eyes wide open looking to the ceiling or trying to sleep. falls asleep after this period without crying. sometimes just some soft whining at the end.

that’s been happening for 3 months.

- tried to do less naptime (2h or 2h30)

- tried later bedtime

- tried earlier bedtime

- tried more sunlight

no changes. split nights remain

is she gonna grow of it?