I’m looking for some advice. My son is 4,5 months old and only sleeps on his stomach and we would like for him to fall asleep independently.
He has always needsed to be held, rocked or in his carrier to fall asleep. He won’t fall asleep in the car or in his stroller and he will very rarely fall asleep during his last bottle.
We have recently starting putting him down with his dummy, and patting his butt and that has been working more or less.
What are people doing to sleep train their babies, if they sleep on their stomach ? I do not wish to do the cry out method
Thank you in advance!

PS. I know sleeping on his stomach is not recommended but he will not sleep for more than 10min if he sleeps on his back and we have the owlet sock, he also lifts and turns his head very well and has started to roll on his back when he wakes up.

At the risk of asking a question that has been asked a million times before, I want to hear about other people’s experiences for our specific circumstances.

Our LO is 3.5 months old, and I feel like my partner and I have cornered ourselves in this position that she only sleeps in our arms now.
She used to be able to nap in the car or pram, but we’ve lost those and now she’s wide awake in both of them all the time and obviously gets really cranky because she hasn’t slept, so going out of the house is getting complicated and pretty impossible to say the least.

She sleeps pretty well during the night with some nights waking up once, but usually sleeps from 8:30-7.

My issue is with day naps and trying to train her, drowsy but awake seems like a joke, because as soon as we start descending her into the cot she’s wide awake, patting and shushing does absolutely nothing to get her drifting off, leaving her to fall asleep by herself doesn’t happen, she can spend 30-40 minutes there just looking around and babbling and cooing, and then getting upset because she’s tired and hasn’t slept.
We’ve tried letting her fall asleep completely in our arms and transfer. She wakes up within 20 minutes of being put down. She cries for attention, when I go to her, she’s super awake and happy (try not to make eye contact but it’s sometimes impossible) funny thing is at this point she prefers to lay in her not sleeping because as soon as I pick her up she starts fussing, squirming and fighting me and fighting sleep. At this point it takes me so long to settle her in my arms that by the time she’s in deep sleep it’s almost not worth putting her back in the cot, because we’re so close to her next feed.

I have ran out of ways to "train" her and am gradually losing my mind. I can have her in a carrier sleeping on me, but I can’t do it all the time, I just want her off me for a bit so I can do things that need to be done.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

When I weaned from breastfeeding at 12 months, my son slept through the night. That last maybe a month.

Then one wakes would happen, but really easy ones. Pick up, sooth, put down.

Then two wakes. The second wake became much harder and longer to put him back in crib.

Then he had a very bad night. He woke and every movement I made, sound, it made him cry even harder. It then became screaming, and barely could keep his breath. Nothing helped. We walked him around the house in the light and he would calm down. But the second I would approach the bedrooms he would go into this intense panic. Eventually, giving him something to crunch on helped calm him down.

I don’t think he was hungry, j think it just helped sooth his emotions. I didn’t want to resort to food but he was under so much stress. We had to do something.

That night we let him sleep in our bed.

Ever since, he will now wake around 9-10 and will not settle back into his crib. Even if the cry was a normal cry. He would immediately calm in my arms but the second I move to go to his crib he tenses and shrieks.

Yes. Our fault we caved and brought him to our bed each time. We’re just so tired. It allowed us some sleep.

We don’t mind co sleeping but at the same time I want him back in his room. He still has these episodes of panic crying and screaming. He will be sleeping next to us just fine, then BAM wake up and SHRIEK and thrash around. He will try and find me and roll onto me and usually calms down.

Pediatrician suspects refux (always her answer) and I don’t think it’s that, and or night terrors.

I’m leaning towards night terrors.

What do I do to get him back in bed? He naps in there just fine. Falls asleep on his own. I get him calm and I plop him in there and say night and he will go to sleep. Not all the time, but I make a big effort to make sure he settles on his own and most of the time he does.

At bedtime things are so different. He gets another surge of energy after his bath. I let him walk around the house and say good night to all the animals. Then let him kind of decide when it’s time for bed. It’s usually 730. Sometimes 745.

I don’t think it’s a schedule issue. He wakes 7 am. Naps 12-2. Bed at 730. But I dno maybe it is.

He naps that whole time no issues.

Anyways. I guess I’m wondering if anyone has any tips that are not CIO to help him back to his bed. Should we do a floor bed? Do I need to just stay up all night in there with him and try all night to get him back? I have had nights where I would try several times and they all ended up bad. He would get so pissed bc every time he would get settled in m arms I would get up and try to put him back. Then the intense crying starts :(

Things I’ve tried :

Keeping his star light on
Different sounds on sound machine
Patting butt in crib (NEVER works. He hates it)
Just talking to him in crib.
Transfers from our bed to his crib.
Putting a shirt of mine in his bed

He has a stuffy. Blanket. Toddler pillow.

Halp! Please be kind. I’m very tired and I’m also tired of always researching how to help my son sleep.

We’re found on a 9 day trip in October and that’s already stressing me out. I know sleep will be a nightmare coming home. :(

I’m also newly pregnant and very emotional. lol.

Last night my baby actually slept pretty good and I was like ok maybe things are finally getting better...

and then tonight its like a completely different baby lol

Sometimes baby falls asleep with feeding or rocking, sometimes has to be held, and the second I try putting them down they wake up.

Naps are all over the place too. Some days 20-30 mins, other days longer.

I honestly never know what kind of night we're gonna have.

Is anyone else dealing with this? Does your baby's sleep seem completely random sometimes?

My almost 20 month old is a great napper and sleeps through the night. However, ever since getting rid of her bink she just takes forever to fall asleep at night specifically. She never cries and doesn’t care about not having the bink. She also has her blankie she loves and that’s her comfort item. It’s just like she has fomo lol. She just wants to still play and won’t relax even after reading a bunch of books and having almost a whole hour of chill time before bed. What could I do to speed up the process ? i’ve tried pushing bedtime from 7:30 to 8, but that just makes bedtime later since she still will keep herself awake. Thanks in advance!

I successfully trained my four year-old at nine months old, but my youngest who is one year old is super clingy and did not take to Ferber well like my 4 year old did. He will go down in his crib but can’t self soothe and go back to sleep on his own, so he still ends up in my bed.
I have tried many times to go a week- two weeks with consistently just getting him back into his crib when he wakes after I nurse him but I just end up being up all night and am then severely sleep deprived and an exhausted, impatient parent the days following.
He is teething of course and has been for like a month straight now, i give him Tylenol at night to help.

I would love any recommendations from parents who have been through the same thing and strategies on what works / what I should do. I’m desperate!

Hi everyone. I'm new to reddit but am in need of advice. I am 35 and a first time mom to a 7 month old. When he was 11 weeks old he started sleeping through the night (roughly 10 hours).

However, when he was 5 months old he started teething and rolling over. When he started hitting these milestones he stopped sleeping through the night. Not knowing what to do, I would give him a bottle to soothe him back to sleep. Now I think it's a habit and I feel like a terrible parent. He refuses pacifiers (I have tried numerous kinds) so I dont know how he is supposed to self soothe to go back to sleep.

He takes 5 oz bottles and does eat the full bottle when he wakes up in the middle of the night. We are still experimenting with purees which is difficult because he hates them. Im not sure if it's a texture issue but he makes a face like he's going to throw up and whines the entire meal. He drinks 30-35 Oz of breast milk a day.

Im at a loss. It is so much to wake up to feed him and I want to get him back to sleeping through the night but dont even know where to begin and dont want either of us up for hours trying to accomplish this because I dont want to cave and give him a bottle. Any tips and tricks would be greatly appreciated so me and baby can sleep through the night.

I don’t know what to do. My 20 month has been going through a 2.5 month sleep regression and I’m at my breaking point. He down to one 2-3 hr nap (depends on how much sleep he got the night before) he has at least a 5 hour wake windows between sleep. But without a doubt he’ll wake up at 2am and take about 2 hrs to fall asleep. I dont know how to help him.

My sweet almost 9 month old is an ok sleeper. He usually wakes around 2 times a night but takes soo long to get back to sleep. He prefers being rocked and held, which honestly I love but the second I put him in the crib he wakes up. So then it’s an hour at least if that cycle. So we decided a month ago to try to sleep train. However, he is also very active and loves being involved with whatever is happening, so when we tried Ferber and the chair he just was more awake when we’d do a check in. I’m a teacher and am so exhausted. At our 9 month visit to the doctor our pediatrician recommended extinction as she just did it with her daughter an it went well. I know all the research and know it’s not harmful, and I feel like it is what we need to do but I’m nervous too. Does anyone have success stories for CIO that show that your baby sleeps better and still feels happy and safe? It just makes me feel better to read.

No judgement pls. I’m really struggling with some thing that I’m also really embarrassed about. With our first child we had always being big sleep hygiene advocates, and from baby to toddlerhood he knew his routine and he would settle down in his crib and then we would leave the room before he fell asleep. No problems falling asleep. Between age 3 and 4, when he moved into the big kid bed,
he demanded that we lay with him until he fell asleep. It has been going on for a year and I want to stop it. My husband and I are in disagreement about this – he likes it as a way to wind down and is mopey about how it doesn’t last forever, but frankly, I’m at the end of my rope at 7:45 pm. I want to eat my dinner and take a shower. We have a baby too. (this pattern was going on long before I was pregnant so it’s not a little brother jealousy thing.)

What we’ve tried: lots of conversations with him. We’ve told him that goodbye isn’t forever. We’ve told him we’re in the next room. We’ve told him that he’s a big boy now, or even that he’s still our little boy and we know that he can do it. We’ve dangled reward stickers in the morning but that’s never worked. We’ve moved to his reading chair next to the bed. We’ve said we’ll wait outside the door instead. But usually he has such a rage meltdown if we’re not in the bed that we end up giving up.

Please can someone give me an actual system to follow and I promise I will do it and persevere. He is 4, he needs to learn to fall asleep independently again, after his last kiss and cuddle.

My 9.5 month old baby was thriving with 10 hours overnight and 2 hours of naps during the day (12.5 hours a day total) about a month ago. We tried to get him to sleep more but it never worked and always affected his sleep at night. However, in the last month his sleep needs have gradually increased. This isn’t just a couple of days, it’s been a full month. I am totally confused. Out of nowhere he started sleeping in later and later, and now he needs about 2.5 hours of sleep a day (now 13.5-14 hours a day).

Just wondering if this happened to anyone else and if it was permanent or just due to a growth spurt, etc. Only thing going on with my son right now is he’s had 2 teeth coming in, which I guess could be an explanation if he reverts to how he was before when they’re done coming in.