Sleep training/night weaning advice

[britbratjf]

Freyas sleep has gotten out of control. We were at the dr yesterday so I know her ear infection is cleared up so I'm ready to start sleep training. Here is how're past couple nights went:

7pm up to her room, nursed both sides with the lights on and me singing to her. She fell asleep anyway but I jostled her as I put her down and kissed her goodnight to wake her a little.

10:30pm: Dream feed

12:30: wake up/crying hard/ sitting up in crib. Last night H went up & patted & she went back to sleep for an hour and a half. Last night I let her go about 5 minutes then went up, patted, shhhed her and that just proceeded to piss her off more. Watched her on the monitor & she just sat in bed for a while quietly. I fell back asleep...no clue if she did but I'm assuming so.

1:30- woke up crying again so I went up and fed her.

4:30- fussed for about 5 minutes and went back to sleep

5:30- woke up crying so I went up to feed

6:50- up for the day

I just started doing the dream feed the past couple nights. She's always woken between 10-11:30 so the past 2 nights I do a dream feed before I go to bed. I feel a let down and hear swallowing so I know she eats something. If I could cut out the middle wake ups/feeds that would help immensely.

She takes 2 naps for a total of 3-3.5 hours of daytime sleep

[emejay]

Have you tried not patting her? Maybe the physical contact without picker her up is confusing her?

I just want to offer you many hugs.

[britbratjf]

May 18, 2016 7:28:53 GMT -5 emejay said:

Have you tried not patting her? Maybe the physical contact without picker her up is confusing her?

I just want to offer you many hugs.

That's a good point. At some point I try and go in and calm her because I don't want her waking DD1 (which has happened). But me patting and not feeding doesn't actually help matters. I just worry that since we've been so responsive she'll feel abandoned/confused if we don't go in when she cries.

[emejay]

May 18, 2016 8:22:08 GMT -5 britbratjf said:

May 18, 2016 7:28:53 GMT -5 emejay said:

Have you tried not patting her? Maybe the physical contact without picker her up is confusing her?

I just want to offer you many hugs.

That's a good point. At some point I try and go in and calm her because I don't want her waking DD1 (which has happened). But me patting and not feeding doesn't actually help matters. I just worry that since we've been so responsive she'll feel abandoned/confused if we don't go in when she cries.

That's he hard part about sleep training for sure!!!

[eliza040502]

The theory behind sleep easy is consistency - if they wake up, always feed or never feed. It messes with them to sometimes nurse and other times not. You have to teach the LO to fall asleep without nursing if this is your goal and be consistent every time they wake. Before we trained, J was up 3-5 times a night. We would try patting but he would just get more upset.

Knowing that we were going to sleep train at six months after an okay from the doctor, I spent a week logging his wake ups and amount of time nursing. Then I made a chart showing each of the wake ups (he was pretty consistent with a 10, 1, 4 wake up, with others potentially thrown in). Once we got the okay, I dream fed him 30 min to an hour before each wake up (so 9, 12, 3). If he woke up before the dream feed, I had my H do checks and I only fed after he fell back asleep). If he woke up in between, we did checks. It took him three days or so but he stopped waking.

J weaned himself pretty quickly off the 9 dream feed (my h was giving a bottle). I slowly weaned from the 3 am feed over a two week period. He woke for a few nights between 3-4 after that but fussed less then five min.

I still dream feed at midnight but he never wakes.

[ugotstarbucked]

I still do one feed a night between 2-4, but if I'm going to her room im feeding her. Consistency really helps. If Freya is eating well during the day she shouldn't need 3 feeds overnight any more.

[mschanandelerbong]

I'm probably confusing him because I feed him once overnight but no more (unless he's totally inconsolable). I have never done a dream feed, there's no way I could get him out of the crib and feed him without him waking up. Before sleep training, I was nursing him to sleep almost every single time. Now we put him in the crib totally awake at bedtime and he goes to sleep. 90% of the time, he wakes up between 2-5 and I nurse him. I don't think most babies this age need to eat 3 times over night. Our pedi has even said they really don't even need to eat one time, but I don't mind doing it for now. If he wakes up during the night and I've already fed him, I pat him and he cries for a bit then goes back to sleep. But ugh, that happened last night and he cried for 10 minutes and it felt like an hour to me! So yeah, I'm probably confusing him...

[britbratjf]

May 18, 2016 9:22:51 GMT -5 ugotstarbucked said:

I still do one feed a night between 2-4, but if I'm going to her room im feeding her. Consistency really helps. If Freya is eating well during the day she shouldn't need 3 feeds overnight any more.

Oh I know she doesn't need to eat. I'm sure it's totally habit at this point. Ugh DD1 was such a better night sleeper (terrible napper) so this is all new territory for me. Parenting is hard.

[britbratjf]

May 18, 2016 11:47:36 GMT -5 ntaylor989 said:

britbratjf, man parenting is hard. I wanted to introduce a dream feed and then got slapped in the face with the 8 month regression. Same woke up every hour last night from 6:30 pm until midnight. So no opportunity for a dream feed. I don't even know where to start with this kid. He woke 8 times last night and tried to feed every single time. Only once was I able to get him back to sleep without nursing. Clearly, I have no advice, but want to say good luck!

Thanks. Sorry your night was so rough!! Hopefully tonight is better.

[canadiansciencegeek]

We are having a hell of a time night weaning. My kid gets PISSED if she's hungry and doesn't get fed. I think we might have succeeded at dropping one feed this week though.

I have found dream feeds helpful, mostly because she falls asleep much more easily after a feeding this way. Unfortunately, my kid is a pro at waking up 10 minutes before the dream feed alarm so it's taken a while to do anything. What seems to have worked (knock on wood) is decreasing feeding times on a dream feed down to 3 minutes, then not setting the alarm one night. If she wakes up when the dream feed should have been, I feed her and go back to dream feeds for a few nights. If she doesn't, I feed her when she wakes up next, let her wake for feeds for a few nights to establish a new schedule, then go back to dream feeds.

We were on a 10, 1, 4 schedule. I skipped the 1 this week and she went to 10, 2:15, 5 the first night and 10, 3, 6 the second. I'm going to try setting an alarm for 3 tonight and see if I can establish that as a dream feed, and then wean off it.

Hugs. I hear you on not wanting to wake the other kid too. It's why blindly following sleepeasy didn't work for us. She was crying for 1h+ MOTN and that wasn't working for our family.

[britbratjf]

May 18, 2016 14:03:50 GMT -5 canadiansciencegeek said:

We are having a hell of a time night weaning. My kid gets PISSED if she's hungry and doesn't get fed. I think we might have succeeded at dropping one feed this week though.

I have found dream feeds helpful, mostly because she falls asleep much more easily after a feeding this way. Unfortunately, my kid is a pro at waking up 10 minutes before the dream feed alarm so it's taken a while to do anything. What seems to have worked (knock on wood) is decreasing feeding times on a dream feed down to 3 minutes, then not setting the alarm one night. If she wakes up when the dream feed should have been, I feed her and go back to dream feeds for a few nights. If she doesn't, I feed her when she wakes up next, let her wake for feeds for a few nights to establish a new schedule, then go back to dream feeds.

We were on a 10, 1, 4 schedule. I skipped the 1 this week and she went to 10, 2:15, 5 the first night and 10, 3, 6 the second. I'm going to try setting an alarm for 3 tonight and see if I can establish that as a dream feed, and then wean off it.

Hugs. I hear you on not wanting to wake the other kid too. It's why blindly following sleepeasy didn't work for us. She was crying for 1h+ MOTN and that wasn't working for our family.

Thanks this is helpful. Though the idea of setting an alarm MOTN makes me sad ....

[canadiansciencegeek]

May 18, 2016 14:31:04 GMT -5 britbratjf said:

May 18, 2016 14:03:50 GMT -5 canadiansciencegeek said:

We are having a hell of a time night weaning. My kid gets PISSED if she's hungry and doesn't get fed. I think we might have succeeded at dropping one feed this week though.

I have found dream feeds helpful, mostly because she falls asleep much more easily after a feeding this way. Unfortunately, my kid is a pro at waking up 10 minutes before the dream feed alarm so it's taken a while to do anything. What seems to have worked (knock on wood) is decreasing feeding times on a dream feed down to 3 minutes, then not setting the alarm one night. If she wakes up when the dream feed should have been, I feed her and go back to dream feeds for a few nights. If she doesn't, I feed her when she wakes up next, let her wake for feeds for a few nights to establish a new schedule, then go back to dream feeds.

We were on a 10, 1, 4 schedule. I skipped the 1 this week and she went to 10, 2:15, 5 the first night and 10, 3, 6 the second. I'm going to try setting an alarm for 3 tonight and see if I can establish that as a dream feed, and then wean off it.

Hugs. I hear you on not wanting to wake the other kid too. It's why blindly following sleepeasy didn't work for us. She was crying for 1h+ MOTN and that wasn't working for our family.

Thanks this is helpful. Though the idea of setting an alarm MOTN makes me sad ....

I hear you.  And I feel that way every evening.  But then when I wake up, feed her, and go right back to sleep, I'm so much happier.  Otherwise she wakes up, eats, then fusses for 30-60 minutes

[tapthathank]

May 18, 2016 14:31:04 GMT -5 britbratjf said:

May 18, 2016 14:03:50 GMT -5 canadiansciencegeek said:

We are having a hell of a time night weaning. My kid gets PISSED if she's hungry and doesn't get fed. I think we might have succeeded at dropping one feed this week though.

I have found dream feeds helpful, mostly because she falls asleep much more easily after a feeding this way. Unfortunately, my kid is a pro at waking up 10 minutes before the dream feed alarm so it's taken a while to do anything. What seems to have worked (knock on wood) is decreasing feeding times on a dream feed down to 3 minutes, then not setting the alarm one night. If she wakes up when the dream feed should have been, I feed her and go back to dream feeds for a few nights. If she doesn't, I feed her when she wakes up next, let her wake for feeds for a few nights to establish a new schedule, then go back to dream feeds.

We were on a 10, 1, 4 schedule. I skipped the 1 this week and she went to 10, 2:15, 5 the first night and 10, 3, 6 the second. I'm going to try setting an alarm for 3 tonight and see if I can establish that as a dream feed, and then wean off it.

Hugs. I hear you on not wanting to wake the other kid too. It's why blindly following sleepeasy didn't work for us. She was crying for 1h+ MOTN and that wasn't working for our family.

Thanks this is helpful. Though the idea of setting an alarm MOTN makes me sad ....

This was the hardest part of the dream feeds for me too - setting the alarm made me anxious, waking up to an alarm to feed my baby made me anxious, him waking up before the alarm made me anxious.  I was so glad when we finally finished that dream feed.  And he woke up every time so it was not a "dream" feed.