We sleep trained DS around 8-9 months when putting him down became a nightmare. He would refuse to put himself to sleep, after doing so for the first 5-6 months of his life perfectly. We did a lot of what @kitchen did. Check ins did not work for us, so basically we just let him CIO. After a couple nights, he was fine. There have been some hiccups in the road since then, but we always resort back to letting him CIO and it works. I am sure we will try and do something similar with DD.
I am also a definite fan of sleep training. For sanity's sake.
I'm a big fan of sleep training. We did it with the girls when they were 6 months old and are planning to do it with DS at 6 months, also. We considered trying earlier, but the pedi recommended waiting. She said right now he still may need to eat in the middle of the night, and that he's actually sleeping really well already.
We did the Ferber method with DD1 and it only took one night with her. I was amazed. We tried it with DD2, but going into the room pissed her off even more, so we just let her cry it out. It only took maybe 2 nights before she no longer cried when we put her in the crib and stopped crying in the middle of the night. It sucks to listen to them cry, but sleeping through the night is fabulous. My girls have been great sleepers ever since, but I have no clue if sleep training had anything to do with that. I think consistency and routine certainly does, though.
100% sleep training, and 100% take your "I don't believe in sleep training" ideas elsewhere. If you're in this thread, you are too damn tired to have to deal with judgement.
My sleep with DS1 was really similar to what kitchen described for her DD1, though he had stopped eating MOTN by the time we sleep trained.
We also did Sleepeasy. With DS1, it took maybe a week for him to go from needing to be rocked to sleep which took hours, to going to bed within 15 minutes of putting him in his crib. He stayed asleep all night, and we were all happier. So much happier.
With this baby, the issue will be night wakings. Once homeboy can physically put the pacifier in his mouth, I think it will help.
Since I currently feel like a zombie bitch with all the night wakings, I cannot wait to sleep train. And get him in his own room once his sickness is done.
Post by hikingmama222 on Jan 29, 2017 9:02:27 GMT -5
I need to come up with a plan for what want to do. Never needed to do anything for DD. By 6 months she was down to 1 night feeding (since she was bottom of the growth chart I didn't want to drop it) by 10-11 months she was sleeping 12 hrs straight through with no night feeding. Put herself to sleep around 630 every night.
I might start with naps, I'm hoping if he can just figure out how to put himself to sleep it will improve his nighttime sleep.
Post by vavavictoria on Jan 29, 2017 9:36:28 GMT -5
With #1 going to bed wasn't really our issue. I wish I could remember when I started this but (maybe) around 4/5 months I let her grumble when we put her to bed. Outright screaming i would go in and bounce for a bit but I let her cry for 15 minutes or so. This worked pretty well for us.
Habitual night wake ups where she would only eat for a few minutes but wouldn't go down with the paci or anything else led us to doing CIO. I think I've shared this before but she kept waking up at 11 every night and would eat for maybe two minutes and then go back to sleep. We eventually did CIO and let her cry for 15 minutes. Three days and she stopped doing it completely. I'm ok with waking for feedings if I feel like baby needs it but when it's just bc they don't feel like putting themselves back to sleep that is another story entirely.
DD was a horrible sleeper. We started sleep training around 9 months. Originally I was against CIO. We tried all kinds of different methods and nothing worked. Then we did ferber, within less then a week she was going to sleep in about 5 minutes and STTN. Amazing! She still is a difficult one with sleeping. We have to stick with a strict schedule and routine or she falls apart. She is 4.
Not sure what we are going to do with DS. He is a much better sleeper. He still wakes up once to eat, but does seem genuinely hungry and goes back down after. We need to get a better routine though. His naps are all over the place and bedtime varies.
We had been swaddling him still. Last night he rolled from back to belly so that will be ending. I am hoping he adjusts quickly to not having the swaddle.
If needed I will have no problem doing CIO again, but will probably wait until 6 months
We never had to sleep train DS1, or at least I don't think we did. TBH, I'm not really sure what all sleep training involves. Maybe we did some of it without realizing it? Anyway, by the time he was 4 months old he was consistently going to bed between 8:30 and 9 and sleeping till 5 and by 6 months old he was sleeping from 7:30 until I woke him to go to daycare at 6:30. I did the same nighttime routine with him every night: bath, breathing treatment in the rocking chair, bottle, them I'd rock him for maybe 5-10 minutes and put him in his crib. He was always asleep and would stay asleep per the schedule above. Naps were the same, minus a bottle: rock for 5-10 minutes and lay down. Over the course of 3 years we've had a few bumps in the road where he would try night waking and we'd let him CIO (assuming he wasn't awake because sick or needed a treatment). He was and is a great sleeper (though an early riser now).
DS2 is so different, though I'm sure he still falls into the "normal" category for his age right now. It's so hard to have had a baby like DS1 and not be trying to compare them. For now, I'd be happy if he would fall into a consistent bedtime. I'm trying to develop a sleep routine with him; bath, bottle while rocking, rock for a few minutes (same for naps minus bottle and bath obvs), hoping to create some familiar sleep patterns, but everything still seems so up in the air. Some nights he's done for the day between 7 and 7:30 and will sleep till 3. Some nights he wants to get up at 12. Last night he went down at 8:30 and slept till 4, with his last bottle having been at 6:30p. It's so variable. Naps are the same. Some days (like Friday) he took one big nap (2 hrs) and then a cat nap late afternoon. Yesterday he took two half hour naps all day. 😳 I don't know what to make of it.
Post by hikingmama222 on Jan 29, 2017 10:22:13 GMT -5
Of course since I've been complaining that DS doesn't put himself to sleep he fell asleep on his own in his chair just now. I'm sitting at the table reading and drinking tea, he was next to me just hanging out. Look over and he's out. Couldn't tell you when that's happened before.
Hallelujah for people discussing this. There were some hardcore antisleeptrainers on my first BMB. Wouldn't even hear of discussing it and ruined every conversation that even touched on it. And working in a pedi office, I've seen pediatricians recommend sleep training as early as 3 months or as late as never. It runs the gamut. So I really feel there's not much of a right answer. Around 3 months, DD1 became IMPOSSIBLE to put down at the beginning of the night. Legit would nurse, swaddle, rock, she'd fall asleep, put her down, she'd start crying, pick her up, rock, she'd fall asleep, put her down, she'd start crying, pick her up, feed, rock, she'd fall asleep, put her down, she'd start crying. Took multiple hours every night. After weeks of going to sleep fine and mostly sleeping through the night. So to go down at night only, we did Ferber with increasingly longer checks/soothes. I'd still feed in the middle of the night if she woke. It took 3 nights with each night improving. But then the middle of the night wakeups started becoming more frequent. She nursed so much at night, she didn't nuse as much during the day, so it turned into reverse cycling. I sucked it up out of guilt and fear until she was 8 or 9 months and I hit a breaking point. At that point the checks made her worse, so we did CIO. And that took a couple nights. It sucks so bad. But I am a much better and truly more sane and safe mother when I have some decent sleep.
With this LO, I've been a little experimentive (not a word? Ok) with sleep. I've been a little less adamant about making sure she's deep asleep before putting her down. And less so quick to feed at every wakeup or squirm or fuss overnight. After middle of the night feeds, I put her down pretty awake and she's not cried at all, just grunts and wiggles to sleep. So I'm hoping it won't be as bad. She's been waking/squirming around 1230 when she had been going until around 4, so I started out with giving her the binky and she almost always falls back asleep until the 4 o'clock hour, when I feed her. Sometimes I'll try a binky then too, but usually no dice. Sooo, from here, if wake ups become a nightmare, I'll do the same as DD1. I'll suck up a night feeding until she starts solids. If she starts waking more and more frequently and nursing for like 2 minutes and falling asleep over and over and over, I'll gradually get more aggressive about letting her figure it out. Which will prolly bring us to 6 months when I'd do Ferber with checks for overnight too. I just can't solo parent a baby and toddler all day every day on the terrible sleep I got with DD1 when it was at its worst.
With DS1, he started getting harder and harder to put down for the night around 4 months. Bedtime stretched to forever as I would nurse him to sleep and he would wake as soon as I tried to put him in the crib. I finally started sleep training right at 6 months with some encouragement from my pedi (who had been pushing sleep training since 3 months). At first I tried the No Cry Sleep Solution method (nurse until sleepy but not asleep, put down awake, pick up at the first sign of crying, repeat), but that wasn't working. After a few nights I switched to Ferber. The first night I checked on him twice and he fell asleep after a grand total of 10 minutes of crying. The second night he was asleep before the second check. And then after that he would go to sleep with less than a minute of crying/fussing each night. Like @kitchen said, it was amazing to have my evenings back and a predictable routine. I wish I had done this phase of sleep training sooner, because our old routine clearly wasn't working for a long time.
For naps, DS1 mostly slept on us or on the go (carrier, stroller, car seat) until about 8 months. At daycare I think he mostly napped in a swing or bouncer. But then suddenly a switch flipped and he no longer fell asleep easily on the go and would get very cranky. We realized he needed a more standardized nap schedule/routine and his own space to nap. He switched over to crib naps at this point super easily. Like bedtime, he would cry for maybe a minute and then go to sleep.
We started gentle night weaning at around 10 months when he was still waking up 3 times a night. This was the hardest for me to do because I hated the thought of him potentially being hungry. I gradually increased the amount of time I would let him cry when he woke up to 10 minutes. Then I would send in DH first with a pacifier to try to rock/pat/whatever DS1 back to sleep. Only if that still failed did I go in and nurse him. By 11.5 months he was STTN and has been a great sleeper ever since.
In general, my philosophy is that you should do whatever is working for you until it's no longer working. The key is to recognize when your routine is no longer working for one or both of you and be able to make changes (sleep train) at that point.
DS2 has had a bad cold all week and has been waking 3x per night. Before this, he had been going to sleep pretty easily and only getting up once each night. If he goes back to that after his cold, I'll be thrilled. But if we've hit a sleep regression, I'll consider starting some sleep training. He's a big, fat baby, so I'm more comfortable trying to stretch out his night time feeding. DS2 is already a better sleeper than DS1 was at this point. I can sometimes put down DS2 very sleepy but awake, whereas DS1 needed to be completely nursed or rocked to sleep. And DS2 is also better about being able to nap on his own in a crib or a bouncy seat.
We tried Ferber with DS1 at 6 months but it was ineffective for night wake ups. It did help us get rid of bad habits and create sleep cues and he went to sleep for the night without fuss. At 10 months we did CIO. He sttn after that but he's a kid that wakes a lot. He still wakes for dreams now at 2.5.
For 2, I have already created good sleep cues and he doesn't have any habits to break. He also puts himself to sleep well. We don't have as good of a routine with him thigh because of tending to #1. I would like to do Ferber intervals with him to get rid of night wake ups at 4 months- he's still a month away from that. I will need a lot of courage because I'm a weenie when my baby cries. It feels unnatural and it makes me question my decision. Until It's all over and baby is sleeping and I'm sleeping and then I'm Just so grateful and relieved.
Or "I could never hear my baby cry because I love them." Gtfo. I love my baby just as much as you do. Sometimes doing what's best for the kid doesn't make them happy initially.
sanibel21 , we must have been on the same board. They were crazed, like, said CPS should be called.
The worst is the sanctimonious "ZOMFG I would NEVER do that! I waited it out because I love my baby! She just started sleeping 12 hours straight at 2 months!"
You didn't wait it out. You got a unicorn. GTFO with your perfect kid.
Seriously. And the "I love rocking my baby to sleep, it's so special, who doesn't love their baby enough to not take the time to rock their baby to sleep?!?!" Um I love rocking my baby to sleep. Love it. Best part of my day. But if they're not staying asleep after putting them down, thus keeping me in a vicious cycle from 8 pm straight through til 2 am, I've gotta give it up. Just don't talk to me about sleep training until you're delusional from seventh-circle-of-hell-level sleep.
My sister is one of those, "I just can't listen to her/him cry" and "I don't mind spending 40 minutes trying to rock her/him to sleep and MOTN. I love that time with them." And she's got an almost 4 year that won't go to bed without falling asleep to the iPad and a 1.5 year old that gets up MOTN more than my 3 month old.
She's like "Ugh I don't know why she (my niece) gets up so many times a night." I do. BECAUSE YOU LET HER. SHE IS PLAYING YOU. Ol' girl does not need milk in the MOTN at 1.5. I mean, really. You've created a monster girl.
I guess some people are about that lyfe. I am not that person.
Or "I could never hear my baby cry because I love them." Gtfo. I love my baby just as much as you do. Sometimes doing what's best for the kid doesn't make them happy initially.
+1 And with DS1, sleep training was basically the same total amount of crying as trying to get him to stay asleep before sleep training. The short term pain was completely worth it and resulted in LESS overall crying.
Post by ksyknelvr73 on Jan 29, 2017 19:46:46 GMT -5
I am still sleep training my 2.5 year old. Like, every few months. Haha! I am fully on board with it. I have been very lucky with my kids as DS1 and DD both are great sleepers, but DS2 is my constant problem. I need more help with how to make him sleep than the baby. I'm sure once she starts teething we will have issues.
Or "I could never hear my baby cry because I love them." Gtfo. I love my baby just as much as you do. Sometimes doing what's best for the kid doesn't make them happy initially.
+1 And with DS1, sleep training was basically the same total amount of crying as trying to get him to stay asleep before sleep training. The short term pain was completely worth it and resulted in LESS overall crying.
So much yes for my son. Months of crying and non sense at night, done after two nights.
Post by erien22846 on Jan 29, 2017 22:32:45 GMT -5
So, I've skimmed this thread and you all make me feel like a good mother. Sometimes I feel I'm putting myself before my kids. But I have to remember that they are benefitting from good sleep and a well rested mom. I've never even nursed or rocked my babies to sleep.
I try not to start any habit I don't want to break later. Swaddling and pacifiers are the exceptions:) Again, we need sleep.
We never had to sleep train DS. As an infant he was a great sleeper, with the very occasional night where he wanted to be rocked or held. That hit the fan at around 20 months and since then he's been awful. He's 31 months and he's never slept through the night since. Ive been sleeping on his bedroom floor since then (minus the last month of my pregnancy and the two weeks after DD was born while we were trying to ebf). If anyone has ideas I'm all ears. Ive tried everything imaginable.
I don't know what we'll have to do with DD. knock on wood she's great. I can put her down wide awake for naps and she'll put herself to sleep. She's still sleeping in her baby box beside the bed and DH cuddles her to sleep at night (his choice as he gets to spend more time with her). We shall see. I may be back with questions if we need to sleep train.
We never had to sleep train DS. As an infant he was a great sleeper, with the very occasional night where he wanted to be rocked or held. That hit the fan at around 20 months and since then he's been awful. He's 31 months and he's never slept through the night since. Ive been sleeping on his bedroom floor since then (minus the last month of my pregnancy and the two weeks after DD was born while we were trying to ebf). If anyone has ideas I'm all ears. Ive tried everything imaginable.
I don't know what we'll have to do with DD. knock on wood she's great. I can put her down wide awake for naps and she'll put herself to sleep. She's still sleeping in her baby box beside the bed and DH cuddles her to sleep at night (his choice as he gets to spend more time with her). We shall see. I may be back with questions if we need to sleep train.
You could definitely sleep train your oldest, if you wanted to. I have done CIO and lengthened check ins with my oldest- as recently as around when he turned two. Typically it means telling him it's time for bed, getting him cozy, leaving, and not going back. They know the next night, oh it's time to sleep, moms not coming back in here. The toddler it took like 3 days of consistently being firm in saying I'm not coming in there, and then leaving him to himself. You can do check ins if that works for your child. My oldest uses check ins as an opportunity to go over the weather, his hopes and dreams, name everyone in the family, and ask for water a snack and to go potty. Anything to get him out of that room and to get me distracted from the purpose. These are smart beings. Don't let them fool you.
We never had to sleep train DS. As an infant he was a great sleeper, with the very occasional night where he wanted to be rocked or held. That hit the fan at around 20 months and since then he's been awful. He's 31 months and he's never slept through the night since. Ive been sleeping on his bedroom floor since then (minus the last month of my pregnancy and the two weeks after DD was born while we were trying to ebf). If anyone has ideas I'm all ears. Ive tried everything imaginable.
I don't know what we'll have to do with DD. knock on wood she's great. I can put her down wide awake for naps and she'll put herself to sleep. She's still sleeping in her baby box beside the bed and DH cuddles her to sleep at night (his choice as he gets to spend more time with her). We shall see. I may be back with questions if we need to sleep train.
You could definitely sleep train your oldest, if you wanted to. I have done CIO and lengthened check ins with my oldest- as recently as around when he turned two. Typically it means telling him it's time for bed, getting him cozy, leaving, and not going back. They know the next night, oh it's time to sleep, moms not coming back in here. The toddler it took like 3 days of consistently being firm in saying I'm not coming in there, and then leaving him to himself. You can do check ins if that works for your child. My oldest uses check ins as an opportunity to go over the weather, his hopes and dreams, name everyone in the family, and ask for water a snack and to go potty. Anything to get him out of that room and to get me distracted from the purpose. These are smart beings. Don't let them fool you.
We tried CIO with him. He literally banged his head off the wall until he bled. Ive tried check ins they do not work. He uses them as a signal that its time to get riled back up!
Post by vavavictoria on Jan 30, 2017 8:16:51 GMT -5
@snuff9861 I'm with becole with the CIO. The checks go the same way with her making up a million excuses to stay up so we don't do checks anymore. I'm pretty hardcore about toddler sleep. #1 is 28 months. When we tell her it's bedtime we put her in bed and give her a few last ditch efforts to pretend to go potty and drink a sip of water etc. after all that she is in her room with the door closed and I'm not going back. Sometimes she screams for as long as an hour but eventually she will pass out and wake up happy in the morning. This fun usually happens if she takes too long or late of a nap or if her routine gets messed with.
@snuff9861, I'm in the same camp as becole and vavavictoria. At that age, he's definitely playing you and I'd be letting him CIO for sure. I see where you said you tried that and that he was physically harming himself, so if that were my son, I'd be going in as soon as I heard/saw that happening and being very firm with him, saying "You are NOT going to bang your head against the wall because it's dangerous and you will get hurt AND we don't treat our things this way. If I have to come in here again, I will (take away some privilege here)."
Actually, at this point, I'd be that way about bedtime altogether. I'd be explaining everything we were going to do, what my expectation was, and what is going to happen if I have to come back in (and only for dangerous/destructive behavior). Then you have to stick with it at all costs. IMO, consistency is everything. If DS doesn't nap and I take his Daniel Tiger privileges away it totally sucks for me and would be so much easier to give in, but they pick up on that stuff right away.
This is where I'll also shamelessly plug that this is why we don't have toys in our kids' rooms. Your bedroom is a place to sleep and that's it. So, yeah, you don't have to sleep during your nap but it's going to be boring AF, so you might as well close your eyes. We've never had to deal with the kid who won't stay in bed because he's getting up and playing with his toys.
I'm totally eyeing the calendar right now trying to figure when we can sed the girls to my parents house so we can sleep train DS.
Ha, I was just going to comment that I'm starting a countdown clock. Though you remind me that I'm going to need some kind of reward for DS1 for having to live through the crying. "Hey sorry, trying to sleep train your brother. If you stay in your room all night, I'll give you one m&m in the morning. Maybe two!"
You could definitely sleep train your oldest, if you wanted to. I have done CIO and lengthened check ins with my oldest- as recently as around when he turned two. Typically it means telling him it's time for bed, getting him cozy, leaving, and not going back. They know the next night, oh it's time to sleep, moms not coming back in here. The toddler it took like 3 days of consistently being firm in saying I'm not coming in there, and then leaving him to himself. You can do check ins if that works for your child. My oldest uses check ins as an opportunity to go over the weather, his hopes and dreams, name everyone in the family, and ask for water a snack and to go potty. Anything to get him out of that room and to get me distracted from the purpose. These are smart beings. Don't let them fool you.
We tried CIO with him. He literally banged his head off the wall until he bled. Ive tried check ins they do not work. He uses them as a signal that its time to get riled back up!
What do you do with your child when he acts out aggressively in other scenarios not associated with sleep? I would follow that same train of discipline/ discussion/ calming, and then continue on. Sleep training is easy for babies because they don't have any skills to really thwart things except crying. Toddlers are hard. They understand causing pain, they understand scaring their parents or what to do to cause the biggest reaction and to get themselves the biggest reward (for my son attention= reward.) I would try to remove all things he could harm himself- maybe even place some pillows against the wall and let him be. Sleeping on the floor is not something I'm willing to do. If you're willing to sleep there, keep sleeping there. Don't feel obligated to do cio if what's happening is working for you. If it's not working, you're going to have to be firm and consistent to get out of the habit.
Post by macaronmama on Jan 30, 2017 10:41:43 GMT -5
We've been working on sleep training since eight weeks with advice from my bff, who is a children psychologist. We put DS down around 9pm, even if he's still awake for the most part. We do the same thing every night - change his diaper, put him in a footie, and swaddle him with a pacifier. As @kitchen noted, we tell him (even though he's too little to really understand yet) that it's bedtime, which means its going to get dark and quiet and that it's time to sleep, not talk. This works more and more often. If we don't have our serious faces on (aka if we smile at him, lol), he tends to talk for a good ten to fifteen minutes after we close the door and turn off the light. But he eventually falls asleep, even if it's 40 minutes later. The paci helps, but we've discovered it's not entirely needed unless he starts super fussing for it, but that hasn't happened in two or three weeks.
I am hoping this will continue to work. He sleeps pretty good most nights - typically only one wake up around 2-4am for the most part. However, I only get up if he starts crying and only after about 5 minutes. Or talking so loud he's going to wake DH or my mom (the kid takes after me). Now that he's past 3 months, I may start letting that go longer at night to see if he goes back to sleep, since he does occasionally sleep through the whole night.
We tried CIO with him. He literally banged his head off the wall until he bled. Ive tried check ins they do not work. He uses them as a signal that its time to get riled back up!
What do you do with your child when he acts out aggressively in other scenarios not associated with sleep? I would follow that same train of discipline/ discussion/ calming, and then continue on. Sleep training is easy for babies because they don't have any skills to really thwart things except crying. Toddlers are hard. They understand causing pain, they understand scaring their parents or what to do to cause the biggest reaction and to get themselves the biggest reward (for my son attention= reward.) I would try to remove all things he could harm himself- maybe even place some pillows against the wall and let him be. Sleeping on the floor is not something I'm willing to do. If you're willing to sleep there, keep sleeping there. Don't feel obligated to do cio if what's happening is working for you. If it's not working, you're going to have to be firm and consistent to get out of the habit.
It depends. If he's only hurting himself I ignore it for the most part until he calms down. Attention is what he's after. If he's going to hurt someone else or its escalated to where he's really going to hurt himself we redirect.
So question for the general public. I was kind of clueless last night. Because even though LO was up a bazillion times, half of them were like stretching grunting talking squirming. Not crying. And I kind of waited around but after a few minutes of the just the same behavior i was like well maybe I can prevent a full wake up and feed by putting the binky in. So I did. And many of the times she fell asleep. Should I be letting her do that for however long it takes to either fall back asleep or start full blown crying? I feel like I'm forcing a crutch. But of course her awake keeps me awake. Which makes me wonder if it's time for her to go to her own room so she can figure out if she's gonna start crying or go to sleep without waking me.
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