Post by crawford411 on Aug 17, 2015 7:45:58 GMT -5
Sunny and I are really struggling with sleep training. darwinfish suggested I ask you sweetsurprise since you had some success. I would love the advice of others too. We have tried a lot of things with pretty much zero success, so I will take whatever tips you have. Thanks!
Post by sweetsurprise on Aug 17, 2015 8:49:09 GMT -5
Hey crawford411! So nice to see you here! I have had several successes and failures with sleep training. Here's the whole long story...
When M was about 6 months I decided to try sleep training. He was at the point where he would wake up 2-3 times in the MOTN for 30 minutes - an hour of rocking and feeding before going back to sleep. Friends of mine told me that age was much easier than waiting until they were older so I spent a lot of time researching it. One of my friends had even paid (gasp) $300/night for a week to have an experienced pediatric nurse sleep train her LO and she basically told me the methodology the sleep expert gave her and I tried it. The plan included a set bedtime that you must keep to (within 15 minutes) every night. The most important thing out of all of this, she told me, is consistency. So based on DS's patterns we chose 8pm as the time to start the bedtime routine. You have to have a very specific routine that you do every night the same way.
At our house, 8pm means setting up DS's room - put on the sound machine, dim the lights, put out a bottle of milk and paci by the rocking chair, pick out PJs and make sure the room is in order. I hold DS so he sees me doing all of this. Then I give him a bath, head into his room for a fresh diaper, pjs, etc. We then sit in the rocker, I feed him, swap the bottle for the paci, turn the lights off, and sing him a song while rocking. You are supposed to put the baby down while they are sleepy but awake. You put the baby in the crib and leave. After you put the baby in the crib you are not allowed to pick them up until the morning.
The first night, we let M cry for 10 minutes. We went in patted his back, told him we love him, etc. This has to be a less than 30 second visit. Then you pretty much let him cry another 10 minutes, go in, repeat. Again...You can't pick them up. Only back pats, paci pop, and an "I love you." Any time the baby wakes up in the night it's the same thing. The next night, you increase the time to 20 minutes, the next night 30 minutes, the next night you don't go in. That was the plan. It's vital that you and your H are on the same page.
In my experience we did this for 4 horrendous nights that made me want to die. I hated every second of it. During the day he had terrible separation anxiety and when he cried it sounded like someone was killing him. Then....like magic...DS slept through the night for 4 days straight (he had never STTN at all up until that point). I couldn't believe it. Then, on day 5, all of it went to hell. DS not only started crying again but it was right at the age when he was starting to pull up and he would try to stand up and get out of the crib over and over and would fall and bang his head. He also started just banging his head on the crib. He had 13 bruises across his poor little head. It was devastating.
We ended up going to the pedi since I was so upset by it and the pedi said we needed to stop the sleep training for a while. Basically, my H and I decided we didn't want to lose all the progress we had made, so we decided we would just go into his room and pat his back as he went back to sleep. We decided to still cut all MOTN feedings and not pick him up until morning (which we agreed on 5am). This worked really well, actually. M would still wake up 1-2 times (sometimes these wake ups were before we even went to bed) and we would just go in, pop the paci and pat his back for 5 minutes and he would be out.
To this day we still (except for one or two occasions when he was really sick), do not pick him up out of the crib and we do not feed him in the MOTN. Right now, he STTN about 3 days out of the week and typically only has one wake up on the other nights, where I can just pat his back for less than 5 minutes and he's out - sometimes I can just put my hand on his back and he'll go to sleep instantly.
In the past 2 months he's had 3 times (including last night unfortunately) when his MOTN wake up was BAD (i.e. he wouldn't go back to sleep within 30 minutes of patting)...we let him cry it out. He hasn't had an issues with banging now that he can just stand up.
So....I don't know what to tell you. Almost every friend of mine that has tried CIO has said it has worked withing 3-7 days. It probably would have worked if we didn't have the bruising situation. For us, crying it out had some really good elements - we were able to cut out the long rocking sessions and feedings, but it wasn't a cure-all for us. It is seriously one of the hardest things you'll ever do as a mom. You and your H need to be on the same page and be consistent. This is still one of the main arguments that H and I have, since he's ready to cut all of the little patting sessions completely and I still hate resorting to crying.
Post by supplycloset on Aug 17, 2015 10:17:52 GMT -5
We did sleep training too. And have re-sleep trained 3x since DD was 6 months old. I finally gave in to sleep training because DD was up for hours every night and DH doesn't help MOTN. We chose to do interval training. In at 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15, etc. We also picked a strict bedtime and stick to it every night. The first time around she cried (and I slowly died inside) until sometime after the 15 minute pop in. Each night got better. Then she got sick, two teeth, vacation, and sick again. I got back into the habit of rocking her to sleep. When it started taking an hour to rock her to sleep, I finally realized I had to go back to sleep training. The re-training has been easier. I think she was ready. We do bath, lotion, pjs, read a book, bottle at 730, lamp off, paci, rock/sing, and in her crib around 745. It's still hit or miss. Some nights not a peep, some nights she's up til 830. We don't go back to her room- right before she falls asleep, she cries for couple minutes. We were told by pedi that if you do interval training, do not pick them up- if they are sitting up or standing in crib, just give them paci and say see you in the morning. DD sleeps through the night with a few quick screams in her sleep sometimes. I wish there was a magic solution. I think you have to find what works for DD. The guy who wrote The Happiest Baby on the Block has a sleep book that discusses all methods and gives you pros and cons of each one. It's so tough. I'm sorry you are struggling with it. If you can stick with it, the results are life changing. I got a big part of my evening back ( most nights I was still rocking DD at 930), and DD is happier because she is well rested and not up all night. Best wishes to the 3 of you!
We only recently had sleep regression issues related to separation issues. At bedtime we kept the normal routine (bath, bottle in her room), then I hold her for a little bit until she starts playing. Then I place her in the crib and walk out. At first crying was 40 minutes now down to less than 5 minutes. If she gets up in MOTN I do go in and pick her up. I hold her for a few minutes then place her back in crib. This crying lasts a little longer bc she isn't up nightly so no real routine established. Listening to the crying is awful so I mute monitor until she's asleep. Good luck.
Post by crawford411 on Aug 17, 2015 12:32:12 GMT -5
Our problem is really 100 different problems, but the issue varies every single night. Sometimes it takes an hour to go to bed, sometimes she goes right to sleep. Sometimes she wakes up after 45 minutes and won't be put back to bed, sometimes she will do a 6 hour stretch. She often eats 2 to 4 times per night. The past month, she has had multiple nights where she has been crying on and off for 2+ hours in the MOTN and won't go back to bed. She doesn't do all of this every night, but it is SOMETHING every freaking night. I never know what I'm going to get. I swear I have bedtime PTSD.
We tried intervals for a week and had INCREDIBLE success. Then she got sick. Then she got 3 new teeth. Now the intervals seem to just rile her up. She gets more and more desperate sounding like she's veing hurt. We have dabbled in CIO and cosleeping. Neither is great. Neither seems to get us anywhere.
So anyway... I'm mostly just looking for help and my pedi's solution was to just basically let her cry. I know it will probably work, but I don't know if I want to do it. But something's gotta give.
Our problem is really 100 different problems, but the issue varies every single night. Sometimes it takes an hour to go to bed, sometimes she goes right to sleep. Sometimes she wakes up after 45 minutes and won't be put back to bed, sometimes she will do a 6 hour stretch. She often eats 2 to 4 times per night. The past month, she has had multiple nights where she has been crying on and off for 2+ hours in the MOTN and won't go back to bed. She doesn't do all of this every night, but it is SOMETHING every freaking night. I never know what I'm going to get. I swear I have bedtime PTSD.
We tried intervals for a week and had INCREDIBLE success. Then she got sick. Then she got 3 new teeth. Now the intervals seem to just rile her up. She gets more and more desperate sounding like she's veing hurt. We have dabbled in CIO and cosleeping. Neither is great. Neither seems to get us anywhere.
So anyway... I'm mostly just looking for help and my pedi's solution was to just basically let her cry. I know it will probably work, but I don't know if I want to do it. But something's gotta give.
Ugh. That totally sucks. I'm sorry about the PTSD. I really, truly believe that each one of our babies is a little bit different and there's not one answer for sleeping issues.
Also, as we all know, sleep regression is real during transitions or teething...so even if things are good, there's always the chance that the tides will turn. You should have hope that she did do well before her teething and sickness.
I would say, whatever you do try to do the same strategy for a week and be consistent. if you can stomach it, CIO might be a good option for 7 days straight. I definitely understand not wanting to do that though. I can't handle it anymore but it is pretty effective for most babies.
I do stay consistent with my patting, not picking DS up and not doing the MOTN feedings. I would suggest stopping the feedings if possible or she will always expect it.
crawford411 my co worker had success with at first giving only a water bottle at night to wean off formula. Then she had to do CIO..she said it was torture but it worked. She said it probably took 2-3 weeks between the water bottles and CIO until her son slept through the night. She said she did it around 9-10 months. Honestly you'll probably get tons of advice but you have to do whatever works for you and whatever you are comfortable with.
Post by geetargirl05 on Aug 17, 2015 20:31:14 GMT -5
So Harrison has made lots of changes in just the last week. He still doesn't STTN but it is incredibly easier at night and naps. He has dropped down to 2 naps a day and basically wakes up 5:30-6:30 (before it was 4-4:30). I honestly think it was us letting him work through it and had very little to do with anything we did.
We vacationed. He got teeth. Vacationed again. He got more teeth. These things were truly horrific for sleep. He now has six teeth and doesn't look like any more are coming soon. I think this was a key for his bad sleep.
However, we did do some very very short intervals for a week and I think that helped. I think we did 2, 4 and 6 with no picking up. And for naps, even shorter 1, 2 and 3.
I definitely think working on the MOTN feedings is probably your first battle to fight. It was for us. We gradually reduced the amount of each feeding.
I wanted to chime in, and agree with pp that sleep training is not a one size fits all. There are things that may work for other parents and babies that will not work for you. And vice versa.
For us, we hit major sleep regressions and while I've always been able to rock dd to sleep within about 20 min (including nursing) - she started fighting sleep, or fighting being put in her crib and some nights it was a two hour battle. We tried the CIO approach, and it was aweful. I don't think either myself of dd was cut out for it. And then things just got better on their own.
Fast forward, our problem became not putting her down (most nights anyways), but waking up 30 minutes after being put down and not being able to go back to sleep without being rocked. Sometimes for 30 minutes. This meant I was finally done with bedtime by 9:00. Just in time to have no time to myself. We decided to try a more gentle approach to CIO than we had previously. We started letting her cry for 5-10 minutes, then going in the room. We don't pick her up, but sooth her with hugs and words while she is in the crib. We help her lay down (because otherwise she would stand all night). We would repeat laying her down as many times as possible, and stay in the room until she falls asleep. At first this still took a while, but now even on nights we do have to go in, we lie her down and she's back asleep within 10 minutes. Not perfect, but much more manageable. And there are more and more nights that she's not waking at all, or waking at putting herself back to sleep.
I think it's important to ask yourself what you really want your bedtime routine to look like. For a while we tried to lay her down drowsy but awake. But in reality, I enjoy rocking her to sleep, and want to keep doing that - so now on nights it takes longer for me to rock her to sleep I just enjoy my cuddles and know that I probably can't have it both ways (meaning I can't want to rock her to sleep every night but want it to only take 10 minutes every night).
I hope you can find something that works for you. Consistency is key, like previous notches said. Good luck.
We have 2 totally different kids with sleep. Our baby has blessed us by just being easy. So I won't talk about him but I'll tell you about our toddler who almost killed us.
We had sleep issues from the start. Did Ferber around 6 months and it sort of worked for awhile. By Ferber I mean times checks and just consoling without picking him up. He cried a bunch but after 4 or 5 nights he was putting himself to sleep himself. Now he wouldn't STTN but it got us done to maybe 1 wake up which at that point was great. That lasted for a few weeks. As soon as he would get sick all would regress again and we couldn't let him cry when he coughs so bad so back to rocking to sleep. Then after he got better we would have to do Ferber again. The pattern kept repeating. Around 15 months we hit rock bottom. He would take an hour to go to bed and then would be awake in the middle of the night for 1-3 hrs. It was horrible.
Finally around 18.5 months we knew we had another baby coming and we did full blown CIO without any checks. In 3 nights he was putting himself to sleep and would sleep 12 hrs. We had another regression around 2 and yet another full blown CIO in may. Since then (knock on wood) we have been good. He can talk really well now and he actually enjoys bed.
So I just rambled a lot so what am I trying to tell you...1) I fully believe some kids just need some time. It sucks 2) we found that introducing comfort things like stuffed animals helped a ton. I would probably still be careful with babies but I think something small could be ok. 3) for some kids I think Ferber is worse than just letting them go with no checks. For our son Ferber did not have lasting effect. Only letting him do full CIO without any checks really worked. That's hard to take but we were desperate. 4) absolutely have a very strict routine. It helped us a ton 5) white noise is maybe the best thing ever.
Hey crawford411! So nice to see you here! I have had several successes and failures with sleep training. Here's the whole long story...
When M was about 6 months I decided to try sleep training. He was at the point where he would wake up 2-3 times in the MOTN for 30 minutes - an hour of rocking and feeding before going back to sleep. Friends of mine told me that age was much easier than waiting until they were older so I spent a lot of time researching it. One of my friends had even paid (gasp) $300/night for a week to have an experienced pediatric nurse sleep train her LO and she basically told me the methodology the sleep expert gave her and I tried it. The plan included a set bedtime that you must keep to (within 15 minutes) every night. The most important thing out of all of this, she told me, is consistency. So based on DS's patterns we chose 8pm as the time to start the bedtime routine. You have to have a very specific routine that you do every night the same way.
At our house, 8pm means setting up DS's room - put on the sound machine, dim the lights, put out a bottle of milk and paci by the rocking chair, pick out PJs and make sure the room is in order. I hold DS so he sees me doing all of this. Then I give him a bath, head into his room for a fresh diaper, pjs, etc. We then sit in the rocker, I feed him, swap the bottle for the paci, turn the lights off, and sing him a song while rocking. You are supposed to put the baby down while they are sleepy but awake. You put the baby in the crib and leave. After you put the baby in the crib you are not allowed to pick them up until the morning.
The first night, we let M cry for 10 minutes. We went in patted his back, told him we love him, etc. This has to be a less than 30 second visit. Then you pretty much let him cry another 10 minutes, go in, repeat. Again...You can't pick them up. Only back pats, paci pop, and an "I love you." Any time the baby wakes up in the night it's the same thing. The next night, you increase the time to 20 minutes, the next night 30 minutes, the next night you don't go in. That was the plan. It's vital that you and your H are on the same page.
In my experience we did this for 4 horrendous nights that made me want to die. I hated every second of it. During the day he had terrible separation anxiety and when he cried it sounded like someone was killing him. Then....like magic...DS slept through the night for 4 days straight (he had never STTN at all up until that point). I couldn't believe it. Then, on day 5, all of it went to hell. DS not only started crying again but it was right at the age when he was starting to pull up and he would try to stand up and get out of the crib over and over and would fall and bang his head. He also started just banging his head on the crib. He had 13 bruises across his poor little head. It was devastating.
We ended up going to the pedi since I was so upset by it and the pedi said we needed to stop the sleep training for a while. Basically, my H and I decided we didn't want to lose all the progress we had made, so we decided we would just go into his room and pat his back as he went back to sleep. We decided to still cut all MOTN feedings and not pick him up until morning (which we agreed on 5am). This worked really well, actually. M would still wake up 1-2 times (sometimes these wake ups were before we even went to bed) and we would just go in, pop the paci and pat his back for 5 minutes and he would be out.
To this day we still (except for one or two occasions when he was really sick), do not pick him up out of the crib and we do not feed him in the MOTN. Right now, he STTN about 3 days out of the week and typically only has one wake up on the other nights, where I can just pat his back for less than 5 minutes and he's out - sometimes I can just put my hand on his back and he'll go to sleep instantly.
In the past 2 months he's had 3 times (including last night unfortunately) when his MOTN wake up was BAD (i.e. he wouldn't go back to sleep within 30 minutes of patting)...we let him cry it out. He hasn't had an issues with banging now that he can just stand up.
So....I don't know what to tell you. Almost every friend of mine that has tried CIO has said it has worked withing 3-7 days. It probably would have worked if we didn't have the bruising situation. For us, crying it out had some really good elements - we were able to cut out the long rocking sessions and feedings, but it wasn't a cure-all for us. It is seriously one of the hardest things you'll ever do as a mom. You and your H need to be on the same page and be consistent. This is still one of the main arguments that H and I have, since he's ready to cut all of the little patting sessions completely and I still hate resorting to crying.
GL lady. Hope this helped.
There's a lot of great advice in this post. Like PP said, every baby is different and the key is to be consistent with whatever method you choose. One thing that made a difference with both my kids was to cut out MOTN feedings. It was only when I stopped the MOTN feedings with both of them that they started STTN. Before I cut out MOTN feedings, they would still wake up and easily go back to sleep after being fed but they didn't sleep all the way through.
Good luck crawford411, sounds like you are having a rough time.
Post by raesofsunshine1 on Aug 21, 2015 14:10:31 GMT -5
We were all for letting our toddler cry it out at this age and it worked for her.
Our baby though, gets madder and madder when we do that and so thats not going to work for her. We still have trouble at night, but naptimes are much better now and even the initial bedtime is better too. We tried the "pick up put down" method. I rock her just a little bit and sing her one song and then lay her down. I pat her bittom and walk away. When she cries, pick her up just until she stops cryi g and calms down, then lay her down again. I keep doing this until she just is quiet and goes to sleep. if she wakes up too soon from her nap (she will notmally only sleep 1- 1 1/2hrs) I do the same thing and so its helped her nap longer too.
Im still working on the middle of the night but this really helped and I was so relieved to find something that worked so well for her!
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