Anyone sleep train before 6 months?

[lbonga1]

After only getting an hour of sleep last night and waking up 3-7 times a night for the past 5 months, I'm ready to snap. Any tips on sleep training? Tegan just turned 5 months today.

[wineandcake]

We sleep trained at 7m and will do if again for this baby if necessary, but as far as I recall it isn't advised before 6m.
Is she eating everytime she wakes? BF or FF? Where does she sleep/wear to bed? Does she take a pacifier?

[lbonga1]

I know it's not advisable before 6 months, but at this point I've got to find a balance. Only getting 4 hours of sleep a night isn't healthy for either of us, and my FI is too heavy of a sleeper to help (I end up waking up before he does anyway).
She is BF, and I pop her on the boob whenever she wakes up because it's the fastest way to get her back to sleep. She eats sometimes, but other times she just sucks for a minute and she's back out. She sleeps in a onesie and sleep sack, and it hovers around 70-73 in our apartment. I turn a fan on low if it gets any warmer. She does go to bed with a pacifier, but if she wakes up and I try to just put it back in, she won't go back to sleep. She has to be held and rocked too. We did have her sleeping in a bouncy seat because the incline helped her reflux, but she started rolling back to front consistently. She doesn't roll front to back though; she's only done it once. So now she tends to sleep on her side in her crib, which is in my bedroom, and I have white noise going.

[kleigh926]

I don't really have any tips but if I were you I would do some kind of sleep training. I think 4-6 months is the age range that the experts say you can start, and your LO is right in the middle of that. And honestly, I just don't believe that a little bit of crying at any age is going to irreparably damage a child. Plus, there are no-cry forms of sleep training that you can try too. I'm a big believer that decent sleep is very important for both baby and mama.

[rosebean]

Yes! trichie5 is right. We did ours at 4 months with DS and 5 months with DD. We used Ferber method for both. DS took a few days to settle in and DD was like, one night. She only CIO for maybe 10 minutes, but our training was specifically for them to learn to fall asleep in their own bed and not to be laying on me to sleep. DD was the worst offender for this. She would barely sleep in her own bed. So now she does sleep in her own crib, but she's still is up every 2-3 hours. Which sucks.

I'm not going to lie. Getting her to bed was easy the first night, but it was also difficult afterwards with the subsequent wake ups that night because she truly wasn't happy that I was putting her back in her crib to sleep. But by the next night she was really over it. She now wakes up to eat, I'm "awake" for maybe 10 minutes, and she's back in her crib. Which is better than her sleeping on top of me.

I haven't trained off any MOTN wake ups. If I go to her 6 month appointment and learn she's lurched up past her growth curve, then I will be talking to him about trying to zap one or two out. We haven't started any food yet (well, we are BLW and she's swallowed a wee bit of banana) so I know that won't affect her weight at this point. But I agree that starting a bit earlier is fine. Ferber worked for us because she sorted through it on her own and we were still checking up on her so she wasn't "abandoned".

[mishka29]

I used the Sleep Sense program by Dana Obleman - you can actually get the pdf online. The book recommends not before 3 months and 13lbs. (I get not everyone will agree with that but I'm just telling you what the book says). We used it and found it to be very successful. It's very similar to ferber, although I haven't read that book so I can't confirm.

[lbonga1]

Thanks for the input ladies. Our first night, she ended up crying for about 45 minutes, and then my FI didn't stick with it the second night when I worked late. I'll have to come up with a plan for when we're really going to start and make him stick to it with me.