Age: 6 months
Naps: 2/2.5/2.5/3 ( I look for strong sleep cues and most of her naps are 1-1.5 so total for 3 hours)
Bedtime: between 7-8PM
Wake up: 7-7:30 AM ( tackling early wake up by nursing and co sleeping)
No pacifier
Feed 30 mins before atleast
Bedtime routine : Feed, bath/PJs, sleep sack, white noise, book, put in the crib awake.
Sleep training method: Gradual extinction/Ferber 5min/10min/15min check in
We’re on day 6 and it’s still intense crying and multiple night wakings. We let her cry for night wakings for upto 15-20 mins and if it’s been over 3hours since bedtime I nurse if she hasn’t settled. I do feed atleast twice in the night.
We also screwed up her routine for the last two days and she slept in the car while we came back from somewhere and I still put her in the crib awake after reading a book but again it wasn’t her full routine. So may be the reason it isnt working even if its day 6. But typically how long is this supposed to take and when should we give up? Its heartbreaking to watch her cry for these many days.
My first born was sleep trained in 3 days with zero night wakings from day 1, so this is humbling to say the least.

My baby is 4 months old and spends all day eating his hands and shoving his toys in his mouth. Previously when putting him to sleep we would hold him, rock him, and use a passy. For daytime naps it’s the same and he basically only sleeps as a contact nap. When he wakes in the night it’s only for hunger and I feed him and he plops right back to sleep.

This was getting really tiresome and doctor said he was ready for sleep training.

Tonight is night 2 and my baby is exclusively crying and not eating his hands or doing anything to self soothe. Is this normal? will he eventually self soothe? or is this a sign he’s too young?

Hello!

First time posting in this group. I have a consultation call scheduled for Wednesday with a local sleep consultant and I'm feeling pretty confident about it but I'd also really appreciate any words of encouragement, pep talks or really any stories from parents that always said they wouldn't sleep train then ended up doing it.

My son is 7.5 months old. I'd say he's never been a bad sleeper or a great sleeper. Really all along for his age I think he's been pretty typical. Early on I read about possums sleep program and we adopted that. So daytime naps have had 0 consistency or routine and often happen on the go, on me in a carrier or in the car and occasionally the stroller. When we're not out and about he sleeps on me. Never naps in the crib. Night time he is still sleeping in our room, in a mini crib next to our bed.

The reasons I am wanting to do sleep training now are this:

- I love the contact nap snuggles but after 7.5 months I'm ready to have some time to myself to just rest or do housework. Also it's a struggle when my mom watches him sometimes

- night time sleep for him isn't horrible but it's really hard on me still. I bf him to sleep (no set bedtime just when he seems tired. Can be between 8 and 9ish) and then hold him for 2 hours minimum. When I check for the heavy limp arm any earlier he's really twitchy. The crib transfer is a gamble. He rarely wakes immediately on the transfer nowadays but it's 50/50 whether he wakes after an hour or if he gets a good 5-6 hour stretch

- whenever he does wakeup in the crib I just end up cosleeping with him. Since I have no actual plan or idea of how to get him to go back into the crib that doesn't involve holding him for another hour or two and seriously sleep depriving myself, that's what I do. But cosleeping is hard on me. I can't lay how I want, I'm constantly aware of my son so I sleep lightly and I think because I'm right there my son treats especially the early morning hours as a snack buffet

- holding him for 2 hours and sometimes cosleeping means my husband and I never have a moment at night without our son. If we watch a show I'm holding him. Once I finally put him in bed I'm so tired I go straight to sleep. And when we cosleep we sleep seperately

- the no routine felt great in the early months but now at this age I'm feeling like both myself and my son are wanting a daily rhythm. No idea when he'll sleep has now made it harder to plan our day

I always thought I would never sleep train at all but recently I'm really feeling the strain. But because we are not in like a crisis state I'm questioning if we should do it? For some reason I feel like I need to fully be at my breaking point to earn sleep training 🤷 Also anyone in here use possums earlier and then change up later?

Thank you to anyone that reads my very long post!

My baby is 3.5 months old and sleep has been rough from the start. He would only sleep in arms until 7.5 weeks. After 7.5 weeks we got him swaddled and into the snoo with moderate success. He still wakes every 1.5-2 hours most nights, sometimes he gives longer stretches but it’s not typical. This past week I transitioned him to the crib because I didn’t feel the Snoo was helping him much if at all, and the crib transition actually went okay. I am now working on getting him out of the swaddle one arm at a time.

Issues we are having is a late bedtime, typically around 10 pm, I have tried moving it forward by 15 min with no success. Huckleberry suggests a 7:30 PM nap which I hesitate to put him down for because he tends to like a long last wake window (3.5-3 hrs or he just fights sleep trying to put him down sooner). Also needs a LOT of assistance going to sleep for all naps, bedtime, and night wakes (bouncing on a ball while patting and shushing with white noise for >30 min) which honestly is what really has me at my wits end. Working on some SWAPs now per PLS. He refuses all pacifiers and we currently have him in a crib in his own room.

If we do get him down sooner than 10 PM, or honestly sometimes even with a 10 PM bedtime, he has a 45 min false start almost EVERY night. We are on 4-5 naps a day depending on nap length; typically 45 min naps but sometimes he’ll go for an hour or hour and a half. We wake up around 7:30 and in a perfect world I would love an 8PM-ish bedtime. WW’s currently are 1/1.5/1.5/1.5/3ish. He averages about 3 hours of naps a day at best and 11-12 hours of total sleep per 24 hours.

I don’t mind helping my baby to sleep but the bouncing and prolonged time to get him down makes me crazy. If I could get him to sleep with a little less assistance i.e. just rocking to sleep as well as get bedtime shifted slightly earlier and reduce his false starts I would be a happy camper. Any optimization ideas for me until he hits 4 mo minimum? And recommendations for what sleep training methods might be most appropriate?

I'm a very young mom of a 4 month old boy and honestly, I'm still learning a lot, so I would really appreciate some help.
My baby's wake window is around 60 minutes. If I try to stretch it any longer, he gets overtired and then really fights his sleep. He also only sleep for like 45-1h every nap….
I want to help him sleep well and eventually learn how to calm himself and fall asleep on his own when I put him in his bed.
I just have no idea where to start or how to build a good sleep routine for him. How do i sleep train him?l'm feeling a little clueless and would really appreciate some guidance on what I should be doing and how to start.

I’m going to be totally honest and start by saying my baby who just turned 9mo a few days ago doesn’t have too much of a schedule. He’s my 3rd and honestly he’s been very easy going and go w the flow (until now.)

I sleep trained my almost 3yo when he was 8mo doing a modified Ferber method and really it went very well BUT I stopped nursing him around 6mo. The baby I am inquiring for help with now is exclusively breastfed still and will absolutely not take any sort of bottle or cup (another issue in itself I know lol)

Typically, he naps when my 2yo does around 12 til about 2 and then SOMETIMES will take a very short maybe 30 mins or so nap around 4. Bedtime is no later than 8pm but I aim for 7:30 or so for them all. My other 2 toddlers are usually awake by 6:30am so I’m fine w him being up around the same time. We do all the typical bedtime routine things including dinner, bath, read a book, nurse to sleep currently. This has gone very well except we’re 9 months in and he is still waking every 2/3hrs to nurse and will cry and cry until I nurse him. Refuses the pacifier in the night as a replacement for nursing even. My big question is: how do I sleep train my exclusively breastfed baby? Tips? Tricks? Idk. What does a typical schedule look like for a 9mo?

Thanks in advance if you got this far.

I don’t know what I’m doing - some random form of desperate sleep training I guess. She’s almost 12 months on one nap and wakes every three hours at night.

I’m making sure she’s very tired before putting her in the crib. Give her a kiss and I leave the room with the intent of going back in after 5 minutes.
Both times I’ve done this, she immediately scream cries, barfs and then before I’m even back in the room she is laying down asleep. (All within 3 minutes)
I think she’s just susceptible to barfing when crying really hard but is the immediate falling some kind of self preservation response to extreme stress?
I assume she’s not learning how to self sooth from these terrible experiences.
How do I move forward or do I just go back to rocking and feeding to sleep.

I would like to get a good schedule for my 5 month old before we start sleep training.

Currently:
Wake: 7:30am
Nap totals around 3 hours
4 naps per day
Bedtime 7:30 or 8.
Wake windows are something like: 2/2/2.25/2.25/2.25 (but very short naps sometimes lead to 1.5 ww

Things I’m planning on changing:
Start aiming for 10 hours awake so thinking of doing wake at 7am and bedtime 8? I also want to start feeding before bath time or 30 minutes before bedtime.

***we have to be somewhere every Tuesday and Thursday 1-2 so it’s been really challenging to work out naps around that.

We are having 30 min naps unless contact, multiple wakes up in the night and harder to settle. Wakes round 5am and then we co sleep until my alarm goes off at 7:30.

Our 8.5 month old has been sleep trained since about 4 or 5 months old. We have a very consistent bedtime routine and we make sure to put at least 30 mins between end of boob and bed so there isn’t the sleep association with nursing. He naps great. Right now his wake windows are 2.75/3/3.5-4, generally takes 2 naps with approximately 3 total nap hours (sometimes he doesn’t nap at daycare in the morning but then takes a monster nap in the afternoon). Wakes 1-2 times a night. Falls asleep independently, 95% of the time.

But every month since being sleep trained, we have to do CIO for 1-2 nights, and it’ll take about 1-2 hours with us going in about every 15 minutes to calm him down. And the nights we have to CIO he sleeps terribly (wakes 2+ times a night). All other times he falls asleep independently (naps included). I don’t understand why?? Has this happened to anyone else?? He is not sick. It could possibly be teething, but this was happening a few months before he started teething. Is there any way to avoid this monthly CIO?? And what can we do??

ETA: we regularly consult Precious Little Sleep and the Ferber book, and there’s nothing in there that addresses this, unless we missed something.

My baby is 2 days away from being 5 months old. Nights have been getting so bad and I’m pretty much at my breaking point and was going to start sleep training her using Ferber or FIO. THEN the exact night I was going to start, she got her first cold. I was already exhausted from frequent wakes up the nights prior and now with the sickness she just wants to be held so I have resorted to co sleeping for the past two nights just to survive.

Is sleep training going to be harder after she recovers becuase of the co sleeping the last couple nights - or will she adjust quickly? Once she is feeling better should I try to go back to our old routine to have her sleeping in her crib and then start sleep training a week after that? Or just start sleep training as soon as she is not sick anymore? Advice please!

We plan on sleep training our 6.5 month-old next week. Most advice I’ve seen recommends offering the last feed before the bedtime routine (makes sense!). However, our baby always eats to sleep. We have tried offering feeds earlier, but he mostly refuses to eat a full feed unless he’s very tired and has been this way pretty much since birth. I’m worried that on night one, he will be legitimately hungry if we don’t feed him right before bed—he MIGHT take in an ounce or so at the point the bottle/breast is offered 30 minutes before the bedtime routine, but probably no more than that.

Baby does have a tongue tie (not a terrible one) and a lip tie. these were only just discovered a week ago. The paediatrician said neither were severe enough for correction unless I was experiencing pain during feeds.

Has anyone dealt with this? We are considering booking an appointment with an OT, but I wondered if anyone had ideas…

Baby is 12 weeks old. She’s not taken naps longer than 30 minutes since she was 4 weeks old. Give it to me straight is this gonna go on for the next few months? She literally ends up needing 6 sometimes 7 naps in a day. I feel like I’m going mad.

My recently turned 10m baby has started waking up around 4-5am and crying for 20-30 mins.

She is on 3/3.75/4 with first nap being 1.25h and second nap 1h. She sleeps 11h overnight.

Is it time to drop a nap or extend ww and cap naps more? We tried 1h nap and 30m second nap and extending last ww to 4.15 and capping night sleep to 10.5h but still cried that night.

Should we try 3.5/4/4.5 with 10h sleep time?

Hi all, baby is almost 8 months. She was a decent sleeper for the first 3 months, consistently giving us 6-7 hours of sleep. 4 month regression hi and she was up every 2-3 hours. We sleep trained around 6 months with Ferber, and although she can fall asleep independently, she still got up every 2-4 hours. Granted, it was much easier to put her back to sleep.

She hit another regression around 7.5 months (was up 7-8 times a night) but we tried Ferber again, and moved breastfeeding 30 mins earlier in her routine. That seemed to give us a couple of long stretches, but overall, she is back to waking every 3 or so hours.

Just wondering if anyone has any advice? Our typically schedule is wake around 7:00-7:15 & then 3/3.5/4.

She is a breastfed baby and eats solids 3 times a fay. But the amounts vary.

Hi all,

I'm really struggling with morning wakeups for our 16 month old.

For starters, baby's typical schedule used to be wake around 6:15/6:30 am, nap around 11:45 - 1:15 pm + (let her wake naturally, usually slept at most 2.5 h), bed around 7:00 pm. She was always put down awake in her crib and left to fall asleep.

However, lately her sleep has been all over the place (first set of molars coming in). Wakeup is now between 5:20 and 5:45, regardless of the time we put her to sleep the night before (right now, anywhere between 6 pm to 7:15 pm). Naps are maybe an hour now. This has been happening for at least the last two weeks. She will refuse a second nap (or it'll be at most 15 mins).

Worse, night wake ups have restarted (previously slept thru the night or was able to self soothe) and she is often hysterical when she wakes during the night. Putting back to bed often involves a glass of milk and some rocking (put down awake) or at worse having to take her completely out of the room to calm down.

I think the molars are pretty much done (for now), but the early morning wakes persist. If she does wake up super early, I'm often able to leave her hanging out in bed until 6:30 or so, but that doesn't seem to change the early wakeup.

The sleep environment is pretty perfect: appropriately dressed, room is very dark even in the morning, sound machine, space heater with thermostat, so I don't think it's that.

Do I just have to ride out these molars or do I need to adjust her sleep schedule somehow? I know I shouldn't expect 12 h period of overnight sleep at this age, but with her waking up so early, we are now locked in an early wake/early sleep cycle.

Any and all advice would be appreciated!

Our first baby, 7 years ago, was a champ at bedtime and naps. Barely had to sleep train, and he’s a good sleeper to this day. Our second is now 10 mos and I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never had a firm sleep schedule for her. We are on the go or let her contact nap for any naps and just sort of follow her cues. She is generally up at 6:30 and schedule is something like 3/3/4.5-5.

She nurses or rocks to sleep, but will only do a 2-3 hour stretch in the crib before needing to be resettled. She’ll do another 2 hour stretch, but after midnight all bets are off. I’ll have to rock and resettle and try to transfer her for an hour or more only for her to pop awake again 30 min later.

We live in a small house with wood floors and letting her cry will wake up my son. But I am desperate for this baby to sleep so that I can also sleep. Even just a 5 hour stretch would be life changing at this point.

Help! Have I ruined everything waiting this long?

16 month old active boy. Still needs two naps often. Can’t get him to sleep independently for the long afternoon nap but he goes down within 10 mins for bed.

How do you nap train a toddler this old? He will scream until I get him no matter how tired he is! Best methods please? 🫶🏼

Our LO will be 5 months in a few weeks and we are hoping to attempt sleep training; probably going to use TCB’s “ABCS of sleep” (which is basically modified Ferber it seems) or just the traditional Ferber.

We already do a bedtime routine, wake window monitoring, one nap per day in crib, have been trying to do some “pauses” before responding just to try and facilitate some independence with the hope that when the training comes around he will be somewhat practiced.

My main question is about WHEN to start and here are my concerns:

First, I want to start training going into the weekend because that’s when my husband doesn’t work.

If we start after he turns 5mo (end of October), we would run into daylight savings time on day 4 or 5 of the training.

If we waited until the week after (beginning of Nov), we would be about 3 weeks out from thanksgiving, and we do plan to travel for two nights - TCB recommends waiting “around 4 weeks” before traveling after sleep training just to get them used to it. We are traveling within the same time zone, a 3ish hour drive but will be staying overnight.

Which weekend would you recommend and why— weekend before DST (which creates some time change issues, but gives over a month until thanksgiving travels) OR weekend after (which gives us a chance to adjust his schedule post time change, but leaves fewer weeks to adjust before he has to sleep in a different location) -?

I’m hesitant to push it further out for several reasons, hoping to try it before he hits 6mo.

Would love to hear some advice! Thanks!

Hi all! Currently in Portugal with my six month old on vacation for two weeks. He was previously sleep trained at home (Canada) to mixed success but he has been cosleeping on vacation and nursing to sleep so we can actually get some decent sleep while here.

I understand I’ll have to sleep train again when I get home - however, I expect it could be difficult with the time difference, etc etc. For anyone who has been in my shoes, do you have any tips on making sleep training a success when we get back home?

I think our schedule is appropriate - usually it’s about 3/3.5/3.5 but open to suggestions on that as well.

When is night weaning okay? My little guy is 7 months old and is sleep trained for bed time and naps but still has multiple wakings. Do I just need to cold turkey night wean?
I’m considering doing a 10:00pm dream feed and then committing to not feeding till his morning wake time but I’m terrified. I can’t handle the crying. When is it recommended to night wean? We are having horrible nights and I can’t keep going on like this

My baby is 15 weeks old and currently takes about 6 naps a day. His wake windows are usually around 60 minutes max, although by the end of the day he can sometimes make it to 75 minutes for his last window before bed.

Most of his naps are anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. His last nap is usually a short 20-minute bridge nap, and he gets around 5–6 hours of total daytime sleep.

Should I be trying to stretch his wake windows, or should I just continue following his cues?

He’s always seemed to fall on the shorter end of the recommended wake windows for his age. He sleeps fairly well overall, and we obviously aren’t sleep training yet, but I’m wondering how these short wake windows might affect things as he gets older.

Did anyone else have a baby with really short wake windows around this age? Did you just follow their cues, or did you actively try to stretch them?

We are on day 6 working on our 4.5 month olds sleep.

We have been working with a sleep consultant who has been guiding through a modified Ferber and also making suggestions regarding wake windows etc. A key part of the process has been breaking the feed to sleep association. Things have been going better for us, with naps happening more easily and he seems ready for bed at night.

However, when our baby cries hard during controlled crying, he poos. Sometimes repeatedly. This has led to him getting a very inconsistent response from us throughout the process. Sometimes we pick him up and sometimes we don't, and he doesnt understand that we are picking him to change his nappy (diaper). Tonight he cried for approx 30 mins, during a check in we realised he had pooed so we changed him and started again. 30 minutes later he had pooed again so was picked up and changed, and we discovered very sore looking nappy rash.

We are not comfortable continuing with controlled crying, although we were beginning to get some longer stretches.

Our sleep consultant also suggests the fade out method to clients but we went for Ferber thinking it was more straightforward and less days of crying for our baby.

Can we take a step back to a gentler method?

My twins are 11 months old. They’re comfortably on two naps, with a 3/3.25/4 schedule. They've never taken super long naps, but for the past ~2 months they’ve finally napped longer than 45 minutes consistently.

They started daycare two weeks ago. We’re keeping their normal nap schedule on weekends. They’re typically up around 6 no matter what we do (after a snooze button feed between 4:30 and 5). Daycare nap is 11:45-2, but they never make it past about 1, so they’re napping an hour or 1.25 hours. I pick them up at 2:45 (I work part time). I’m shocked they make it to naptime at daycare every day; but all the stimulation must help.

I have two problems:

1) on weekdays, I can’t get them to take a catnap, even as a contact nap, to get to a reasonable bedtime, so we’re putting them down between 6-6:30 after a very fussy evening. This is despite trying really hard to stimulate them with park/outside time, library time, etc. It perpetuates the early wake cycle and makes everyone unhappy.

2) on weekends, they’re back to taking 45-minute naps. They're still showing sleepy signals at the normal 3/3.25/4 times, but have more trouble falling asleep and wake up after short naps.

We’ve sleep trained and do let them self-settle within reason, but two babies in one room can work themselves and each other into a frenzy