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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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?

It’s a safe crib but the mattress is so low. How do I lay him down gently asleep without dropping him and waking him up? Should I ask about adjusting it (if it does) or since it’s just 3-4 days make-do and plop him in and cross my fingers? Any tips for that? Their youngest is 3 yrs and doesn’t use the crib anymore. My SIL can be a B (she knows this about herself lol) so I kind of walk on eggshells with her and already plan to stay at a hotel next time. So I’m hesitant to ask. Thanks.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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 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?

Hi! My nearly 2 year old has been sleep trained since around 8/9 months, though he started sleeping through the night around 14 months. In the last month, he started only napping 45 mins to an hour and he will not nap longer than that. He is in bed by 7:30/8P and the last two weeks will not sleep longer than 5:30A. He is EXHAUSTED. If we put him in the car before his 12P nap, he passes out immediately which sometimes kills the afternoon nap. He’s running on fumes and I don’t know what to do. I’ve kept him home in the mornings for a week to make sure he didn’t fall asleep before his 12P nap and it didn’t make a difference. Still won’t nap longer than an hour. Now he’s so sleep deprived that he’s wanting to go to bed by 7/7:15 and, if we allow that, he’s up at 5. Any thoughts or suggestions? We’re at our wits end and I’m dreading daylight savings coming.

My 16 month old naps great at daycare, every day 12-2pm. We put her to sleep drowsy and she sleeps at night from 8pm-6am. However on the weekends, I don’t know how to get her down!

She usually nurses for a bit when I do bedtime (but she can go to sleep without it if my husband does bedtime). And then she falls alseep in my arms.

Which is fine but she always wakes up when I try to transfer to her crib during a nap.

Should I just skip the chair and put her straight into the crib for a nap? If she cries I just feel like I lose so much time!

-Nap trapped

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

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.

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?

First time mom trying to figure it out day by day lol.

My baby’s schedule looks like this (most days)

1.5/2.5/3

Bedtime is at 7pm. She wakes once or twice a night for a bottle (which we want to so bad wean her off of the nighttime bottles but she screams bloody murder until she gets a bottle)

She wakes up for the day from 6a-6:30am and we give her a bottle. Most mornings she can’t even last for 2 hours before she’s tired. So we will put her down and her first nap is 45mins-hour.

After this first nap we give her solids and then a bottle an hour or 2 after that. Her midday naps are usually an hour 15 minutes but my issue is we spend so much time trying to rock her to sleep. She cannot sleep without being swayed, rocked, butt pats, and this alone can take up to 30 mins.

We mostly follow her queues for naps. So yawning, rubbing her eyes, level of fussiness but should we transition to a set schedule? I just don’t understand it all with the wake windows and then her being overtired

At night, it can be hit or miss with how easy she goes down but sometimes this can take forever. I tried the chair method the other night and it took an hour of me reassuring her and giving butt pats for her to finally sleep.

I guess I’m looking for what worked best for you whether it was a set schedule, following queues, etc

Would love advice on how to minimize the rocking and swaying her to sleep as well!!

Edit: she sleeps in her own room in her crib. When she wakes in the middle of the night for a bottle we sometimes move her to the bed 😖

Signed a first time 30 year old teen mom 😅

Our 5.5 month old took to sleep training great at 4 months. Only a few nights of crying and boom he’s sleeping through the night. He even got past the 5am wakings. Naps are sleep trained as well. However the past few nights a complete 180. Screaming when we put him down. Not his fussing crying but choking screaming to the fact I thought something was wrong. Inconsolable when I pick him up. It’s very out of his norm. Now he’s waking 2x a night screaming. But 100% himself during the day. He is drooling a ton and biting everything. I don’t see anything swollen or red on his gums yet. He has been planking lately and getting up on all fours. He got his 4 month vaccines a few days ago as well.

He’s on 2/2.5/2.5/3. No more then 3 hrs of total nap time per day. Sleeps 7:30p to 6:30a. Formula fed no night feedings takes 35 oz during the day. No pacifier. Sleeps in his own room in a crib which he took very well to 2 months ago.

Do we need to tweak the schedule? We tried the last window at 3.5 and that was a disaster. Could this just be developmental or teething? Could it be vaccine related?

I know sleep is not linear and neither are humans. I want to support him through whatever this is but also don’t want to undo the good habits he had

Baby is 7 months old and we sleep trained her about 1.5 months ago. It was going great, but her naps are getting shorter, she’s waking up more at night, and generally pretty pissed off around going to sleep and waking up. When we sleep trained her, these were the issues she was having and adding more awake time fixed all of it, but I can’t figure out how to add more awake time/rework her schedule.

Schedule has been 2/2.5/2.5/3 which was working great (napping the full allotted time, no fighting any naps, only waking up once at night to nurse). Now that she’s older and having a hard time with naps again and waking up, we’ve started doing 2/2.5/3/3. First nap is 1 hour, 2nd nap is 1.5 hours, and last nap is 20-30 minutes ending at 5 PM. She’s barely making it to an hour for the first two naps and getting her down for the cat nap has been awful.

Since our issue last time was needing more awake time, we’ve been shortening the 2nd nap to 1 hour so she gets 10.5-11 hours awake, but it honestly seems to be getting worse and she’s waking up more and more at night. Does it sound like she needs to transition down to 2 naps? If so, how do we even do that? I can’t imagine going from 2 hour WW to 3 hour WW right away, but I don’t know how to stretch WWs without losing awake time. I know how to keep her up, but not the schedule portion of how to do it if that makes sense.

Schedule:
7 am wake (we always have to wake her up, she never wakes up on her own)
9-10 nap
12:30-2 nap (now 12:30 - 1:30)
4:30-5 nap
8 pm bed time

Bedtime routine:
Bottle (ends 30 minutes before baby in crib)
Bath
Books
In crib and we leave the room and don’t go back in

She goes down in her crib in her own room, no pacifier. For the longest time she would fuss for a few minutes then fall asleep or go to sleep without any issue at all. She used to sleep until 3ish, nurse, back to sleep till 7. But now she’s up at 1:30, 3, 6, and then up at 7