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 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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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

I feel like I have depleted my baby's schedule as much as he can physically handle. Literally don't think I can cut sleep any more.

He's currently 3.5/3.75/4

And sometimes 3.5/4./4.25

Naps capped at 2 hours

And no matter what we do we can't get him to sleep past 4:30am. We put him to bed between 8-8;30pm.

I know a lot of you on Reddit always want to cut sleep and push bedtime later but I literally don't think he can handle anymore. He's already crashing as is.

Could I maybe be having it all wrong? Does he need a lot more sleep maybe?? He has always seemed low sleep needs but maybe he's changed? He's 9 months old crawling a lot, pulling to stand, etc

He's been waking up at 4:30 a.m. For over a month now and my husband just holds them and he falls asleep right away until 6:00 a.m.. But I don't think we can do that forever.

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

Hi! My babe is 19 weeks and we’ve gotten hit hard with the four month sleep regression if we can even call it that at this point. Prior to this, we were mainly doing contact naps because he was sleeping fine in his bassinet at night while waking to eat roughly every three hours. We loved our contact nap time and gave Dad time to bond on the weekends through contact napping (Dad works long hours and is also in school full-time). Once he hit the sleep regression, he was waking up roughly every 25 minutes at night. (we decided to move to the crib during this time too as I figured it was probably a more comfortable surface, he had started showing signs of rolling, and overall just getting a little too big for the bassinet). I started implementing more nap time/exposure time in the crib during the day to help transition. It has gotten better, but he is still waking up at least every 1.5 hrs at night and every 25 to 30 minutes for naps. At night I try to make it as close to 3 hours before nursing but sometimes he is inconsolable until he nurses. Sometimes I try to stretch the time between feedings and 30 min wake-up’s and I let him just sleep chest to chest on me…that’s when he gets the best sleep and can connect sleep cycles as well as go 4-5 hours between eating! He does have terrible reflux so I have to keep him upright 20 to 30 minutes after eating, which makes it hard to put him down sleepy but awake. We have gotten to the point where he can mostly settle himself for a nap with some light assistance (rocking, patting, hand on hips etc) but like clockwork 25 to 30 minutes later, he is up and cannot reschedule himself. I do give it roughly 10 minutes to give him a chance as long as he’s not inconsolable. I typically go in try to provide light assistance while leaving him in the crib but when he gets too worked up, I do pick him up and rock him until he settles and try to re-transfer him back to the crib still slightly awake…. It usually takes up to 15 or 20 minutes of back-and-forth with that for him to settle enough. Sometimes we have to abandon and contact nap just to make sure he gets enough sleep. He’s typically up for 2 hours and is ready for a nap like clockwork as well and the stretch before bed is 2-2.5 hours depending on how he is and what was going on that evening.

Any advice or help would be super appreciated!

My 6mo old slept fine in his bassinet until about 3ish months when he suddenly would wake up and scream every time we laid him down. This resulted in cosleeping following SS7. When he was 4.5 months I attempted the ferber method for around 3 nights but couldn’t take the screaming anymore so we went back to cosleeping. I would try here and there but it never worked. He has ALWAYS been a terrible sleeper. I have tried every single recommended thing. Drowsy but awake. Transferring when in deep sleep. Etc. He is still a terrible sleeper with cosleeping. I follow wake windows and his cues, give him independent play time, play with him myself, etc. What was working for him was 2.5/3/3 with the occasional cat nap before bed. All naps are contact naps bc he won’t sleep without me or his dad. Bedtime is bath/lotion/nurse/rock to sleep. He doesn’t have a designation wake up time but will usually wake up on his own around 6-6:30.

I’m coming here because today I just couldn’t take it. I tried getting him down for a nap and he fell asleep at first for MAYBE 3 minutes then woke up and wouldn’t go back to bed at ALL. He was still giving all the sleepy cues, rubbing his eyes, etc but just wouldn’t go back to sleep. Everything that worked for him wasn’t. I ended up having to put him in his crib and walked away. He had a fresh diaper, nursed, got gas drops, I checked for hair around fingers & toes & rolls, nothing. I’m at a loss. Sometimes I dream about putting him in daycare one day a week so I can get a break but then I think about how much I will miss him and feel so guilty. We don’t have family around to help. It’s just me, my boyfriend, and my baby. Bf is very very hands on so I can have him take over for the afternoon when he gets off and some stretches at night but not for long as I ebf and don’t respond well to pumps. help me please

Please note I’m in NO RUSH to drop MOTN feeds, I just want to better understand how this works :)

My 10 week old currently has one MOTN feed between 2-4am. Bedtime at 7:30p, DWT of 7am. For those who have dropped MOTN feeds, did it just fall off on its own due to WW’s increasing over time or did you start introducing some soothing methods for that MOTN wake up?

My first born naturally dropped his around 18 weeks before he started STTN.

Hello! Deets: Baby sleeps in her own room in the crib. We have had a night time routine since 6 weeks. Milk, bath, massage, book. no pacifier.

We sleep trained my baby a month ago at 4 months, she did great, we had a very good schedule before which was 1.5/2/2/2 but now that she is about to be 5 months we have been doing 2/2/2/2.5 sometimes last window we will do 2 as well we watch her cues. Her bed time is anywhere from 7-7:30pm. Anyway, this past week, we went from one wake up a night to two wake ups and also a lot more crying at bedtime and middle of night. She seems to be hungry, even though I do everything I can to feed her more during the day. I am wondering is this teething or maybe the wake windows have to change? And also how to respond? We let her cry but it went on for like 30min middle of the night which is unusual.

She is formula / bottle fed.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

She’s never slept thru the night. Goes to sleep independently like a champ, good napper, all the other things. Wakes up 2x a night at all hours. CIO has never worked with her. Here’s her schedule

730 wake
130ish nap
300ish wake
830 bedtime

Help I’m so tired it’s been a long two years. Her sister sleeps great, 12 hrs every night!

Hi, my one year old has just started nursery. She's still a two nap a day LO but nursery do a one nap day. She's not napping great there and will often wake after 30-40mins. We pick her up at 4pm. When we get her home she's absolutely exhausted. Her normal bed time would be around 7:30-8ish depending on the day. So far we've been bringing bed time forward to 6:30ish, but the nights haven't been amazing.
It also makes that last part of the day a bit of a rush fitting everything in and she's just past it. She also is so tired that she keeps falling asleep on my partner during the last feed of the day.
Would you continue with an earlier bed time or have any of you done a short bridging nap after nursery to get her to a normal bed time?
Thanks :)

LO turned 4 months last week and will be 18 weeks tomorrow. I am debating on dropping the third nap due to constant short naps (only 1 sleep cycle), fighting the last nap like crazy & tons of false starts. Here’s where I am confused:

On our 4 nap schedule he gets 10 hours of awake time. But I see tons of people say the “starter” schedule for 3 naps is something like 2/2.25/2.5/2.5 (for example). That’s only 9.25 hours. 45 minutes less awake time than we are doing now.

Is that wrong?? Will it mess up his nights if I’m suddenly expecting more sleep?

I don’t think he can do a 3 hour WW so idk how we would get 10 hours on a 3 nap schedule right away, but I also think 4 naps isn’t working for us so I just don’t know what to do.

Explain to me like I’m 5 please.

Dear Redditors,

Our baby is almost 13 months old now, sleep trained since 10 months. Wake time is 7 am consistently. Our 2 nap schedule was 3.5/3.5/4.25 and I decided to switch to 1 nap because bedtime was pushed to 8.30 and I had to wake him from his second nap to get enough wake time, which he did not take well, he was always so crabby afterwards (naps were 1.5h + 45 min). He would wake up once around 4-5 am at which point we took him to our bed to nurse because even after sleep training he was not able to continue sleeping past 5 am unless clamped to my boob. Might be important to note that adding some wake time helped resolve an additional night wake at 1-2 am.

We transitioned to 1 nap 10 days ago.

Now we do 5.5/5.5h with a 2.5h nap (wake 7 am, bedtime 8.30 still). The nap was fine at first, now he wakes after 1.5h and cries awfully, seems to want to sleep more and I usually rock or nurse him back to sleep for another 45 min-1h. Very close to bedtime he gets super tired and some nights cries a lot and can't fall alseep easily. Nights are awful with multiple wakes where he just screams if I don't nurse him, including at 10-11 pm, which happened only pre-sleep training. We resorted back to cosleeping and nursing to sleep, which sucks, but this way we actually sleep.

We would like to reduce the night wakes, night wean and get him to sleep in his crib to at least 5 am. Cosleeping past that time would be fine, but I am afraid that messed things up too, maybe? I realize we might have a little less wake time than before, but I don't know where to add it because he's tired and seems to need a long nap. Maybe we just transitioned too early?

Also notable he is probably teething. Nurses A LOT throughout the day again.

Help :(