Does anyone have any gentle methods? We cosleep and I want to continue bf during the day but want to night wean

Having Dad settle maybe an option but not for another 2 months after which Dad may be able to handle some nights

If I don't offer the boob between sleep cycles he screams! He's getting 2h of daytime sleep and plenty of exercise and outdoor time.

He wakes every 2h at night for comfort nursing

My 9 month old gets up multiple times a night I feed him back to sleep, which sometimes is draining but I am not wanting to do any sleep training. Anyways naps… he normally does two 60-70 minute naps a day recently he’s been wakening half way through and I go in and pat him or rock him back to sleep is this wrong should I let him wake? But I feel if he’s easily going back to sleep within two minutes he needs the rest.

My baby is just hitting 4 months. I’ve heard this is a good time to kind of add more of a schedule to their sleep.

I like the idea of this because if it helps my kiddo sleep better that’s great and I obviously want them getting enough rest for their brain development etc…. However I also don’t want to restrict myself and make myself go crazy by limiting all my life interactions due to set naps and bedtimes. We often go to grandparents for dinner for example and I don’t want to just have dinner and be like k bye gotta go cuz bedtime u know? How are people balancing these things? Any ideas or help is appreciated. Thanks.

Cosleeping with a 7 month old. I don’t mind it although I wish I could get more comfortable. Breastfeeding at night is a breeze. It’s just me and her in the big bed.

The problem is that I work nights (12 hours) several times a month. Hubs then has to take LO all day while I sleep and then all night while I’m working. Thankfully his mother stays overnight so she can take over after I get home, shower, nurse, and then get some sleep. Hubs definitely loves the snuggles and baby girl sleeps just fine with him despite the absence of boobs, so breastfeeding is not the limiting factor, but he absolutely cannot sleep when he’s got her, so he’s running on almost 24 hours awake by the time I get home. It would also be nice to not feel like I was hit by a truck every morning and maybe let hubs have his spot back lol.

Because of this we are making a concentrated effort to get her accustomed to sleeping in her crib. We rock and nurse to sleep and then either I or hubs will put her down, but she usually doesn’t stay asleep for long and wakes up crying. Last night we got about an hour and a half, but tonight she only slept 20 minutes and now she’s in my arms. We always end up back in the big bed.

We will absolutely not let her cry it out, but I do want to help her to feel safe enough in there at night that she’ll go back to sleep unless she’s hungry. Is that even possible?

I am coming up to going back to work in 3 weeks' time (😭) with an 11 month old who was still often waking every 1-2 hours, maybe with an initial 3-4 hour stretch, with me being the solo responder every single night to feed back to sleep.

Everyone was telling me I can't keep doing this back at work, I would be too tired, I would have to sleep train, I would have to stop feeding to sleep, I would have to do something to change this. I didn't want to change anything, I was just planning to deal with it, plus she's going to go to daycare and probably get sick a lot and have bad nights because of that anyway, and I just didn't see the point. But the pressure people were giving me!!

But!! The last couple of weeks, things have slowly been improving where our best nights were becoming our normal slowly..... And then last night she did an initial 7 hour stretch and then slept through till morning and tonight an initial 8 hour stretch!!!

So eff all those people who told me she couldn't learn to do it all by herself and that I was hindering her sleep and mine. I have changed literally nothing about her schedule, the way she falls asleep, how I respond, nothing. She will sleep when she's good and ready, thank you very much.

I know we will likely go through rough patches again for various reasons. But she can do it!! And I'm so proud of her and so proud of me for sticking with it.

That's all.

Baby is 8.5 months and sleep has gone completely to shit. He’s always needed a lot of support around sleep (normally wakes 2-4x a night), but bedtime has recently become a nightmare.

At this point the schedule is roughly 3/3/3.5, and that’s just following his sleepiness cues. Sometimes WW are a little longer, but never under 3 hours. Total naps around around 2 hours, sometimes 2.5.
We just moved states. Dad isn’t here yet. He’s teething. Bedtime is taking 2 hours minimum. He feeds to sleep and then is ready to party but also fussy, rubbing eyes, and melting down. Nighttime is a whole different story. 4-6 wakeups a night, which used to be 2-3.

Is it just a transition thing? Not enough wake time (it seems weird to extend WWs when he’s clearly tired)? I tried Motrin at bedtime for teething and it made no difference. Am I doing something wrong? He’s going through so much, constantly pulling to stand and wanting to walk, plus a new place… I am just at my wit’s end solo parenting and so exhausted.

My LO is 11 months and we love bed sharing so I can easily nurse her back to sleep. We don’t want any more kids so I’m happy to get in all the baby cuddles that I can as hard as it can be sometimes. Anyways, when did you transition your LO into their own bed/back to their crib/their own room? Our crib sits in the corner of our bedroom collecting dust and I will be getting rid of it soon, but not sure if I want to try out a floor bed in our room/her own room or just continue on. Her bedroom is on the floor down from us so I am torn. Thanks!

(I also posted this in the cosleeping sub, but think I may get more responses here)

Were going to do our first hotel stay this weekend and im a little stressed about the sleep situation. I sleep on a very low profile futon on the floor with my 12 month old at home. He rolls a lot in his sleep and every time he wakes at night he immediately sits up, crawls, even stands on the rare occasion. I usually wake when he does, but sometimes i wake and find him sitting on the floor on the side of the bed…no clue what his manner of exit from the bed was…

We have done some traveling to families houses and had luck with just putting a mattress on the floor. I also slept with him once on a high normal bed that was against the wall. I put him on the wall side and it wasnt a problem.

Also, my husband does not want to entertain the idea of our baby sleeping between us. Husband is a fairly large guy and feels like he sleeps too deep and moves to much in his sleep. I am more comfortable with the idea than he is after all the books ive read about sleep. But not trying to start an argument right now.

So ideally we can put the mattress on the floor at the hotel.

But im planning for the event that there is not enough space to do that.

I want to preface this by saying I understand that bed bumpers and rails are not necessarily the safest option. I am just weighing pros and cons for the temporary situation.

I assume the bed will not be against a wall. So I bought these inflatable travel bumpers and I set them up today and I am so worried that my little guy would easily crawl over them in the night. And fall off the bed.

Any suggestions? Should i buy a bedrail? Not sure if we would be able to fit that in the car for travel

ETA: We cosleep for pure survival. We are bringing the pack n play as an ultimate last resort, but he currently wakes every 2 hours with cosleeping…so i am pretty sure no one would get much sleep with him in the pack n play all night.

ETA #2: There is a sofa bed in the hotel room. I am not sure why i did not think to look at the room photos and description online. My husband booked it months ago and im clearly sleep deprived this week lol. I think we will be able to easily put the mattress from the pull out sofa on the floor!

My 7 month old had a pretty predictable sleep pattern and was getting an average of 13.5-14 hours of sleep per day between his three naps and night sleep. All of a sudden, literally overnight, he dropped about two hours of sleep and is now sleeping about 11.5-12 hours per day total. 1-1.5 hours of the dropped sleep was from his nighttime sleep.

This has been going on for the last week or so. I’m surprised and a little concerned about the dramatic drop in sleep. He does seem fussier during the day, but he also just started crawling and popped a tooth. Is this a sign that I need to drop a nap, or just a phase because he’s learning new skills?

13 month old transitioned to one nap a week ago. We co-sleep on a floor bed, and she nurses to sleep. I’m trying to stop nursing her to sleep, but so far nothing else seems to work.

She has struggled with falling asleep for the past few months. Once she is asleep, she generally sleeps well and wakes only once to feed. Her usual nighttime sleep is approximately 8 PM to 7 AM.
Bedtime has always taken at least 40 minutes, but lately it can take several hours, and she sometimes doesn’t fall asleep until around 10 PM. This was one of the reasons we transitioned to one nap, as her bedtime was getting increasingly late.

She now has one nap of approximately two hours. Getting her down for her nap also takes at least 40 minutes. She nurses for a long time and protests when I unlatch her, even after she has fallen asleep and stopped actively nursing.
Bedtime is even more difficult. She nurses, then unlatches and starts moving around the room. Sometimes she plays, sometimes she cries wants to leave the room, and sometimes she tosses and turns around the bed.

She is generally a very active child, and at bedtime she simply won’t lie down long enough to relax and drift off to sleep. Nothing seems to help her relax. I’ve tried stories, lullabies, patting, stroking, and other calming techniques, but nothing seems to work.

Hi everyone,

LO is EBF and around 4.5 months old. She has had pretty good night sleep since she was born - recently around 2-4 night wake ups but with cosleeping and feeding to sleep these are super easy to handle. Normally we are in bed from around 9 pm until 8 or 9 am, but that is with cuddling, some play before sleep etc.

Her daytime sleep however is all over the place. On a daily basis I basically have no idea when she will be asleep and when not. Often she is having micro naps while nursing which somehow regenerate her to be awake another hour or two. I offer sleep when I see shes been awake a while, but I don’t ever force it. She has reliably one nap a day which is at least 30-60 min, also cosleeping or a contact nap, though when this is is truly all over the place. She is happy and alert throughout the day and eating well.

Am I disadvantaging her at some point by not enforcing a daytime schedule, calculating wake windows etc? Would she over time develop a daytime schedule of her own? I am home with her for the whole first year, so we have no real need to conform to a schedule currently, and I’m satisfied with her nighttime sleep.

Wondering if anyone has advice about how to break the feed to sleep association once baby naturally stops BFing? Not a problem just now but I’m assuming it’s on the horizon. Thank you!

This is my 3rd baby and neither of my older kids did this so would love to know this is actually a thing (lol)
My 4 week old fights tooth and nail to sleep. Not just at night time, all day. This just started a few days ago. I change and feed her as soon as she wakes up and then try and get her back to sleep as I don’t want her wake window to be too long (made the mistake of doing that earlier on) and she will not settle. Screams and cries. It takes almost 2 hours for her to settle. Even while holding her, rocking her, in the carrier. Once she finally does start to shut her eyes it’s like clock work 5 min in she opens her eyes and starts looking around. I don’t dare put her down because I know she isn’t in a deep sleep yet. On top of the hours it takes to settle her, for her to actually be in a deep sleep takes another 30-45 min. Anyone else???

I’m a FTM to an EBF 18 week old. For the last 2ish weeks he’s been waking up every 45min to 2 hours. He was previously doing 3 hour stretches in the night, so that’s why I put quotes around regression because he’s never really slept thru the night. But he’s randomly given us 2 nights now from 9pm-3am.

My question is how do they randomly just sleep thru the night some nights during this period of more night wake ups? He’s done the same thing every day and wasn’t a more stimulating day than usual. Has this happened to anyone else? Everything is just so confusing/mind boggling to me

My 6 month old has generally been a relatively decent sleeper and a fairly high sleep needs baby.

We went through 4ish weeks of sleep challenges when she was 4 months old with fighting naps and being unable to link sleep cycles (all naps at 30 minutes). Luckily from 5 months onwards she had gone back to longer naps and we would get anywhere between 30mins to 2 hours. Night sleep would be between 7pm to 7am with one wake up for milk. Sometimes she would wake to happily babble in her bed for an hour and go back to sleep.

Now, for the last couple of weeks sleep is a mess again. She gets tired around 2 hour window with clear signs - rubbing eyes, staring etc., but trying to put her down is hell - screaming, kicking, hard to transfer. A lot of naps don’t go past 30 minutes and cannot be ‘saved’ despite her clearly being tired after waking up. At night she also wakes up multiple times screaming and being hard to put down (normally from 2am onwards). It is definitely not teething as we tried remedies to no effect.

My question is, is this a normal phase? Development? I am happy to keep supporting her, rocking and persevering through her distress, but I am worried about how tired she seems all the time upon waking up.

OMG Y’ALL! As the title says. I’m shooketh. I was posting on here a couple months ago LOSING MY DAMN MIND with 45 minute wake ups throughout the night. Here I am on the other side. And I haven’t done anything different - still nursing to sleep, still cosleeping. He’s just growing up & naturally developing into a more sleep capable little bubs.

I’m absolutely not expecting this to continue, just to not get my hopes up lol but for this morning, I am celebrating 🙏🎉🥳

When you’re in the trenches of sleep deprivation it feels like you MUST be doing something wrong, you start questioning everything. The only thing I did start doing was capping day time sleep around the really really bad nights and that made a slight improvement in his sleep, but it was still really tough. He had 4 teeth coming in & was trying to crawl.

Just keep going, you WILL sleep again. I never thought it would happen to me 🥲

Babe is 12 months! (I think) I’m finding that with an earlier bedtime (like before 7:30p) my baby tends to sleep later in the morning between like 6:30/7a. But when I put him to bed closer to 8p he will wake up at 5:30/5:45a ready for the day….does anyone else find this?
Where it confuses me is if he wakes up at 4p from a nap I feel like putting him to bed at 7:15ish is not enough awake time….so what do I do lol

My baby was born at home, since the night she was born I have always coslept. I went into motherhood planning to cosleep because I believed in the bonding, health benefits, and breastfeeding support, we never even bought a bassinet. I woke her up every 2 hours to nurse until she hit her birth weight, and from then I’d let her sleep, however she’s always woken up every 2 hours on her own anyways. I carried her basically all day as a newborn, all naps were contact naps in the carrier, and I had her on me doing skin to skin as much as possible for the first few months of her life. She had reflux so up until she was 5 months old we slept chest to chest, and then she slept next to me nursing on and off throughout the night. From 6 months onward she’d basically be latched all night long, and had 2-3 months of waking up every 30-60 minutes.

She’s 12 months now and still needs to be near someone, still wakes up every 1-2 hours, and can not sleep in the car, stroller, or anywhere that isn’t touching someone. She will let others put her to sleep if I’m not in the room, so she’s not dependent on me or nursing specifically, but she definitely needs to be in contact with someone for both naps and night sleep. Throughout the past year I’ve tried at various points to get her to sleep in a crib attached to the bed, a separate mattress, even just a bit further than me on the mattress, but the max she’ll sleep is 30 minutes before stirring and getting super upset that she’s not touching someone.

My husband is telling me that for the next baby, we need to try a bassinet/crib from day one so we “don’t make these habits again”. He really believes that she got too used to cosleeping and constantly being near someone, so she never got the ability to learn that it’s possible to sleep on her own away from someone touching/holding her.

In my head I keep thinking this is just her temperament, even if I had put her in a bassinet from day one she might have just turned out to be a contact-seeking baby anyways. And if she wasn’t a contact-seeking baby, she would have made it clear that she doesn’t like being so close. But the comments start getting to me and I’m beginning to wonder if maybe he’s right. I did what I thought was best for her, but now I keep worrying that maybe I made her too dependent on touch and she could have been getting better sleep if I had just given her a chance to sleep away from someone.

I’m not sure if this has any basis in biologically normal infant sleep, but this sub aligns most with my thoughts so I thought I’d ask here. Thank you for reading!

Helpppp!! Feeling at the end of my tether. Do I sleep train? Finding it so hard and not being consistent with it as it breaks my heart seeing her cry so much. Shes getting so distressed she's turning herself over in her bassinet and she hasn't learnt to roll back yet therefore getting more frustrated so I end up going into her before the 5/10 mins.

She used to sleep great, put down awake but drowsy and go straight to sleep at 7pm - 2am for her first feed, back down and then wake at 7am. Since approx 4.5months - she is unable to go down without significant crying meaning myself or my husband have to rock her and sing her to sleep, when she wakes in the night she takes so long to settle, I end up putting her in my bed which she is definitely sleeping better in when being cuddled but still not great.

Me and my husband are now falling out frequently over this as we're both so fed up of taking 1hr+ to settle her every night and throughout the night.

Any advice so greatly appreciated

hello all. my babe is almost 3 months and is wonderful sleeper at night. she sleeps about 8 hours during her first stretch at night before she wakes up for a feed then sleeps another 3 ish hours. when we watch her on the monitor she wakes after her first 30 minutes or so and then spends 20-40 minutes awake ish but almost always falls back asleep on her own. if she fusses too much i go back in and put her back to sleep.

during the day she mostly contact naps but i do want her to start napping in her crib at least once a day so i can get some things done. we have been practicing putting her in the crib once a day, usually her second nap but starting to try with first. when she contact naps she often stirs after about half an hour and i shush her back to sleep and she’ll usually sleep for 1.5 to 2 hours. during her crib nap she wakes after 30 minutes and will not go back to sleep. i give her lots of time but she always ends up fussing or crying out after a while so i go get her.

looking for advice on supporting her to sleep a little longer in her crib!

Baby is 7 months on the 7th. His nights seem to cap out at 9 hours no matter what I do, I can’t escape the EMW. DWT is 6:30 but we’re waking up at 5 and needing held back to sleep IF he falls back asleep.

Schedule is 2.5/2.5/2.75/3

First nap anchored at 9 unless he wakes before 6 and doesn’t go back to sleep, we will move it to 8:30

Bedtime at 8 and up at 5 like clockwork. If we do get him back down at 5 he is still up at 6.

He sleeps for 2.5 hours maximum during the day.

Overtired from anchoring first nap? Ready for 2 naps? Just need to accept 6 as new DWT?

Hi all, my son is 21 months nearly 22 months old and he is such a bad sleeper that it’s really mentally taking a massive toll on me and I don’t know what I can do. He is SUPER dependent on me, he still wakes up multiple times a night calling for me and needs me to do bum taps or sing to him to get him to sleep or sometimes even rock him. On average he wakes up between 2-7 times a night and there have been occasions where he is awake for 2 hours or even ready for the day at 4am. He’s always been a very bad sleeper since he was around 9 months old before that he was great, we did contact naps until 7 months old. Bedtime takes up to 40mins on a good day and consists of him laying in his cot and us tapping his bum and signing to him, he will literally do anything to keep himself awake until he can’t do it anymore. But the biggest struggle for us at the moment are his naps it’s beyond hard to get him to sleep and just tests me in every way possible. He used to do naps in the car and that was easier than at home but then the last 3 weeks decided he wanted to fight that too, at home it’s almost impossible to get him to nap we have to physically rock him (he’s 13kgs) and force him to sleep he will do anything to fight it and I mean anything, he will smack his lips, talk, laugh, sing, literally try to fight us off until eventually he can’t do it anymore and that takes at least 45mins (on a good day) and is sooo exhausting. There are days where I just end up crying or screaming at him which I don’t want to do but it’s so frustrating when I’m trying so hard and he just laughs at me or does something silly. I’ve tried to leave him in the cot and walk out because sometimes I need to and the moment I leave he becomes hysterical and starts crying straight away. I tried to just sit there and he just tries to get up. He thinks it’s a game and just rolls around does back flips just anything.

We thought maybe his ready to drop the nap because we went through 2 weeks of him fighting it so bad that a lot of the time he didn’t nap, so had an early bed time but his night time sleep was just as bad and then even worse him not napping started affecting his behaviour and he became so angry all the time, throwing tantrums hitting biting etc (never ever did that apart from occasional tantrums) so we realised he really did need the nap even though he would act normal. We managed to get him back into naps by forcing him like before still takes up to 45 mins and is such a big struggle. He is super clever and advanced, he talks a lot and can put 3 word sentences together, he has SO much energy so I do think his brain struggles to switch off but what else can we do? It affects my mental health so much and it’s sooo difficult, the nap time, the bed time and also constant wake up at night I feel like I can’t catch a break. It’s making me feel so frustrated with him a lot and everyday I’m just running on nothing. When does it get better? Or will it get better? I feel like sleep training him is impossible he is hysterical when I leave the room let alone if I tried anything else, I feel like some of this is my fault and I’ve made him too dependent on me 🥲 (also tried to get him to sleep in bed with us because we don’t mind but he doesn’t want that)

Got an 8 month old here who is still on a very firm 3 nap/day schedule. Kind of expected to at least be transitioning by now but she still can’t and it more than 3 hours awake and currently sleeps 11 hours straight at night, so I’m not keen on forcing any changes!

But I’m curious, what age was your LO when they dropped the third nap?

I have a 13 MO, and she seems to be needing more sleep as of the last couple of days - she doesn’t appear to be sick, and she doesn’t have a temp etc.

So, I’m just wondering, when did your toddlers start to communicate properly they were tired? I’m regretting not teaching her sign language 🙃.

Is this normal? I’m assuming it is, but it does make me feel like I’m doing something wrong. Dad took most of the nights and early morning shifts this week and I think bub slept through for 4 out of 6 of them (he uses a pacifier, so maybe some of those “sleep throughs” required maybe 1 replug as we call it!)

Anyway, 2 nights ago I took over again because dad is busier during the days again, and bub woke up at midnight and 4am for a feed and maybe 1-2 other short wake ups.

He’s in his own room now and he’s combo fed. So we can’t really say “he smells the milk” because physically we were all doing the same thing when it was my night as when it was dads!

Also maybe I’m hoping that this is him slowly starting to STTN consistently but maybe I’m delusional