I have an 8MO that we sleep trained with Ferber around 6mo the. He’s mastered going down on his own but we didn’t wean him so he was still wake 1-2 nightly for feeds (breast fed).

As of the last week, he’s waking earlier and earlier and staying awake for an hour and sometimes more. If he’s been asleep 5+ hours I’ll feed otherwise I just do Ferber check-ins. It feels like all he does is cry and it feels awful.

His schedule is wake around 7- 2-2.5 hour wake window, 1.5/2 hour nap (though currently it’s maybe an hour), awake for 3 hours, 1 hour nap, awake for 3.5-4.5 hours and sleep by 7ish. If anyone has advice I’m all ears!

Hi!

We are sleep training our 12 month old.. we’re currently on day 4… quick over view: we started using the Ferber method the first couple of days, then had a horrible nap experience, he cried for 2 hours so my husband panic bought Taking Cara Babies lol. Her method for the check in intervals are pretty much the same.

So sometimes he goes down in 20mins and sometimes it takes him an hour or more. I’ve noticed when it’s time to sleep, and we go in his room (We follow our schedule bath, sleep sack, read books, bed, and have the hatch sound machine +light) whenever it’s time he’s sooo upset even when we’re reading I feel like he knows “it’s coming” and he’s just dreading the crib :( he starts pouting/sometimes crying before we even lay him down. It makes me so sad.

Ive read it can take up to 2-3 weeks to fully sleep train at 12 months😫

Any tips/tricks/advice we can do to ease the transition or at least help him dread his crib less. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

Baby is 6.5 months old, EBF and we've finally gotten on a consistent day time schedule which is generally 3/3/3.5 and his two naps are 60-90 minutes each. He's rarely going over 3 hours of daytime sleep. We sleep trained around 4-5 months (setting a timer and letting him CIO) and he falls asleep easily at bedtime and for naps especially now that he happily rolls onto his stomach.

We had a brief window where he was going down around 7pm and was waking up once to nurse around 4am and then sleeping until 6:30/7am. Since the naps got better nighttime sleep has gone down hill and he's up at least 3 times a night. His first wakeup is often around 10:30pm and since we're still awake we'll set a timer and let him cry for around 10 minutes and will feed him if he doesn't fall back asleep. Lately he's cried the whole ten minutes.

He'll also wake up around 2am (my wife will nurse him because we're both half asleep and this is the path of least resistance) and then he gets up around 5/5:30. I try to get him back down with a pacifier but since it's so close to morning this can be tough and sometimes my wife will nurse him back to sleep and he sleeps an hour in bed with us (one of us is always mostly awake).

I'm not sure where the best place to start is to cut down the night wake ups or try to get a more consistent morning wakeup time. I'm wondering if we're letting him sleep too much during the day? He went from 4 30-40 minute naps to 2 60-90 minute naps pretty quickly. Any advice would be appreciated!

We're in process of sleeping training via CIO for my 5 month old. Currently on 3 naps 2/2.5/2.5/3ish. Average total sleep lately is just shy of 14 hours. We notice we get better nights and a better overall mood and rhythm throughout the day with a 07:00 FMW and 20:00 bedtime. But the 20:00 bedtime with the optimal-for-age wake windows is hard to achieve if naps are even a little short.

Today for example, first nap at 09:00 was only 70 minutes (ending at 10:10). Second nap therefore started around 12:40 and was only 45 (he got super fussy even with maximum entertainment at the end of this wake window). That nap ended at 13:25 (45 minutes). Last nap will be at 16:00 or slightly before and it is generally always the shortest, 20-30 minutes. If that's the case is it better to put the baby down "early" to avoid going over 3 hours of awake time? Or should we push through to 20:00? We can easily have short nap days that have the last nap ending as early as 4pm. I really don't want to push our morning wakes earlier if we can possibly avoid it. What's the recommended strategy here?

I have always put my baby to bed at 7pm and let her wake up when she’s ready. I don’t have any issues with her crying or fighting sleep anymore. I started using a baby monitor to watch her and i notice that a lot of times she’ll just lay in her bed with her eyes open for hours. some days it’s earlier than others where she falls asleep. sometimes she’ll talk to her stuffies or flip through one of her books she keeps with her. but for the most part she’s just chilling in there, eyes open. Is this normal for an almost 2 1/2 year old? I try to have a wake window of at least 4 hours before bedtime.

did sleep training (Ferber) around 3 months and it worked well for a month... then started traveling a good bit and teething and now we are at 6.5 months and it's turned into 3x's a night wakes/feeds and I'm about to lose my mind. LO is refusing bottles during the day and I chase her to drink milk throughout the day, the night feeds are usually 4oz and that's the only time she takes milk without a fight. What do I do?

WT 8:30

2/2/2 + "crap nap" when needed to make up any shorter day naps. (aiming for 3hours total)

BT 8:30

I know this schedule is "late" but it is what works with my husband's work schedule.
Any advice?

Please help!

All of a sudden my 11 month old will not nap unless in the car or being rocked.
I used to be able to put him down awake and he would put himself to sleep. He was sleep trained. And the only method that worked was full extinction.

Now that he can stand, he will stand for a full hour and just cry.

We tried a gentle Ferber with check-ins for naps and checking in made him more worked up.

I’m at my wits end. I can’t get anything done and he’s just so tired. Nights are fine and he still sleeps through. But naps have become an absolute nightmare.

Has anyone tried full extinction for naps with an 11 month old?? Is there any hope?

Hoping ya’ll can help me overcome one last hurdle with sleep-training my 18 month old. Over the past few months we have slowly transitioned from co-sleeping to him sleeping in his crib all night. We are now at the point where he wakes up 1-2 times per night and I just go tuck him back in and sit in his room for 10 minutes until he falls back asleep. I don’t pick him up or talk to him when I do this. We’ve been stuck at this stage for about 3 weeks and I’m not sure how to help him learn to fall back asleep without me going in there. He will sit and cry and call out “mama” for 45+ minutes and has not yet gotten himself back to sleep independently. I would like to avoid full on crying it out unless there is no other option, because he will cry for a long time and it just breaks my heart! Thanks in advance for any wisdom!

If it helps, his bed time is 8:00 pm and he usually takes a 1 hour nap around 11:00am. For bedtime, we read 2 stories and then he falls asleep in his crib independently while I sit in his room. Usually takes about 10 minutes for him to fall asleep.

Baby girl is 7.5 months. She’s our second, and we approached her sleep way different than our first - aka no schedule, just cues. It’s been working, for now. Roughly though, she might be a 3/3/4. Sometimes a 3/4/5, or sometimes a 2/2/3/4. This varies because sometimes she wakes early, falls asleep on the way to daycare, on the way home, or maybe while we’re driving somewhere on the weekend.

We haven’t done any sleep training because she’s been sooo easy to fall asleep. The problem is, it used to be either just snuggling in our arms or when she’s done nursing and now it’s like 100% when she’s done nursing. This isn’t sustainable. I start a new job soon (have been laid off w the ability to get up a lot in the motd) so I’m hoping the sleep training will help her self soothe when she can to go back to sleep without a boob.

The evening routine: Dinner, bath sometimes, pjs and diaper, go to brother’s room for bedtime things, go back to her room with dimmed lights and sound machine on, into sleep sack, nurse, and she falls asleep.

I’ve attempted to nurse earlier to then only read a book and say goodnight when we’re back in her room. Super fail. I know I need more of a plan and more knowledge/tools than I have. Help please! Where do we start??

6month old, almost 7 now. Never been a great sleeper (since birth would wake every 2-3h for feeding - was a month premature so we would go for it). Since 4mo wakes up every hour, some very rare 2h stretches, screaming for the bottle. Bottle fed since 2 mo. Still taking 4 naps a day (mostly 30-40min so tops 2.5h a day) - sometimes 3 naps a day. Bedtime by 7-7:30pm (pretty consistent). Tried cosleeping, didn’t change the pattern. We are going insane 😵 NEVER slept over 3h in his very long life 🤣

any tips for difficult babies? (difficult in the most cute way, but will scream bloody murder and wont stop during nightime, only the bottle can help 🥲)

My baby is three months old. He currently sleeps at night from 8 PM to about 7:30 AM. Two weeks ago we started doing one arm out in the swaddle. It took him about 2 to 3 days to get adjusted and now he does fine with it. I’m planning to do the second arm out in a couple days. I did read about the magic Merlin sleep sack. Is this worth getting? If both of his arms are going to be out in a few days, do we even need the magic Merlin? Or do we just continue two arms out with the swaddle?

Current schedule: wake 7:30am, start nap routine at 12:30, bed time at 8pm if he naps, or 7pm if he doesn’t.

I know a lot of people just let their kids drop the nap around this age but I really don’t think my son is ready. When he doesn’t nap he gets very wired in the afternoon/evening, and also gets pretty irritable, which makes the bedtime routine rough too.

The nap routine starts right after lunch around 12:30 or 1pm. We read books, I start rocking him with his blanket while we sing songs and then I put him in his crib. This used to work like clockwork and he would go to sleep for up to 2hrs.

After this past summer we had some vacations and also some changes to my work schedule so the routine got thrown off a bit. Now since I’ve tried to get back to the routine he is absolutely refusing to sleep. As soon as he realizes it’s nap time he starts fighting. He won’t sit with me while we read, doesn’t want to be rocked. I’ve tried just putting him in the crib and saying goodnight but he just cries or rolls and bounces around and never goes to sleep.

I’ve tried moving the routine later but IF he does fall asleep (which is still rare) he ends up not going to bed until 10/11pm which is too late for me and my husband, we need to be in bed by 8/9pm due to our work schedule.

Any tips or advice on either getting him to nap or figuring out how to get thru the evenings with a tired, grouchy toddler I guess would be appreciated

We are planning to sleep train our 17 week old when she turns 4 months later this week. Currently, we rock her for every nap and for bedtime before placing her down in the crib for naps and bassinet for bedtime. We are on four naps and all naps are about 35 minutes and then she wakes up, we put her down 10 minutes after she falls asleep after rocking. For the second nap, I nurse her to sleep and hold her for about 2-2 1/2 hours for a longer nap.

The last two nights for bedtime she wakes up as soon as we put her down in the bassinet. Before, if we held her for 20 minutes after rocking her to sleep for bedtime, and put her down, she would stay asleep for 4 to 6 hours but last night, we had to hold her to sleep the whole night and she nursed most of the night while I held her.

We are currently following wake windows of 1.5/1.5/1.5/1.75/1.75 since the last day or two.

I have a few questions before we start to sleep train:

1. Since we rock her to sleep or nurse her to sleep, how do we know if the wake windows are appropriate before we sleep train? Since we soothe and rock her to sleep, we cannot tell if she is under or overtired because she ends up falling asleep at some point. 

2. We have been taking her 15 minutes before the end of the wake window into her room, putting on her sleep sack and telling her that it’s time for a nap and turning off the lights with her in our hands. The last 2 days, every time we walk into the room and put on her sleep sack in the crib before picking her up to rock her, she’s been crying loud. Is this mean overtired or she’s starting to associate the room with sleep (4 month regression?)

3. Should we start with naps or bedtime for ST? Since we EBF, if she wakes up in the middle of the night, how do we know if we should feed her or use our sleep training method to put her back to sleep?

4. For a 17 week old, is it better to start with extinction or Ferber method with check ins? If we do Ferber, how many days should we try until we know that the check-ins are not helping her?

Thank you in advance! We STed our older daughter at 5 months with extinction and remembered her crying a lot because we couldn't get the WW right before starting so want to make sure we are prepped this time.

TY!

My baby is just about 10 months. Sleep trained via Ferber
For a few months he was comfortably doing:
3/3/4 - Naps 1 hour each
Sleeping straight through the night 7:30pm-7:30am

The last few days he’s been fighting his second nap, and the second wake window ends up being close to 4 hours. I’ve tried a few days of capping his nap to 45 mins ish to keep bedtime around 7:30, and also tried a few days of keeping the hour nap and having a slightly later bedtime.. both have resulted in him waking earlier (6:30am - 7am) which is fine.. I’ve then tried making an adjustment where he does 11 hours overnight and added approx 15 mins to each nap duration to get him closer to the 14 hour suggested sleep per day for his age.. he’s still fighting his second nap hard.

I’m wondering a couple things:
- is it too early to work toward dropping to one nap?
- even though he goes down easy for his first nap at 3 hours, should I push that one back and work on extending wake windows to gradually work toward one nap?
- what have you found successful in transition to one nap? Trying for a longer first nap and maybe a 15 min cat nap in the afternoon?
- any schedule adjustments that I haven’t thought of that I should try before flipping my world and his schedule upside down lol?

Thank you!

does anyone else have a baby who falls asleep in your arms but wakes up the second you put them in the crib?

you can rock them, feed them, walk around, wait until they seem completely asleep... and then somehow their eyes open as soon as they touch the mattress.

then you have to start the whole thing over again.

sometimes you can’t even tell if your baby is tired, overtired, hungry or just doesn’t want to sleep yet. by the time you figure it out, everyone is crying lol

what actually helps you with the crib transfer? and how many times do you usually have to try before your baby stays asleep?

I sleep trained my four month old a few few weeks ago. OK here’s the story. We’re living with my in-laws right now and they’re building us a house on their property with the house just got done. We just moved in but before we are living in their house and my boyfriend‘s bedroom and we decided to start sleep training and it worked. He was sleeping through the night he was going to sleep on his own. It was magical, but he had a night where he was just had a complete meltdown and actually my mother-in-law had to put him to bed because I was freaking out. He would not stop crying. And ever since that happened I swear he needs to be rocked to sleep now he’s waking up 3 to 4 times a night, so I just gave up on sleep training. I just thought OK maybe this is just how it’s gonna be. I have to rock him to sleep and I’m not gonna get any sleep, but I really want to implement it, but is it too late is he confused now? I don’t understand really what’s going on and why it worked so well and then that one night when he had the meltdown after that, it’s been really hard. I guess maybe moving has made him confused I don’t know, but I’m gonna commit to it and start tonight because I’m exhausted and I can’t keep living like this if you have any tips and tricks let me know. I did the Ferber method before. If you think it’s a loss cause also let me know because I don’t wanna waste my time trying to sleep train again if I already confused him. Thank you so much

My almost 9mo has historically given us great night time stretches. She’d consistently sleep between 6.5-8.5h and would only usually wake 1-2 times (naps have always been horrible). We decided to sleep train using PUPD at 6.5mo and it worked beautifully. This was done because she’d only go to sleep after rocking while latched and it was taking forever to do.

The moment she turned 7mo this all went down the drain. We had to revert back to boob rocking, she started completely refusing the pacifier and bottle (both breastmilk and formula). We ruled out all medical issues.

She’s currently waking up every 2 hours overnight, refuses to be transferred back to crib. She literally won’t sleep unless it’s on me. After giving us longer stretches for naps, she has reverted back to 30’ naps.

My sleep consultant had me try the chair method tonight after moving her into her own room and it went horribly, she was hysterical for a straight 30’ to the point that she was choking on her tears. I tapped out and returned to the boob rocking. PLEASE help 🙏🏼🙏🏼

Additional info: -WW: 2.5/3.5/4 (she won’t always go down sooner) -Bedtime is between 7:00-7:30 depending on wake windows -Average total daytime sleep: 1.5h -Great with solids, will eat 3 meals a day -Breastfed and CMPA -The sweetest fomo baby

We’re on Day 7 of sleep training but started naps too and on day 5 for naps.

Currently he does great with the first nap 1-1hr25m consistently. But the second naps are always 38-40 mins. He goes down independently and asleep w/ fussing in 3-5 mins. So we’re still on a 3 nap schedule but was hoping to lengthen nap 2 so we can begin transitioning to 2 naps eventually.

2.25/2.5/2.5.2/2.75 - he caps his night sleep 10.5-11hrs himself. He resettles himself for 90% of night wakings so far. Very few we have to check in.

We tried 2.25 window prior, 2.5hr, and tried a small top off 45 mins prior. Also tried keeping him engaged to avoid drowsiness 15-20 mins prior to the end of the WW. Still just wakes up 40 mins. Cries upon waking , we wait maybe 5-7 mins to respond and there’s no way he’ll resettle himself in that state.

Any other tips appreciated!

After many many many months of trying to fix broken sleep, we’re preparing to sleep train my 10 month old using CIO for the first time (past attempts were Ferber).

3.5/3.5-4/4, naps capped at 2 hours

I spent a long time and put in a lot of effort to remove her nurse to sleep association, we moved on to rocking. This resulted in a likely rock to sleep association. Now we put her in the crib fully awake and pat her butt and shush until she’s asleep, usually in less than 10 mins.

I feel like I haven’t seen anyone on here say they sleep trained from a pat-to-sleep situation. Is there an option besides CIO? Since it’s potentially one of the weaker associations compared to nursing or rocking? I know I probably just need to bite the bullet, but wondering if there’s another route for this current scenario.

My 7 month old has started fighting naps and seeming upset when naptime comes which is not common behavior for her, i know it’s because she is ready for a longer wake window before naps but we’re in an awkward predicament. Right now we’re on 2.5/2.5/2.5/3 and sometimes 2.5/2.5/3/3. She is definitely ready for at least 3 hours for each wake window but if i do 3/3/3 then she’ll be losing an hour and a half of awake time and i think it’ll
make nights worse. However i tried 3/3.5/3.5 a couple of weeks ago and it was a nightmare trying to keep her up past the 3 hour mark. She’s also a catnapper and has never taken a non contact nap longer than 35 minutes so i had to hold her for both naps on that schedule which took time away from me cleaning. What do we do? idk what the middle ground is to bridge this awkward gap until she’s ready for a two nap schedule

Our 5.5 month old has been sleep trained since 4 months. We did full extinction. We are on a 2/2.5/2.5/3 schedule with 1 hour naps, 7PM bed and 6AM rise.

We recently moved and had some set backs associated with that. The main setback was early waking, like 5 AM consistently. That made sense because we switched time zones, and 6AM was our previous wake time. We locked in our schedule more stringently and actually moved bed time forward to 7PM from 8PM because he was consistently falling asleep during our bedtime routine.

This worked for about a week. Now we are randomly having several night time wake ups, but not every night. I suspect a schedule issue.

I was thinking of pushing bedtime back to 8PM and adding that time into the first and third wake windows. If not that, then shortening day naps to 45 mins. What do you think? What would you all adjust first?

Can you also give me some realistic advice for expectations at this point? Is it just par for the course for baby to randomly have a bad night... Weekly? Several times a week?

Has anyone sleep trained around 12–13 months with an exclusively breastfed baby?

My daughter will be 12.5 months when we start and she currently wakes up pretty much every 2 hours to nurse. She also nurses a lot during the day.

My biggest concern is that she’s not a great solids eater. She’s pretty picky and doesn’t eat a whole lot, so honestly a big portion of her “eating” still comes from nursing, especially at night.

I’m nervous about cutting out her night feeds when she isn’t really making up for those calories with solids during the day. I also don’t want her to be hungry all night and just crying because she wants to nurse.

For anyone who has been in a similar situation, what did you do? Did you night wean first or sleep train and night wean at the same time? Did your baby eventually start eating more during the day once they stopped nursing so much at night?

Would love to hear from anyone who had a baby who was still nursing frequently and wasn’t a big solids eater when they started sleep training!

We are wanting to start sleep training this week. We are considering trying the Ferber method. However knowing my son, when he is in his crib and we don’t get to him right away, the longer we wait. The more red faced angry he gets. Rarely have my wife or I been able to get him to calm down without picking up him and rocking. So not sure Ferber would work. Any advise?

Also, how does nap time work during sleep training? I am assuming if we do CIO or Ferber. The clock on nap window doesn’t start until baby is actually asleep.