sleep training day 2 (updated and a question)

Dstevens429

I never thought sleep training would be so exhausting lol. This is really a ramble sorry. Last night A went down at 8pm and slept till midnight. He woke up in his crib, sat up and cried....and cried...and cried. I went in tried to calm him by telling him I was there. I did the pat the butt, massage his back, everything.  Finally I gave up and left the room for a bit. 10 minutes later I sent DH in to try and calm A. Well A was not having it he just screamed his little head off. So heart breaking. After 45 minutes of crying I picked him up and calmed him down enough where he was awake but asleep. I continued to lay him back down in the crib where again he started to cry...ughhh. I waited about 5 minutes, patted his bottom and by 1am he was asleep whoorah. A slept till 5:30am which was a big accomplishment so I fed him and then he went back to sleep till 7am. Tonight he went down at 7:30am almost asleep, he has already woke up one time but I promised myself i would wait 10 minutes before going in and in  about 7 minutes he put himself to sleep. Awaiting the next cry out but I think we may be getting somewhere. Wish me luck on day 2. Thank you @ robeano for the ebook again.

JBDamonM

Good luck! My LO is two weeks older than A and we just did sleep training last weekend. We had a week from hell last week where she was up almost every hour......then she would be snoring on my shoulder, so I would put her down and she would be crying 20 minutes later. We did the straight cry it out. There has been a few tough spots but overall it's made a really big difference, although she still keeps waking up at 3AM which is frustrating me even though we don't get out of bed for it. I hope tonight goes better for you!

ccam

You can do it!! Good luck tonight. Night 1 was the worst for us and it just went up from there!

Robeano

So glad it's working for you. Sleep training is so hard, but so worth it!!

Mnerani

GL tonight! FWIW, we tried the method of going in to comfort DS while sleep training, but that actually made him more awake and more angry. In the end, we had to do straight crying with no comforting, and that worked in just a few nights. Hardest nights of my life, but he's STTN ever since with no looking back. 

Dstevens429

Update.  A slept till 330a then cried and cried. I gave in...I know I know, and BF him. He actually ate for 10 minutes so I feel like he was starving.  How can I eliminate these MOTN feedings...do I just let him CIO

ccam

When we first started sleep training, DS would legitimately be hungry if he woke up anytime after 3am. If it was around that time, we'd feed him. Anytime before and we'd let him cry it out. After a while, he dropped at last feeding by himself and slept right through.

I'm on mobile - how old is your LO?

TJ1979

I was going to ask how old too. If LO is old enough to not actually need that MOTN feed, you can start by limiting the length of the feed. 10 minutes one night, 9 the next, etc. Like @ccam, I wouldn't allow feeding before a certain time. If it was before 2, mh had wake up duty bc it limited the opportunity for boob. If it was after 2, I would nurse and put her back in bed. Prior to sleep training I would bring her to bed with me when she woke up after 2.

Dstevens429

LO is 9.5 months

pb_bride

I night weaned M when he was 5 months. M was waking up once a night then, but the times he woke up were totally random, like 11pm one night, then 4 am the next, then 1 am the next etc. I thought if he were hungry, he would be waking up around the same time every night,  plus, Ferber said most full term babies don't need MOTN feedings by 5 months. His opinion is that after 5 months, babies wake up to nurse due to habit.  Yes, they are hungry but that's is because they have been trained to get hungry at that time. 

Anyway, Ferber has a whole chapter on weaning MOTN.  Like PPs said, you have to set a cut off time first. Say 2am, then no nursing prior to 2am. Then you push that time 30 minutes late each night, so tomorrow night, no nursing prior to 2:30am, and so on.

P.S. Whatever method you decided to go with, please be consistent.  If you do one thing one night, then something else on a second night, then a third thing on third night, your LO will just be confused, and lengthens the sleep training process. 

Mayzie15

Sounds like you are doing great.  We sleep trained about three weeks ago and it is getting better the longer we have done it.  I agree it's so hard when you hear them crying you want to run in there but we have realized that a lot of the time he will fall back asleep - hope it keeps getting better and everyone gets a little more sleep

Mnerani

TJ1979 said:

I was going to ask how old too. If LO is old enough to not actually need that MOTN feed, you can start by limiting the length of the feed. 10 minutes one night, 9 the next, etc. Like @ccam, I wouldn't allow feeding before a certain time. If it was before 2, mh had wake up duty bc it limited the opportunity for boob. If it was after 2, I would nurse and put her back in bed. Prior to sleep training I would bring her to bed with me when she woke up after 2.

This is what I did. The first night, I let him eat all he wanted, and I counted the seconds. It was like 700 seconds. So the second night, I counted to 650 and put him back down. The third night, 600. And so on, until I saw that he was accepting to eat for like 2 minutes, at which point I knew that he was waking up from habit and not from hunger. I definitely wouldn't have had the guts to cut his last night feeding cold turkey. My resolve would have cracked if I'd thought that he was in there hungry.

ccam

We Ferbered at around 5 months so our situations would be a little different.  DS was also waking up at random times at night and then would occasionally sleep through until the morning.  So we knew he could do it.  He wasn't hungry, it was more of a habit.  If we gave him a bottle, he would inhale it but he did not need it.  He just needed to learn to put himself back to sleep instead of relying on a bottle and us rocking him to sleep.