How long for Ferber to work?

jwebbbber45678

We're giving it a try again. We've moved him into his own room and we're doing Ferber get him to sleep alone and through the night. He's always been a pretty bad sleeper. We've gotten him comfortable in his crib within the last month. The first night of sleep training was amazing, very minimal crying. The second night was tough and the third night was just awful. We'd like to be consistent and stick with it but I need some hope because it keeps getting worse. If you used this method, how long did it take to work? Thanks!

ElleMF728

The general rule in my sleep group is that you need to commit to at least a week before making any drastic changes.  Consistency is so important and it can backfire and make things worse the next time if someone isn't completely on board with your new routine. 

We used Ferber around 8 months. 
Night 1- 15 minutes of crying with checks at 2, 5 and 7.  There was also 12 minutes after his first MOTN feed. 
Night 2- 12 minutes with checks at 5 minutes
Night 3 - 2 minutes with no checks needed. 

We had a pretty easy go of it to be honest but that was my experience.  We went from waking consistently at 11:30, 2-4 (up during these hours), 5:30 and morning at 7 am to STTN or waking once 5 am in 3 nights. 

Most common tips:

• STing is for bedtime and any wakes before midnight.  After that its fine to go in and feed LO.  CIO in order to drop night time feeds with typically end up in lots of unnecessary crying.  Get bedtime and before 12 am figured out and then reassess whether night weaning is even needed or not.  In a lot of cases LO will stop waking naturally after learning how to soothe at bedtime. 
• At this age baby needs to be awake.  Not drowsy but awake, they are too old for that really to work very effectively in most cases. 
• Err on the side of overtired vs. not tired enough.  LO should have about 4 hours of wake time before bed. 
• Work on naps separately after night training if needed. Good day sleep will help with your STing so do whatever you need to in order to get good naps if possible. 
• Extinction bursts are common.  Don't freak out if things are going great and you have a bad night. 
• If you are having a tough time have the "stronger" partner listen to the monitor while the other takes a shower, goes for a drive/walk etc. In my case that means DH handled the monitor at bedtime while we STed. 

rachelkawesome

From what I remember from the Ferber book, it said give it a full week, and if it's still not working, move on to something else or wait until the baby is older. Though I feel like the "waiting for them to get older" part was for younger babies than ours would be now. We needed the full week, and honestly my LO still fusses for about 2-5 minutes before he goes to sleep. I think that's more the initial separation than the sleep training at this point though, if that makes sense. Good luck and stay strong!

jennahkross

So we did Ferber and did bedtime and naps at the same time. It took about 4 days and nights with her crying for an hour or more. We also had a repression when she startes daycare where we had to start again.  Sometimes she still cries before nap for about 5 minutes, but falls asleep on her own!

CSchoFink

The first night at our house was AWFUL; it took almost 45 minutes for him to fall asleep (we did all of the regular checks at the recommended intervals). His time did go down each night, but it took the full week to get him down to under ten minutes, and then it took about a week to get him to under 3 minutes (before our first check). Now he goes down easily with no fussing. I'm really glad we stuck with it. I'm definitely the tough parent in our house (a decade of teaching high school will do that, I guess) so I had to drag my husband away from the nursery door a few times, but he's so grateful I did now that our whole family sleeps well!