Parenting after a Loss

At what age did you sleep train?

And how did you know your LO was ready? I am not ready to sleep train Emma yet.  She has been soothing herself to sleep quite a bit this week and I want to give her a chance to develop this skill on her own before I intervene with a plan. I know it is thought that babies need to learn how to sleep but how do you know your LO is ready? As a teacher I know my students are ready all different times for a skill but of course I can read them better.  Did you just know?  Also, did anyone not use CIO and if you didnt, what did you use? I am not sure CIO is for us.  This whole sleep thing intimidates me and I never feel like I am doing the right thing.

Re: At what age did you sleep train?

  • I just started a week ago. I'm doing a modified sleep lady technique. I just kind of knew because she wasn't/couldn't be hungry and she was dry. She was tired, but kept waking. So it was time.?

    Before this last few weeks, she was a good sleeper so she didn't need it. ?

  • Well, we just started this weekend and they are 5 months old (ignore my ticker).

    I think it really depends on you and your baby and what your goal is and what you think is preventing you. For me, I felt like they are both now finally old enough to be not only sleeping through the night without an extra feeding,. but I also didn't want to let the bad habits we were starting get too much more entrenched, figuring it would just be that much harder to break later. Just to clarify, very few babies need help sleeping. They can certainly go to sleep, it was more a matter of being able to get to sleep and stay asleep without having their lips wrapped around my nipples, you know? Or, in Henry's case, stuffed full of milk and rocked in a swing.

    I decided to pick up the Ferber book and give it a go on a whim. Honestly, if it had been more complicated or if  it had seemed at ALL distressing to my babies I wouldn't have done it, but it wasn't. I had always worried it would be this great big painful process, and it wasn't at all. After 2 days I can hardly call it a success yet, but these last two days have been astonishing. The babies are happy and so are we. There was virtually no crying!

    If Emma is already soothing herself to sleep, you may not even need it..she may settle into a routine on her own. What makes you ask about sleep training? Ie, what is the problem you want to correct?

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  • imageSkatcat:

    If Emma is already soothing herself to sleep, you may not even need it..she may settle into a routine on her own. What makes you ask about sleep training? Ie, what is the problem you want to correct?

    I guess I am asking because she has had no consistency in her sleep over the last month and I was wondering if I should "train" to get some.  Last night she woke up once to feed and ate 4 oz so I am not sure she is ready to drop that feeding, I will ask the pedi on Wed.  Then she woke up 2 more times (I heard on the monitor) and put herself to sleep.  The 3rd time was up at 4 and wanted to be for the day so we brought her to bed where she talked to herself for a bit and then fell asleep.   I always thought I would wait till she was 5 months and I was on summer vacation but dont want bad habits to form.  Yet she seems to be learning on her own so maybe I wont have to? I definitely need to get Ferber's book. I am just so clueless about sleep.

  • I only had to do minimal training for night sleeping. She STTN from 9 weeks on but started waking at about 6 months. We did 3-4 days of Ferber and she never woke again. I knew she wasn't hungry because she had been STTN for so long and I could tell she really just wanted to play. We nipped that one pretty quickly!

    Naps have been a different story. I tried to train from 6-7 months but nothing worked so I gave up. I recently did straight up CIO and it worked. She is almost 8 months. I always make sure I put her down with a full belly and a dry diaper. I knew she needed it because she always woke up crying and was overtired and fussy all day long.

  • I started at 5 months. ?His sleep was getting worse instead of better. ?Up until then he was only waking to feed, and going 4 and then 5 hours between feedings. ?All of a sudden he started waking up more frequently, every two hours or so. ?We only fed at the 4 hour mark, but I think intermittently reinforcing the waking up was counterproductive. ?He was coming home from daycare exhausted and cranky and we can't move his bedtime up any earlier or let him sleep any longer in the mroning, so he had to start getting decent sleep at night.
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  • four months.

    i was ready and ferber said four months at least.  he was getting up every two hours and was addicted to the binkie. i decided to modify ferber and if he didn't seem ready i was going to stop. but it worked after a few days. by worked i mean - in crib and no binkie.  he still got up to nurse about three times a night until recently.

  • it depends on your baby and you/DH.  Is she happy and seems like she is sleeping enough?  Then I wouldn't change a thing.  Are you not sleeping enough and need more sleep?  Then you may want to consider making a change.  I am not a CIO fan so I read the No Cry Sleep Solution. https://www.pantley.com/elizabeth/books/0071381392.php.  Its a good book about understanding infant sleep first and then evaluating whether you need to make a change and how to do it.  I think its important to understand infant sleep, their cycles, how they fall asleep and get back to sleep before you make a change.  And sleep train doesn't necessarily have to mean CIO

     

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