If you did sleep training...

fxz109

What did you do, how did it go, and how did you know what to do?

DD isn't sleeping well at all.  Naps are a fight which I tend to lose, and she doesn't sleep very well at night.  It's been going on for 2-3 weeks, and teething may have something to do with it, but if it's not all teething, I need to be prepared now to address it when the teeth finally do come through.  I've requested some books from the library (no cry sleep solution, Ferber, and AAP sleep book), but I'd like some real world experiences.

TIA!

rlthomas7

We did Ferber right around 6 months. Ferber says that if you rock your child to sleep and they stay asleep, you don't have a sleep problem. So we kept rocking him to sleep, but we did the Ferber method for his night wakings. They started when he had a cold and we moved him into his swing so he could breathe better. After the cold was gone, he was still waking and crying so we'd put  him in his swing to get sleep for all of us. Finally we decided that we needed to stop with the swing at night, and we did Ferber. My suggestion is to do it before she can stand up in her crib. That adds a whole new dimension to waking up and crying, and you'd worry more about her hurting herself crying standing up and thrashing around.

Anyway, for us, the first night was around 3 hours. Of straight SCREAMING. Adam is pretty, um, high spirited, so we knew it would be a battle. We found that going in to check on him made him worse, so we finally just let him cry. It's good that you're getting the book, because if you choose this method, you need to understand WHY you're doing it or you'll crack after a half hour. DH was ready to crack in hour 2, but he stuck it out and we made it.

The second night was a half hour. The third night he didn't wake up until morning. He did regress a few months later and we had to do it again, but it was nowhere near as bad as the first time.

Futuremrssoll

Eli was a great sleeper until about 9 months when he was sick and got used to waking up in the middle of the night. ?He was not taking a scheduled nap at that point. ?We decided that he was only waking up at night out of habit, so I we let him cry it out. ?It sucked, he cried for about 2 hours without stopping, most of which i cried too, then i went in to hold him. ?He fell asleep on me, I laid him down, he cried again, so i let him cry again for another hour and a half, so then at that point it was like 5:30 in the morning, so i just kept him awake. ?He was really tired but i would not let him sleep until 10am. ?I laid him down for a nap, he cried for about an hour, but then slept for an hour. ?I laid him down for an afternoon nap, he cried for 20 min then slept 2 hours. ?That night he went to bed fine, woke up when he normally did but we let him cry. ?It took about an hour and a half, but he finally put himself to sleep. ?Took naps with maybe 10 min of crying prior the next day, and has been great ever since! ?We lay him down awake for his naps and bedtime now and he stays down, which is great! ?Cry it out was tough for those 2 days, but i really think it was just worse for me. ?He learned that he needed to go to bed, and I learned that it is okay to let them figure it out. ?Good luck!