*gtown re: Ferber*

DCtoLowcountry

I'm sorry this is late - M may be STTN by now! - but sharing anyway.

From p. 74 of Ferber's book on wait times:

Day 1 - 3,5,10,10

Day 2 - 5, 10, 12, 12

Day 3 - 10, 12, 15, 15

Day 4 - 15, 17, 20, 20

Day 5 - 15, 17, 20, 20

Day 6 - 17, 20, 25, 25

Day 7 - 20, 25, 30, 30

Huh. I think I did Day 1, 2 and 3 - I know I couldn't wait more than 10 minutes to check on him - but DS got with the program in 5 nights. Anyway, HTH.

WinesNotWhines

Thanks! M has STTN for the past 3 nights! Hooray! The most he cried any night was 6 minutes.

DCtoLowcountry

Awesome! DS was usually down before the first check at 10 minutes.

Mrs.Handy

gtown- I'm so jealous!

Hey, sorry to interrupt but we've recently started sleep training with DS and I was just wondering how we should be handling night-time feedings. He's going to sleep on his own now after 5-10minutes of fussing. But he's still waking up 2x a night. He's still BF and he nurses voraciously at least twice a night. Do we do the intervals just like earlier? or something else?

Thanks for any advice.

DCtoLowcountry

The answer on night feedings is that it's up to you. You can keep them, eliminate gradually, or eliminate cold turkey. Ferber does have a strategy on gradual elimination that uses gradually increasing time between nursing sessions, or sending in DH with a bottle of pumped milk that has fewer ounces each night, but I didn't use it so I'd recommend reading the book.

Under our pediatrician's advice, we got the OK to cut out night feedings cold turkey and did so at 6 months. I was worried about intake especially since DS is on the small side, but he increased his volume during the day to make up for it. It was the same for us as regular Ferber - DS would wake, cry for less than 10 minutes, we'd soothe at intervals and he'd go back to sleep.

Mrs.Handy

DCtoLowcountry:

The answer on night feedings is that it's up to you. You can keep them, eliminate gradually, or eliminate cold turkey. Ferber does have a strategy on gradual elimination that uses gradually increasing time between nursing sessions, or sending in DH with a bottle of pumped milk that has fewer ounces each night, but I didn't use it so I'd recommend reading the book.

Under our pediatrician's advice, we got the OK to cut out night feedings cold turkey and did so at 6 months. I was worried about intake especially since DS is on the small side, but he increased his volume during the day to make up for it. It was the same for us as regular Ferber - DS would wake, cry for less than 10 minutes, we'd soothe at intervals and he'd go back to sleep.

Thanks that is very helpful, we tried doing the intervals one night and he cried for 45 minutes which is longer than he has done when putting him down at night until I was exhausted and just nursed him. We may try again sometime...I may have to get the book from the library.

WinesNotWhines

M cut out night feedings a few weeks ago, which is what prompted us to do Ferber to eliminate the night wakings altogether. We got to that point by having DH go in at night to soothe him back to sleep in the middle of the night. If H could soothe him back to sleep, then we knew he wasn't really hungry. It made me feel less bad about doing Ferber, because I knew he wasn't crying out of hunger.

eeclem

: Butting in :

MrsHandy - When we "Ferberized" we kept one night feeding. I was concerned that it would be confusing for C (how would he know when it was okay to wake for feeding and when it wasn't?), but it worked out fine. I think we only had two nights of Ferber before he was going down fine and only getting up once. Definitely check out the book though - there is some advice in there and I'm fuzzy on the logistics. 

But we did Ferber at 5+ months and C started to STTN and drop his night feeding on his own at 9 months. So, if you wanted to go ahead and cut out the night feedings in one fell swoop now I certainly wouldn't blame you. As, DCtoLow said, it's really up to you.