For those of you who used this to sleep train what was your experience like? How did night 1 go, and how quickly did the nights get better in terms of LO crying?
Mr. & Mrs. UMich! July 2006! :-)
DX: High FSH/DOR
It took 44 cycles, just over 3 years, 6 failed IUI's in MI, and 1 round of IVF at CCRM to get our BFP!
Beta #1 (9dp5dt) = 206, Beta #2 (11dp5dt) = 438
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?Our Baby Boy Born June 26th, 2012?
Re: Extinction method
We did Ferber last week. Granted my son has always been a pretty good sleeper. We were doing Ferber more to teach him that he could sleep in any position (previously he was in a Tucker Sling because his crib was inclined for reflux). He had been waking up once per night for a couple of weeks where he had previosuly STTN most of the time so we figured it was a good time for the transition since he already wasn't sleeping great.
He woke at 11 when he rolled to his back and we started with 3 minutes and got up to the 20 min interval before he fell asleep (about an hour total). Just finally rolled to his tummy the way he likes to sleep and was out. For us it wasn't that bad. I could tell they were angry cries, not sad or hurt (plus a video monitor helps).
He's been back to STTN since then.
We did it for a nap yesterday. He was much angrier and roleld around in his crib, kicking it. Wouldn't let me put the paci back in his mouth. Took 45 minutes and then he fell asleep mid scream for 2 hours.
If you're talking full extinction, no check-ins, I can't help you there. Didn't need to try that.
My son never had too much trouble going down for bed initially, so we used it mainly for motn and naps. The first night he cried for 40 minutes before putting himself back to sleep and then slept until his early a.m. feeding. Next two nights were 30 minutes each. Once he was doing well with that we started letting him fuss it out to wean the early a.m. feeding and that took about a week and he was sleeping until 6ish. Our ideal wake up is between 7 and 7:30 so these days if he wakes earlier than 7 we usually just leave him in his crib unless he actually starts crying, which almost never happens, he typically just plays for a bit and either goes back to sleep or fusses a little. He is starting to wake up very close to 7 or even a little after more consistently. The first few nights of crying are hard. I suggest using a video monitor and listening to some soothing music through earphones. It was also easier to deal with once my son was a little older and I felt confident that he no longer needed to eat in the motn.
Naps took a bit more longer and didn't really become super-consistent until he went down to two a day at around 9 months.
We did extinction for naps and bedtime at the same time. Night wakings weren't really a problem for us before sleep training and they didn't happen much during sleep training either, but we did extinction for those too.
The first night was awful! DD cried for about an hour, then threw up, then we cleaned her up and put her back in bed and she cried for about 20 more minutes and fell asleep. Then I think she woke again within an hour and cried for 20-30 more minutes and then slept til a reasonable time the next morning.
Night 2 was about 25 minutes of crying
Night 3 was maybe 20 minutes of crying and then she fell asleep but woke up and cried for close to an hour. I went to check on her, she was totally fine just couldn't go to sleep, but she fell asleep after about 30 more minutes of crying.
after that the crying got less and less and by the time a week had gone by, she would usually fuss for a minute or less and then go to sleep. After 2 weeks, she usually wouldn't fuss at all. After sleep training we still of course will have some naps and nights that aren't great. It isn't going to make things perfect, but DD's sleep is 1000 times better and even though it was awful, I have absolutely no regrets. I truly believe she was taking terrible naps and taking hours to fall asleep because she didn't know how to do it on her own and had outgrown the sleep crutches we had previously used to help her. I was really afraid it just wouldn't work for DD and we would put her through something awful for nothing, but obviously that was not the case. good luck!