Beating a dead horse - Sleep training
Cheenomae
member
I need advice. I realize I could read a quick book and do all the responsible research first, but I'll admit I like to take the easy way out.
Mason is 8 months old and still doesn't sleep through the night. I'm not sure if he can or not. He has taken acid reflux medication twice daily since about 3 weeks old. We recently tried to wean him off and it was a disaster. He's just not ready. Anyway, the medicine can't be taken with food or drink because it needs time to settle. We don't want to wake him so early that we can give him his medicine and then wait the 30 minutes to feed him before we leave for daycare. What we've done for several months is put him to bed as normal and then anyway between 3 & 5 am he's woken up and we've decided to feed him a bottle. This way we don't wake him for daycare with him being hungry. It allows us to give him his medicine when he wakes and then by the time he gets to DC they can feed him and enough time has elapsed. (I feel like this doesn't make sense but can't figure out my wording...)
Now I'm starting to wonder if I should sleep train him to sleep through that 3-5 am wake up and instead of giving him his medicine before a bottle we could feed him when he wakes (before we leave for DC) and then give him his medicine right as I'm dropping him off at DC. This means we need to "sleep train" him to stop feeling like he needs to wake up for that feedings he's had since he was wee big.
Do I just let him cry at this age or do I do the check ins.... advice? Y'all are my favs.
Re: Beating a dead horse - Sleep training
Agreed.
I can't speak about the meds as we were very lucky and DS didn't have severe reflux. I think the sleep training would work if he wasn't putting himself to sleep at night which it sounds like he is. He probably wakes for that bottle because he knows he's going to get it. If I'm understanding that right.
We sleep trained DS at 6 months with CIO full extinction because we knew if we went in he would ramp himself back up. It was hard but it worked. After we did that and he got it down pat (2ish weeks) we started to wean him off the MOTN feeding. He goes down at 8 and would wake up about 1-2am expecting a bottle. We gradually lowered the oz's of his bottle until nothing was left. He never got to that point. He stopped waking on his own.
Does your DS finish the whole bottle at the 3-5am wake up? Does he fall back to sleep right away or is he up for a while? Will be fall asleep during the bottle? If he does any of these it's a good indication (IMO) that he doesn't "need" it. Read up on this:
https://www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-3/
It helped us immensely and now DS sleeps from 8-8am with no MOTN feeding. He's been doing this for about 2 months!
We did sleep training and night weaning and addressed them as two separate things. I read many books and went with Ferber for sleep training and did a combination of Ferber and SleepEasy for night weaning, you should do it gradually and not just stop feeding him during the night, he is used to it and expects you so CIO would just be mean in this instance. You really need to read some books before starting, but here is what our night weaning schedule looked like. I would set my alarm and wake her at a specific time. I started with an hour before she typically wakes up so I knew if she woke up before that she was not hungry yet and I started with one ounce less than she normally drank. I reduced every other night instead of every night, just to make it more gradual for her.
Night 1- 1am, 6oz
Night 2- 1:30. 6oz
Night 3- 2am, 5oz
Night 4- 230, 5oz
Night 5- 3am, 4oz
Night 6- 3:30am, 4oz
Night 7- 4am, 3oz
Night 8- 4:40am, 3oz
After night 8 I did not set my alarm and just tested it out to see if she would STTN, which she did. Since that night we have not had to wake up for MOTN feedings.
Thank you everyone for your input and advise. It all sounds very helpful.
To clarify, I agree it's irresponsible to do "sleep training" without any research. I speak tongue in cheek sometimes too often. I will certainly do some actual research before I do anything but wanted to hear some ideas right away. Impatience is my virtue!
Also, he does put himself to sleep every night on his own. When we do the one feeding each night he wakes up on occasion and we wake him on other occasion. We usually want him eating by 5 am for the medicine aspect so if he doesn't wake we set the alarm to wake him instead. It's about 50/50. He does finish the whole bottle and it's rare he goes right back to sleep. He usually talks for 20 - 30 minutes first! Eventually he does go back to sleep.
Since he puts himself to sleep I would just do night weaning. Both Ferber and SleepEasy have sections on it, I would just read those and see what works best for you! Like I said, I did a combination of the two because I felt it would be best for my DD. You know your DS best!