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Austin Babies
Mrs.Talala
member
Ferber Questions
Mrs.Talala
member
So I am at the end of my rope. I feel like a walking zombie. Amelia has been waking every 2 hours this past week, and we all need some sleep. Plus DH leaves for a week on Saturday and I am freaking out. So after Mollie's post about Ferber working for her pretty quickly, I think I'm going to give it a try. I ordered the book but haven't gotten it yet. I have a few questions if you have time but feel free to tell me to just wait and read the book!
Can you do Ferber while LO still is eating during the night? Right now she is eating twice at night but I really think she could go longer and only eat once. Do we have to wait til she is night weaned?
Amelia is teething right now. I feel like she is going to be teething for quite awhile. I dont see this as a reason not to try ferber, am I wrong here?
Is the book hard to read? Can a sleep deprived full time working momma get through this quickly????
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Re: Ferber Questions
i can address the eating part. both times i have done ferber it has been when the baby still wanted/needed to nurse once a night. we wanted to help them to learn to go back to sleep on their own, not force them to drop a feeding. what we did was do the check and console (graduated extinction) at bedtime and any time the baby woke up until about 1-2am, feed then and then do the ferber until morning.
most recently with annie i fed her the first night at about 2am, then she woke up again at 5 and i got her up for the day after nursing her.
after that, the 2nd night she woke around 3 to nurse then was up for the day at 5 again. every night since then she has woken around 3:30 or 4 to nurse and up for the day at 7-7:30!
my girls have never had much trouble with teething so i don't know the answer to that.
I would not ferber while teething (or when she is sick). She is hurting, that is probably also why she is waking up so much (assuming she has been sleeping longer stretches before).
When we ferbered, M was still getting up twice a night and nursing. Our pedi said there was no reason for this, but I was nervous and decided to elminate only the first feeding. He dropped the second on his own within a couple of weeks.
That 4-6 month stage is a killer. I'm sorry.
What I'd probably do (and what we did with DS around that same point) is gradually cut down on the amount you're feeding at night. Not sure if you bottle feed or BF, but we were bottle feeding, so I just made the bottle 1oz less every couple of nights until he was down to a 1oz feeding. Obviously this wasn't going to curb any hunger, so I knew at that point he was feeding out of habit and felt okay with taking the night bottles away entirely (he was just over 6 months at this point, I think). So while she's teething, I'd take that as an opportunity to work on cutting down the feedings, then when she seems to be feeling better do Ferber.
Good luck. As far as the book being hard to read, I did think Ferber was a little hard to follow. I MUCH preferred Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Written a little more plainly, imo.
(read it. you know you want to.)
anderson . september 2008
vivian . february 2010
mabel . august 2012
We ferbered at 9 1/2 months, but Kate was waking up every hour and would not go back to sleep unless I nursed her. We tried to night wean her before ferbering her, but she would scream bloody murder for up to an hour each time we tried until I caved and nursed her. All this while we were holding her/ cuddling with her in our bed.
In our situation, I thought it would be too confusing to continue to nurse her at some night wakings while refusing to do so at others so we night weaned with the blessing of our pedi. I refused to ferber for a long time, but DH was adamant. In the end, we took her to the pedi and had him check to make sure that she wasn't teething/ didn't have an ear infection/ didn't need to night nurse any more before we started.
Personally, I would not ferber if my baby was still night nursing and needed the milk, but I know that all situations are different and that it can work well for a lot of babies. Kate just wanted to use me as a pacifier so I was less sympathetic. I realize that she probably had a need to comfort suck in the middle of the night, but she also needed two parents who weren't zombies/ at each others' throats all the time. I should also note that Kate is extremely hard headed so ferbering was waaaaay harder/ longer for us than anyone else I have ever talked to about it.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
When I did it with A, I worked on getting her to be able to fall sleep on her own first. After she was doing that well we then addressed the night feedings. She didn't need the night feedings, it was more of a habit. We eliminated one and she eliminated all the rest by herself. Ferber outlines how to eliminate the feedings and help your child fall asleep on their own. You can do both together, but I was more comfortable doing it separately and it worked well for us.
ETA: If she is teething, I wouldn't start it. I'd wait and give her Motrin in the meantime since she's just about 6 months. Once the teething is done, then I'd start the sleep training.