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Babies: 3 - 6 Months
bluejetta
member
planning on (or already did) sleep training at 4mos?
bluejetta
member
I know there are those who think this is too young or just not good at any age and I respect those views. We feel, for a variety of reasons, it is the right time for us to try this with our daughter to improve her sleep and rest.
I've read Ferber, Pantley and Weisbluth and we're going to go with the graduated Ferber plan of putting DD down and then progressive waiting. I'm not willing to just put her down and let her cry for an indeterminate amount of time but we're not having much success with drowsy but awake and while I realize that might improve with age we don't want to wait that long - again for a variety of reason - .
I'm curious what others are doing (or have done) and what considerations you had in deciding.
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Re: planning on (or already did) sleep training at 4mos?
4 months is REALLY young for sleep training IMO. it's also a period of crappy sleep for many babies. (it certainly was for mine!) At this point, there is no way I would even consider any form of sleep training that involves CIO. I may consider it down the road if he develops bad habits, but right now he's an infant who sometimes needs mom for comfort.
I understand people are going to disagree on this topic and with our choice of doing it at all or at this particular time. Our LO gets rocked to sleep and back to sleep in the middle of the night. She is still young at 3 months and we are happy to do this. But, it often is taking 2 hours to get her to sleep at night or she wakes up multiple times at night after being fed/etc and can't get back to sleep which makes for a not well rested baby. I don't expect her to sleep through the night or not need us but we're trying to figure out how to help her sleep better and sleep training seems like a path we'll take.
Ultimately we are just doing what we think is right for our daughter and I'm looking to know from others who chose the same developmental time (or not for reasons such as the PP mentioned) and what happened.
We recently did Ferber - about a week and a half ago. It was not our intent to make him sleep through the night - he used to sttn for over a month and then we hit the 4mw.
However, we were rocking him to sleep and then he would wake up in the middle of the night anywhere from 2-6 times and he required being rocked back to sleep. It was getting increasing harder to get him back to sleep, taking longer and longer to rock and putting him down at the right time so that he wouldn't wake right back up. By doing Ferber, it was out intent to break the sleep association of being rocked to sleep and requiring it in the middle of the night to sleep.
He is now mostly back to sleeping through the night (again, wasn't our intent). If he wakes to eat, I am more than happy to feed him. Actually, recently I've been setting an alarm to get up in the middle of the night to go in and dreamfeed since his weight gain has been slow. It has been very nice for him to be able to fall back asleep himself in the middle of the night now. It has also really helped with our naps and he's now napping in his crib instead of the swing.
I had originally been very against letting him cry at all but when I started having to get up 6 times a night to rock back to sleep and it was taking a long time to do so and I had to work 12.5 hours the following day, it was tough. So shortly after four months we felt it was the right time to break the sleep association. Now, I give him a small A&A security blanket which he can associate sleep with.
My LO is 3 months on Sunday. My husband I agreed that we would give her a 10 minute window to CIO to see if she will go to sleep. We always make sure she is truly tired before allowing her to just cry. We have done this for naps and at bedtime and only 1 time out of probably the 10 times we have done it has she cried more than 10 minutes and needed us to go in there. Most of the time she is done crying in less than 5 minutes and is out for the count. Now, when I mention crying there are different kinds of cries.
I think that allowing us this 10 minute window forces us to truly listen to our LO and determine what she truly needs. My LO will cry when she is trying to fall asleep while I am holding her as well. I have to walk around with her and she will fight it and fight it. Sometimes I think the crib allows for less stimulation then me shifting around trying to make her happy. I spend AT LEAST 10 minutes sometimes trying to walk her around while she cries trying to sleep. Sometimes she is awake when we lay her down (with eyes drooping of course so we know she is tired if she does cry) and sometimes she is out by the time we make it up the stairs to her crib.
Everyone has different opinions on when is too young or whether to allow your baby to cry. I spent too much time worrying about what everyone was saying and not just thinking about how my daughter is responding to things. Since we started letting her fuss at night she has been sleeping through the night for the last week. She goes down around 9:00 and wakes between 6-7a. I still have to fight her for naps and she is very inconsistent there but she is getting restorative sleep at night.
She used to wake between 3-5 and we would go walk her back to sleep...since allowing her to fuss she has taught herself to go back to sleep at this time. Sometimes I just hear her talking in her room and eventually she is quiet again. Allowing her to do it on her own actually made me feel like I accomplished teaching my daughter something already (though I am sure many of you disagree and I will be bashed for letting her cry). I am very attentive to her needs when she is awake and interact and love on her alot when she is not fussy overtired and crying. I think that is important too!
Good luck! I hope things get better. I know this isn't true sleep training but we are just trying our own thing and plan to do sleep training around the time you are as well if she doesn't start soothing by then. Hoping she'll find a prop before as trying to get her to take a pacifier is out of the question. And she hasn't found a finger/thumb just yet...or should I say at the right time since her hands are always in her mouth.
Way to young. Sorry. I'm a huge fan of CIO in older babies and toddlers, but this constant rush to force kids to sleep when they're not ready is ridiculous.
I'm also trying to introduce a lovey, and we are starting to let her have one hand out of the swaddle as she is soothed by sucking her hand. And perhaps doing these things will help. We do let her fuss before we go in when she wakes and sometimes she goes back to sleep or is fussing in her sleep.
First off I will say I am ABSOLUTELY against letting a child cry inconsolably at any age (even my almost 4 yo) but we started our own version of Ferber last weekend with DS as he had been putting himself to sleep and sleeping very well since birth and then switched and spent three weeks fighting sleep and waking up every two hours all night long. Here's what we did:
Night one: Laid down swaddled and drowsy, but awake. We let him cry for 30 seconds, 1 minute, 90 seconds, and then 90 seconds each time thereout. I went up roughly six times.
Night two: Laid down swaddled and drowsy, but awake. We let him cry for 1 minute, 90 seconds, 2 minutes, and then 2 minutes from there out. It took about four trips up, but each was roughly 15 minutes apart before he started fussing again.
Night three: Laid down swaddled and drowsy, but awake. The plan was to wait 90 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, but he never woke up until it was time to eat at 3 am.
He has gone down without us having to go back up each night since. Today I started doing it for his afternoon nap and it took two trips up before he was out. DS is tiny so I have no intention of dropping a night feeding if he wakes up hungry, but being able to put himself to sleep when he isn't hungry is key. He now wakes up and fusses once or twice a night, but goes right back to sleep, where before he would wake up and get himself so worked up he wouldn't go back to sleep.