Babies: 6 - 9 Months
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XP: What sleep training method did you use?
LO is nearing 4 months old and I would like to start sleep training her soon. Right now, she sleeps pretty well from 7pm-12am. After her feeding at 12:30am she really is up every couple of hours and we usually just give up and put her in her swing from 4am-6am so I can rest. Se gets a pacifier and she is still swaddled and I am wondering if I should start weaning her from the swaddle. So, my questions for you:
1: What sleep training method did you use and why?
2: When did you start?
3: How long did it take?
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Re: XP: What sleep training method did you use?
1: What sleep training method did you use and why? Sleep Easy Solution, someone I know had the same exact issues I did with my DS regarding sleeping and SES helped her. I read the book, and I liked the content. It's a modified CIO method.
2: When did you start? 4 months when he started waking hourly and eating/ soothing didn't do much for him.
3: How long did it take? It worked almost immediately, but I have to warn you. At least in the book, I can't remember the exact term but you might have great success early on and then your baby might try to regress again. I think it's called the rebound effect but I am not sure. Sleeping seems to ebb and flow in our household. A string of good nights and a string of bad ones.2 we started just shy of four months.
3 it worked overnight. DS went from sleeping on me for every nap and half the night to taking every nap in his crib He cried a lot the first night and a lot his first nap. Every nap thereafter we went down with no crying. Now he sometimes cries for naps if he gets too tired. Most of the time he just fusses or talks to himself or most commonly just goes right to sleep. We do rock him until he is drowsy.
CIO is not for the faint at heart. It is HARD to hear them cry. But the way I see it we tried other things first and something had to be done. With the "no cry" solutions he still cried and after an hour or more of "pick up put down" for each nap we still ended up just picking him up and resorting to our usual measures of getting him to sleep... Simultaneous patting, rocking, shushing, sucking... We saw no improvement after several days. I would rather do a few nights of CIO than hours of crying each day with pick up put down. Less crying overall and my baby is the happiest baby I know.
FWIW, we modified the plan a bit and decided to keep night feedings. Put problem was not getting up at night. Even though he was still waking 2 to 3 times at night we didn't mind that. Our problem was getting him to sleep on his own. They do have a great night weaning program but we didn't use it. DS stopped waking up at night on his own two weeks ago. So I can't attest to the effectiveness of the night weaning but it sounds like a good plan.
ETA we kept the swaddle even though the plan says not to. The first night we cut the swaddle and he cried a lot and kept flailing. The next nap we didn't swaddle and the same thing. The next nap after that we swaddled him and he went down without crying at all. We kept the swaddle until he was five months and then cut it cold turkey. He was already sleeping well by then. He had two naps with no swaddle where he fussed a lot more but by that night he was totally fine with it.
1. Healthy Sleep Habits Happy Baby. We had some friends highly reccomend it. With DD1 we tried ferber and no cry sleep solution with no success. The book just stresses how much babies/kids need sleep to be healthy. The biggest difference with this method vs ferber is what he called the extinction method. At night (naptime is a bit different) you let them cry until they fall alseep bc if you go in there they learn that and will continue to cry expecting that visit.
2. around 6.5 months
3. Night 1 she cried for 2 hours- I was sick from it. Night 2 wasn't even 20 minutes. For a few nights after that she fussed for 15ish minutes very rarely was it a hard cry. Now I put her down and she fusses for a minute or 2 then sleeps until 6:30ish when she wakes up hungry.
1: What sleep training method did you use and why? We used SleepEasy solution. I read about it on a blog I read (Cup of Jo) and as it was the only book we had, we went with that when we were having sleep problems.
2: When did you start? We started at 5 months after a month of having to rock her to sleep for at least 30 min. DD was able to roll over in her swaddle so we had to stop swaddling and was still very wiggly which was causing all the issues with her soothing herself to sleep.
3: How long did it take? For bed time - 5 days for results. The first night was awful (58 min of crying), but it got so much better from there. I also weaned her off one night feed at the same time. Naps took two weeks to be consistent and after two months, I still have issues with her going down for her third nap, but that isn't her inability to self soothe; it is just her wanting to be up and playing still. The third nap is starting to phase itself out.
If you are going to sleep train, I recommend purchasing the book of the method you choose instead of getting a summary online. There are usually very good comments from the authors that you can't get in a summary from a message board which will help the process go smoothly. Also, remember to be consistent! Mixed messages are so hard at this age and if you give up in a few days, your LO will have cried for nothing.