Those that did NO sleep training

hopefulmom81 · November 2012

Let's talk.

So, I attempted the Ferber method last night. I can't do it. I don't have the resolve or will power when DD is screaming and upset to not pick her up. I was shaking.

I own it. I admit it. I am an enabler

So, for those of you who didn't do anything (are there any of you out there?), how does it work? Does LO just eventually drop the night feeding on their own?

Am I awful? I know that I should be teaching her to pacify herself, but honestly she is SO calm during the day, the only time she REALLY needs me is at night once or twice. Will this stop on its own, or do I need to be more firm?

She goes down around 7:30PM and most nights makes it until almost 2. Some nights she wakes up more around 12 and then goes down until almost 4.

Is 1-2 night feedings awful at 6 months?

Help. I am a very confused mama who knows I can't do anything that involves CIO.

EDIT: I should explain that I did Ferber to a tee for a full hour before I gave in.

WearingRed · November 2012

I couldn't do anything because of situational co rooming. Around 9 months em stopped waking to fed and around a year she stopped waking unless she was sick or had a bad dream. She just started sleeping in her own room and does great. I don't think I will ever let my kid cry it out. And really they do adjust in their own when they are ready it just might make you crazy waiting though.

Izabella22 · November 2012

I didn't do any sleep training cause I can't handle CIO either. I find that everytime I try to manipulate his sleep it means we all get less sleep and he is less happy - which means we're all less happy. The pedi wants his bedtime shifted earlier since we put him down around 9 most nights, but he sleeps till 6 for the most part and I'm good with that. Its really about what you can live with... if you can't handle the night wakings then you should try something, but if your routine works for you and no one is really suffering.... I don't see why tweaking it just to fit the norm is worth it. Granted, DS STTN since he was 3 months for the most part unless he's sick/teething so I'm not really a huge help. But you've got to do what works for you. One thought if the night waking is to feed, Have you tried offering a paci instead? When DS does wake in the night I don't feed him, and I don't pick him up unless he's messy or sick.

CheesyPeas · November 2012

Izabella22:
I didn't do any sleep training cause I can't handle CIO either. I find that everytime I try to manipulate his sleep it means we all get less sleep and he is less happy - which means we're all less happy. The pedi wants his bedtime shifted earlier since we put him down around 9 most nights, but he sleeps till 6 for the most part and I'm good with that. Its really about what you can live with... if you can't handle the night wakings then you should try something, but if your routine works for you and no one is really suffering.... I don't see why tweaking it just to fit the norm is worth it. Granted, DS STTN since he was 3 months for the most part unless he's sick/teething so I'm not really a huge help. But you've got to do what works for you. One thought if the night waking is to feed, Have you tried offering a paci instead? When DS does wake in the night I don't feed him, and I don't pick him up unless he's messy or sick.

Ditto all of this. We never did sleep training but DS has also always been a pretty good sleeper, so I never really considered doing it either. If your routine is working for you, I say stick with it. Despite what others may say about missing your window of opportunity to sleep train, I've seen multiple people on here state that they did it later without issue or just waited it our for their LOs to start sleeping better all on their own.

When DS wakes up at night (a rare event up until the past month or so when he has started waking once or twice a night), I try to give him a paci to help him soothe himself, roll him onto his side and rub his back. About 80% of the time, this process enables me to get in and out of his room in literally about 30 seconds. Other times when he's clearly too upset for this method to work, I get him out of his crib and nurse him for about 10 minutes, and he zonks out again. It works for us, and I don't mind hopping out of bed when need be.

spincat9 · November 2012

You are not awful. I absolutely was feeding DD 1-2x/night at 6 months. In fact, I fed her 1x/night until she was a year old approximately. And she gradually dropped that feeding on her own. I did no sleep training. Had no inclination to in fact. My daughter now sleeps from 8pm to 8am with no wakings. You need to do what is right for you and your baby. Don't worry about what's popular, what others do, etc. I personally was a big advocate for self-weaning, and if DD woke up at 3am, I would check her diaper, try to lull her back to sleep with no food, and if she didn't go back to sleep b/c she was hungry, then I fed her. DD just weaned about 2 months ago (at almost 16 mo I believe it was) and she dropped her last feeding right before bed on her own, in her own way, in her own time. Your daughter might be legitimately hungry. You might talk to your pedi too. Mine was completely fine with my DD waking 1x/night at about 4am to eat. By that point she had been sleeping for 8 hours and my pedi felt it was totally ok to expect her to be hungry. Gradually once you add solids, your baby might stretch out to 3am or 4am, then 5am. That's how it worked for us anyway. When it got to be 6 or 6:30 that she woke up for the 1st time, then I just got her up for the day. She got so tired, it wasn't long at all before she decided it was better to sleep through to 8am than for me to get her up that early! lol... Do what's best for you and your baby. Trust your instincts.

lotus88 · November 2012

DD has just started to be fairly consistent eliminating the night feeding, though I don't mind getting up once around two or three which is what she had done for the last three monthsish. Now I actually end up waking up an hour before I need to because my boobs are insanely engorged. So we're still working out the kinks. When I lay her down for the night the first time she's asleep in the crib. The second time, I lay her down awake in the RnP and she puts herself to sleep without any fuss. I've never let her CIO. She complains, yells sometimes, but rarely cries. When she does, there's a good reason. I'm sure this doesn't work out for everybody, but I don't think everybody needs ferber either.

Junebug060609 · November 2012

We did Ferber, so I'm no help with suggestions. I tried No Cry methods before going that route and had no success. I do want to mention that most people I know of that have done Ferber react much like you did. It is one of the hardest things I've ever done as his parent. I stuck with it because he wasn't sleeping anywhere near enough and I was concerned about his health.

I don't think you're awful. Do what works for your family. Babies sleep patterns are ever-evolving, and eventually your child will STTN.

Regarding the night feeding, 1-2 feedings a night at 6 mos sounds reasonable to me. My son was taking a feeding a night until right around the one year mark. Sure it wasn't what 'the experts' said should be happening, but I was alright with it and he went down immediately afterwards for the rest of the night.

VeilSdeGTO · November 2012

My situation is a little different as I did attempt to sleep train. I tried the sleep lady shuffle, I tried CIO, a no-cry whatever, I tried the praying/begging/magic rain dance, and none of it really got her to fall asleep on her own or help her sttn.

It also got to a point that it was causing her to get even less sleep or take longer to get to sleep than if I just nursed her. Plus, when she would get sick/growth spurt/teething/full moon, she would go back to waking multiple times and I dread the thought of having to re-train her every time.

I finally just let things be and nurse her before bed, and nurse her if it was after three hours from her previous waking. She slowly dropped the night wakings on her own and would start to fall asleep quicker on her own.

At 11.5 months, she sttn for the first time and now at 13 months, is pretty consistent with that, even with illness/teething/etc. If she does wake up, she will fall back asleep within a few minutes. If it doesn't, than I got in and just lay her back down, rub her back for a few seconds, and she's back asleep.

I functioned on very little sleep for the entire time, but I really feel (hoped and prayed) that she would do it when she was ready, and she did. Sure, it took way longer than I had hoped, but it worked for us. I don't think I would do anything different except accept that she was just going to take a long time to sttn early on and not bother with all the sleep training.

I now slightly miss the night wakings. Just ever so slightly...

MickeyM04 · November 2012

We did not do sleep training and DS has been STTN since 5 months. He used to have 2-3 night wakings every night...I remember shortly before I went back to work at 12 weeks I was freaking out because I did not think I could get up 2-3 times a night and function at work. So what we did was around 9 weeks when he would get up during the night for the first feeding around midnight we would send DH in there to rock him/give him a binky until he fell back asleep. After maybe a week or so, he stopped getting up for the midnight feeding because he realized it wasn't happening. (The reason DH would go in there would be because if he could smell me he automatically assumed it was time to eat.)

So we started only feeding him for the 2:30ish feeding, and this lasted for a long time until around 4 months it slowly started getting later...he would sleep until 2:40...then 2:50...then 3:00...etc. until he was actually not waking up until 4:00 to eat. Then before I knew it, at almost exactly 5 months he started STTN until 5:00...then 5:30, and now he pretty much sleeps from 7:15 p.m. to 5:45 a.m., and he's 6.5 months.

So #1, I think the trick is for a feeding you want to eliminate is to send DH in to rock her or soothe her to sleep and she will start getting the idea that she doesn't get to eat at that time. Then #2, I think honestly LO's will start STTN when they are ready. DS slowly started pushing that middle of the night feeding back all on his own until he didn't need it anymore. Of course I may just say that because we had an easy LO who started STTN by himself.

Also FWIW, our ped said that for BF babies, if you can get a 6 hour stretch at about 4 months of age, you are in EXCELLENT shape and that he doesn't recommend CIO for a BF baby because breastmilk is digested so quickly they usually truly do need to eat in the middle of the night. At 4 months when I said we were getting stretches from 7-2:30 a.m. he said that was FABULOUS for a BF baby. Sounds very similar to what yours is doing most nights. That being said the 2 wakings during the night, probably 1 is not necessary to feed her for and I would figure out which one you want to get rid of (probably the midnight one since she probably should be able to go more than 4.5 hours between feedings) and send in DH for a few days to rock her to sleep and see if she starts sleeping through that feeding.

GL mama!!!

october_artist · November 2012

Well we aren't doing sleep training and honestly, I have a horrible sleeper. As in I wish she only got up twice a night......it's more like 10. Sometimes fewer sometimes more. I'm not working right now so that is what keeps me from totally breaking down from lack of sleep. If I had someplace to be most days then maybe I'd set up a different strategy but seriously - letting her cry is not an option for me. Yet. lol, I do have faith she will sleep eventually. We cosleep and bed share after a few wakeups so it's easy for me to just nurse her sidelying and doze through it.

Anyways, just wanted to give you some support with whatever way you choose to proceed - it's not easy! Sleep is most def important and in all of this I've learned not to judge someone's methods - whatever works for you is the best route.

I did see this on FB recently that spoke to me and it kinda keeps me going when I'm a bit tired:

"Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your baby. Go to your baby a million times. Demonstrate that people can be trusted, that the environment can be trusted, that we live in a benign universe." -Peggy O'Mara

Good luck mama!

Sonadora · November 2012

We Ferbered 3 times. Each time her sleep got better, but eventually at 11.5 months something finally clicked and she stopped waking at night.

At 6 months we did it because she was still waking every 1-2 hours or less and nothing but the boob could get her back to sleep. Her wake ups decreased to every 2-3 hours...at 8 months we did it again and wakeups went to every 3-4 hours. At 10 months again and we got it down to just one or 2 wake ups a night. Then on her own at 11.5 months she just randomly started STTN one night and now only wakes up and cries for us if something is actually wrong.

GL!

And, fwiw, I could not do the Ferbering, it had to be H because if I went in, she smelled my milk and that was the end of that.

Karen1998 · November 2012

We did Ferber, basically, to drop to 2 feedings a night. My kid likes to eat. He also refused to take more than about 4oz at a feeding, regardless of age. We did re-Ferberize him around 6-9m (I forgot when) to get him down to 2 feedings (11pm and 4-5am), again at 10m and then again at 11m to get rid of one of the 4-5am feeding (as it was clear that he could handle it then) and then again after a year to get rid of the last one. To me, it's pretty normal to have a 6m old child that eats at least once, if not twice, during a 12 hour period. Especially if that child is BF. It's also pretty normal to have a child that randomly adds in new feedings for a few days when he's hitting a spurt.

It really sounds to me like you have a pretty easy baby and one that may (fingers crossed) train herself. If you do decide to do sleep training later, there are other methods (Sleep Lady Shuffle comes to mind) that may be more up your alley.

I agree with PP - if the schedule is not bothering you and everyone's happy with the amount of sleep they're getting, then it's not worth fretting over.

piedpiper07 · November 2012

I am right with you. I am finding it impossible to do Ferber. or CIO. But he wakes 7-10 times a night still. I don't know if I am doing something wrong or he is super hungry, or what. So no solutions from me but I feel your pain!

mundayem · November 2012

I didn't ST, I don't plan to ST, and he's never STTN. Some nights he's up only twice, sometimes it's more like 7 or 8. He's really good and happy all day so I have no problem with him needing a little more comfort at night. I think part of it is because I work full time he wants to be close to me at night. I say do what works for you. I could never listen to D cry like that.

deltagirl79 · November 2012

We did not sleep train. I considered us to be very lucky in not needing too, but at six months he was still waking to eat 2-3 times a night. He would wake, eat and go back to sleep easy peasy, so like pp mentioned since it didn't bother me, I didn't feel the need. Not too long after six months he started only getting up once a night and around 9-10 months he started STTN 7-7.

If you are not bothered by the sleep that you are getting (or lack) and LO seems to be getting enough then I would not worry or feel the need to sleep train.

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