We used Ferber sleep training method with DS. It worked for us, but it is not right for every baby or parent. We first used it to get DS to go to sleep on his own, then once he master that we used it to cut out the night feedings. Each step took about a weekend for him to learn. When he would cry I would go in and rub his belly, but not pick him up, and tell him I loved him. He usually cried harder when I left. It was a hard weekend but everyone was sleeping better afterwards. I have been debating doing it with LO to cut out the night feeding (she already goes to sleep on her own), but she is still catching up in weight and height from being born early so I have been putting it off.
We may be moving to Ferber if I can convince DH... Based on how my LO cries it seems like he's more angry about being put down than afraid of being alone. We'd been trying pick up put down but I'm not sure if it's working since he's waking up an hour after he goes down and we have to do the whole thing again. There is one other method that's gentler than Ferber called the chair method where you sit in a chair next to their crib and let them cry while you're there so they know they aren't alone. You slowly move the chair further and further each night till you don't need it. But I think LO would be angry that I was sitting there and not helping him and it would take longer and be more painful
We tried the chair method. .. for a night. It became apparent that my being in the room made everything worse. We let her cry it out and went in to calm her every 10 minutes. She got the idea by night 3 and now sleeps through the night. We are still struggling with naps. She goes down easy, but will only nap for 30 minutes at a time.
To answer your question about what to do when baby wakes in the night: my LO just wakes once to nurse. After nursing, I did a shortened version of her nighttime routine and put her to bed. When she wouldn't sleep, I let her cry and came in to calm her every 10 minutes or so. After a few nights she would go back to sleep after nursing without crying.
It's time here to sleep train too. He already spends the first 1/2 of the night in his crib and by 3am I'm too tired and bring him to bed with me, but cosleeping is really not for me. I'm gonna move his crib into his room and sleep in the guest room for a few nights as we get the hang of it(DH has a high stress job and needs to sleep, so our room is no good for sleep training)
Do you guys think the change of room will throw anything off? Is 3-5 nights the norm for them to sorta get the hang of it? Should I do naps now too or wait on those?
I'm not sure how well this is gonna go, he never calms down without being picked up, but setting him down starts the crying back up right away.
This stresses me out to no end, but I'm confident he's developmentally ready.
It's time here to sleep train too. He already spends the first 1/2 of the night in his crib and by 3am I'm too tired and bring him to bed with me, but cosleeping is really not for me. I'm gonna move his crib into his room and sleep in the guest room for a few nights as we get the hang of it(DH has a high stress job and needs to sleep, so our room is no good for sleep training)
Do you guys think the change of room will throw anything off? Is 3-5 nights the norm for them to sorta get the hang of it? Should I do naps now too or wait on those?
I'm not sure how well this is gonna go, he never calms down without being picked up, but setting him down starts the crying back up right away.
This stresses me out to no end, but I'm confident he's developmentally ready.
-------qbf---------
Moving from my bedroom to their own did not bother either of my kids, but I have heard other moms saw it disrupted their kids sleep. Maybe try a night in the new room with your regular routine before starting sleep training. When we did sleep training we just did it at night, then DS figured out the naps on his own shortly there after. But I think the official Ferber method recommends training at both naps and night. With DS the worst of it was over in a weekend. By Monday there was still some crying but we did not have to go in the room more that once a wake up.
It's time here to sleep train too. He already spends the first 1/2 of the night in his crib and by 3am I'm too tired and bring him to bed with me, but cosleeping is really not for me. I'm gonna move his crib into his room and sleep in the guest room for a few nights as we get the hang of it(DH has a high stress job and needs to sleep, so our room is no good for sleep training)
Do you guys think the change of room will throw anything off? Is 3-5 nights the norm for them to sorta get the hang of it? Should I do naps now too or wait on those?
I'm not sure how well this is gonna go, he never calms down without being picked up, but setting him down starts the crying back up right away.
This stresses me out to no end, but I'm confident he's developmentally ready.
I am not using the Ferber method, but am sleep training my daughter. Changing from my room to her crib actually helped us quite a bit. She was no longer waking us up every time she rolled over and we were no longer waking her up.
If there's something strange underneath the hood. Who you gonna call? Your Doctor. If there's something weird and it don't look good. Who you gonna call? Your Doctor. Immediately. If it's new, painful, and possibly pregnancy related get your ass off the internet and call your doctor. It's for your health and your child's.
I am not using or plan on using the ferber method. We tried it with DS and it didn't work. I'm okay with nursing her to sleep. The kegs are gold ladies! Think I can get away with it until she is 5? Jk... We are moving DD into her crib this weekend. Wish us luck! And good luck to all of you with whatever method you try and works for you.
Are all these sleep training for babies who cry or for babies that just dont sleep and play ? Mine doesnt cry, just plays and is noisy when she does not want to sleep. And she still wakes up hungry during the night, so I dont get how you can "cut" the middle of the night feeding. She did not have it before so I put in on growth, it sounds wrong to cut it, what amI missing ?
@poupoule I'm not looking to cut out feedings, but give him the skill of falling asleep without me. My lo is an exceptionally light sleeper and wakes himself up every hour or 2(or less). He then nurses for like 1 minute and is back out. I'm the pacifier, and it's just not working because when I set him back in the crib 1/2 the time the motion wakes him and we have to start over. He only seriously eats once, maybe twice a night but I'm up with him all night if we don't cosleep.
I did Ferber at the recommendation of our pediatrician. My son puts himself to sleep fine at night but started waking up more and more and we were all exhausted and sick for weeks. The first night, he cried/fussed for 10 minutes each wake up but calmed down when I walked in. After 4 nights, he slept through the night for the first time ever. Which means, I slept through the night for the first time in over FIVE months!!! Last night was the second night he slept through the night so fingers crossed that this continues. We decided to drop the overnight feed as well. My son is 18lbs at 5 months and the pedicitrician said continuing to feed at night would make the wake ups more of a habit. I give him a big bottle at 7pm and then sneak in a do a dream feed at 10pm before I go to bed. He wakes up at 6:30, happy and ready to eat. I know people are apprehensive about letting their baby cry a bit but it really does help them learn how to self soothe and a well rested baby is a happy one.
If your baby has teeth you may want to think about cutting out the night feedings. My toddler has major tooth decay issues and the first thing every dentist we saw asked was does he go to bed with a bottle. We did stop feeding my toddler at night at about 6 months, but all his teeth are rotten anyway (sometimes you just cannot win).
We do not plan to Ferber, it's not right for us. BUT moving DS from the pack n play in our room to the crib in his room has greatly improved his sleep.
LO finally goes to sleep on her own, we had to resort to crying it out as well. Our problem now is waking during the night.
I have zero problems with nursing LO if/when she needs even through the night hours but for the life of me I cannot figure out when she is just fussing and can resettle herself vs when she is hungry. Its not consistent night to night. Ive kept logs & looked for patterns.
She has 2-6 hr stretches w/o breastfeeding. Some nights i am convinced she isnt hungry but her fussing escalates to crying and I had guessed wrong. Other times after 5+hrs of sleep i'll be so confident she is waking out of hunger but then the sight of my boob knocks her out for another few hours....so wrong again! I feel hesitant to just always rush in to feed her since I dont want to take away her ability to self sooth and put herself back to sleep between sleep cycles. Its just frustrating I feel like I should be more in tune with her needs!
I should add she is a chunky kid! 20% for length and always 60+% for weight so the fact she wakes out of hunger at all makes no sense to me!
I've started Ferber as a last ditch effort because I am going crazy. Nothing else is working and nursing to sleep every time the Bebe's woke up (sometimes 5-6 times a night) just isn't feasible anymore. It's been two nights now and things maybe seem to be getting better?? I go in after 5 minutes and sing a song/ rub her head for about 2-3 minutes, then leave again. Tonight it took 3 tries. She's petite, so I still feed her at night. If it's been 3ish hours i just feed her and she's right back down, more than that and I've been trying the 5 minute thing. It's harder in the middle of the night because all i want to do is sleep, so it's easy to give in to something I know will work right away, like nursing or cosleeping. My husband is not totally on board--or just doesn't get what I'm trying to do because he just does his own thing. From everything I've read, it's not so much the method, but the consistency that does it, so we'll see...
Thanks everyone, this is great. I tried it one night and ended up in tears (both of us) and just gave in and held him for like an hour... not the method. But the next night he was being totally impossible to put down, he ate and was exhausted but every time I tried to put him in his crib, he would start fussing. So, we did the checking on him at intervals things, and I survived without crying and he was asleep after about 30 minutes (he wasn't crying the whole time, thank god).
Right now I'm sort of doing this: if he falls asleep nursing and tolerates being put down in his crib, bully for us, if not, and he won't calm down quickly, we do a little ferber. I'm pretty sure this is not what you're supposed to do though and I should probably either do the method or just rock him to sleep every time. I'm finding it really difficult to cope with hearing him cry though, feeling like he must feel abandoned and not understand why we aren't coming in. Probably just me projecting my own issues, I'm sure he's fine, but its tough. I have his six month check up in about two weeks, so I think I will talk to the doctor about what to do then, because I'm not sure if it is even ok for me to cut back on night feeding. He generally eats twice per night now, and it would be nice to cut that down to once.
@PocoHR I feel for you! Hearing our daughter cry tore me up while we went through sleep training. The way I managed it was I told myself a period of crying followed by hours of uninterupted sleep was healthier for her than the broken sleep she had been experiencing. I am a ftm and am sure that parenthood is going to bring a lot of challenges & times where I will have to make the right decision for our daughter and the right decision is not always the easy one. (I just told myself this over and over as I fixated on the baby monitor)
Hey ladies, I'm a lurker here but I'm hoping maybe you can give me some advice.
I'm also going through what most of you are describing. She goes down ok at night but will wake after an hour, then 2 or 3 more times a night. She can't seem to fall asleep without nursing. She never used to be this bad of a sleeper. She has STTN quite a few times, even after the 4 month regression. She's now 5.5 months.
Last night we decided to try Ferber at her first waking. She cried for 5, 8, 11, and 15 minutes. Never fell asleep, just screamed bloody murder. I would soothe her for a few minutes by rubbing her little head and kissing her tears, but it just didn't work. The whole thing took just under an hour before I finally gave in and nursed her, and she fell asleep after 5 minutes from sheer exhaustion from screaming so long.
I'm so lost. What do you all think?
Me: 34 DH: 35
Married 2010
TTC: Feb 2014, BFP 7/14/14, CP 7/18/14
BFP 3/10/15 - DD #1 born 11/19 TTC #2: Oct 2017, BFP 12/19/17, CP 12/22/17 BFP 2/20/18 - EDD 10/31/2018
Hey ladies, I'm a lurker here but I'm hoping maybe you can give me some advice.
I'm also going through what most of you are describing. She goes down ok at night but will wake after an hour, then 2 or 3 more times a night. She can't seem to fall asleep without nursing. She never used to be this bad of a sleeper. She has STTN quite a few times, even after the 4 month regression. She's now 5.5 months.
Last night we decided to try Ferber at her first waking. She cried for 5, 8, 11, and 15 minutes. Never fell asleep, just screamed bloody murder. I would soothe her for a few minutes by rubbing her little head and kissing her tears, but it just didn't work. The whole thing took just under an hour before I finally gave in and nursed her, and she fell asleep after 5 minutes from sheer exhaustion from screaming so long.
I'm so lost. What do you all think?
How old is your little one? She may be going through a growth spurt and developmentally unable to wait until morning for more food.
If there's something strange underneath the hood. Who you gonna call? Your Doctor. If there's something weird and it don't look good. Who you gonna call? Your Doctor. Immediately. If it's new, painful, and possibly pregnancy related get your ass off the internet and call your doctor. It's for your health and your child's.
Hey ladies, I'm a lurker here but I'm hoping maybe you can give me some advice.
I'm also going through what most of you are describing. She goes down ok at night but will wake after an hour, then 2 or 3 more times a night. She can't seem to fall asleep without nursing. She never used to be this bad of a sleeper. She has STTN quite a few times, even after the 4 month regression. She's now 5.5 months.
Last night we decided to try Ferber at her first waking. She cried for 5, 8, 11, and 15 minutes. Never fell asleep, just screamed bloody murder. I would soothe her for a few minutes by rubbing her little head and kissing her tears, but it just didn't work. The whole thing took just under an hour before I finally gave in and nursed her, and she fell asleep after 5 minutes from sheer exhaustion from screaming so long.
I'm so lost. What do you all think?
How old is your little one? She may be going through a growth spurt and developmentally unable to wait until morning for more food.
5.5 months/24 weeks. She'll be 6 months 5/19.
Me: 34 DH: 35
Married 2010
TTC: Feb 2014, BFP 7/14/14, CP 7/18/14
BFP 3/10/15 - DD #1 born 11/19 TTC #2: Oct 2017, BFP 12/19/17, CP 12/22/17 BFP 2/20/18 - EDD 10/31/2018
We actually could never go in and soothe our lo. since our presence seem to only make her more alert and awake it prolonged her crying. She eventually just got very overtired and that's when the bloody murder screaming would start! Every baby is different but for us we could never go back once we laid her down. We would make sure she had been burped, diaper fresh, fed and felt certain all of her other needs had been met. Thats what worked for us.
After a few nights, things are getting better! We realized its better if my husband goes in. When I'm there he just cries harder, I think because he really wants me to pick him up, but my husband seems to be able to soothe him at least a little. Last night he only cried for 9 minutes and then fell asleep. I'm hoping this means things are really getting better!
Night before he cried for almost 2 hours with me going in every 8 minutes, soothe, leave, cry, repeat. Last night his first wake up was 35 min of crying and every wake up after was eat and right to sleep! Progress! I didn't think it would go as smoothly as most kiddo's so I'm excited even though that's still a lot of crying. He also popped his first tooth yesterday and today he rolled back to belly for the first time. Big week for us!
We don't wait until he stops crying to leave the room, we'd be there forever. My husband just goes in, pats his back/head and tells him its ok, and that he should sleep, then leaves. He's only in there for 30 seconds tops. I think staying any longer would confuse and upset my son, he would really wonder why were were sitting there watching him cry, I think.
I am gonna throw it in there, maybe you had all tried. A friend came visit recently and I asked her how she did with her kids to put them to sleep, they are now all grown ups. And she told me I absolutely needed a 2-in-1 eletronic mobile. That turns with music and projects images. I was sceptical but had just had a couple of night when my baby did not fall to sleep easily on the breast so I was expecting difficults nights. I ordered one she picked for me. 3 weeks later I fonally bought batteries for it lol. and we tried it yesterday when she awoke 1h after being asleep - I was afraid she would try grabbing it, be even more awake because it was new etc - OH MY GOD she looked at it with big eyes, stopped kicking the blankets and talking. She was out in 10min!!!! She woke up 5 hours later and I fed her she fell asleep on me, no need for it. Then 3 hours later at 6am I turned it on - out in 5 min again for her last two hours.
Hey ladies, I'm a lurker here but I'm hoping maybe you can give me some advice.
I'm also going through what most of you are describing. She goes down ok at night but will wake after an hour, then 2 or 3 more times a night. She can't seem to fall asleep without nursing. She never used to be this bad of a sleeper. She has STTN quite a few times, even after the 4 month regression. She's now 5.5 months.
Last night we decided to try Ferber at her first waking. She cried for 5, 8, 11, and 15 minutes. Never fell asleep, just screamed bloody murder. I would soothe her for a few minutes by rubbing her little head and kissing her tears, but it just didn't work. The whole thing took just under an hour before I finally gave in and nursed her, and she fell asleep after 5 minutes from sheer exhaustion from screaming so long.
I'm so lost. What do you all think?
A few days late but how does bedtime look in your house? The reason why I ask is because 6 months is prime time for object permanence. Are you nursing her to sleep? Ferber is best used at bedtime because generally most sleep associations and issues result from something happening when LO is initially falling asleep at night.
If you are nursing her to sleep at bedtime she may be expecting the same thing to occur each time she wakes overnight. When we broke DS2's suck-sleep and pat-sleep associations at bedtime he went from waking every 1-3 hours to waking 0-1 time overnight naturally without doing any sleep training MOTN.
I'm a September mom but our board has been a bit slow lately. Sorry to jump in.
I got 6 uninterrupted hours of sleep last night. Who is this kid!?!? The one night I didn't pump before bed, so engorged but couldn't care less. I haven't had this much sleep since the first week of February.
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm such a ostrich when it comes to sleep training. So we bed share, and I'm liking it actually...a lot. I know we should probably sleep train her and without a doubt, she needs to learn to put herself to sleep, but I just don't have it in me to do Ferber or CIO. We still hold her for naps ffs. I hate how saying this makes me feel like I'm being a detriment to my child and I feel embarrassed about telling people all this- but my daughter is just high needs as hell. 20 minutes sleeping in the crib for a nap or 45- a hour and a half in my arms. There's no comparison. I still have to bounce her to sleep too which I could do without. If she could just fall asleep on her own things would be great.
My LO wakes up every hour and just turned 6 months. I don't think I can do ferber. Anyone tried anything else to teach their LO to fall asleep on their own? Anyone tried the " no cry sleep solution"?
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm such a ostrich when it comes to sleep training. So we bed share, and I'm liking it actually...a lot. I know we should probably sleep train her and without a doubt, she needs to learn to put herself to sleep, but I just don't have it in me to do Ferber or CIO. We still hold her for naps ffs. I hate how saying this makes me feel like I'm being a detriment to my child and I feel embarrassed about telling people all this- but my daughter is just high needs as hell. 20 minutes sleeping in the crib for a nap or 45- a hour and a half in my arms. There's no comparison. I still have to bounce her to sleep too which I could do without. If she could just fall asleep on her own things would be great.
No advice but I'm in the same boat. I'll be sure to comment if we figure something out that works.
I probably got one of the last one it had just taken a week ! edited : another success tonight ! She whined a bit but her eyes kept going back on it. She also has a crinkled toy to keep her hands busy, it calms her too to touch it with her hand. It has been attached to the side of the crib since day 1.
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm such a ostrich when it comes to sleep training. So we bed share, and I'm liking it actually...a lot. I know we should probably sleep train her and without a doubt, she needs to learn to put herself to sleep, but I just don't have it in me to do Ferber or CIO. We still hold her for naps ffs. I hate how saying this makes me feel like I'm being a detriment to my child and I feel embarrassed about telling people all this- but my daughter is just high needs as hell. 20 minutes sleeping in the crib for a nap or 45- a hour and a half in my arms. There's no comparison. I still have to bounce her to sleep too which I could do without. If she could just fall asleep on her own things would be great.
Just wanted to let you know that's us here, too. I don't even get 20 minutes if I put her down for a nap, more like 5-10. 30 if I hold her through the whole nap, so that's just what we do. At night, she's weird. Half the time she falls asleep at 7 and sleeps till 3 or 4. Half the time she's up every 2 hours, you could set your watch to it. Still have to hold/nurse to sleep every time, but she only really eats at the 3am feed. After that wakeup, if she doesn't fall asleep from nursing I can usually bore her to sleep, by sitting in the dark with her making no noise (fun), to get her to sleep till 6, but that is wakeup time no matter how much she did or didn't sleep. There are nights she only gets 6-7 hours but she still won't go back to sleep, she's just a fussy grouch all day.
I don't think I can do Ferber or any CIO type method but we have to do something. I tried pick up put down and it only worked the first night, then she got wise to it and starts crying if you motion to put her down. It's not my presence she wants, we room share so I'm always there. She wants to be held and no amount of shushing, patting, or soothing of any kind works if I don't pick her up. It's exhausting, the only times I get more than 4-5 hours a night are when DH takes her, or we get a magical 'good' night.
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm such a ostrich when it comes to sleep training. So we bed share, and I'm liking it actually...a lot. I know we should probably sleep train her and without a doubt, she needs to learn to put herself to sleep, but I just don't have it in me to do Ferber or CIO. We still hold her for naps ffs. I hate how saying this makes me feel like I'm being a detriment to my child and I feel embarrassed about telling people all this- but my daughter is just high needs as hell. 20 minutes sleeping in the crib for a nap or 45- a hour and a half in my arms. There's no comparison. I still have to bounce her to sleep too which I could do without. If she could just fall asleep on her own things would be great.
This is us too. I've been snuggling her to sleep with a special muslin blanket, using a sound machine, and using a diffuser with lavender oil in it in preparation to make the transition to the crib. I know you're supposed to take away sleep crutches before sleep training, but that just seems to be too much for me, so shoot me. I feel like I'll have better luck if I attack her senses lol she will have the blanket to hold, the sound to listen to and the lavender to smell. Then after she gets used to that I'm going to put a mattress on the floor by her crib and sleep there with her for awhile. After a couple weeks of that I will then attempt to put her in her crib while I sleep on the mattress next to it. And then, over time, move the mattress farther and farther away. I have no idea if it will work but I feel like I need to try something.
Just throwing this out there: my son was up 3-5 times per night and constantly wanted to be held (he would sleep cradled in my arms) before we switched him to his own room at 4 months. I did not want to do it, my pediatrician said we should try it and it helped immensely. I think I was actually waking HIM up and being away from me helped him get more rest. I also hate leaving him to cry, but lately it's almost like that's what he needs. I nurse him, bounce him, hold him, shush him, and he just fusses on and off. Once I finally lay him down now he only cries two or three minutes and he goes to sleep and does a 6 - 8 hour stretch. I was hesitant to try these methods, but in the end I really think it's what is best for him.
My LO wakes up every hour and just turned 6 months. I don't think I can do ferber. Anyone tried anything else to teach their LO to fall asleep on their own? Anyone tried the " no cry sleep solution"?
I used it with my 2.5 year old when he was a baby, it worked great. I used it with DS2 and not so much. I think different babies just respond to different things. It is definitely worth a shot. Despite not having a ton of success the second time around I really think it was a big part of the reason that Ferber was relatively painless for all involved.
We ended up with very minimal crying which I attribute to our work with No Cry, I think the most we had was 15 minutes in intervals.
It is a process though, we spent about 3 months using it with DS1.
To those who hold thier LO through naps, that was me until this week, and with the training he already gets at least an hour in the crib. I know every baby is different but night time training instantly helped daytime, and I wasn't even trying to work on naps until next week. The only time now that he wakes up is after like 6am, but I think it's just too bright in his room by then. I'm going to try blackout curtains and I think we'll be all good.
PocoHR
member
Re: Ferber
We first used it to get DS to go to sleep on his own, then once he master that we used it to cut out the night feedings. Each step took about a weekend for him to learn.
When he would cry I would go in and rub his belly, but not pick him up, and tell him I loved him. He usually cried harder when I left. It was a hard weekend but everyone was sleeping better afterwards.
I have been debating doing it with LO to cut out the night feeding (she already goes to sleep on her own), but she is still catching up in weight and height from being born early so I have been putting it off.
To answer your question about what to do when baby wakes in the night: my LO just wakes once to nurse. After nursing, I did a shortened version of her nighttime routine and put her to bed. When she wouldn't sleep, I let her cry and came in to calm her every 10 minutes or so. After a few nights she would go back to sleep after nursing without crying.
Do you guys think the change of room will throw anything off? Is 3-5 nights the norm for them to sorta get the hang of it? Should I do naps now too or wait on those?
I'm not sure how well this is gonna go, he never calms down without being picked up, but setting him down starts the crying back up right away.
This stresses me out to no end, but I'm confident he's developmentally ready.
We decided to drop the overnight feed as well. My son is 18lbs at 5 months and the pedicitrician said continuing to feed at night would make the wake ups more of a habit.
I give him a big bottle at 7pm and then sneak in a do a dream feed at 10pm before I go to bed. He wakes up at 6:30, happy and ready to eat.
I know people are apprehensive about letting their baby cry a bit but it really does help them learn how to self soothe and a well rested baby is a happy one.
We did stop feeding my toddler at night at about 6 months, but all his teeth are rotten anyway (sometimes you just cannot win).
I have zero problems with nursing LO if/when she needs even through the night hours but for the life of me I cannot figure out when she is just fussing and can resettle herself vs when she is hungry. Its not consistent night to night.
Ive kept logs & looked for patterns.
She has 2-6 hr stretches w/o breastfeeding. Some nights i am convinced she isnt hungry but her fussing escalates to crying and I had guessed wrong. Other times after 5+hrs of sleep i'll be so confident she is waking out of hunger but then the sight of my boob knocks her out for another few hours....so wrong again! I feel hesitant to just always rush in to feed her since I dont want to take away her ability to self sooth and put herself back to sleep between sleep cycles. Its just frustrating I feel like I should be more in tune with her needs!
I should add she is a chunky kid! 20% for length and always 60+% for weight so the fact she wakes out of hunger at all makes no sense to me!
Right now I'm sort of doing this: if he falls asleep nursing and tolerates being put down in his crib, bully for us, if not, and he won't calm down quickly, we do a little ferber. I'm pretty sure this is not what you're supposed to do though and I should probably either do the method or just rock him to sleep every time. I'm finding it really difficult to cope with hearing him cry though, feeling like he must feel abandoned and not understand why we aren't coming in. Probably just me projecting my own issues, I'm sure he's fine, but its tough. I have his six month check up in about two weeks, so I think I will talk to the doctor about what to do then, because I'm not sure if it is even ok for me to cut back on night feeding. He generally eats twice per night now, and it would be nice to cut that down to once.
I feel for you! Hearing our daughter cry tore me up while we went through sleep training. The way I managed it was I told myself a period of crying followed by hours of uninterupted sleep was healthier for her than the broken sleep she had been experiencing. I am a ftm and am sure that parenthood is going to bring a lot of challenges & times where I will have to make the right decision for our daughter and the right decision is not always the easy one. (I just told myself this over and over as I fixated on the baby monitor)
I'm also going through what most of you are describing. She goes down ok at night but will wake after an hour, then 2 or 3 more times a night. She can't seem to fall asleep without nursing. She never used to be this bad of a sleeper. She has STTN quite a few times, even after the 4 month regression. She's now 5.5 months.
Last night we decided to try Ferber at her first waking. She cried for 5, 8, 11, and 15 minutes. Never fell asleep, just screamed bloody murder. I would soothe her for a few minutes by rubbing her little head and kissing her tears, but it just didn't work. The whole thing took just under an hour before I finally gave in and nursed her, and she fell asleep after 5 minutes from sheer exhaustion from screaming so long.
I'm so lost. What do you all think?
TTC #2: Oct 2017, BFP 12/19/17, CP 12/22/17
BFP 2/20/18 - EDD 10/31/2018
TTC #2: Oct 2017, BFP 12/19/17, CP 12/22/17
BFP 2/20/18 - EDD 10/31/2018
I ordered one she picked for me. 3 weeks later I fonally bought batteries for it lol. and we tried it yesterday when she awoke 1h after being asleep - I was afraid she would try grabbing it, be even more awake because it was new etc - OH MY GOD she looked at it with big eyes, stopped kicking the blankets and talking. She was out in 10min!!!! She woke up 5 hours later and I fed her she fell asleep on me, no need for it. Then 3 hours later at 6am I turned it on - out in 5 min again for her last two hours.
This thing is amazing. 10 stars!!!!
If you are nursing her to sleep at bedtime she may be expecting the same thing to occur each time she wakes overnight. When we broke DS2's suck-sleep and pat-sleep associations at bedtime he went from waking every 1-3 hours to waking 0-1 time overnight naturally without doing any sleep training MOTN.
I'm a September mom but our board has been a bit slow lately. Sorry to jump in.
Fisher-Price Precious Planet 2-in-1 Projection Mobile https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001GQ2SA2/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_api_Yg-lxbHPE7A95
edited : another success tonight ! She whined a bit but her eyes kept going back on it. She also has a crinkled toy to keep her hands busy, it calms her too to touch it with her hand. It has been attached to the side of the crib since day 1.
I don't think I can do Ferber or any CIO type method but we have to do something. I tried pick up put down and it only worked the first night, then she got wise to it and starts crying if you motion to put her down. It's not my presence she wants, we room share so I'm always there. She wants to be held and no amount of shushing, patting, or soothing of any kind works if I don't pick her up. It's exhausting, the only times I get more than 4-5 hours a night are when DH takes her, or we get a magical 'good' night.
We ended up with very minimal crying which I attribute to our work with No Cry, I think the most we had was 15 minutes in intervals.
It is a process though, we spent about 3 months using it with DS1.