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January 2016 Moms
cali1710
member
Sleep training
cali1710
member
who has started it? What methods have you used? Is it working out and how long did it take? I don't plan to sleep train for another month but curious as to what everyone else is doing if you've started.
Re: Sleep training
time, ish'. It always happens between 7:15-7:30. I sing him the same song every time, and I only sing it at bedtime. We rock for no more than 15 minutes and he goes down drowsy, but awake. If the paci. Comes out, we wake 3-5 minutes, unless he's in a full blown cry. We go in, pat him, "shhh" him quietly and put the paci. back in. We do not pick him back up to re-rock him.
He hasn't been good at crying it out for an extended period of time and soothing himself. So we haven't let him cry, for more than 5 minutes.
I think we're going to keep trying drowsy but awake but if it doesn't work within the first 10 minutes or so, we'll just call it a day and do whatever we need to do. Then try again the next night. Like @nackie, the only other priority right now will be minimizing night nursing to hopefully break that particular association. We started by putting in a longer bedtime routine of nurse, "teeth", diaper, book, lights out, white noise on, cuddle, sleep. Hopefully once this routine is in place, she'll forget all about the nursing part at the beginning as a sleep cue.
I'm so curious what is working for everyone else though!
Two precursors to this working were that 1 - he has shown some self soothing behaviours (some rubbing his head, eyes, and ears, but the big one is kind of wiggling his head on the mattress) and 2 - he stopped nursing to sleep and started nursing to drowsy and then pushing away and requiring a ton of rocking out of no where and would seem to fight to get out of my arms, yet scream when put down.
I have always wanted to avoid crying it out but have often felt desperate and tried it for a few minutes at a time only to have him escalate extremely quickly or get so worked up in less than 5 minutes that he vomits....so CIO in any capacity wasn't going to work.
So for bedtime and naps I have been nursing until he pushes away after our usual routine, then kissing him and putting him in his crib and sitting beside it leaning on the edge so he can see I'm there. He usually plays for a bit with some self soothing and then starts to fuss. When he fusses, I don't let it get to crying (he's way harder to calm
once the crying starts) I put my hand on his chest or pat his chest and shhhh loudly. Usually he will start his head wiggling which tells me it's working. I stop after about 5 shh es and he does some more soothing, playing, whatever and I repeat until he's asleep. If he starts crying while I shh and pat then I pick him up until he's calm and start over. It's tedious and takes 45-1 hr each time so far, but I can handle it way easier than fighting to rock him for just as long or hearing him screaming. I just keep telling myself to stay calm and that he is trying to do this on his own but just needs a little help.
Definitely not for everyone as it takes so long and will probably take quite a while to get to totally independent sleep, but it feels more peaceful for both of us and I finally feel like a success instead of constantly fighting with him and feeling like a failure to fight for an hour for 20 minutes of sleep. I recognize this would be impossible if I had another child or more responsibilities, but like I said - I was spending 45-1 hr rocking him anyways so this was a better alternative for me. I felt confident in trying this after re-reading the no-cry sleep solution.
I've been doing the Ferber method with him for about a week and a half now, as well as being super strict about only keeping him awake 1.5-2 hours between naps and it has literally changed my life. It's amazing what a good night's sleep and free time to do things during the day can do!
He now has 3 naps/day, 1-2 hours each and only wakes up once or twice during the night, all in his crib in his own room. He's usually able to fall asleep within 5-10 min, even if I put him down wide awake.
Only problem now is he's still being swaddled, and seems to still need it to fall asleep. DH found him on his tummy this morning so I'm worried I'll have to start sleep training all over without his SwaddleMe.
https://www.mybabysleepguide.com/2009/01/sleep-training-ferber.html?m=1
He settled into his new nighttime routine on the third night: no crying when I put him to bed, wake up for a 5 min cry around 11pm, nurse a bit around 3am, and then sleep until around 8am
Having gone from nursing him every time he woke up, to trying to get him to self soothe, I found the first 2 nights to be really great for learning which times he was fine (crying 5-15 min with "visits") and which times he needed to be fed (continuing to cry after 1.5 hours with "visits"). I was feeling a lot of mommy guilt that he wasn't eating enough when cutting back nighttime feedings so drastically.
ETA last paragraph
@cali1710 that definitely sounds like progress! After seeing your struggle with sleep on other boards that I've also posted on I feel very excited for you!!
I wanted to update a bit....so we've been at it for 3 days and I'd say our success rate is about 90%! Success being he's fallen asleep in his crib and not in my arms. The one fail we had he was very worked up (which doesn't usually happen since I try to comfort before it gets to crying) and ended up throwing up a lot so we abandoned that nap...not sure if he was worked up because he felt sick or he got sick because he was worked up. Anyways, our biggest success has been that yesterday he has an hour 20 minute nap where all his naps have been about 20 minutes for at least the last 2 months!! I was so proud!!! He's also sleeping increasingly longer stretches at night. Although it took the longest time yet to get him down last night (a little over an hour) and he woke up after about 45 minutes, he went right back down and slept 6 hours, followed by a 15 minute feed and went right to sleep when I put him down and then slept another 3! One of the best nights he's ever had.
One additional trick that has been making him fall asleep faster the last 24 hrs is initially putting him down on his side or when he fusses turning him on his side to do my shh/pats. He rolls to his side on his own often in his sleep or soothing and tends to sleep better this way, so I thought I'd see if me coaxing him into that position would help and the nap I just put him down for he was asleep within minutes of me doing this on my second attempt.
We've definitely had some struggles as I think he's caught on to what I'm trying to do, but I know it'll be one step forward two steps back for a while.
He can roll both ways, he just doesn't roll much from belly to back. He's getting better and realizing that he got himself onto his belly and he tries with all his might to get back over, but sometimes, it just ain't happening, lol. He now will fall asleep on his stomach and we've got ourselves a side sleeper for the most part, after we got him out of the Merlin suit and took the blankets out.
(She has reflux so I expect some waking... Also, she IS a baby, afterall!)
I do have to say however, that I don't think this method would've worked for my son, who was like a bear to get to sleep and very codependent for soothing. But it's working for my daughter, and certainly helping with less middle of night soothe sessions!
We never did any sleep training with my son, and my 2 year old still wakes in the middle of the night... about half the time.
Edited because kids
We've always been lucky through the night, he's settled down after a night feeding without problems, and for the last month he's been nearly STTN.
Naps I gave up fighting for the longest time, the rare chance I could get him down in his crib he'd wake up within half an hour. So I had him nap on the breast in the day (I'd just settle down with my book, TV remote and a drink/snack), then when he was done with that at 4 months we went to napping in the wrap/carrier. But for the last week he's been napping in his crib in the day, for 1-2 hours at a time, woohoo! I've let him fuss and whinge for a little while, only going up if he's actually crying, and his whinging has been getting shorter and shorter.
TL;DR: We've let him whine, if he cries we soothe him without picking him up unless he's too worked up, and he's gradually learned to settle himself down.
@cali1710 Our LO can only roll over from back to tummy, it took about a week of rough nights where we had to keep turning him over when he got too worked up and putting his dummy in, but he gradually got used to sleeping on his tummy. Now he rolls over the moment we put him down, but he wriggles for only a couple minutes then consistently falls asleep with his knees tucked under him and his butt in the air. It's actually pretty cute!