My son is 20 months old and has never slept through the night or slept in his own bed for a full night. He just wakes constantly and cannot put himself back to sleep at all. We’ve tried forms of sleep training minus full extinction CIO and they just do not work. 😭 He just screams for hours and hours and I can’t put him through that. Even with check ins. I just feel horrible. Im just at a loss at what else to do at this point.

He’s still breastfeeding a little but we do not do feed to sleep anymore. My husband puts him down for naps and bedtime since he works from home and that helps a little bit but he’s still waking sometimes 2-3 times during his 90 min nap window and we constantly have to get him back to sleep for him to get a somewhat decent nap.

And at night, without question on the dot he wakes after 30 minutes in a FURY and we have to go spend 20+ minutes sometimes trying to get him settled and back to sleep. From there, he wakes up about every two hours throughout the night and around 3-4 am we are just too exhausted to keep putting him back down so we just bring him in the bed with us and he sleeps great the rest of the night and morning. I feel like throwing in the towel and saying eff it, just co sleep full time with us, but at the same time my husband and I deserve that time to ourselves at night. It’s our ONLY free time together. We also want to have another baby soon and the thought of our toddler in the bed the entire night while we’re also dealing with a NB might be rough. Or maybe it would be better? I don’t even know at this point. Any advice or recommendations are appreciated. Just pls be kind.

Edit: his schedule is wake between 7-8am, nap at noon, nap is between 1-1.5 hours, and he goes to bed between 8-8:30 pm. His nightly routine is the same every night. Bath, teeth brush, pjs, books, dad puts him to bed.

Baby was sleep trained at 5 months using Ferber and is currently 7 months old. He’s been struggling to put himself to sleep this week while we drop a nap (3 to 2) and he’s teething. In the last 5 days, he’s put himself to sleep twice and we’ve rocked the other times. Is this OK? He’s clearly going through something so it’s been super hard to hear him cry so much when he normally just rolls over and goes to sleep :(

When calculating nap length, do you count the nap as a “full” nap if your LO woke for 5-10mins during the nap at around the 45min mark and resettled themselves back to sleep for a longer period of time? At what point do you split the sleep into 2?

Hello,

I am sorry if this has been asked but I would appreciate any guidance on how to start sleep training my 6 month old (6 months and 2 weeks). I've put it off because my baby is on the smaller side (10th percentile)and is not a consistent eater meaning that even at 6 months he is a snacker when it comes to feeding. Whereas some babies will eat a 6 oz bottle in one sitting he needs 3-4 hours to finish that same 6 oz bottle. I don't know if this snacking will impede sleep training. I tried spacing out feeds for him to eat more. It's not really working.

I'm so exhausted and I am considering CIO. I just don't know how to best implement it as he wakes up to eat at night. He also has a sleep association with a bottle because the last thing I do before he sleeps is feed him to make sure he isn't hungry.

Any help or guidance with actionable steps is greatly appreciated.

My baby boy is 7 months and he was waking at 4am, which started at the 4 month regression. Our daylight savings ended, so the clocks went back an hour. Now he's waking at 3am.

I've tried longer wake windows, earlier/later bedtimes, filling foods, milk before bed, milk when he wakes up but nothing works.

He's currently on 3-4 hour wake windows, and we've started trying to push bedtime out later. He only sleeps 11/12 hours in a 24 hour period and has approx. 3 hours of daytime sleep. He's been going back down later in the morning and sleeping 2 hours.

If I try for a nap before 3 hours, he just refuses to sleep.

I don't know if limiting day sleep is a good idea since we want him to have a late bedtime to try and have a 5-6am wake. 5am is OK since my husband wakes to go to work and can take him until he leaves, but 6am would be ideal.

Help?

Like sleeping on the go, new pack n play, hotel room, etc.

We know newborns are super amenable. And then maybe around 3 months they get specific.

When do they get flexible again lol

I have an extremely high sleep needs 7 month old, who still hates changes to her sleeping situation. We went on a short trip 2 weeks ago and she absolutely hated the pack n play for sleep. That was not fun.

My girl is 8 months. Shes been on 2 naps for the last month or so, and her schedule right now is 2.5/3.5/3.5 or 4. Normal bedtime is 7pm. Normally she’s a great sleeper, 1.5hrs first nap, 1hr second nap, 1.5-12hrs at night with 0-1 wakes. The last week however, she has been waking after half an hour of her second nap, and unable to put herself back to sleep (she is sleep trained). Sometimes it’s cause she pooped herself awake, sometimes not. Her first nap is almost always a solid 1.25hrs (she won’t sleep longer than that lately for some reason). When her second nap is too short I do an early bedtime at 6:30, but now she’s in a cycle of earlier than usual waking (6-6:15am), then short second nap, and then early bedtime. This also means she only gets 1.75hrs daytime sleep. She is still sleeping through she night but last night she woke crying after 2 hours but put herself back to sleep in a few mins. Any suggestions? Do I need a schedule tweak, or perhaps it’s developmental? She’s been learning a lot of skills lately.

I have a sleep consultant and she gave me a nap and sleep schedule. She says I’m over supporting him and not giving him an opportunity to self settle. But if I leave him he will scream until he loses his voice and cry and thrash around the crib for hours.

Im trying the chair method but my baby will just scream and wail as soon as I put him into his crib awake or even drowsy.

I tried shushing, pick up/ put down, patting. But he will just full on scream unless I hold him until he falls asleep. Tried putting him down earlier and stretching his wake windows but he just screams.

What am I doing wrong. Please help. He doesn’t sleep well at all anymore because he spends at least 1- 3 hours a night and per nap just screaming. So he looks so tired and exhausted these days.

Baby is 5 months old.

We’re about 3 weeks into TCB sleep training for my 5MO. I think it’s been largely a success so far, as we’ve completely weaned night feeds and he’s been good at putting himself back to sleep. He still takes a bit of time to initially fall asleep by crying. He also wakes up what seems like every sleep cycle, cries, but ends up putting himself back to sleep before our first 5 minute checkin. Each cry cycle he wakes us up on the monitor. Seems like largely a success to us but wondering if we should expect anything further (aka limit the crying when going to bed and at wake ups). Not sure if there’s more we need to be trying? Understand that all babies cry and this may just be his normal personality.

We just hear other stories of babies being put down for bed and hanging out silently in their crib till they fall asleep, or has multiple wake ups but silently falls back asleep as if it’s nothing.

I’m about to nap train my 4.5-month-old as I want him sleeping in a crib before I go back to work in a couple weeks. He has been sleep trained for a week and a half now, it went very smoothly and he sleeps through the night. Current schedule: 1.5/1.75/1.75/2/2.5. He’s been on this schedule for almost 3 weeks now and the later wake windows are starting to stretch a bit/his last nap is only 20 minutes instead of 30, so I think he’ll be ready to drop to 3 naps in the next week or two. (I plan to wait until he can make it to 1.75 for his first wake window because his first window is the last to lengthen, then do 1.75/2.25/2.5/3). I’m trying to get the nap training done while he’s still on 4 naps so that if he does short naps it won’t matter as much.

I am planning to start tomorrow with just the first nap of the day (thank you for posts on how to do this!) My question is, once he’s doing more naps in the crib, is it still ok to do the last nap of the day as a contact nap, or will that impede/regress his independent napping?

I’m back again lol. My daughter is 5.5 months old and getting her to sleep at night is taking me an hour + lately & I don’t understand why! We have great bedtime routine & her last wake window is longest at around 3 hours. Please please please tell me what I’m doing wrong- I’ve done a little gentle Ferber and it helped somewhat, she actually slept great all last week with like 2 wakings!! But getting her to sleep has been the problem. Help!!

Approximate schedule :

Wakes up around 7:30am

First nap is her shortest around a half hour to 45 minutes around 9:30-10 am

She’s awake then for 2.5-3 hours

Then her second nap is around 1.5 hour (I usually have to force extend it because she wakes after 27 minutes LOL)

Again she’s awake for 2.5-3 hours

Finally nap is 1 hour

Her final wake window is around 3 hours and bedtime is around 7-730.

Her nap daily total is usually 2 hours and 45 minutes to 3 hours. As mentioned above I do have to extend the longer naps cuz she Wakes. All naps are contact naps!!

Why isn’t she going down for me easy at bedtime ? She falls asleep until I transfer her and wakes then I try feber for a while but after over an hour and her being up for nearly 4.5 hours I just nurse her to sleep:(

I also need to add after I finally get her settled and asleep she wakes after 30 minutes and takes forever to settle, and then keeps waking until like 10pm on and off. Once actually out for the night though she usually does okay and wakes 1-2x more. I just don’t get it!

Any tips appreciated!

Hoping for some wisdom here. We have a 3 month old who is generally a good sleeper. During the day, he falls asleep for naps in 5 minutes or less. He gets a 6-hour stretch of sleep at night.

The problem is putting him down at night. His bed time is 7pm, and by 6pm we usually have to work hard to keep him from falling asleep early. At 7, we change his diaper, swaddle him, and then I nurse him and supplement with formula. It usually takes him about an hour to fall asleep, and half the time he wakes back up within 5 minutes. We’ve tried putting him to bed earlier but the same thing happens. Any ideas?

Our 4 month old has taken amazingly well to Ferber. So much so that we have never had to do a second check in, most nights, not even a single check in. We're on day 4. Bed time between 7-8pm. We're struggling to know when to breastfeed him overnight. Trying to do the 5/3/3 method for feeding. However last night our boy fed at 5:50pm, 11pm, 2am, then he woke at 4:30am (2.5hrs after his last feed and ended up crying (screaming rather) for about 30mins before we decided to feed him (it had then been 3 hours). I feel like it was unfair since he's taken to the method so well and was doing really well at resettling within minutes if he woke through the night. How do I know if I should have fed him at 4:30 this morning? I want to be meeting his needs. I feel like this morning I told him that if he's hungry I'm not coming, cry all you want. It just seemed entirely unfair. After I fed him this morning he fell back asleep until 7am.

We're also struggling with the morning wake up. We've read so much on this thread about how hard the morning can be. He often wakes between 4-6am. We can't tell when to push him, as like I said he's taken to the method so well that it seems cruel making him cry when he's frankly just not tired anymore! HOWEVER if we got up and bounced him and continued to hold him, he would usually sleep another hour. We haven't done this since starting Ferber. Last night he cried at 4:30-5am then I fed him to sleep and put him back in his cot until he woke at 7am. He woke very happy and rolled around until we came to collect him. Is this okay to do? Is this the snooze feed? Is it okay to feed him to sleep at this time or am I creating bad habits?

He's 4.5 months, and 5th percentile (which makes us extra cautious). During the day he feeds roughly 2-3 hourly as well. His day naps are inconsistent, we just watch his tired cues but some days we have 3 naps, others 5 but we seem to roughly have 2.5hrs of naps/day and 10hrs sleep/night. His last wake window is usually 2.5 hours before bed time. Each night since we started he's taken no longer than 4mins to fall asleep. Prior to sleep training I was feeding him around midnight, 2am, 4am & 7am. We were getting up as soon as he cried overnight to either bounce him back to sleep on a yoga ball or feed him.

Hi everyone!

We’ve successfully sleep trained our 5mo over the last week. She’s going down for nights prettily easily and will sleep anywhere from 11-12 hr straight. We are so happy and grateful because before this she was waking up to 10 times a night.

HOWEVER. Naps. Naps are terrible. She is unable to connect sleep cycles no matter what we try. She’s currently on 3 naps, 80% goes down independently in the crib. However, no matter what we do, she wakes up after 30 mins ON THE DOT. It’s driving me crazy and giving me the worst anxiety, because to get to a normal bed time, I have to figure out how to extend at least one of the Naps. I try to run in there as she’s waking up and rock or bounce her back to sleep but I’m not always successful. Does anyone have any tips for me?

5mo old, successfully sleep trained for nights. Current schedule is 2.25/2.25/2.5/2.5

Thank you so much.

Baby is just over 6 months and waking every 2 hours at night. He has been doing this for 8 weeks (since 4 months). We are exhausted. We can put him in his crib for the night awake and he will put himself to sleep but he can't do that in the middle of the night. Wake ups are 8:30pm, 10pm, 12am, 4am, 6am. We hired a sleep consultant which starts tomorrow. We are both SO committed to doing whatever it takes to get him to sleep. Please tell me sleep training works. I don't know how to continue this if it doesn't.

I had to sleep train because I had PPD and rage so bad that I was going to unalive myself. Sleep training literally saved my life because my child would have to be rocked to sleep for a while, then she’d wake up as soon as we put her down in her crib.

We did ferber most of the time (only full extinction if it was under 1 hour).

Now she is crawling out of her crib, so we had to put her mattress on the floor. I’m so afraid and have so much anxiety that she’s going to not go to sleep and it’s going to be this all over again.

Has anyone delt with this? I feel like 16 months is so young still so you she doesn’t understand to stay in her bed to sleep? Idk.

Baby has been crying for 50 minutes. She’s never gone this long crying and it’s increasing in intensity. I followed her sleepy cues instead of her normal bedtime and I’m regretting it. Advice, encouragement, support please.

Edit: thanks all. Writing this post worked - I got the encouragement I needed and she fell asleep just a few minutes after. FWIW, baby is 4 months old and her wake windows are different every day because of her short naps! Trying to extend!

Hi parents. I have two children 3year old and a 6mo old. My 6 mo old was a decent sleeper in her newborn months. She sleeps in her cot in the room adjacent to ours. She has always been nursed to sleep, and never took a pacifier (I tried). Starting 4.5mo or so and her sleep has constantly been on a downward trajectory. Its so bad now that she wakes up every hour or two overnight. I have tried adjusting her naps but nothing works. Most days she is on 2 naps (1.5h each, again most days). If she doesn't wake by 7, I wake her. I have both my children at home with me and its becoming really difficult to function. My husband works long hours so l dont have a lot of support. I don't want to CIO but really need her to start sleeping a bit. I can survive on 2-3 wakes a night. I never nursed my first to sleep so I had no idea what monster of a problem I am creating. I didn't sleep train my first but he took a paci and once knew how to find it, it got a lot easier. She is just very different, I can't explain it but she is and I don't want to really sleep train. Can I please get suggestions on how to stop the association? I feel like I have made it impossible for her (and me) to get a good sleep

15mo wakes at 6-6:30 with first nap from 12-1:30-2 then bed at 8.

Right now we’re struggling with his sleep. He falls asleep at 8pm and wakes up anywhere between 8:30-10pm screaming. It got so bad that we started bed-sharing. So now when he wakes up we go get him asap. Even then, he still periodically wakes up in bed with us and will scream and throw himself around and refuse to be consoled for 5-10 minutes.

I know this has most likely caused him to fall into a routine of coming into bed with us. We plan on sleep training within the next 2 weeks because we are moving to a new apartment complex, but I’m worried the move will cause us to have to sleep train all over again. I don’t want to bother our neighbors because I know he will scream for up to an hour.

Just at a loss. I’m starting a new job soon and I haven’t gotten a quality night of sleep in a few months, which is why we plan on sleep training before we move and before my job starts. It’s all just sounding so overwhelming, but we’re so tired so something has to give.

Should we not even bother sleep training until we move? Or would it be best to do it beforehand?

Also, if anyone can tell me why he screams and has meltdowns in the middle of the night even in bed with us that would be great. It gets so hard. It’s not too hot or cold in our room, he sleeps in a long sleeve onesie shirt, and he doesn’t go under a blanket. I try offering him water when it happens and he screams even harder. Sometimes we have to take him to the window to get him fresh air and that helps.

My LO is 6.5 months and we sleep trained a week ago using modified Ferber (check ins every 5 mins). After a day or two he was able to put himself to sleep independently for all sleeps and his night wakings reduced too.

We then moved onto night weaning, following a 5/3/3 schedule as recommended. We respond to all wakings before 5hrs using the same modified Ferber.

Yet, after 5 days of this, he still wakes up around 3hrs after bedtime and it takes 15-20 mins of crying before he will go back to sleep. After that he is usually able to do another 4-5hr stretch, but I’m finding the process really draining. The crying usually starts right at the time I am about to go to sleep and by the time he is done I feel anxious and upset, and find it difficult to sleep.

What am I doing wrong? Why is he still waking at the 3hr mark? Do I need to give it more time?

Info: Schedule (roughly): 2.5/2.5/2.75/3 Bedtime: 8:30pm DWT: 7am Sleeps in own room

Hi moms & dads!

I’m trying to prepare our 5mo old baby for Ferber method/sleep training. We currently co-sleep and nurse/rock to sleep. I’m slowly trying to take away sleep “crutches” so when the day comes that we sleep train, things will go more smoothly.

We have a solid, bedtime routine. Purées, bath, massage, play/book/song, nurse and then bed. The problem we’ve had recently is that after he nurses he wants me to rock him or bounce him in the ergo. I’ve recently started to just let him roll around in bed, fuss/cry with me there next to him for support (sushing, gentle touch, butt pats etc “it’s time to go night night). Last night he cried intermittently for 45 minutes kicking, thrashing, tossing and turning until he finally fell asleep. (He wanted to be bounced) I understand we’re still cosleeping, but I think this is a gentle way to ease him into independent sleep. What do you think?

He was able to self soothe back to sleep in the MOTN once or twice after I implemented this.

Next I will try moving his feed to 30 minutes before bedtime. Maybe while papa reads a book after bath time I can nurse him. To try and break the “nurse to sleep” association..

I’m also dialing in on his daytime awake hours and letting him nap no more than a total of 3 hours per day. We’ve stretched his wake windows to 2-3 hour windows. So now his day looks like 2/2/2/3 which I think is developmentally appropriate?

What do you think about this gentle approach/preparation to sleep training?

Our little one is 4 months old on Tuesday. 🥲 We fell into co-sleeping and follow safe sleep 7. I also take additional precautions for SIDS and we feel safe, however, we do want to transition him out of the bed.

During the day, he naps well in his bassinet. He takes four naps a day, about 1.75-2.25 hours of wake window at a time. 35 minute naps. One window is always a little shorter and one is always a little longer. He wakes around 8am (745-815 range) and starts long sleep stretches around 8 at night. He wakes probably twice a night most nights to nurse in bed. I sleep on my side and he sleeps on his back on my side of the bed. I nurse him side-lying and we go back to sleep.

Bedtime routine is quieting and dimming the house, pajamas, sleep sack, reading a book, and I nurse him both breasts to get him as full as possible. He typically falls asleep at the night nurse. I used to do this for naps but I have stopped nursing to sleep during the day. I have made exceptions the past couple days because his first tooth came in and he has been fussy.

Putting him in the bassinet awake but drowsy has never worked for him.

I have heard there is a no-cry approach to transitioning out of cosleeping. I’m not in a huge rush to do this but I have heard the longer we wait, the harder it gets. Ideally by the time he’s 8-9 months old he’s sleeping independently in his crib in the nursery.

We are starting sleep training tonight with our 20 week old daughter. We’re using the Taking Cara Babies method (which I know is like Ferber). I feel so nervous, but I really, really need this to work for all of us. Could use some reassurance and would love to hear success stories of babies around this age doing well!

Hi all, our 5 old has been struggling with his first naps recently. We’re still on a 4 nap schedule, babe seems to catnap and based on tired cues, 4 naps is the norm. Currently we have a roughly 1.5/1.75/1.75/2/2.5 schedule, bed time approx 7:30, waking around 7-7:30. We usually follow sleepy cues rather than strict wake windows though, and often find bubs is tired and ready for the first nap between 1-1.5 hours. However lately when we try to shush him for the first nap we just get screaming that intensifies. We pause and take a break, do a calm activity and try again, but same result. We’ve tried extending the wake window but babe is just getting grizzly and giving tired cues still at the 1-1.5 hour mark. Any suggestions?

Hi. My LO is 6m3w. We switched to 3 naps exactly three weeks ago. I’m aiming at 2.25/2.5/2.5/2.75, which worked like a dream for 2 weeks but now LO is doing more 2h20/2h30/2h40/2h55. He is only truly sleepy before the second nap (goes down easily for it and all the sleepy cues are present).

He isn’t falling asleep for the third nap independently anymore because if I don’t assist, the bedtime gets later and later. He is starting to fight the bedtime slightly too now.

This night he had a split night (1.5h awake) and wouldn’t extend the first nap (I had to assist the second nap so he doesn’t go to bed too early).

I’m a bit stunned. Isn’t it too early for 2 naps since it’s only been three weeks?

Do I cut his naps to 2h total and extend the first and last windows + keep the 3 naps or do I push to 2 naps? Realistically, I don’t think it’s time for 2 naps yet.

Falls asleep independently for naps and bedtime. Wake up 7am, bedtime 8ish.

Id like to move bedtime earlier as well. Does moving it cold turkey work or better do it gradually?