r/sleeptrain • u/Maber1994 • 21d ago
4 - 6 months Baby actually is happy when going to bed now
Just want to share our success story in case it helps anyone! I recently sleep trained my 5.5 month old using the Taking Cara Babies ABC approach (basically Ferber). The first week had a lot of ups and downs and there were so many points that I wanted to cave and just go rock him and hold him. He was the type of baby to cry for 30 minutes every night as I rocked and nursed him to sleep and would wake 8-10 times a night crying. All in all, he cried a lot prior to sleep training.
Now that we sleep trained, he actually smiles up at me and shrieks with delight every night when I set him fully awake in his crib. It’s like he’s excited to go to sleep! It’s the sweetest thing. I can tell he’s all around just a happier, more confident baby. And he sleeps straight through the night now. It was so hard to choose to sleep train- I felt judged by so many. But I feel we traded a few nights of increased crying for months/years of a happy little sleeper.
10
u/yellow_pellow 20d ago
This! We did full CIO as an infant, had to retrain a couple times at 8 months and 12 months, but my 21 month old gets put in his crib wide awake for naps and bed, plays with his toys in bed for maybe 20 mins, then puts himself to sleep and wakes up happy.
People who think CIO or even Ferber is traumatic, is crying for an hour twice in his life, worse than kids who are scared to have their parents leave? Is it worse than parents who have to rock their toddler to sleep for an hour each night and then have them wake up upon transfer and have to do it again?
Yes, there is a little bit of pain when initially sleep training, but the benefits far outweigh the cost. My kid is happy and adjusted for sleep time, and us parents are happy and well rested!
3
u/Foreign_Drink9316 15d ago
This is encouraging to read! My baby is 3 mo this and planning to do CIO next month around 4-4.5 months. He screams when I try to transfer him to crib no matter how asleep he is 😭 all naps that aren’t on me have to be fully assisted as he has ZERO self soothing abilities
2
u/yellow_pellow 15d ago
Yes do it young. It’s so much easier that way! I’m going to do once my second baby is 4 months as well.
1
u/Foreign_Drink9316 15d ago
Was your baby similar? How did full CIO go and how old was your baby when you first did it?
3
u/yellow_pellow 15d ago
We did FUss it out when my baby was 3.5 months, only because it’s too young for CIO. He fussed for 18 mins the first night and went to sleep. Maybe 12 mins the second night and 5 mins the 3rd night. Had to retrain a couple times due to regressions and those were full cio. But he’s slept like a dream for the most part
1
u/Psych_girl218 11d ago
Can you talk about retraining at 8 months - what led to having to do that? We are 7.5m and I think we might have to do the same but really struggling with CIO as he’s older and louder - and can go for much longer!
1
u/yellow_pellow 10d ago
He just started refusing bed time again and I weakened and started cosleeping without wanting to, so we did CIO for a couple days. He definitely cried longer and harder due to being older but it worked! We had to do it again at 12 months after vacation and that was the worst. He cried for 70 mins but now he’s almost 2 and we haven’t had to retrain since. He sleeps like a dream now. Totally worth it
Don’t think of sleep training as a one time thing, it is ongoing
3
u/flymetothemoon-e 20d ago
Any advice on how to do this with twins without them escalating each other ?🙃 8 months old and one cries every night and sometimes ends up setting off her sister
3
u/Maber1994 20d ago
Ahh I don’t know what I would do in that situation!! Maybe make a post in this sub. I’m sure there are others with twins that all have some great advice. This sub is so helpful
3
u/Decent_Ad_4666 21d ago
My baby is 4.5 months old - Is that too early to start? Im struggling with hourly wakes at the moment and almost always feed back to sleep. I’m exclusively breastfeeding…how do I know he’s not hungry overnight when waking??
1
u/Ginngingerale 20d ago
Hey! My baby is 5M now and v similar - was waking every 1-2 hours and would only feed back to sleep. We cosleep and i had a hunch that he needed to feed only because he was smelling me. This past week i’ve been letting him sleep with Dad and he’s been waking less often! Also when he wakes, Dad only needs to rock and hum for a few minutes and he’s back to sleep easily. Last night i made it from 730pm - 2am before feeding him!
1
u/Decent_Ad_4666 20d ago
This gives me so much hope! I was thinking of moving him to his own room to see if that helps - he’s also been rolling a lot so I thought he might sleep better if he rolls onto his belly in a crib vs a bassinet with very little space next to my bed. Going to give this a try for a few nights!
1
u/Ginngingerale 20d ago
No problem! Just note that because my LO was used to sleeping with me, there was some resistance with Dad soothing him back to sleep - he cried 20mins on the first night but now he’s much more used and barely fusses for a few minutes before sleeping. Also i only transferred to Dad after I put him to sleep at bedtime - since he’s sensitive to overtiredness - will tackle that challenge once he is more used to Dad.
1
u/Maber1994 20d ago
According to Taking Cara Babies, it’s best to wait until 5 months old. But I know a lot of people on this sub say 4 months is fine. I did a lot of prep work in the weeks leading up to sleep training and that included testing to see how many times a night my baby actually needed to eat and when so I could incorporate feeds into my sleep training.
1
1
u/Scriptsinmotion 20d ago
We slept trainee our LO at 4 months. He’s 4.5 months old now. Night and day after day 1. He was waking up every 3-4 hours before and now wakes up only once throughout the whole night. Even when he does wake up, he can put himself back to sleep unless he’s hungry, then we would feed him.
1
u/Dangerous-Analyst854 20d ago
We started at 4 months and it worked! Took some trial and error on our part (filling up her tired tank just enough and timing out her last feed). We were at the end of our rope (she was waking up 5xs). Highly recommend
1
u/Forwardmvmt84 19d ago
We did fuss it out at 4 months and 1 week. We are a week in .. 1st night was the worst we ever had. 2nd was better. And he slept though the night the next 5. Haven’t done naps yet though.
1
u/Foreign_Drink9316 15d ago
How did you do fuss it out? My baby will just automatically resort to screaming. Yours didn’t?
2
u/Forwardmvmt84 15d ago
A bit on days 1 and 2. Day 1 I left the though house bc I can’t take the crying and my husband went in at 15 minutes and rocked him and he went immediately to sleep. (He woke up at 9 and it was the worst night of sleep he’s ever had) Day 2 set the timer to 18 minutes and he stopped crying at 17 and went to bed (he was up at 3 and came into our bed). And then ever since night 3 he slept through the night.
2
2
u/Fickle-Fennel-984 21d ago
Question- because I’m doing a heavily modified Ferber approach with my LO. She wakes every 45-55min after she falls asleep. I’m unsure how to help her past this. We will do the crib side support and then wait an interval before we go back. And she will fall asleep again…just to wake up after an hour. 🤦🏻♀️ after the 3rd time I call it for the night. (Part of my modification due to my baby). Did you deal with that?
3
u/Extra-Ice4917 21d ago
I just have to reply to this because we’ve had this for 5 months and has just recently got better! We tried Ferber but our baby seemed to get more angry whenever we would try and settle her at crib side. I set a timer for 10 minutes and really closely monitor her cries. If there are breaks in her crying I leave her, if she’s inconsolable I then go up after the 10 minute timer and settle her but usually she settles herself to sleep at 4 minutes. I had to come on here and tell you because I spent MONTHS on Reddit, Google, AI for nothing to work and the false starts were breaking me, we’d have at least 6 a night! I’d suggest watching your baby’s cues rather than doing Ferber religiously. I hope this helps a little! We’re still yet to implement this for naps 😀
1
u/Fickle-Fennel-984 20d ago
Thank you. Yeah I’m at a loss. My baby can’t seem to handle more than 1.5hr wake time comfortably. She will get really grizzly, rubbing eyes, stares off. Clearly tired. She has pushed it to 2.5 hrs but it’s hell. She is so tired. I’m literally trying to race the clock to get her down by 1h 45m so she doesn’t tip into overtired hulk baby. My goal is to get her a minimum of 2.5hrs of nap a day. (I shoot for 3hrs but she usually averages 2.5hrs). Not for lack of trying. She just literally fights it. 🤦🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️ I will say, she is cutting her first tooth (5mths old), has found her feet, and gave her first full belly laugh yesterday. ( She’s done the little happy squeals and half giggles. But first full belly giggle yesterday 🥰) I just need to figure out how to help her link cycles
1
u/Maber1994 21d ago
Yeah we definitely dealt with that. In the Taking Cara Babies course, she makes a great point about the importance of consistency every night while sleep training. She said if a baby knows that sometimes waking up and crying will get their parents to come in and hold them/ soothe them/rock or nurse them to sleep, then they’ll keep crying every night knowing that sometimes they get their desired outcome. But if you set the expectation that they need to learn how to put themself back to sleep every time and you stay very disciplined and consistent, then they will learn how to put themself back to sleep. That’s all assuming their wake windows and other needs are being met of course. I really recommend her ABCs course for sleep training because she goes in so much detail to help lead you to success.
2
u/Fickle-Fennel-984 21d ago
🤔 hmmm I’ll look into it. I thought they don’t know how to link their cycles yet, it’s not manipulation, but rather the inability to link cycles (which even adults can struggle - hence the random wakeup to turn over) It’s so hard for me to let her cry again without some support when I know she’s not developmentally able to yet. I thought I’d read gentle support does help them to learn to trust their sleep space enough that it will happen. The only thing I do when she wakes is literally 60seconds (cut short if she starts to fall asleep) of crib side support which entails my hand on her chest, gently bum pat and shushing. I just want her to be able to link her sleep cycles once she’s gone thru all the crying to fall asleep independently. I will say, I notice her stir and wake a little even cosleeping
1
u/Maber1994 21d ago
Yeah look into it, she explains it a lot better than I can haha. But she did talk about how even adults wake slightly between sleep cycles. I can tell my LO still does but now he just readjusts slightly every 40 minutes instead of crying or opening his eyes. I was doing crib side support with some pats and words of encouragement during sleep training with intervals of 5,10,15 minutes but never picking up. I tried cosleeping too before starting to sleep train but my LO still cried all night when we tried that so we moved forward with training. Good luck!! Hang in there 🫶
1
u/Fickle-Fennel-984 21d ago
Thank you. We’re only on night 4. I have a very sensitive, strong willed little one. So some of the more extreme methods just wouldn’t work for her. (She screams till she bursts blood vessels in her face, eyes, and neck - her doc said she’s 100% healthy. Just strong willed)
2
u/Impressive-Fact7780 21d ago
I haven't done the same course as you two but from lots of time on this sub you might want to make your own post and get a schedule check - not linking sleep cycles means they wake but it doesn't mean they have to be upset, especially if they've fallen asleep completely independently (without you in the room even, last milk 30mins before)? If so it might be that your baby is under tired because they're not getting enough awake time during the day - your own post about baby's schedule and this group will check for you
1
u/Maber1994 21d ago
Oh my ☹️ I’m sorry that’s rough and that makes sense why you want to modify your sleep training
1
1
u/New-Being-3840 20d ago
Have you dealt with extending naps. Started modified Ferber on Monday and her day naps are still only 40 mins. She will carry on sleeping if I rescue the nap with a contact nap but she won’t resettle herself. Any advice welcome!
1
u/ughtheinternet 20d ago
Check out the gentle nap training post on this subreddit. It’s linked in one of the pinned posts. We did that with my girl, and she went from contact napping only to connecting sleep cycles in her bed in probably a week!
1
1
u/Sad-Entertainer-5603 16d ago
5.5 m here too! Can you share how do you deal w night wakings? Like my 5.5 will wake to feed 3x on boobs and if it’s formula it’ll be 2x . I’m loosing my mind! We haven’t sleep train yet but Really tempted to after this encouraging post
10
u/Calm_Analyst9172 20d ago
That’s awesome and similar to what we experienced too! I thought I was torturing my 9 month old by doing cry it out (we intended to do Ferber but the check ins only escalated him) but we did it bc I was starting to hallucinate from lack of sleep & not able to perform at work. Well it turns out he was desperate for sleep too. Starting almost immediately he only increased in happiness and confidence. He whined WAY, WAY less throughout the day bc I guess he had been just as tired as I was from all the night wakings. He had been soooo close to a milestone but just not fully there yet (I think pointing) and he hit it the VERY NEXT DAY after he slept through the night.
Congrats! Happy for you!