I haven't needed to sleep train my daughter because I was happy to get up overnight and she hadn't been to bad to get to sleep, until now.

In the last year or so we have culled Breastfeeding, bottles and pacifiers, so no longer have any crutches.

She has been in her single bed since just before 1 because she hated a cot.

She wakes up around 6am each morning, has a 1-2hr nap around 1130am, then her bedtime routine starts around 630pm after dinner.

Bedtime routine is bath time, pajamas, a snack if she needs one, teeth, bit of chatting, stories and bed.

Bedtime is usually 745ish.

In the last 2 months she has been incredibly abusive towards me, hitting, biting, pinching etc. Her stalling is excessive, gets distracted by blankets, my face, pillows, the curtain string, water, wanting to get up, anything!!

Most nights i end up swaddling her and rocking her to sleep because I need her to stop hitting me. During this she screams at me telling me to get away.

I sometimes then try to leave the room to have a break from the abuse. She gets up immediately and tries to leave the room, if I hold the door shut she screams and/or unpacks everything in her room.

Doesn't seem to make any difference if she has had a busy day, active day, skipped her nap, gone to bed early/late, snacks, yoto before bed.

Once asleep, she usually sleeps throught the night once she has gone to sleep which I am very grateful for.

About my toddler: she is pure chaos, a bit scrawny but a pocket rocket for sure, she is sweet natured but lacks impulse control, she is a great problem solver and generally very happy. I sometimes wonder if she has a degree of ADHD or if it's just toddlerhood.

Any advice is greatly appreciated 🩷

8 month old, we aim for 3/3.5/4 but it depends on how long he naps for.

He’ll do 1.5 hrs in the morning if he’s out in his stroller (so that’s what I try to do every day) or driving. Otherwise his naps are ~40 minutes max. We‘ve moved to two naps because he was fighting his last nap like crazy and then it got so late that it was pushing bedtime to like 9pm — but he wakes up around 5am no matter what.

Obviously there’s already a couple of issues there, but the thing that’s killing me is overnight sleep. He goes down for bedtime like a dream. We do solids, bath, bottle, books and playtime for 30 mins and then put him down awake with a pacifier. He goes to sleep on his own and stays asleep for several hours.

But overnight he wakes up a ton. First wake between 11-midnight to eat, then he tends to wake up anowhere from every 30mins to a hour screaming - whether his pacifier is in or not - before waking up for good around 5.

I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do about this. I’m so tired that my brain actually can’t process what time it is overnight — whether he should need to eat or not. I have walked into walls multiple times. I often just find myself shoving a boob in his mouth because it’s the only thing that will calm him down. The past week I’ve just been sleeping on the floor in his room because I don’t trust myself to be safe walking down the hall to him. The idea that I’m supposed to do the sleep training check ins throughout the night just doesn’t seem physically possible? Is that my only option?

ETA - he freaks out if his dad goes in to check on him overnight — it always makes it 100% worse. So all the nights are up to me.

I know this schedule wouldn't work for a lot of people and most here would recommend a 1 nap day, but this schedule has saved my sanity this week so I thought I'd document it in case anyone else encountering issues wanted to try it.

Babe is what I would consider low sleep needs averaging 10 to 11 hours sleep in 24 hours (only does 11 hours when I nail the schedule perfectly).

She has been like this since her first sleep regression at 3.5 months and following all the standard advice and wake windows just led us down a road of terrible sleep for everyone involved.

After a rocky few weeks of illness and teething I was completely thrown off schedule wise and sleep had gone to shit with multiple nights of being kept up to 4am.

I tried going to 1 nap, but babe was getting overtired and waking hourly at night. I was getting no sleep as she did her best sleep between 8:30 and 11pm and then was a mess for the rest of the night.

I LOVE a late bedtime as it means I go to bed the same time as baby and this is what gets me the most sleep. I don't get any time for myself but sleep trumps everything else.

Wake windows are 3.75/4.25/5.

Naps are 1 hour (ish) and 40 mins (ish).

7am wake up, 10pm asleep and 1 overnight wake quick to resettle. I have not night weaned yet as I have not yet garnered the energy to..

I suspect we will be moving to a 1 nap schedule once she can handle 6 and 7 hour wake windows...

Hi all,

My LO (8 months) has done well with sleep training. Except she always cries when i transfer her to bed. I watch the time and she always stops between 1-3 minutes in and falls asleep not long after.

She is still waking to feed once or twice during the night. It is a lot when she screams on top of her lungs at 2am when i put her back to her bed.

And so I'm wondering if your kiddos did the same and when they stopped. Bonus points if they were a similar age!

Our second baby is 9 months old next week. She started sleeping through the night (7 pm to 7 am) at 4 months old. At 6 months, she started sleeping in her room in her crib. No disruptions, still 12 hours of great sleep. She even would wake up in the morning and just be happy to chill for a while.

However, at the end of April, she started waking up twice a night. Once at 1ish am and once at 4ish am, before waking up at 7 am for the day. The whole night wake up is very quick- diaper change, bottle, she immediately falls back asleep and transfers to her crib no problem. Start to finish it’s 10 minutes. When this started, she was close to crawling (now crawling and standing) *and* was teething, so I figured this was your standard regression. Our first never had any regressions (unicorn sleeper) so this was all new to us, but we figured it would pass in a few weeks. However, it’s now been almost 7 weeks of this and we don’t know what to do.

We tried capping her naps, and it left her absolutely feral and cranky all day, and she still woke up twice at night. We always give her 10 minutes at night to try and settle, but she does not self soothe back to sleep. We tried going in and soothing her without picking her up, but that just makes her hysterical, and we end up having to get her anyways. So we’ve just been giving a bottle because at least it’s fast and she’s obviously hungry. But maybe that’s feeding into the problem? We just don’t know where to go from here. Ride it out? Try something new? I have no idea.

Current nap schedule is up at 7 am, nap at 10 am, nap at 2 pm, bedtime at 8 pm. So 3/2.5/4. The second wake window is so short, but she is always totally ready for a nap at 2 and she falls asleep instantly. I thought about pushing her nap to 3 pm, but I’m worried that will make her sleep worse because she’s napping so late in the day. However I am open to any suggestions for how to improve our schedule!

Anyone have advice on what needs to be changed to hopefully get her sleeping through the night again?

So my 3rd baby is just shy of 7 weeks (2 days) and I have a 20 month old and a 3.5 year old. The older two were very lightly sleep trained via precious little sleep fuss it out, but really I just started establishing independent sleep as early as I could with them (around 6 weeks) even if it was one sleep onset a day of going into the bassinet awake.

Anyway, I am struggling to protect my newborns sleep with my older 2. I am not suggesting sleep training her just for the record.*** My older 2 share a room and go to bed somewhere between 7:30 and 8, but the bedtime routine is lengthy because I’m negotiating with 2 hellions. My youngest has been going to bed late anywhere from 9:30-11, as newborns do, but the last ~2 weeks she will fight bedtime for 90+ minutes. I realized last night she’s being kept awake all through my toddlers bedtime routine and THEN we start the wind down process for her but by this point she’s already been up at least an hour or more, so that extra 90 is pushing us into way way way too long for her and she’s so overtired. She’s just wired and fussy, wants to comfort nurse but gets mad when she actually gets milk, falls asleep for 3 minutes and jolts awake, is instantly awake when I try to transfer etc.

My question is would it be too ambitious to try to get her down by 8? I’m not necessarily hellbent on a specific time. I just don’t know how to protect her bedtime/wake window/anchor her sleep and also deal with my toddlers bedtime and this poor girl is so overtired and cranky every night I don’t want to do that to her anymore. Any help is much appreciated!

Our 6 month old son had a good stretch going where he only had 1 night wakeup. His schedule looked like:

Wake up 7:30

First nap 9:30-10:30 (ish)

Second nap 12:30-1:30 (ish)

Third nap 4:30-6

Bedtime 8

He was only waking one time around 3 and then going right back to sleep.

Now, he won't sleep in past 6 am. But he seems so tired and usually falls asleep on the way to daycare at 8. He has been waking up every 3 hours at night for the past week or so, so we thought maybe he was overtired. We switched his bedtime to 7 with no luck.

The first two naps of his day are not super consistent because he goes to daycare with some super active, loud kiddos.

Is this teething? Is it a leap? What can we do to help him? I'm so tired 😅

Struggling with too much awake time, around 11-12hrs which I think is causing early morning wakes 5-530am.

My son is 7.5 months corrected and can handle 3 hour wake windows, but we often get early morning wakes (around 5:00 to 5:45am) and short naps (30 to 40 mins).

Because of the early start and short naps, I end up needing a third nap or bedtime would be well before 530pm. It feels like we're stuck between schedules.

How to avoid too much awake time? For example yesterday was 3/3.5/2.5/ then Bridge nap and wouldn't go down before 2.5hrs at 730pm.

Would love to hear others' experiences.

The last week or so my 5 month old has been having a false start bedtime literally every night and it’s so frustrating! She typically wakes up from her last nap at 4 and we start her night time routine around 6:30 (bath, bottle, book, bed). This worked so well for weeks and now without fail she’s asleep for around 30 mins and then wakes up screaming. Sometimes she wants another ounce or two of formula. She does typically sleep through the night after this (sometimes a 5am wake up but usually 6). I’ve tried feeding her at 6:30 instead of starting her routine at that time so she doesn’t fall asleep eating (which sometimes happens if we feed her closer to 7). I’ve tried having her wake up from the nap earlier, later and can’t seem to fix this. Has anyone gone through this? Any advice?

I’m screaming over here.

My little guy just turned 1. It’s minimum of 2 wake ups a night. I am so tired and I feel like it’s affecting my health and his , and definitely my ability to shed the extra pregnancy pounds.

I also absolutely am not a cry it out mom. I’m not built for it. Please - like I am 5 years old someone please tell me how to sleep train this guy without breaking my heart and his. I’m so tired.

Wake up is usually 540. First nap around 1030 second around 330. Naps usually 1.5 hours.

Bed time is bath - book - sack - milk (yes I feed to sleep)

My 8 month old baby has been sleeping well (11 hours overnight). He used to be very calm and happy during the bedtime routine and would go down happily and sleep within 3 mins of being placed in crib. In the past week he has been crying for 10-15 mins before falling asleep. Is this just a phase? We haven’t changed a single thing in his schedule (2.5/3.5/4.25). Is there some sort of regression or separation anxiety around 8-9 months or should I teak his schedule?

My son just turned 1 on May 21st. He’s never been the best sleeper, he’s up at least once a night. We sleep trained around 9 months old using modified Ferber, and it was great but did a backslide fast. Still waking up at least once in the night.

Lately though, he’s been having a horrible time sleeping all around. Waking up in the night and screaming for hours even though he’s absolutely exhausted, today he woke up at 4:24 am and didn’t calm down until 6 AM. He is teething, but I do all I can before bed to make him more comfortable…

His schedule is 3/3.75/4. Naps are pretty decent. Anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. Could this be part of the issue?

Honestly this is affecting my mental health at this point. He’s an extremely cranky baby even when he sleeps well and he’s quick to upset…all that together has just been so hard lately.

I’ve had his ears checked at his last appointment last week and they were perfect. So it’s not that.

Someone please HELP. 😭

As the title says, I’m wondering if it’s time to drop to one nap or if it’s just a regression.

My 12 mth old has been sleep trained since 5mths and usually happily puts himself to sleep. Out of nowhere he has started crying and becoming inconsolable when we leave the room. We went through a pretty bad sleep regression around 8/9 months, and this does feel similar, except way less extreme.

He does still manage to put himself to sleep within 15mins and hasn’t escalated to the point of me needing to go check in (which I dread bc they make it so much worse)

His schedule is 3/4/4 with 2 hours in naps. I did drop from 2.25 in naps to 2 a few days ago to try and help with our other new issue, which is emw. The last 4-5 days, he has been waking up at 530 and just rolls around babbling until we get him around 6-615. Before he was sleeping 8-630.

Are these the signs to drop to 1 nap or should I give the changes I’ve made some time to settle and see if that helps?

My son (13 months) has been experiencing what I think I separation anxiety at bedtime.
He was previously putting himself to sleep…we had bath, bottle, books, songs and I’d sing him a lullaby place in crib and walk out. He’d usually fall asleep within 5 minutes. He definitely did not sleep through, wake up at least 2 times a night. We had issues with weight gain so i didn’t completely remove the bottle overnight. Also I’m usually just so tired i give it to him bc i know he will fall asleep with it.

For the past week, he’s started crying and escalating to full on throwing up. Like within 1-2 min of crying. I’ve given the milk earlier but he’s still vomiting. Like forceful full bed change. He gags with some foods and we are seeing OT for that.

Anyone experienced this? My older son was a bad sleeper but never have this vomiting issue.
I’m fine with CIO but obviously that isn’t an option. I just don’t want to resort to having to rock him to sleep. Even if I bring him into bed with me he thinks it’s playtime. I can feel myself just getting frustrated and angry then I feel bad bc he’s just a baby.

I've always heard babies' sleep needs only decrease, but ever since my baby started crawling it feels like he needs significantly more sleep. Anyone else run into this?

We switched to 2 naps with a 3/3.5/4 schedule at about 6.5 months and after a short adjustment period it almost seemed like he needed even more awake time - he was regularly waking up early from naps and in the morning. But then he started crawling around 7 months and now it feels like he needs more sleep than he did a month ago. He has to be woken from every sleep most days, and just today he fell asleep 30 minutes early in my lap while we were reading a book. It seems like he needs more like 3/3/4.

(He's otherwise super active and happy all day, eating normally, etc, so I don't think he's sick or anything like that.)

Is this common?

“Sleep training” my second son currently. I use the term loosely as tbh he’s done a lot of the work himself, we’ve just had to tweak wake windows a bit as I think he was undertired.

4 months old, suits a 3 nap schedule. At first I think his wake windows were too short but over the last couple of days have managed to shift him to

2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5

with little to no protest so I think this is an ideal schedule. Sometimes a wake window is 2 followed by one that is 3 but always shooting for ~10 hours awake time and ~3 hours nap time (so~11 hours overnight)

Goes down wide awake and self settles for naps and sleep, connects nap cycles well.

Baby is EBF and I’ve been trying to feed at the beginning and end of every wake window to ensure daytime calories are good. He’s mostly receptive to this although sometimes I just think not hungry. I don’t mind feeding once (or even twice!) overnight but I believe baby may be developmentally capable of going straight through. I just wondered in other people’s experience if you had a similar age breastfed baby, when did they start to sleep their 11 hours?

My first son was (is) a dreadful sleeper so this is all new territory for me!

Second time parent to a two month old. We are planning to sleep train around 5 months.

We did a modified Ferber at 5 months with our first and it was really great - but they stuck their thumb to self-soothe. So far our second is still finding their hands, and uses a soother sometimes. If they don’t end up sucking their thumb too, how does sleep training work successfully? I’d rather not spend my life replacing their soother!

My baby was gently sleep trained with good sleep hygiene and with modified Ferber but generally never needed much in terms of ability to put himself to sleep independently. We had a solid night routine and he would even in the past month say bye as we walked out the door.

Seemingly overnight he now resists his bedtime routine with every ounce of himself and begins screaming as soon as I place him in the crib.

I’ve been camping out and stroking his back til he falls asleep although last night when I walked out he woke up and proceeded to cry a little but went back down independently in 5-8 min.

Will this pass?! What is going on and where did my great independent sleeper go

Hello,

I need help fixing my 22-week-old baby's sleep schedule so he sleeps better at night.

For the past 3 days, he has been waking up around 7:30 AM. His first nap usually starts around 9:30 AM. Recently, I extended his wake windows to 3 hours because he was fighting naps and bedtime. Since doing that, he falls asleep much more easily with little to no resistance. Last week, he used to wake up 4 times at night every 2 hours. but now only three times with noticeably longer stretches

The issue is that his naps are now about 1 or 1.5 hours each. By 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM, I'm unsure whether I should start his bedtime routine or give him a fourth nap. If I give him a short 20-minute fourth nap, it pushes bedtime to around 9:00 PM.

Also, I know babies shouldn't sleep later than 8:00 PM, but when he does, he sleeps a first longer stretch 4 hours....

I'm conflicted because he seems to tolerate 3-hour wake windows well now, but I'm not sure what the best approach is.

Should I:

1. Keep the 3-hour wake windows and accept a later bedtime?
2. Wake him earlier in the morning and cap his naps so he can maintain 3-hour wake windows but still have a bedtime closer to 7:00 PM?
3. Follow a different schedule altogether?

What would you recommend for a 22-week-old who is handling 3-hour wake windows well and taking two 1.5-hour naps?

i’m looking for some real actionable advice and personal experiences for anyone that’s been through similar. i’ll try and keep it short and elaborate in the comments. i’m keen to sleep train my 4 month old. during his naps, he self soothes a dream. i can pop him on his soft play mat in the kitchen, his crib in his nursery, or his cot beside my bed and he will just doze. which is great. even though for the last month or so he’s been in 30 minute nap purgatory. literally like clockwork. he only takes 30 min naps.

i would do the slashes but i dont really know how… he takes about 3-4 naps a day. his average wake window is 2-3 hours. he is a notorious snacker and bottle swatter. the only time i feel like he’s really focused on feeds is overnight which starts two hourly from 12am to about 5am and he never wakes up hungry. he guzzles 4-5 oz then he’s back straight asleep.

i have loads of questions and am desperate for sleep training advice as i’ve already started some methods and research but i know that i need to first address these nighttime calories and getting him on a solid feeding / napping schedule during the day. i have heard the whole “dark room, minimal distractions, etc” but the reality is that’s not always possible. i need a real plan to implement to try and remove or postpone these nighttime calories so he’s not relying on that time to feed so we can focus on welcoming sleep back into my life 😩

thanks in advance and sorry this is all over the place im exhausted lol

So my baby used to be a fantastic sleeper. As a newborn she would rarely cry. She would wake 2-3x per night and at around 3 months, she would only wake up once for a feed and back to sleep. She would even sleep through the night now and again.

Everything has changed now and I don’t know why or what to do. Around 4.5 months she started waking frequently ( 2 hourly) but I could put her back in the cot after a cuddle. Now at 6 months, she wakes every 20-30 minutes and will not be placed in crib. She doesn’t respond to shushing or pats and will cry until she nearly vomits. Her daytime nap schedule is variable but generally has only 2 naps (sometimes 3)- they can last anything from 30-90 minutes depending on her mood. I believe she is teething right now and that may be part of it??? She’s otherwise a very happy baby.

Any advice would be so appreciated! Will this settle down itself?! Should I be sleep training? And how!

Baby is 9 months old, sleep trained, 3/3.5/4. Up until yesterday went down for naps no problem, but today was HYSTERICAL for his nap. Fell asleep in my arms when soothing him which he hasn’t done in months.

We did CIO at 22 weeks, but I didn’t let him cry it out today as I was shocked and worried something was wrong since he hasn’t cried to sleep in months. He’s close to crawling and just started going from laying to sitting on his own.

What should I do?

My baby is 17 months. We originally sleep trained when he was 10 months using a modified chair method which he took to really well. We had a relapse after he got really sick a couple months ago where we had to retrain and after that he was a phenomenal sleeper! He would tell us he was tired we would lay him down for nap/bedtime and walk out. He would either fall asleep right away or hang out/quietly play by himself until he fell asleep.

We took away his pacifier (by doing the cutting method) last week and it has been a nightmare. We expected to have to do a bit of retraining but not to this extent. We did the same modified chair method that we did the last 2 times but he was waking up later expecting us to be there so we are trying Ferber instead. He dreads naps and bedtime, and does anything he can to avoid going to his room. He wakes up for about an hour sometimes multiple times a night and just screams and calls out mama/dada. He also refuses to lay down in his crib. He has fallen asleep standing multiple times and fallen and hit his head.

I’m reading that 17 months isn’t too early to take away the pacifier but I’m feeling like we made a mistake somewhere….