Hello, baby is 8 months old next week. We have been back and forth to 2 naps the past 2 weeks. On 3 naps she would go to bed at 9:30pm and i would wake her up at 6:45. No night wakings. She would do solid 12:30 wake time no problem and 2h30 naps ( I cap the last one). Days become long and we tried switching to 2 naps. So far we managed to so around 12hours wake time but she started waking up once during the night and then between 5:30-6am crying. Sometimes I breastfeed her, she wants to play but she falls back asleep until 7am (my ideal waking time), but I don’t want it to become an association. If she wakes up around 6am I do 3 naps otherwise she would go to bed early and most likely wake up at 5am. I know I probably have a low sleep need baby but am I doing anything wrong? I was hoping to do 9pm - 7am but I guess that was also impossible on 3 naps so I can’t expect it on 2?
Example WW - 3h20, 3h50, 4h30

Baby is 4 months old and we used to do 8- 8:30pm bedtime, and wake up around 7-8am. This has worked out great for us. But lately, she woke up from her last nap screaming tired(30min short nap, around 7pm), making bedtime pretty stressful.

Yesterday, instead of napping, I put her to bed at 7pm and she slept. Around 11pm she woke up and dad was a little too enthusiastic about changing diapers that she was fully woken up(even happy) for a 90 min wake window. Then we all went back to bed and she woke up at 8am.

This schedule is actually ideal for us, 6am in way too early for me. But I have never heard about splitting night sleep like this and don't know if this is just a one off event and I am shooting myself in the foot in the long run? I just really want to keep wake time at 8am!!

Hi all,

Currently LO is 6 mo today, sleep trained for nights and naps. Trying to follow 2.25/2.5/2.75/2.75 (but dealing with nap refusal for the last nap very frequently, don't have total control of schedule).

Two questions:
1) He is sick. He is waking up more than usual at night - last night twice (normally 0 times). I assume all sleep training protocols go out the window when they are sick? They aren't going to lose the skills if we comfort them to sleep while sick, right?

2) We are traveling at 7mo. He currently does not fall asleep anywhere besides the crib (hates stroller, carrier, carseat). Will he eventually fall asleep on the plane in our arms, even though he hasn't done that in months now? Any tips?

Once a baby is sleep trained, how do we deal with teething or illness? Surely they need more soothing during those times. Can we still contact nap? Rock to sleep? Take into bed one night? Or does this reverse the whole sleep training?

Hi

Our baby has always been great with going to bed at night. Never really had any issues there. Also naps have been not too bad.

However, since she hit 12 months (she is now almost 16 months old), she only does a 30 minute nap and wakes up crying. She has never done this in the past with her naps. We've tried everything to get her to go back to sleep but nothing ever works. The only thing that works is holding her and/or rocking her.

Any tips?

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!

I'm just curious what it really means? Like if LO wakes up an hour before DWT crying, do you just let them cry for an hour?

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?

Baby turns 4 months in 2 days and we’re currently trying to sleep train. We tried CIO for 2 days but gave up because she seemed so tired and off by the third day.

We’re trying FIO now, but I can’t even get to the stage where she’s calm and awake in the bassinet. As soon as I put her down, she immediately starts crying. She currently falls asleep nursing or being held, so the transition feels impossible right now.

Did anyone else struggle with this at around 4 months? Did FIO eventually click for your baby, or did you need to wait longer/change approaches?

Baby is 7.5 months old, dropped to 2 naps a couple weeks ago, following 3/3.5/4. I always have capped her naps, first nap is 1 hour, second nap I cap at 1.5 hours. So total of 2.5 hours of daytime sleep. Bedtime is around 7:30/7:45. I try to follow set nap times, regardless of what time she wakes, nap 1 at 9:30 pm, and nap 2 at 2 pm. When I first sleep trained her around 4.5 months, she was sleeping 11-12 hours overnight with one wake normally, and would sleep until 7:15/7:30 am. I know sleep needs can decrease, which is why I am capping her naps and usually aim for about 10.5-11 hours overnight sleep. Lately she has been waking 3/4 hours after bedtime and needs to be nursed to go back to sleep, but goes back to sleep fairly quickly, so not a huge concern. However, she also now wakes around 5:30/5:45 am and will really struggle to go back to sleep even if I nurse her. She normally eventually will, but it can take 30-40 minutes and some crying. I’m not sure if she is waking early because of over tiredness or under tiredness.

We have had quite the time sleep training my daughter - now 10 months. We finally nailed naps during the day! Independently falling asleep and staying asleep for 2 naps a day 99% of the time! (YAY). BUT our early morning wakings haven’t solved yet. She sleep during the day anywhere from 2hrs 15min - 2.5hrs bedtime stays the same with either as she just falls asleep either right away or rolls around for a bit before falling asleep anyway. She gets up once to comfort nurse (not looking to drop this quite yet). But then she’s consistently awake usually around 5:30-6. Our ideal wake up time is 6:30am. She’s still sleeping in our room. We’ve tried everything to solve this honestly. We trialed 2hrs daytime sleep, 2hrs 45mins, later bedtime, earlier bedtime. None of them made it better, in fact a lot of them made the rest of the night worse still with an early wake up.
I don’t know what to do. It’s killing my husband since he’s the one getting up at that time to hold her. She falls back asleep 75% of the time but absolutely will not let you transfer her. Help. Please. I’m begging.

ETA schedule: we don’t go by wake windows anymore we do naps at set times so nap 1 9:40-11 nap 2 2:50-4 lay her down for bed at 7:30.

Low sleep needs, sleep trained LO 14 mo and 1 week. All his life he’s presented as atypical with his low sleep needs, and for SO long I was offering him more sleep than he could do.

Thank God for this sub Reddit cause the internet has gaslit me! We have finally started to chip away at the 60 min wake he’s been having overnight. With 12.5H awake time it was 45 min. So we likely need closer to 12.75 if not 13H 🫠

Current schedule

6:30 Wake (I wake him cause he’s trying to recoup the lost sleep overnight)

Daycare - Nap 12-2PM (12PM is the nap start time for when he moves to the toddler room in a couple months so I am reluctant to shift this)

Home - Micro nap 10-15 min anywhere between 10:30-11AM he takes it on the go

Nap 1:30/2PM capped at 1H45 (Needs to be cut a little shorter now obvi)

Bedtime 9PM

Would love to hear some solidarity and schedules that your low sleep needs babes are on! And if kiddo is older when they dropped their nap! TIA!

My 22 month old has been waking up at 5/5:30 a.m. everyday for the past month and a half. His bedtime is between 7-8 pm. This is based on how his nap goes. His naps at daycare range from 55 minutes-2 hours. No matter what time we put him to bed, he still wakes up that early.

He no longer needs the soother at night and falls asleep independently, but when he wakes up at 5/5:30 he calls out and won’t stop unless we give him the soother. Even with the soother, he doesn’t fall back asleep but he will stay quiet in his crib until close to 6:45 am.

I’m due with our 2nd baby in a month and I’m already suffering with lots of sleep issues, so even having 1 more hour of morning sleep from our toddler would be so helpful!

So my 10 month old (born a month early so 9 months adjusted) has been struggling to sleep for almost 2 months. Here is a little breakdown of everything that’s happened in the past few months:

- 6-8 months he was sleeping through the night with the help of the Ferber method. It was amazing.

- 8 months he started daycare

- he got sick for literally almost 2 months straight and needed us during the night time constantly. We let go of some strict sleep rules so that he could be cared for.

- now that he is feeling better, we’ve started to get back into sleep training but it isn’t working like it did that first time.

Here is where we are now:

-bedtime is 7:30ish pm.

-he’s waking up around 10/11 pm every night and staying up till 3:30 ish.

-We try to give him 10-15 min before we go in.

-He has yet to soothe himself this go around. We pick him up momentarily and then try again.

-He will usually wake again at 5:30 am ish and we co sleep until 7 because everyone is just exhausted at that point.

-he’s takes 2 naps a day. He sleeps around 3 hours on average. He is getting better at napping independently, which wasn’t the case before.

I’m racking my brain at what this could be and how we can make it stop. He’s teething, he’s also working on skills like pulling up, he’s definitely developing more awareness, so I’m thinking this has to be a regression now….

We are so tired. Help. What can we do differently.

Help! Please let me know if this is just normal or if it’s due to sleep training and will fix in time?

I have an 8 month old that the past 3 days we have been sleep training using the chair method, which has been working better and better each night! We typically put her down in the crib either at 7:15pm or 7:30pm and it takes anywhere from 10-30 minutes for her to fall asleep on her own. No matter what time she ends up falling asleep though, she all of a sudden is having early morning wake ups that she didn’t used to have.

Before sleep training, I could put her to bed at 8pm by holding her to sleep and she would stay asleep all night long until I woke her up anywhere between 7am to 7:30am! Were sleep training because we want to get to a point where she can fall asleep in the crib on her own because when I hold her to sleep the process takes so long between falling asleep and being safe enough to complete the transfer lol.

But I’m frustrated because while the chair method has been working and she’s learning the independent sleep skill and falling asleep at the same time she used to be, she’s all of a sudden waking way earlier than she used to which is also not conducive to our schedule. She’s waking anywhere between 5 & 6am. I’m able to resettle her back to sleep but if I don’t she’s up too early, cranky for the day, and throws off the whole schedule. She typically gets 2.5-3 hours of nap sleep during the day and 11-11.5 hours of night sleep.

I’m wondering if this is due to her learning to fall asleep independently? But the whole point is to help her get herself back to sleep when she does have those type of wake ups! I give her 10-15 minutes to see if she’ll resettle herself back to sleep and she just can’t, probably because sleep pressure is low around them. But then it’s like, well she used to not wake up at that time at all when I had rocked her to sleep so is it worth it? Will it pass in time once she completely gets the hang of it?

Our baby is 16 weeks old. She’s slept thought the night since we got the okay to let her sleep once she got her birth weight back. She’s exclusively breastfed. The problem is I have to feed to sleep for her to go to bed. The only way she’ll ever fall asleep is in the car seat or if I feed her to sleep. I feed her and put her down in her crib for nap time but she’ll only sleep for 30 mins which leads to a fussy overtired baby. I’m trying to monitor the wake windows and not let her get overtired, also trying not to put her down when she’s under-tired.
I’m wondering if anyone had any luck with sleep training for naps ? Also, does anyone else feed to sleep? I have no idea what I’m doing and the goal is longer naps.

I need help. I'm a teacher so when I went to work my baby went to my mother in laws.. where she held her and rocked her to sleep. And I was so tired and baby wouldn't sleep so we started doing that too. Now it's summer break and I'm trying to sleep train her but she will cry and cry and cry. She will cry for hours. We are trying the chair method where we sit in the room with her but dont hold her. If we leave the room she becomes hysterical. Im not sure if being in the room is making it better or worse. I don't know how much crying is "too much".

And when she finally goes to sleep, starting around midnight she'll wake every 45 minutes to an hour for the rest of the night. She cannot or will not put herself back to sleep. I am exhausted and in a not so good place. Does anyone have any advice?

Our schedule we aim for is 2.5/3/4. Bedtime is 730.

Hi everyone!

Our LO did well sleeping through the night for 10-11 hours with one MOTN waking here and there after gaining birth weight. About 3 weeks ago, she would start waking at 5:45 no matter when she went to bed which we tried keeping within the 7:30-9 pm range depending on when her last nap was following wake windows. Naps super well, usually anywhere from 30 mins to 2 hours resulting in 4 1/2 hours total as of the last month or so.

2 weeks ago she started waking multiple times in the night. She is nursed to bed so I would be up, nurse, wait til she was in a deep sleep, transfer. She also started getting startled in those transfers as we needed to discontinue swaddling/she doesn’t care for the sleep sack. I’d say the last week she’s gotten fussy and upset when trying to put to sleep so that process is now taking over an hour.

Last night it took two hours to get her asleep and transfer her following a 2 hour wake window with her usual bedtime routine. She woke up after 3 hours then every hour and a half following until 6:15 AM.

We got back from the pediatrician today who told us to let her nap as much as she wants until 2 PM, then keep her wide awake for 5 hours to reset her sleep? This seems drastic as I’m terrified of her being overtired. Curious on any advice/tips here. Thank you!

Hi! I have not started sleep training yet but I am beginning to do research and start planning. (My baby is almost 4 months now.) I watched the Doctors Bjorkman’s sleep training video on YouTube. I’m have a question about the timing of going into the bedroom to reassure baby. They say you go in for 20 to 30 seconds and talk or put your hand on the baby. I just want to make sure I’m understanding correctly that the baby may still be crying after that 20 to 30 seconds? If they are still crying, you leave the room and set your timer for 10 minutes (or 15 minutes depending on how many times you’ve gone to console already)? Or do you stay in console until they’ve stopped crying?

Another quick question- they specifically talk about day 1, 2, and 3 of sleep training. Are you supposed to accomplish sleep training in 3 days or do you do the training for however many days it takes?

Thanks for the help! Here is the video I was referring to.

Does it sound like my 6.5 month old is ready for 2 naps? He naps well. Probably too well. I usually have to wake him up from every nap or else he will sleep too long. He seems tired and cranky when I wake him from the nap. At night he has been waking up around 12am and seems wide awake. Then awake again around 2am and then 5am where he's wide awake again. His schedule is

7:30 wake up (this changes but I'd like it to be 7-7:30)

9:45-11 nap 1

1:30-2:45 nap 2

4:45-5:15 nap 3

8pm bed time

Hi! I have a 9.5 mo old baby and I am working on the ideal sleep schedule for him.

We have been on 3/3.5/4 for a while buy I feel like he needs to get closer to 11 hrs of awake time in order to sleep better at night. I am trying to figure out if we should cut the naps or change awake time or bedtime although right now we are on a 7:30am-8:30pm schedule and it fits our situation pretty well. So I am more tempted to cap naps even though I feel bad for waking him up...

In your experience, which one of the naps should be longer? The first one so he can build up more sleep pressure in the afternoon, or the last one to avoid overtiredness?

Also I am willing to hear about your own baby's schedule or any other advice regarding a 9-10 mo baby's sleep schedule.

For info he is not sleep trained and I nurse him to sleep.

Thank you in advance!

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!

Okay so we decided to try doing the Ferber method for our girl and I’m struggling with maintaining consistency with the days and check ins. She sleeps through the night most nights, and our first night she woke up at 3am, cried 23 minutes total and self soothed back to sleep. However the next 2 nights she slept through the night. So how do I go about continuing to Ferber if she’s sleeping through half the time?

We also decided to do naps at the same time which are usually much harder for us than bed time. Typically for bed time we lay her down and she puts herself to sleep within minutes. She’s 4.5 months and her best wake windows are around 1 hr 45/2hr/2hr 15 and then our last wake window/nap is always questionable. I feel like she’s borderline ready to drop that nap but struggles to make it through her bed time routine when we skip it.

So basically I’m looking for any advice people have with what amount of minutes to do check ins if she doesn’t need a single check in one day, but does the next? If she doesn’t need any check ins on day 2, but does on day 3, which time intervals would I go by? I’m so grateful she can self soothe a lot of the time but I want to feel like we’re actually making progress on her being able to really self sooth to sleep!

We just retrained our 11 month old and she sleeps from 8pm to 4:50AM. But these early mornings wake ups are killing me. She will dose off if I'm holdong and patting her, but immediately screams awake if I sit my butt down, even if I don't change the angle I'm holding her. She also cried with her eyes closed if I keep trying to sit down. I've tried to let her cry it out but the sleep pressure is so low that it only did the opposite. I'll normally give up at 6AM and start the day.

Her first nap is no earlier than 9:45. Total daytime nap 2-2.5 hours. WW is 4/3.5/3.75 (first one so long because of the EMW). The room is dark and white noise plays all night long. She's not too hot or cold. I'm awake at 4:45 this morning and laid still in my bed. At 4:53 she woke up like a clock and there was no noise or whatsoever that woke her up.

Please help...it's so early and exhausting to start every day this way

What is going on with our baby's sleep!? We have been trying to sleep train our 6 month old baby (extinction method) for almost 2 months. Some nights she does great—fusses for a few minutes at bedtime and has no problem sleeping. But about twice a week, she will have a bad night, involving prolonged crying at bedtime, and/or prolonged crying when I put her back in the crib after middle of the night nursings.

The thing that's confusing is that there's virtually no difference between our schedule and bedtime routine on the good nights and the bad nights. And we always check the obvious: Her diaper hasn’t leaked, she doesn't have a fever, she shouldn't be hungry, and she’s not teething. 

Every bad night, we try to come up with some kind of explanation, no matter how tenuous: Maybe it’s because she woke up from a nap 2 minutes early? Maybe a car honked at an inopportune moment? Maybe she has a tummy ache?? It's got to be something, right??

But if she’s truly sleep trained, shouldn’t she be able to roll with those types of very minor variations? Her sleep improved with sleep training but two bad nights a week seems like a lot! Is this normal? Do we just have to give it more time?

We are also confused about how to approach the bad nights. If she has a bad night and cries for more than 30 minutes at bedtime, we have started to go in around the 30 minute mark to soothe her and do a quick reset. This normally works in the moment, but in the long run, we worry that we may be undoing all of our hard work. But then, confusingly, most other nights she falls right asleep with no issue! Are we doing the right thing by resetting her once or twice a week at bedtime?

Please help us get over this hump!