To feel like I have to let my 5mo "cry it out"?

[OnSilverStars]

My 5 month old DD is a poor sleeper. She's EBF and I regularly feed her to sleep. I know I'm forming bad habits. I did the same with DS. When he was 9 months I sorted it with some gentle sleep training.

DD is only 5 months but will not nap and is up every 1-2 hours throughout the night wanting to be BF'd to sleep.

During the day I try rocking her, the pram, the car, leaving her for short periods of times and going into soothe her, leaving her for longer periods. Anything. Even breastfeeding her to sleep by the time I get desperate and she's getting soooo over tired.

She doesn't know how to get herself to sleep. It's obvious this is the problem.

Last night she went to bed at 6:45 and was up every 1-2 hours until 6:45 this morning. Glad she's in bed for 12 hrs but getting broken sleep all night can't be good her her. Tried to put her down at 8:30. Three hours later I think she's finally asleep after exhausting all other options and letting her cry.

What did you do? What would you do? Thanks

I co-slept and bf laying down. Dd eventually got to the point where she fed without waking me up. Frigging god send.

She’s only 5 months old. Feeding to sleep at that age is quite normal, hardly a “problem”.

How is letting your baby know you're there to comfort her "forming bad habits"?! Try cosleeping and you'll find that she helps herself throughout the night without either of you fully waking up and you'll both feel so much better for getting better quality sleep.

YABU why would you want to let a tiny baby cry themselves to sleep? Feeding a baby to sleep is normal and fine and imo leaving her to cry is shit parenting.

Frankly, letting a 5 month old go without a nap all day because you don’t want to feed her to sleep, is nuts. She is way too young for this.

You're not forming bad habits. You're responding to your baby's needs. What do you think will happen? You'll still be breastfeeding a ten year old to sleep? I promise that won't happen.
If you want to leave your baby to cry it out that's entirely your decision to make. I do want to reassure you that your baby is completely normal though.
My DC 2 and 3 were crap sleepers, particularly number 2. She didn't sleep longer than 2 hours at a time until she was two. She also wouldn't go in a buggy and had to be carried in a wrap, wouldn't take a dummy or bottle, etc etc A truly relentlessly clingy baby.
DC 2 and 3 are the most independent, chilled out kids now. They go to sleep independently, they didn't even say goodbye to me when they started preschool and reception, they no longer need to be fed to sleep. You get the picture. Its anecdotal but DC1 who I did sleep train and give myself endless stress over getting into routines etc is erm..slightly more high maintenance.
What would I do? Keep feeding to sleep. Keep doing what you're doing. You will raise a well attached child.

5 months is really far too young to be able to get herself to sleep. Society expects far too much of babies and toddlers when it comes to sleep.

I sympathise though. Mine is a toddler now and still a terrible sleeper. Co-sleeping really helped. As did lowering my expectations and reminding myself it's not forever. I struggle myself with night waking and nightmares etc and I don't want my dd to have the same anxiety about being alone at night.

Not a popular opinion on here but I’ve just tried CIO with my 3 month old. Massive difference in 2 days. She’s happier and better rested.

It's so hard and I had a baby like this.

The thing is she DOES know what she needs to sleep. She needs closeness, comfort and to suck. At her age, that is normal. So the easiest thing to do is work out how to offer her that comfort whilst protecting your mental health and achieving some sleep. This might look like cosleeping, using a sling, using a dummy. Are you sleeping during the day? How much support do you have with everything else? Do you express? Does. Bottle work? Does skin to skin with somebody else help?

Not a popular opinion on here but I’ve just tried CIO with my 3 month old. Massive difference in 2 days. She’s happier and better rested.

That just leaves me speechless.

I will stick my neck out and say that helping a baby to learn to sleep without being fed to sleep is a good thing for both mother and baby.

OP isn’t proposing that she stops feeding her baby.

@vinoelle

Not a popular opinion on here but I’ve just tried CIO with my 3 month old. Massive difference in 2 days. She’s happier and better rested.

Even the advocates of sleep trainings disagree with doing it a at such a young age. Why have a baby if you can’t be bothered to care for it.

Babies sleep differently to adults. It’s not actually a problem for them to wake frequently to be fed. They’re designed to do this and it’s in no way harmful. It crap for you, but broken nights of sleep is what babies are generally supposed to do.

Try to let go of the worry about ‘rods for backs’ (honestly, it’s just not true - they change all the time at that age and don’t set down lifelong patterns). Feeding her to sleep will do no harm. You don’t need to make it some kind of last resort - just do it and stop feeling guilty.

She will eventually learn to sleep independently. Humans do. It’s ok that she hasn’t learned it a 5 months. It won’t be the case that she can’t do it at 2 or 5 or 12 or 47. In fact, it might not be the case at 6 months because babies just change.

My advice would be to stop being so harsh on yourself and do what works. Feed her to sleep for daytime naps and don’t worry about a lack of 8+ hours of continuous sleep being ‘bad for her’.

@vinoelle

Not a popular opinion on here but I’ve just tried CIO with my 3 month old. Massive difference in 2 days. She’s happier and better rested.

YOU may be happier and better rested, but you can’t possibly know that your baby is.

Have you tried breastfeeding her to sleep in the day before she gets over tired? I sympathise as my DS was a terrible sleeper. I focused on getting him as much sleep as possible in the day which helped him sleep better at night. You have much more patience in the day as well.

We teach our babies lots of things, why would we not help them learn how to sleep?

There are stages of sleep training rather than going straight to CIO. But don't feel pressured into continuing feeding to sleep / co sleeping if that's not what you want. Your mental health is important too.

YABU!

It’s not a problem and it’s not forming a habit. It’s what she needs.

You can either spend 6 months trying to “fix” things until the phase ends, or you can go with it and do what gets you through it.

I got a next to me cot, fed lying down, by 14 months she was sleeping through.

I would personally give it another month as at around six months of age their brain matures and their naps start to get a bit longer and more regulated. I personally believe you need to do what's best for you and your family. If you need sleep to be a good mum, then that's up to you. Don't feel bad if you decide to sleep train. Co sleeping is not always the answer. I could never sleep with my baby in the bed, even when I tried and once we did some gentle sleep training and I could put her down to sleep in her cot, my life improved greatly and my anxiety reduced massively. I was a much better mum and my baby was so much happier once she was getting some decent sleep. Good luck !

Why is it a problem she feeds to sleep? Why is waking up in the night bad for her? Why is her sleep a problem? She’s a very young baby. She’s doing what 5 month olds do.

Leaving her to cry it out might teach her not to bother you when she wakes because she’ll learn you don’t go to her but 5 month olds don’t learn to self settle.

Firstly I'd stop trying to get her to settle without a feed in the day. She just gets crosser and more tired for no good reason, if anything you are training her to protest for longer if she doesn't get fed (until she does)
Then I'd start a gentle routine for naps and bedtime - dark, feed, into cot
I'd decide how long to stretch between feeds at night and get partner to deal with any wakings in between
TBH with mine at that age poor sleeping was more to do with teething than relying on feeding. Could it be that? If she's in pain she will want to feed because it makes her feel better

Just fed to sleep. If she's well rested throughout the day, she'll likely sleep better at night, too. She'll also probably sleep better once you start weaning, and that's a few weeks away.

I personally wouldn't sleep train a baby. 5 months old is tiny (I have a 5 month old, too). But look up put down pick up if you feel like you need to. It's a much more gentle way of teaching self soothing compared to CIO.

I think 5 months is too young to let her cry it out. I did controlled crying with my eldest but she was just over one at the time.
I know the tiredness is exhausted my son is 4 months old and we just can't get him in to a routine and his body clock is out of sync. He doesn't sleep until 3am most days and then sleeps until 9/10 which is fine now but I'd like to get him in better habits for nursery.
I think what you're doing is fine. 5 months is still little. Personally I have generally found that they do find their own routine in the end but takes a while. Also I'm sure I read somewhere that most babies don't sleep brilliantly until they're weaned.

Wow. Mums net at its finest! Haha. I don't care about my baby!? New low for some of you I'm sure. Well done 👏🏻

I have been trying to breastfeed my baby to sleep since 8:30 this morning. It wouldn't work. She's was exhausted. I let her cry for about 4 or 5 minutes and she fell asleep.

Sorry but think it was the right decision. How can some of you even see your phone screens from your high horse? Ffs

I can absolutely understand how draining it is as one of mine was the same. I would say based on my two the one who was a poor sleeper just has a personality where he needs more comfort than my other DC. He's just a more emotionally sensitive child and I think his needing to BF to sleep was just a symptom of him needing more comfort in the night. With my easier DC if I didn't come instantly to settle her she'd just kind of get bored and settle herself down, with my DS he'd just become more and more frantic until he was absolutely distraught. Sleep training him would have involved leaving him for hours in a panicked state which I think would have been awful for him and me. I ended up cosleeping, which I hadn't wanted to at first, but it got us through that first year and things then began to improve.