To not sleep train my baby?

[MD1803]

So, the internet is full of advice how to sleep train your baby.

Are there many / any people out there who never bothered and just allowed things to happen (and how did that go)?

My DD is 4 months old (in two days). We are now about two weeks in into the 4 month sleep regression. In general, it takes fair amount of rocking to get her fall asleep for her naps or at bedtime. I never put her down drowsy but awake. In fact I always wait about 20mins when she is normally in deep sleep and doesn’t wake up once I put her in her cot.

From about 2 months old until the regression started she would sleep from 9:00 and later 8:00pm to first wake up around 3:00 / 4:00 am.

Since the regression I started to take her to bed with me after her midnight / 1:00am wake up. Frankly I get better sleep that way. I never took her to bed with me before.

I’m thinking she will just naturally develop sleeping habits where she will get over the regression and eventually learn how to fall asleep on her own.

Am I being delusional?

I think 4 months is too soon to know anything. Not delusional but it also might not happen. Only fine will tell.

Nope haven’t done it with either of mine! Struggled a bit through the 8 month regression but he’s ok now after a few weeks. Both excellent sleepers (my older one is 7).

I just couldn’t stand to hear them crying.

I didn’t with mine.

I briefly tried with older DS and found him covered in vomit.

I decided that was the end and I felt very upset I’d let him get that distressed.

The are 9 & 4 and sleep fantastically now unless unwell.

At 4 months it shouldn’t even be considered in my opinion.

Mine are all teens now but I never did sleep training, I couldn’t stand the crying. All slept eventually

When it changed and your having to go to bed with your baby at 7pm
every night and you can’t event have some free time to yourself you might change your mind 🙈

I was the same and then I cracked when she was 7 months let her cry 1 night for 15 mins and then by night 3 she was sleeping in her own room and I had some time back to myself in the evenings.

but you do what works for you

I’m thinking she will just naturally develop sleeping habits where she will get over the regression and eventually learn how to fall asleep on her own.

She may or may not.

No point in making any grand plans, play it by ear, see how you go.

Its totally up to you.

No one on here can predict the outcome. Your kid might be quite chilled out and happily sleep well without much help in the next few weeks anyway. Or they might be like my friend's kid and still need want mum with them every single night to fall asleep at age 5.

I would say what you can do regardless of sleep training is try and have good sleep habits. Predictable routine, calm bedtime, good diet, have both dad and mum put baby to bed so they aren't overly reliant on one. Once they get over about age 1 I do think it helps if you can try not to rely on props like you rocking them or sitting patting them to sleep but it's your choice to make.

I didn't sleep train DS, but be warned he was 3yo before he slept well!

I’m thinking she will just naturally develop sleeping habits where she will get over the regression and eventually learn how to fall asleep on her own.

This is probably a bit delusional but it depends on when you expect her to. In lots of cultures it would be normal for children of 5,6,7 to still sleep in with parents. So if that's the sort of thing you don't really mind you probably can wait it out.

What @Fupoffyagrasshole said.
2 yo DS still needs rocking to sleep. Tbf I tried very hard to sleep train him. He was just resistant. It got to stage where he was waking every 20 mins at 11 months old and I was exhausted hence tried sleep training. When your that exhausted you get compassion fatigue and the crying doesn't hurt as much! Even now it's such a hard task getting him to sleep.
DS 6 months is a dream. I put him in his cot awake. He shuffle and grunts for a bit. Might whimper cry for a few mins and before I can go to comfort him he's fast asleep. If I reach him awake then a few pat's on the bum and he's off to sleep. Still wakes up for night feeds etc but nighttime routine and naps are so much easier.

Its unlikely

Youve created a sleep crutch/habit by rocking.

Its unlikely she'll learn how to fall asleep in a different way by luck.

But if you're happy to keep rocking her, keep rocking her

It is a huge misconception that sleep training means leaving your baby to cry. Sleep training is anything that encourages them to sleep on their own - so shush pat is sleep training.

Your baby might be an angel at sleeping or she might end up waking every hour through the night so you shouldn’t rule anything out at this stage; but the blanket “id never sleep train my baby iTs CrUeL” line is nonsense really

I tried sleep training for one night around 6 months and it nearly broke all 3 of us. s

On and off my LO has slept through the night from around 10 weeks. He gor bad again by 6 months but once in his own cot in his own room was great again. He is currently 10 months and goes down anytime from 7pm to 9pm depending on naps/ what we are up to /dinner time etc. He wakes a fair bit some night and others sleeps through but generally is down till 7.30am.

we could be stricter I suppose... ultimately I think I am too lazy plus someday I just like the cuddles

Fed DS to sleep as much as I could. Rocked otherwise. Never put him down drowsy, always asleep. Fed him (BF) every time he waked. Never did anything remotely close to sleep training.

He was 3 last week. He happily walks upstairs for a nap, lays down, and drifts off by himself. He does the same at bedtime bar a few nights he asks for cuddles which I happily give. He sleeps through the night most of the time.

Lyndsay Hookway on IG.

Change if something isn’t working and your comfortable with sleep training or whatevs. Carry on as you are if you want to. Your baby will learn to sleep.

Oh and to follow up, I can’t give you a magical moment when DS no longer needed us, he gradually got better at falling asleep on his own. Reckon he needed minimal input by 18 months.

Everyone has to make the decision that seems right to them.

Personally I never sleep trained my two as it didn’t sit right with me and they both became great sleepers anyway. The BASIS site is a really great resource for evidence based info on sleep.

^ This is all the kinds of myths that uphold the sleep training industry culture, OP. Have you come across The Beyond Sleep Training Project? Lots of informed which debunks all these myths and gives alternatives to sleep training.
All children do end up sleeping through eventually - it is not necessary to 'teach' them this. Ime this is just what sleep consultants would want vulnerable young mums to believe so that they then pay £££ on having some stranger dictate how they must treat their own baby!
If all this stuff about 'bad habits' were true mine would have forever woken up after every sleep cycle - because I always just breastfed or cuddled back to sleep - but lo and behold, they naturally went through phases of sleeping better and worse but in the end slept through in their own beds just fine when they were developmentally ready.

Gosh, don’t even worry-4 months is still so wee to be thinking about that. We went with the flow until about 5.5 months when suddenly it because apparent she was getting overtired in the evening and we then instigated a story/bath/bed routine. It pretty much works, we had a regression a few weeks ago where she woke at 2am and we realized she needed more proper food before the evening bottle!

You’ll figure it out, every baby is different

Agree with this. Don't know a soul who even considered sleep training at 4m. However I couldn't have worked 40 hours a week with my one year old waking to feed hourly so I did something then. Both my children were the same. Certainly not all children naturally learn to sleep through the night until more like 3 or 4. With all due respect, you're only 4m in and after another year or three of broken sleep may feel differently.

Of course she will. I don't know many 25 year old who still need to be rocked to sleep.

Dude, it takes more than 1 night to sleep train a baby.

@Selinna

Eventually can be a long time.

And of course its not a myth that we form sleep habits. Most adults have them too.

I'm sure your kid didn't move from feeding to sleep to not with no intervention whatsoever

@ScottishBeth

No me either, because they learned another way.

I know plenty of adults with a huge variety of sleep habits/crutches and plenty with awful sleep

You're not being delusional but at 4 months you've still got a long way to go.

By MN standards I was doing all of the wrong things in relation to DD, first it was rocking to sleep (still at like 7 months old), then feeding to sleep (up until about 15 months old)

Now at 18 months old I've reached a point where she will fall asleep on me/next to me with no interaction if I lay in the cot next to her. I will then climb out and she will sleep for about 5-6 hours & then may wake up to come into my bed which I don't mind.

This all has happened with no crying whatsoever due to the fact that I feel like I've made the changes when she has been ready rather than forcing them on her.

So no I don't think it's necessary to sleep train but I also think it can make independent sleep take a bit longer so up to you what you're happy with.

I didn't ever leave DS1 to cry. When he was 10 months I started putting him in his cot fully awake and seeing if he'd put himself to sleep with me singing or chatting in a chair next to him. Sometimes he did, other times he'd get too upset and I'd pick him up and get him to sleep by cuddling him. If he woke up in the night and I couldn't settle him I'd bring him in with us. He slept through for the first time shortly after he started putting himself to sleep, and then started sleeping through consistently at 16 months which was also when I stopped breastfeeding. He's 2.5 now and puts himself to sleep really well, and always sleeps through apart from illness and occasional bad dreams etc.

I have a 3 month old DS2 now so keep hearing about sleep training again. The sleep training industry reminds me a bit of the diet industry. There might be a grain of truth at the heart of it (ie. it's good to have healthy sleep habits/a healthy weight and it's possible to achieve that methodically), but there is a lot of pseudo science about, and it's easy to become obsessed.

Also, bear in mind quite a lot of the advice on the internet is American, where women tend to go back to work much earlier than in the UK. If you're going back to work at 3/4 months you're probably going to much prefer actively getting your baby to sleep through as soon as possible, and you don't have as much leeway to wait and see what happens with their sleep with less direction.