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?

People also forget that the primary stress response of a baby is to sleep.

Most people see "sleep training" and jump to "leaving them to cry all night".

I'm surprised no one has mentioned cortisol yet 🙄 (although maybe they have - I've skimmed)

There's nothing wrong with teaching your child that they are loved and safe and they can soothe themselves to sleep. But that if they need you, you'll be there to comfort them.

I don't understand what the issue is.

There's quite a misconception that if you ST it means you've left your baby to scream for hours. Which for me personally i would never do.

Sleep Training is anything from cry it out to sitting next to them, patting their bum and shushing them.

4 months is young, but a good bedtime routine will help build healthy sleeping habits.

It's up to each parent to decide what works for them and their baby.

@Milkthistle55 and @LarryTrotter

You'd think a child psychologist would know that huh?

Parents should do what is best for them and their babies and not judge others on their own situations frankly.

I sleep trained my eldest as he woke every 45 mins from birth, by 4 months I had severe sleep deprivation as would get 10 mins sleep per sleep cycle with him if I was lucky and frankly it was dangerous for me to be looking after a baby in that state let alone driving. There is a big difference between being tired and severe sleep deprivation.
I have been told on more then 1 occasion that I was cruel, I tortured my baby etc etc except we never did the CIO method. We did stay and support with patting, sushhing and within a few days he was sleeping in 3 hour blocks. By 7 months he slept through til 5am and through the night from 9 months.

DS2 was a far better sleeper and would only wake every 4 hours and be fed to sleep but that has gone backwards at 4.5 months to every hour so again we do a combo of feed to sleep and stay and support depending on the times that he wakes up.

Do what works best for you but know that might need to change and also understand sleep training is not CIO method alone!

I tried to sleep train DD1 on the advice of everything/everyone. Dreadful for us and I regret it so much.

With my other children, I had so much more confidence and didn't sleep train at all - my other DC settled into a routine much more easily. I can't remember at what age, so I guess not terribly late.

My otherwise logical and sensible sibling sleep trained from 2 weeks old. Absolute bloody nightmare for everyone involved.

What worked for us :

• Rocking : Pb, we only had a King of Rock in the house no Queen. I was dismissed.


• Sleep soother


• Swaddle then later hoodie pyjama with hands and feets covered. That was my magic trick.


• limited space to sleep : cosydream style bed in the baby's bed.


• Feed, change if needed, burp and lie the BB almost asleep but not quite.


• the dreaded dummy (ye I have written it down as I am being truthful, it's not a good idea, it's not needed, I regretted it)


• Ultra dim lights at night when changing.


• Just you, no moving no nothing, just you. Actually only method that never fails...Clever clogs.

Is it sleep training? I doubt it, the outcome wad wildy different depending on the kid.
Anyone else ? I am taking notes here. The wider the arsenal the better. Mine is quite limited TBH.
At that particular stage if I have a 3/3/3 hours of sleeps or 3/4 that's bliss. You have to rush to bed yourself. Half a hour more sleep is worth it's carat.
It's still the raw phase to me.
(gases, teething, the joys...)

I didn’t realise that this can be such a polarising issue.

In general I imagine what is on the internet is well meaning but I think it is such a fine balance about how to intervene and when, specific to each individual’s situation and each baby.

What I took out of it all, and hence was worried that I’m doing things wrong, was that we must start encouraging the baby to fall asleep in the cot on their own and to teach them how to self sooth in the night. Otherwise they will never get there.

At the moment, now that she started waking more regularly in the night, it works for us that I offer her breast, she does go immediately back to sleep (although I do need to hold her again for a while otherwise she wakes up if I put her down too early). I do that once and after second waking I do the same but keep her in bed with me as it is less interruption for me and her. I can just offer her the breast in the bed and we both go back to sleep relatively quickly. Before I put her down for the night there is always some element of rocking or bottle / breastfeeding to sleep.

So in my mind that works well at the moment, but to keep repeating myself, reading advice and views on the internet and also some advice and views here, one is led to believe that by doing this I’m creating problems.

Albeit it’s only anecdotal, but it sounds like there are people out there who did a similar thing and didn’t create a problem for themselves, so that is reassuring.

Equally, I believe people shouldn’t be judged if they try out different methods relevant to their circumstances. The only concern I would have if someone ends up doing something where it’s ill-advised for their specific situation, but are led to believe it is the right thing and that they should persist with it.

@MD1803 your current setup sounds exactly like mine. First feed back in cot, second feed stays in bed. And if this was my first, I too would be panicking that I needed to make a change before it became a bad habit that was hard to break. I wish I’d not spent so long of my firsts’ time as a baby panicking about such things. But alas, I think every first time mum has to go through it.

Kids eventually sleep through the night. But the question is… did they do that on their own or at some point did there have to be some strict intervention? I reckon the first will happen in almost every scenario, but the second happens if the parent hits a wall where they need to intervene (and fair enough if they do). So if your current set up works, keep at it. Enjoy those early morning cuddles (before they can roll about and kick you in the head).

Otherwise they will never get there

See, I think this is exactly the kind of lie that sleep consultants spread to essentially scare parents into sleep training. I almost started to believe too that I would be doing my DC a disservice by not doing this to them! Ridiculous. I was just in a vulnerable and anxiously place.

OP, they will naturally get there in their own time. Like they also start to be interested in solid foods in their own time and learn to crawl and walk and talk in their own time. Your baby's sleep will naturally change over time, sometimes it will be easier, sometimes harder (for you I mean), but over time it will naturally develop towards longer and more independent sleep stretches. Please don't let these harmful discourses intimidate you or scare you into doing something to your baby that you didn't really want to do.

I’ll be starting sleep training around 2 weeks. But I’m also back at work a week after baby is born so I need sleep to function

Oh, wow. That’s tough. Are you in the UK, I believe here you actually only can go back to work 2 weeks after the baby was born at the earliest? I don’t know if going back to work after one week is your choice or you are ‘forced’ but if it’s the latter maybe worth looking into? Even one extra week in terms of recovery post birth will be very useful.

I went back to work after 8 weeks but until she is 6 months I can work 5 days a week from home. My husband is on shared parental leave so he takes over early in the morning and I have a nap before starting work.

Somehow it worked out well, and neither of us are sleep deprived (at the moment) and so far we were not forced to do any intervention.

We thought we would need to, mainly my husband. I wasn’t against it but I couldn’t see how would we stop her from waking up at night if she needs feeding (in the early days) Then literally as I I was to start work again at the 8 weeks she started sleeping from 9:00pm till first wake up at 3:00am (we are mix feeding from birth as I had issues with breast feeding and milk supply).

Lot of luck to you and your baby what ever you end up doing.

How do you sleep train a baby that needs feeding every 3 hours though?

Obviously I can’t speak for @LookAtThatCritter but this probably comes back to the question what do we mean by sleep training.

We in the first two weeks (when my husband took paternity leave) just went with the flow. Had baby with us in the room watching the TV until we went to sleep (baby sleeping on us or in the cot).

When my husband went to work and I had to do for 6 weeks the whole night and whole day I got strict about 9:00pm being the bedtime. E.g. nappy change, feed (wake baby up from the nap and feed if necessary), lights out and quite (and I went to sleep at 9:00 as well). The evening become more predictable that way and the wake up times during the night as well. I wouldn’t call that sleep training, more routine management…. though.

Not in the UK! No maternity leave, so returning to work isn't a choice. I think MD1803 is right, I guess different people see sleep training as different things. Sleep training at 2 weeks isn't about sleeping throughout the whole night, it's just about routine management and getting the baby to fall asleep by themselves or in a certain set of circumstances. To some extent, I think the majority of people sleep train but don't think of it that way. It's only when you get into the extinction and ferber methods that it becomes an obvious training and not everyone is comfortable with doing those.

I didn't sleep train as early as 4 months but did do it at 8 months which worked after 3 nights. I'd much rather a few nights of crying and whimpering than disrupted nights for years. A colleague still get woken a couple of times a night by her three year old - ridiculous!

Can you take one more week as holiday or unpaid leave (if you can afford it) or something to have at least one other week off? I’m assuming this is your first one.

I’m in the UK but didn’t qualify for statutory maternity pay either as I got pregnant before starting my job. Originally I was going to go back after the mandatory two weeks at home but then I thought try to extend it and I used my holiday pay for part of the 8 weeks, the rest was the minimum Matt allowance paid by the government.

Everyone’s birth is different but I thought I was really lucky I ended up taking a bit more time (albeit taking a financial hit) as I didn’t appreciate the recovery your body needs to go through post delivery.

Update on my post should other people wondering about the same thing come across it.
After a few weeks of taking my baby to bed with me after the second then first wake up she became impossible to put her to bed at bedtime. She would wake up immediately after I put her down. However, she would stay asleep if I put her down in the bed with me next to her for a moment.

Then one night she woke up and turned on her tummy. She was like that for a while with her eyes open and then just went to sleep without any intervention from me.

I also stopped having to rock her to sleep at bedtime. She is bottle fed and then breast fed and then rolls on the bed for a while with me next to her. Only very rarely she won’t settle and I need to rock her to help her fall asleep but then once she sleeps in my arms she actually starts wriggling and crying in sleep but settles as soon as I put her down.

Now she sleeps in her cot next to the bed (she falls asleep in my bed and I move her in her cot once I go to sleep) and I wake up when she wakes up in the night. There is a lot of tossing and bushing but she just goes back to sleep on her own, unless she is hungry or did a dirty nappy.

She still needs a lot of help at nap times and bedtime is still with help (I lie next to her and she takes the breast as well as she keeps turning on her tummy with her head moving side to side) but it did feel like just by following her lead and reacting to her / trying to work out what her resistance / fussiness at bedtime was caused by she is naturally slowly developing new habits. So I now do feel confident that just by tuning into her needs and adjusting slowly as she is capable she will become an independent sleeper. It does actually feel like creating those bad habits such as rocking to sleep and taking her to bed with me was beneficial as we both got better sleep during the regression period.

She is now just over 6 months.
Btw I also use the huckleberry app and the sweet spot is rather accurate.

Or maybe it’s just because she’s a little older.

Never sleep trained mine. He started sleeping through in his cot at around 14 months.

I really regret not doing mine. It is absolutely exhausting where as my friends who did do sleep training are able to enjoy their life again. I am in a black hole atm with a baby that absolutely can’t soothe themselves to sleep

I use the term baby loosely he is two atm

I fed to sleep, rocked to sleep, ssshed to sleep, held to sleep, sang to sleep with no issues - f all this rod and crutch for your back. They need to feel safe enough to go to sleep so make sleep a safe space - you won't regret anything you do from love.

Until you’re so exhausted you fall asleep at the wheel. Safety first.

@Wouldloveanother I didn’t drive when exhausted when I had newborns