to sleep train my baby?

[chickpea1982]

Ok, so I'm only partly asking if AIBU, more posted here for attention!

I have a nearly 8 month old baby, breastfed, who co-sleeps with me at night. During the day she usually sleeps in her pram, or in her car seat if we are out. Sometimes in my bed. Other than when she falls asleep in the car, she is almost always breastfed to sleep.

At night she will sometimes wake a couple of times, have a feed, and go back to sleep. But sometimes she will wake constantly, need feeding/cuddling to go back to sleep, and I end up barely getting any sleep myself as a result. My husband has been sleeping in the spare room since she was born as we can't all comfortably sleep in the bed together.

The thing is, I'm going back to work in a week, and my husband is taking over parental leave. He needs to be able to get her to sleep without feeding her. I also need to get better sleep at night so I can be on the ball for work. We also can't keep putting her to sleep in her pram - as she gets more mobile it won't be safe without strapping her in (which risks waking her up). She has a cot in our room which she has pretty much never used!

I'd like to get her sleeping in her cot, both for naps and at night, and to be able to sleep at night without needing cuddling, so I'm thinking about trying sleep training. I really can't bear her crying so I'm finding this quite daunting. I think maybe I could cope with some controlled crying, as long as it didn't last too long and I had the option to pick her up and comfort her. There are so many different methods out there, I'm just so confused about how best to go about it.

Does anyone have any experience to share of sleep training and how it worked for you? Or AIBU for even thinking of sleep training?!

We sleep trained at 6 months, I also didn’t like the idea of him crying so we did a gentle sort of method of comforting him. We did the chair method and changed our pre-sleep routine.
First would be changing the feed to sleep association. It’s good she can sleep in the pram as it shows she can sleep without being fed to sleep. Also, you might find that when you’re not there she finds it’s easier to go to sleep without a feed anyway. For bedtime you could move the feed to the start of the routine, then bath and story and then into bed. Then you may need to just comfort her in other ways to help her get to sleep, like shusshing or patting her tummy or something.
There’s lots of sleep consultants on social media, some a very pro strict sleep training methods, some are more on the side of going with the flow of your baby, and obviously there’s a load inbetween. So have a look and see what angle would work for you and your family.
Also, you may find that she sleeps better in her own room. Once we moved our son into his big crib in his own bedroom his sleep improved a lot as he wouldn’t be disturbed by us during the night.

Oh honey nodont feel bad. There will be people who will always say that this is bad and that is bad....but at 8 months old your baby can sleep through the night. Studies have shown that if a baby can sleep well while they are young they grow up to be better sleepers and less issues with sleep. My son screamed for the first 6 months. He slept for 20 minutes the most in any given time. It was literal torture. I sought help online about sleep training and lots of people were calling me the worst mother to do this to a baby, to go with his flow (like seriously 20 minutes of sleep) to suggesting things I didnt ask for. We did the cry it out method but took it a bit slower and after 4 days he started sleeping through the night. He then started napping in the day too. He turned into a much happier baby and I wasnt miserable and could actually begin to enjoy my baby. My husband did the sleep training because I just couldnt bear not comforting him while crying and would have broken the routine. It also sounds like your little one is more comfort feeding than hungry and using you as dummy to sooth back to sleep. I hope you get it sorted and can get your little one sleeping soon.

We used Lucy Wolfe’s The Baby Sleep Solution at 6 months. Gentle sleep training where you stay in the room with them, can pat them, rub them, and pick them up if need be. Took 3 days to train my eldest and the best thing we ever did x

Just here to recommend Calm & Bright and their gentle sleep training plan - they are amazing! I also couldn't cope with any kind of crying-it-out. We did it when my daughter was one year old and it was a game changer x

I feel your pain - both of mine went through a period of waking every twenty mins when they were around eight months. But they do grow out of it. So much is related to teething and weaning and separation anxiety. Without doing anything other than wait for them to get older their sleep has improved. We have a mattress on the floor and a baby gate on the door so that I can feed to sleep and roll away and my partner can massage them to sleep. It was harder for him initially but I helped make the link by stroking their back as I fed to sleep so that he could then do the same if I wasn't around.
Full disclosure - I'm against sleep training. I don't think it's fair to stop responding to a very young child's needs for comfort just because it's night. But I do get how hard it is (also bedshare and breastfeed) so solidarity there!

Leaving a baby to cry has been proven to be detrimental to their brain development , higher instances of anxiety later in life and attachment disorders .
Imagine you being upset and wanting a cuddle and your husband just told you you have to get on with it because he can't be arsed to deal with you anymore.
Imagine being cuddled and having all your needs met for 8 months then you are just left to cry how awful that would be , babies don't learn to self soothe they just realise no one is coming.
Edited to add I have a 10 month old breastfed baby that will only contact nap and sleep with me it's exhausting and frustrating sometimes but it won't last forever.
The couple of suggestions above look like they are worth checking out

Leaving a baby to cry has been proven to be detrimental to their brain development , higher instances of anxiety later in life and attachment disorders .

No it hasn’t. There is evidence in both directions, none of which is strong enough to consider the matter “proven”.

OP, as discussed above there are plenty of ways to sleep train that don’t require leaving a baby to cry. So you don’t need to go this way, which is good because you don’t want to! But don’t let poorly evidenced claims like this from anonymous posters about any method put you off trying something that might work for your family.

We sleep trained at 7 1/2 months as I was feeding to sleep and baby was waking multiple times in the night for a feed for comfort rather than hunger and I was struggling with it. Baby is 9 months now and still exclusively breast fed.

I would say we gently sleep trained. She is 9 months now and still wakes up once a night and a rare occasion she sleeps through - sometimes she can be settled without feeding within a few minutes, sometimes she needs feeding back to sleep but it is much better than her waking 4/5 times a night in our bed. I find she is a much happier baby now she is in her own room and happier of a day too!

i really struggle with my daughter crying too, my partner seems to cope better than me and therefore he settled her back to sleep every time in the first week or so of sleep training. (Did feel bad as he was having to get up for work and I’m off on maternity but it’s what was working) I would feed her and put her in cot almost asleep and then he would tap/shush with lullabies until she went off. She did cry but we did not leave her to cry on her own. I know some people do this and I think each to there own but we found it harder leaving her to cry on her own. Only issue is I think it has taken longer for us to sleep train and partner had to do a lot of settling back to sleep the first few nights of sleep training. After about a week she starting sleeping much better and still does now (unless teething/unwell). As I said earlier, she does wake at least once a night but 9/10 it’s not difficult to get her back off to sleep. I suppose if she was still waking multiple times a night I would try controlled crying but for now we are ok.

Good luck!! Xx

getting a baby to comfortabley sleep in their own - no problem

leaving a baby to cry - problem.

leaving a baby to cry is absolutely fucked up.

I had mine sleeping through about six hours at six weeks and eight weeks in their own cots. I never fed to sleep if I could avoid it. I just can't comprehend how tired some mothers must be with being kept sleepless for months on end and being taught this is unavoidable or even desirable. And no they weren't left crying for hours or fed on a rigid schedule. The thing is that a generation or two ago that wasn't even unusual or remarkable.

This is not true. There is no proven scientific evidence of this. OP, you are going to have to make gradual changes but babies need to learn to sleep well on their own. You are doing baby and yourself a favour. Long term sleep disruption is so damaging for you all.

Hi OP.

I have an almost 8 month old who still doesn’t sleep through the night. She wakes for bottles in the night every 4 hours, although sleeps between these times. She usually drinks the whole bottle, or close to. People kept telling me weaning would make a difference but it hasn’t. I’m not sure what I can do, the disturbed sleep is absolutely awful after so many months. Solidarity 😩

more damaging than sleep disruption is a baby who eventually falls silent because they realise no-one is coming. The baby is not 'soothed' it's catatonic.

No one is saying that a baby or todder sleeping happily on their own is a problem, but 'sleep training' by leaving a baby to cry until it gives up is absolute damaging. No mammal mother does it. Very few humans do accross the world. Only post-victorian cultures.

You have left it as but late and constantly feeding every time she wakes will !she it difficult to sleep train her. Move the for from your room and put her down to sleep and don't feed her when she wakes.

Babies need to learn to sleep on their own? Babies don't need to learn shit! It's a baby ffs. Leaving them to cry is abhorrent.

Do not feel bad OP. You all need sleep. You cannot function as an employee, partner or parent without adequate rest, and neither can your partner. You need to actually have a relationship with your partner, not have him shunted to the spare room. You need a long term plan that is going to work for all of you. Nobody is suggesting you leave the baby to scream until its throat is raw. But you need to have a plan that works for you all, and what you are doing atm just isn't working.
Best of luck next week!

You go back to work in a week and you co-sleep with her?

So, from now on, Your dh should co-sleep with her instead. In advance, you agree how many times you think is reasonable to feed her overnight - so you might say Midnight and 4am to start with - outwith these hours, her Dad deals with it - he comforts her - crying with a loving parent beside her is completely different to leaving her completely alone to CIO - She may wake up less when you're not there anyway.

See how you get on like that - your dh and baby may not like it to start with, but it's one of the gentler ways of weaning her off breastmilk overnight

😂

You've left it a bit late but I agree with the suggestion above of getting your DH to cosleep with her, and bringing her to you in the night if he can't resettle her. You need to stop the night time feeding before you can get her sleeping longer. You could try a dummy too to get her back off during the night.

My baby still has almost a full bottle when she wakes every 4 hours - she’s clearly hungry - I’m not sure just giving her a dummy would suffice ??

Babies that are never responded to give up trying - yes but that is a Romanian orphanage type scenario and not sleep training for 3 nights in the context of a loving home.

Babies that have been sleep trained do still cry at night and in the day. They obviously don't go catatonic or give up trying. That's a load of rubbish.

You may as well equate limiting sugar with starvation - the two things are opposite ends of a spectrum.

What age is she? If she's over 8 months you could try reducing the amount you give her at night and increasing the amount in the day.

i had stopped breastfeeding when we did sleep training.

my experience is:

• my BFing friends weren’t as no where near as successful with sleep training/ full nights sleep.
• its not and “one and done” situation. illness etc means you need to go back and retrain.
• my DD “sleeps through” (wakes and resettles by herself) and has done since about 6m (This excludes illnesses and a weird 3m period at 18-21m which almost killed us)
• if your baby is NOT responding to the training within 2-5 days it prob isn’t right/ won’t work.
• I have no regrets about sleep training and will do the same with DS in about 3months.

the catatonic comment made me laugh out loud.
thats children who have every basic need ignored for months… not a 5 min interval.
my Dd is as far from catatonic as you can imagine… she’s a delightful chatterbox and we often hear her having a song song or playing with her teddies after lights out. It’s really cute to listen to

I found with both of mine that if I went into them at night or slept with them they would want the breast and go crazy for it so used to send dh in.

When I went back to work my dd refused to eat or drink anything else so I decided to stop bf as I was getting no sleep. I moved her to their own room I sent dh in to settle and soothe her. It took time but eventually she got the message that they would get a cuddle from him but Mummy and her milk were not coming. She stopped waking and also with no bf she actually began to eat more food and drink formula from a dippy cup. Your baby is a bit younger but you could swap to bf before food so it's not feeding to sleep. Give dh the job of putting baby to bed. I don't know the strategies suggested but some sort of gentle back out the room, return to pat and comfort but leave again strategy would work and not do any harm. The trouble is sometimes you find yourself going back for the 20th time and then you are tired and just give up. It will be a week of pain for you and your dh but its doable.