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?!

Have a look at hannah love's sleep course, along with the reviews on trust pilot. The course is non CIO, and the first step is breaking the feeding to sleep association and it teaches baby to let you settle them to sleep in other ways, without feeding. Then, you will be slowly doing slightly less to settle them until they are able to get to sleep themselves in their cot. This is very different to leaving a baby to let them cry (this does not happen on this course), so ignore any haters who will tell you doing this is you being a bad mum. You are a person too and have your own basic human needs - sleep being a huge one.

For what it's worth, I did the following.

I never fed to sleep if I could avoid it. What happens is that the baby wakes up alone and yet a moment before it was with mum and it's frightened about how mum suddenly disappeared. The baby has to learn how to get back to sleep on their own and feeding to sleep does not teach them that. In fact, it does the opposite.

At night when they cried, I would go in and change and feed them. I would keep the lights low and no interaction other than changing and feeding and no talking. I would give them their bottle and change half way through to wake them up a little to finish their bottle. I would then put then down. If they wanted me to come back to them, they had to put a bit of effort in - no, this is not hours of crying, maybe 5-7 minutes. They knew if they put a bit of effort into crying, mum would appear but it would be really boring with very little interaction at night. I left a night light on.

They learnt that fun things happened during the day and night time was really boring. As I said the eldest slept through at 6 weeks (say midnight to 6 am) and the younger one took 8 weeks to get to that point.

Now you could say that I traumatised them and so on. All I know is that I had hours and hours of sleep that my contemporaries lacked and so did my children.

In fact, the wife of one of my colleague who hadn't had a decent night's sleep in years fell asleep at the wheel and drove into a brick wall. Luckily, her injuries were minor and the baby was unscathed. My colleague got a huge fright and insisted that they had to have an end to this and it was one hellish week before their daughter learned to settle. If you start young you never get to this point.

"You've left it a bit late" - comments like this boil my blood a bit. Super unhelpful (and baseless) but you see this shite trotted out everywhere by non-experts on social media to get parents tied up in knots over sleep.

OP, this actually sounds like the perfect time for you to try something new. A lot of people find with BF babies that they settle easier with the non-feeding parent, so a good time for your DH to step in on nights now that he's on leave.

There are definitely options you can try that don't involve leaving your baby to cry. Many are based around reducing the level of help you give your baby to sleep, e.g. some variation on this: https://childrenshealthsurrey.nhs.uk/services/sleep/gradual-retreat. Lots of NHS guides on it if you Google. I'd steer clear of social media as I find you can get into a bit of a hole.

And meanwhile rest assured that your baby still has lots of developing to do and along with that sleep generally starts to settle a bit of its own accord. For instance, we were in the same situation as you (feeding to sleep or walking in a pram to nap) and found at around 9 months our baby was starting to fall asleep straight after being put in the pram, before we'd even started walking. She no longer needed 10-15 mins of walking. Around the same time we could see she was starting to find new ways to resettle herself if she woke up at night. That's not to say you shouldn't try some sort of training to help your baby get there quicker, but to reassure that you haven't missed some sort of mythical sleep boat! I hope your return to work goes well too.

We slept train both our babies, around six months. Best thing ever, and we were all a lot happier for it.

Thanks for all the replies, I really appreciate it. We've made a big step forward in the past few days - she is now sleeping in her cot at night, which has helped enormously. The cot is still in our room at the end of my bed, so I still get woken up by her a few times a night, but mostly it seems to be a quick 10 -15 minute feed then back to sleep. No crying involved so far, though I haven't been brave enough to try putting her down without feeding yet.

Some really good suggestions above. I think I will try to get DH more involved in settling her at night (about time he did some of the work!!!) and see if I can work up the nerve to put her down without feeding.

OP, sleep training doesn’t need to be cry based. We followed a gentle method over many days where we gradually reduced night feeds and comforted DS in his cot.

It's going back some years now but I used the Baby Whisperer sleep training for my dd. Useful as It's not a one size fits all - takes into account your baby's personality. My dd is 14 and is a very good sleeper 😁.

Realistically your dh needs to be able to ensure your baby gets sleep so now is a good time.

Your baby may still need feeds at night hence the odd waking but would only have thought once would be sufficient, you don't use sleep training to cut out night feeds, sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick there, it is for teaching them to self soothe so they can go to sleep on their own without rocking etc.

If she still needs a night feed and you don't feel able to do it with work, you will need to transition to formula for that night feed with a bottle or express and feed with a bottle so your DH can do that feed instead.

I done sleep training at about 7 months with my son and yes it is hard but it was the best thing I ever did, we done Ferber method where we went in after 5 mins then 10 etc and the first night was hard took a couple of hours and he did make himself sick crying, but the second night was an hour then third 30 mins then 10 mins on the 4th and then nothing, ever since he has gone to bed in his cot on his own with no issues, now 3.5 years. If he had been sick the second night, I would have caved but at that age it should take no longer than a week to do, but the older they get thelonger it can take. It isnt for everyone or every baby.

Mumsnet is very pro sleep training.

My real life was very anti sleep training.

I decided I couldn't listen to my son cry for me and not go; but kept an open mind about the concept. 5 of the babies in my 8 baby NCT group were sleep trained. Its "worked" for one, who does wake up but will sing herself back to sleep loudly rather than cry. My son now tends to play with his teddy or read, but he knows if he does cry out, I'll go. Which means he does, if he needs me.

The rest have all gone through the same regressions and wake ups as the rest. 2 now have the worst sleep in the group. It took us a lot longer to get to good sleep, but it's lasted and I think I made the right call for us. I couldn't have done the constant retraining.

She's a baby. It feels relentless in the moment but she will learn by herself, whatever you do. For me, the science was too iffy to put me or him through it.

I really can't bear her crying so I'm finding this quite daunting.

I suspect this means it's a no-go for you anyway. There will be tears and potentially a lot of them.

For what it's worth, everyone worries about going back to work. I did, too. It works out. Your husband will find his own way to put her back to sleep, as she'll know he doesn't have milk. It'll work without you needing to do any training.

Yep OP thats the way you want to do it, start settling when she wakes without feeding- however in my experience you need to work on things during the day before it'll work/make it much easier at night. You need to 2 do things. 1, space feeds out during the day so you know how long she can go without a feed, therefore you will be confident at night if you choose not to feed, that she doesn't need the milk. 2, you need to also cot settle (I.e. don't feed to sleep) during the day for naps. You need to be consistent during day and night for her to understand and learn. Then be consistent and confident! Set a feed curfew at night. E.g. if she wakens in less than 3 hours, she isn't getting a feed. Once you've made that decision, stick with it, and continue to settle her in other ways than feeding. If you relent after she protest and give her a feed, it won't teach her to settle in other ways. Just make sure your approach to settling is consistent day and night, and don't switch things up. Hope that helps

Disturbing that the "best thing you ever did" was leaving your baby alone to cry so much that he was sick. What a betrayal of trust.

I sleep trained both my DC at around 9 months. I was on my knees by that point and couldn't cope with any more disturbed sleep. It took about a week with DC1 and I think a couple of nights for DC2. They were both big enough, healthy enough, well fed enough, etc, to be able to physically cope and it worked. Thereafter, they slept through and I slept through and I never regretted it. They also became really good sleepers.

My friends who refused to sleep train and thought it was cruel had many more months (even years!) of disturbed sleep and I don't think it did either them or their DC any good. One friend still had her DC co-sleeping past the age of 10, which to me was unthinkable! Neither of mine were traumatised by sleep training. They cried at the time, but I'd built a sufficiently loving and trusting bond with them both by 9 months, so any upset was very temporary.

We used this method for both of ours - a gradual retreat, which isn't no-cry but also doesn't mean leaving them alone: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/sleep/1394888-What-worked-for-us-Hope-this-helps

Both times our only regret was not doing it sooner. With DS1 I particularly regretted this as it was only afterwards that I realised how much the previous sleep situation had reduced my enjoyment of him and of motherhood. It was transformative.

They're now nearly 6 and 3 and remain, as they always have been, loving, happy children who know they're loved and have a strong attachment to us both.

It has not been proven to be detrimental to baby's brain development in the context of sleep training. Cite a peer- reviewed paper if you're going to make a claim like that to a mother in a difficult situation.

When I said I never fed to sleep, I didn't mean to put the baby down without feeding. Just make sure the baby is awake rather than dosing off. You can use a face cloth on their face for a wipe, for example, if you need to wake them up or change their nappy or whatever. We used to have a routine of winding up their music mobile when they first went down at night.

"In their recent paper published in JCPP, Bilgin and Wolke (2020a) argue that leaving an infant to 'cry it out', rather than responding to the child's cries, had no adverse effects on mother-infant attachment at 18 months. This finding opposes evidence across a wide range of scientific fields. Here, we outline several concerns with the article and argue against some of the authors' strong claims, which have already gained media attention, including a report on the NHS website. We suggest that the authors' conclusions should be considered one piece of a larger scientific whole, where 'cry it out' seems, overall, to be of detriment to both attachment and development. Crucially, we are concerned that this study has issues regarding power and other analytical decisions. More generally, we fear that the authors have overstated their findings and we hope that members of the public do not alter their parenting behaviours in line with such claims without further research into this controversial topic"

Commentary: Does 'cry it out' really have no adverse effects on attachment? Reflections on Bilgin and Wolke (2020)
Abi M B Davis et al. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2021 Dec.

But what you've cited there is a commentary piece disagreeing with another (peer-reviewed, published) piece that claims to show that there is no harm from sleep training. The absolute most you can say this shows is that there is evidence on both sides?

We sleep trained when my DS was 6 mo using the Ferber method. He started going off to sleep himself within a few days. I won’t lie, those first few nights are difficult, but it was 100% worth it. He loves going in his bed now. He started sleeping through the night at 1yo, and consistently has (now 2yo). So many friends with children the same age as him who didn’t sleep train are still complaining about their children waking several times a night, taking hours to go off to sleep, being absolutely exhausted from a lack of sleep.

We’re all well rested and full of energy for the next day, and sleep is so important for children, and my partner and I get child-free time in the evenings once he’s in bed to recharge - it seems a no brainier for me!

We used the Ferber method at 9/10mo with my first, and 12mo with my second. Third is not old enough to do it yet. Total game changer for everybody.

Best thing we've ever done. It was awful, I'll tell you that, but I kept an incredibly detailed log so I could see progress. It took about 4/5 nights but now they both sleep through the night, and when they do wake up because they're cold/sick it is very easy to get them to go back to sleep.

They also wake up between 7:30-8am, which is far better than 6am like most other parents I know.

That's true, but with the published evidence available at the moment we can't say that sleep training doesn't cause long term harm, which previous posters are saying. I get it, contemplating the fact you might have done something that will cause anxiety issues in the future is not pleasant, but it's not a risk free decision. For the sake of waiting a few months I'm not prepared to risk it. My breastfeed, bed sharing, fed to sleep baby was sleeping through the night (7-7, so not "sleeping through but actually 12-6") in his own bed consistently at 15 months. We just waited for him to get older.

I meant cry it out method sorry should of been more clear SOME gentle sleep training methods are fine others are not much better than cio ,she mentioned leaving baby to cry hence I assumed she meant cio method which is cruel .

Babies do not NEED to learn to sleep on their own they are babies for Christ's sakes ! We as adults don't sleep alone , when we are upset we go to someone for comfort so why the hell do we expect a baby that is 100% dependent on us for all their physical and emotional needs to sleep alone ?

1. sleeping training isn’t “leaving a baby to cry until it gives up” - there are a variety of ways to provide them with the opportunity to learn to self sooth and sleep alone
2. ”mammals do it” isn’t a valid argument to apply to humans because mammals also do incest, murder, infanticide - and many other things we wouldn’t do!

I have just sleep trained my 7 month old. She wasn’t napping for longer than 30 mins a time during the day and was waking every couple of hours during the night. I also have an almost 3 year old so I was running on empty and losing the will.
my eldest slept through the night without any training from around 8 weeks old so this time around I was completely overwhelmed and felt like an awful mother.
my 7 month old was in her own cot but because of the number of wake ups my partner moved to spare room so I had flexibility to co sleep if needed. This helped for a bit but I found I was constantly feeding to calm my baby and it definitely became a comfort rather than a need so decided things needed to change.
Firstly, made sure all naps (no matter how short) were in the cot. Then I dropped our attempt at an early evening nap and started keeping her awake for at least 3 hours before bedtime. I then feed her a minimum of an hour before bed time. Then came the sleep training… the first night was awful. She only actually cried for about 10 mins but I felt dreadful. Thank god it didn’t go on long. If you do want to do it I recommend having your camera on but sound off. Mine flashed when she cried so I could see she was ok/know if the cry escalated. After she cried she fell asleep and that was it. Not sure if it’s luck/timing/random but she now sleeps through. She cries when I leave the room but once I shut the door the crying stops, she closes her eyes and goes to sleep. I’ve seen her wake on the camera but she doesn’t really cry, she falls back to sleep by herself. She also now naps for about an hour per nap during the day.
I appreciate my experience is pretty positive/fast but I wanted to assure you that sleep is so important to everyone and it sounds like you need a drastic change. Do what is right for you. I was lucky it took one evening and it may be the same for you. Definitely look into the wonderful advice others have offered, and ignore those who think sleep training is bad. Lack of sleep is worse!!!! It destroys you mentally and physically.