Sleep training - cry it out method

[Nicolahollie]

My DD is 13 weeks old and I have been looking into (and also dreading) the 4 month sleep regression. I really don't want to do the cry it out method and have been looking at gentler techniques.

But it's all very contradictory.... most articles suggest starting it around 4 months old and no matter which technique you use they all suggest you have to either leave your baby in their room crying or go back to settle them then leave the room. But at this age aren't they still supposed to be sleeping in the same room as you?!

So how can you possibly leave the room when they're not supposed to be on their own???

I'm a first time mum and have spent a lot of time googling over the last few months and I've never come across so many things that contradict each other.

Also any tips on self soothing without crying it out is most welcome 😊

Honestly, your choice, but a 4 month old baby is still so tiny and reliant on you, I don’t know why you would just want to sooth them?
The sleep regression is temporary, and you can’t predict how it’ll affect them at this stage anyway….

Just to add, this is an interesting resource https://huckleberrycare.com/blog/4-month-sleep-regression

Hi. My LG is 5 months and we are a couple of weeks out of the “regression”. I had an more fussy than usual baby who fought daytime naps a bit more, but she was also teething so there was that too. To be honest…. It wasn’t THAT bad! She’d wake a bit more at night, we’d pick her up when we were sure she wasn’t going to settle and she’d fall right back to sleep.
I imagine it’s more of a shock if you have a baby that has been sleeping through, but mine still wakes for feeds so it wasn’t much different. I know people who didn’t even notice a sleep regression.
I would say though that your baby hasn’t got mature sleep cycles, so sleep training before 6 months is pointless anyway. You can form good sleep habits and associations but that’s all. As new parents we get so obsessed with sleep and milestones and forget that each baby is different… even siblings! So my advice would just be to stop reading all the contradictory stuff about sleep out there and just do what feels right to you at the time. I don’t know any adults who need rocking to sleep, so I very much doubt rocking your baby is going to do any long term damage.
Trust your instincts and just “wing it” as they say.

It's not that I don't want to soothe her myself, I'm just worried about creating a bad habit by her always needing me to fall asleep it's all from what I've been reading really.

And yes I don't know any adult that needs rocking to sleep either 😂 I've actually read that somewhere before too!!

She is up every couple of hours to feed in the night usually so maybe I won't notice it as much. Last night was a very different night, whenever she woke she was making different noises, not crying more like moaning. I left her sometimes for a few mins and she fell back asleep, a few times I had to rock her in her basket and others I got her up to feed if she wouldn't settle. Does this sound like the regression?

I should just do whatever feels right but just so worried about getting it wrong for her and making our lives harder in the future

My baby is 7.5 months old. The 4 month sleep regression wasn’t pleasant but definitely not as awful as all the stories online make you believe. So try not to worry about it too much until you’re in it properly and you know how your baby is coping / how their sleep has changed.
My advice would be to just support your baby through it. Do whatever you have to do to get your baby to sleep. It can be annoying for a couple of weeks, but just remember that it is only a couple of weeks and they really do need you still.
We contacted a couple of sleep consultants and both said they wouldn’t do any sleep training with a baby until at least 5 months, and even then they both said it’s better to wait until 6 months, once baby has a more mature sleep cycle. So I wouldn’t try sleep training yet, going through the stress of it with a baby who isn’t ready and then it all coming undone and having to start again.
We started sleep training at around 6months and did it at the same time as moving him to his own room. It worked well to do both at once and he’s slept amazingly ever since (apart from last night as he has a cold and the occasional night when he’s been struggling with teething pain).
Definitely research different sleep training techniques so you can decide if there’s any that you feel like you could follow if and when you decide the time is right for you and your baby to start. Some do cry it out, some do really gentle techniques, so it depends on what you could deal with.

Cry It Out Method just teaches your sweet infant child that when they cry and need help, nobody is coming to help them. Our DD is 5 now and very well adjusted. We followed an attachment style when she was a baby and toddler just because it felt natural to do so. She went into her own room at about 6 months and it was difficult tending to her every cry during the sleep regressions but really it doesn't last for long... whats that saying? the days are long but the years are short? Just try to remind yourself that every time you tend to your LOs needs through the night you are reinforcing your bond. Set up a chair in their room if you can, then you can have a cuddle if need be. I breastfed until 14 months and quite often I'd sit in the middle of the night to just have a quick feed and a cuddle if she needed it. Then when we stopped breastfeeding I thought it would be a drama weening her off the night feed and it turned out she couldn't have cared less 😂She knew she was safe and didnt need mum anymore! My conclusion, you can't cuddle a baby too much. It's how they thrive x

It’s not a ‘habit’ that babies at this age need you to sooth them back to sleep, it’s biology. Honestly ignore all that rubbish when people say that. Let a baby be a baby and get the comfort they need at this age. If you want to sleep train do it at the correct age. It’s hard to know what to do as a first time mum but please listen to your baby when they need you right now

Thanks everyone for your advice and support. It's not something I actually want to do but you feel you should be doing from all the articles out there!

I did wonder if 13 weeks was too young but then I've heard start it from 3 months. I'm going to just continue to do what I'm doing and worry about it all if/when it happens. She's up every couple of hours usually anyway as she EBF so I'm hoping I may not notice any disturbance.

I don't want to hear my baby cry her eyes out and be distressed, it's supposed to be ingrained into our brains to attend to them crying I don't think it's something I could handle anyway.

Well done for asking for advice, you sound like a great mum. I honestly think all these books and articles are just out there to make money. That’s why there are so many. You can’t make money by saying ‘respond to your baby like biology intended’. It would be a short book.

Awww thank you 🥹 I'm doing the best I can but winging it most days!! I talk to my mum about these sorts of things and she says "I've no idea what you're talking about", "I've never heard of it". There were no wake windows and sleep consultants in her day of bringing up children and clearly wasn't an issue! I keep having to tell myself that people have been having babies for a very long time and haven't needed to do the things we're advised to do today.

@NewBabyGirl2020 you're absolutely right it's all money making and actually causes new mums to stress about something they don't need to. As if we need more things to think about!!

The sleep regression hit us at exactly 4 months very hard and our baby didn't come out of it. Plenty of them do apparently after a few weeks, so i wanted to give her time to try to get through it. The chances are that yours will come out of it, so try not to panic,at this stage. But if it goes wrong, here is what we did.

I was determined not to sleep train until she was at least 6 months. I finally broke at 6 months and 10 days, after spending 2.5 months with her waking 8 times a night and with some of her sleep periods only lasting 20 minutes. As an insomniac myself, i couldn't sleep in the tiny windows between her wake ups. I was only able to make it for so long because my partner has a flexible job and works from home so could let me sleep from 6 - 10am.

By this point i was speaking to doctors about post natal depression caused purely by sleep deprivation and they were offering me antidepressants. My partner and i weighed up the potential effects of having a long term clinically depressed and medicated mum versus trying sleep training for a few days. We decided trying sleep training would be less damaging to all long term, provided it showed some results quickly.

We used a method where you check the baby after 2 mins of crying and leave the room after rubbing her belly and talking to her until she stopped crying, which she always did very quickly. Then you return and do the same after 2.5 mins, then 3, and so on up until 5 minutes and then you keep going back after 5 minutes until they fall asleep.

The first night she was asleep in 12 minutes, the second 7 minutes, then 3.5, then 2.5, and then she began to always fall asleep before 2 mins was up. By the end of the week she didn't cry at all, just looked around her room and dropped off. We've had a few hiccups with more recently sleep regressions and developmental stages but nothing even 10% as bad as the 8 wake ups a night. She currently puts herself to sleep and sleeps straight through the night.

Hopefully you won't have to sleep train, but if you do, please remember that it doesn't not always involve hours of crying. Its changed our lives and is the best decision we could have made. But i am glad i waited as long as i did, because she was ready. 4 months is very young and you're baby might well learn to link sleep cycles naturally.