What would gentle sleep training typically involve?

[Aliceandthemarchhare]

I am concerned about my four month old and would appreciate some advice.

He typically sleeps from about 9 pm to 5 am and wakes up once to be fed (usually) so that’s fine.

During the day though his naps are so short that when I total it up he usually only sleeps about two hours, sometimes less. I try not to worry about it but he does get so overtired by evening it’s not much fun.

Is there a gentle way to get him to sleep a bit longer?

One thing I read about is going to him a few minutes before he wakes and doing whatever you normally do to get him to sleep to see if you can keep him asleep -apparently there's a window of wakefulness about 20 mins into a nap. That said we didn't have much success but worth a try. The other thing I wonder about is whether you can move his bedtime earlier as 9 seems very late and particularly with the light mornings it's likely to be easier to get him to sleep earlier in the evenings than later into the mornings.

None of my DC slept longer than 30 min naps until they were about a year. Occasionally if I kept them on me I could rock/feed them back to sleep as they stirred but to be honest that was only possible with DC1 when life was calm.
Mine didn't sleep well at night either though - every 2 hours until at least 9 months and for two of them beyond that.
I think if I you want to encourage a longer day sleep you do need to be there to help resettle them after their first sleep cycle.
But as PP have said - that night sleep is pretty good going and I wouldn't risk messing with that at all.

This is where MN can be a bit confusing because on the one hand is bedtime is late but others are saying his night sleep is good.

I can only go on what I have. I know I don’t have a well rested baby and I also know he is well under the amount of sleep he should be having.

I’d try shorter wake windows, and no more than an hour and a half before the first nap of the day. I found Huckleberry app good for keeping track of next nap time. It might not (probably won’t) get you longer naps but it might stop him being so tired. And get a good strong routine for naptime and bed if you haven’t already.

All huckleberry really says is that he should be sleeping every two hours but he won’t. So it is difficult really.

I understand that you would like your DS to sleep more during the day, but that seems a very, very late bedtime for him. In my experience it is easier for babies to sleep longer at night than to introduce additional daytime naps. Could you put him to bed more around 6 or 7pm? Have you tried this? It would be my first suggestion. I know it’s annoying for you to have to go to bed earlier to catch up on sleep, but it should stop him being overtired in the day. I think most baby sleep books would suggest a much longer sleep at night. My eldest only slept for short periods during the day (45 mins at a time) it really depends on their sleep cycle. Alternatively have you tried a completely blacked out bedroom for him (it’s possible to velcro black-out blinds to the window so not even a crack of light comes through) and/or some kind of white noise that can be deactivated when he wakes? Best of luck.

Sorry that should have said “reactivated” when he wakes (Ewan the Dream sheep or similar..)

Id be really happy for him to go earlier but he just doesn’t - he has a bath and clean babygro and goes in his sleeping bag, then another feed and then he (finally!) falls asleep. Is it really awful? The other babies I know his age all have similar bedtimes.

I don’t think it’s really awful, I just think it might be the easiest way round the tiredness. (The other babies you know may sleep more during the day?) I had an early bath/bedtime routine with mine from an early age for various reasons (so they were all in bed at 6.30pm for the first few years - I was exhausted by that time - you are doing well to keep going until 9pm with a baby!) You could try bringing the whole routine forward a couple hours for one night and see what happens... I used to put them to bed early (in their cot in their bedroom) then dream-feed at around 10pm before I went to bed, which I would recommend if your DS does fall asleep earlier....

Yes possibly ... the problem is that he just wakes up at midnight and won’t go back to sleep then

There is no such thing as "typical gentle sleep training" I'm afraid!

Sleep training is too loaded a topic and too lucrative. "Gentle" often is just a marketing term that people throw in because they know sleep training has a bad reputation and people don't want to hire a sleep trainer if they gemerally follow attachment parenting or similar.

Or it can mean methods which don't involve leaving to cry. Or methods where the baby is crying but you're there with them.

Or it can mean more of a counselling service helping you to reframe your views on sleep rather than actually make any changes.

Or it can be methods which don't really do anything but take up loads of effort so it sort of feels like it is doing something and in the meantime the baby just gets older...

It seems to depend on the person's personal definition of the term.

Anyway. I quite like Lyndsay Hookway of Feed Sleep Bond if you want someone to follow on social media/look at their website, she has a youtube channel as well although not a huge amount of sleep stuff on there. She does seem to have a good blend of the talking and being able to reframe stuff but actual info about what works as well, without so much of the moralising/sleep camps/total bollocks that passes for "baby sleep science" that seems to be out there.

Apols - had not read the whole thread before I barged in with my unhelpful opinion

@Aliceandthemarchhare

Yes possibly ... the problem is that he just wakes up at midnight and won’t go back to sleep then

Oh no, that’s tricky. My gut feeling is that, if you are going to sleep train, then you are better off doing it at night (although I realise not fun for you to be doing it at midnight!!) simply because he will have to learn to settle himself in the night at some point. Whereas you will drop the daytime naps in due course. It’s so difficult, I do hope you find an answer!

What you're getting is a good stretch at night time and you really shouldn't worry about the naps - but that really doesn't help you much. I'd day feeding to sleep may be a bit of a problem if that is what he is expecting at nap time and explains why he only wants to sleep on you. You could try a baby bouncer that swings if he sometimes falls asleep in the car, a dummy to mimic the sucking if he needs some comfort. It could also be that he is over stimulated and can't sleep, so 20 mins before he's due a nap, just have some very quiet cuddles before putting him down. If he is overtired have you tried putting him down every 2 hours for a week or so to see what happens? These things can take time and won't happen overnight so being consistent in whatever method you chose really is important otherwise he won't know whether he's coming or going.

At 4 months his sleep habits will likely change naturally on their own. For mine the key to longer sleep was gradually getting rid of sleep crutches like feeding to sleep and dummy but mine were a little older than yours when they slept through.

Co sleep. It's much easier, and babies generally sleep longer. Do the research to ensure it's safe.

I don’t think co sleeping would help at all. He sleeps fine at night, and putting him in bed with me would just mean my own sleep would be disturbed and I'm also not clear how co-sleeping done 'right' is that different to him being in a bedside crib. It’s daytime naps that are the issue. I have tried putting him in his Purflo on my bed and lying next to him but it doesn’t make a difference.

I’ll try the quiet cuddles - thanks. Or as quiet as he gets! (Not very!)

Your wake windows are too long imo. Aim to be putting him for a nap every 1.5 hours after his last wake. Find a way he will sleep first, and use that. He's too small to train into anything. So if he'll sleep in a rocking pram, get yourself prepared with somewhere in the house you can rock the pram. I've seen other people use bouncers and those rocking swings. Put baby in and rock rock rock until asleep. To start with, continue the rocking for the whole nap if needed. If you stop rocking, keep an eye on the time and after 20ish minutes, start rocking again to ensure the sleep continues through the next sleep cycle. You need to encourage the linking of the sleep cycles now. You can do the sleep training into a cot and self soothing later (ideally well past 6 months). It sounds like you have a very over tired baby and need to break the cycle.

They are too long according to the books but if he won’t sleep what can you do (meant genuinely, by the way!) There is absolutely no way he will sleep if he’s not tired. I think his wake windows are just a bit longer than average.

You need to start trying to get him to sleep earlier. It sounds backwards but if you know he needs a nap after 2 hours awake, start the process from 1.5 hours. Then you have half an hour to get him to sleep. Otherwise if you start after say 2.5 hours and it takes half an hour, he's then been awake 3 hours (or more if it takes longer) and the over tired cycle starts.

It isn’t like that though. After two and a half hours he will feed and then fall asleep. He simply won’t sleep if he is put down in a crib or cot.

I honestly have more chance of a lottery win than getting him to sleep after an hour and a half!

Could you try gradually moving his bed time forward by 10 minutes each day until you're around 7:30/8?
Then as annoying as it is, plan a walk or a car trip out at the end of every one of those 2/3 hour awake windows to let him 'practice' his sleeping, eventually his sleep cycles should settle and you'll be more able to dictate nap length. At the moment it just sounds like you need to put money in his sleep bank.
Tho I'm no guru, my DS is sleep regressing and up every 45 mins some nights!

Sleep regression is brutal

I don’t know. He has sometimes zonked out early but then he just keeps waking up! I think I need to crack the daytime naps but I honestly don’t know how.

Today he was awake at 5 and then slept for about an hour and ten minutes 650-8. So good.

Then a nap at about 11 for half an hour.

Then slept very briefly (10’minutes) in the car twice.

So in a whole day less than two hours and up at 5 [shocked]

Bless you, it sucks when you are hearing so much noise about how ‘all newborns do is sleep’ and you are stuck with one that doesn’t! Mine was similar to an extent at 4 months. He would only do about 9 (very broken) hours at night - 9pm to 6am was a very good stint. Nap wise he’d just cry hysterically if I attempted to ‘put him down’ either awake or asleep (his cot was a very expensive cupboard). He’d do a longish nap (1.5h) on the boob/being held once a day but for aaaaages any nap in the car or sling (he’d just scream in the pushchair) were stuck at exactly 31 minutes. He had awful witching hours - he’d be angry and colicky from 5 or 6pm onwards until he crashed out.

This is so rubbish but I genuinely think this is just how some babies are wired. They are super alert and tend to prioritise being awake +/- feeding over sleep. I’m pleased to report my now ten month old can cope with a rubbish day of napping. He has had at most 2h today, was a little grumpy at bedtime (now 7pm) but still went down absolutely fine and I won’t expect to see him for a feed (touch wood) until maybe 3:30. If I’m lucky he might go right through. We gently, gently broke the feeding to sleep association about 1.5 months ago (~ 9 months). There is absolutely no way he would have been ready any earlier - I still wonder if we should have done it, it involved tears but always supported in his dads arms.

The sleep training industry will have us believe that babies who don’t sleep so well are going to be extremely damaged and not develop properly. There is absolutely no evidence for this - all studies on sleep deprivation in children have been done on pre schoolers at the youngest. I used to hate this phrase but honestly honestly, he’ll drop down to 3 then 2 predictable naps at some point and life will just get so much easier - this to will pass. Just try and survive now, maybe read Lyndsey Hookway’s book and aim to assess your situation when he’s a bit more predictable, maybe 6 months? Good luck xx

Thank you from one Alice to another