Gentle sleep training to get our eve back!

[Orangepen13]

My 8mo has never liked sleeping without us. She will go down for naps but always wakes after 30 mins or so if we don’t hold her. Never settled in the next to me, so we’re co-sleeping (which I’m fine with).

She is great at falling asleep, barely takes 5-10 mins. BUT every evening we put her down at 8pm and she wakes at about 8:40pm every night. At this point, she really doesn’t go down well, very twitchy, every time we try to leave her she wakes. So we bring her back downstairs. We are so desperate for our evenings!

im wondering if anyone had tried any gentle approaches to help go down, and stay down in the evening? I don’t want to try anything that leaves her to cry alone (no shade, just not for me).

I know this seems counter intuitive but could you bring her bedtime forward a bit?

Starting at 6:30, bath, bottle/bf, bed?

I don't know why but sometimes that works and at least if she wakes after 40mins you've still got time to get her down again, hopefully for good.

If that doesn't work then I would spend a very boring week sacrificing evenings and stay in her dark and boring sleep space when she wakes, getting her back to sleep as long as it takes, rather than bringing her downstairs as that might be reinforcing the pattern.

Have you tried gently semi-rousing her and resettling just before she wakes? If it's always the same time you can go in 5 minutes before or so and gently stir her, then put dummy back in if she has one or shh/pat her. The idea is that it'll ever so slightly disturb the end of the sleep cycle and start a new one before she fully rouses and then it's very hard to resettle them.

All sounds normal for an 8mo, it does get easier!

And I really don’t think there such a thing as gentle sleep training… there’s crying or not.

What happens if you get back into bed with her 5 minutes before she wakes up and start patting her?

You could try pre empting the end of the sleep cycle by going up gently rousing her just before she normally wakes and then lying with her until she’s back to sleep but I know that’s not exactly getting your evenings back. Long term it might help but I don’t know how realistic it is though to expect her to stay asleep completely by herself of an evening when she never sleeps independently at any other time. Essentially your are her sleep prop, and that’s fine if your fine with it but it probably doesn’t go along with peaceful adults only evenings.

Have you tried putting her to bed a bit later?

Gentle and sleep training don’t belong in the same sentence. Don’t be fooled by people/“sleep coaches” who tell you otherwise. You either neglect your babies cry for help or you don’t, there’s nothing gentle about ignoring them

how long is she awake for before going to bed? My LO only contact naps during the day but will go to bed absolutely fine at night. I just make sure that there’s at least 4 hours between his last nap and bed time. Before that I found his wake window wasn’t long enohhh and so he kept waking up for the first 90 minutes when going to bed

Don't really understand the no gentle sleep training thing? I agree there is no gentle CIO though, it might get quick results but I couldn't do it.

I've never left baby crying but I would still call what I did sleep training. Coach them on to a schedule, consistent bedtime routine, once they're down for the night they don't come out the bedroom again, even if we have to go in, again and again, to comfort. Catching early sleep cues and understanding wake windows. Practicing naps in the crib and letting him figure out how to put himself to sleep.

It all worked well and I never let him cry, is that not sleep training?

Genuine question, not being facetious!

Good ideas - I hadn’t thought about waking up just before and resettling so will give that a go!
Shes usually awake 3.5-4 hours before bed, but stretching to 4 consistently might help as well.

Erghhhh the week we spent trying to resettle her in her room was just the worst. One night I spent my entire evening upstairs… does it get better?! We couldn’t work out if it was helping or if we were just losing evenings for no benefit

@PinkPhlox id call this sleep training too. Interested to hear how you helped them get to sleep yourself?