Baby still waking hourly with sleep training

[Sadness89]

Currently sleep training my 8 month old. Please no comments about how bad sleep training is and how I should cosleep etc. I used to cosleep but no one slept.

He’s been doing great so far but I’ve noticed from watching the monitor that he’s still waking hourly but is able to quickly put himself back to sleep on his own in a minute or two, which he never used to be able to do. Is this normal or do babies normally sleep straight through and successfully link sleep cycles without waking at all?

I should say - he wakes and puts himself back to sleep with no crying either.

Sounds fine to me! Well done, enjoy your sleep

That’s great.

We all stir between sleep cycles, it’s so your brain can check for “danger”. The point of sleep training is that your baby learns to go back to sleep after they stir, instead of waking up fully and needing help to go back to sleep. So it’s working!

Sounds fine. We all wake in the night but don’t remember. Read up on sleep cycles and also what’s normal infant sleep to help manage expectations.

I'm not saying this in a judgemental way, just a matter of fact. The "promise" of "sleeping through the night" really means "won't disturb you in the night". There's no decreased frequency in stirring/waking when you sleep train, baby just stops calling out for you, ignores the need that prompted them to previously call out when they woke and goes back to sleep instead. So yes, what you're seeing on the monitor is the normal result of sleep training.

ignores the need that prompted them to previously call out when they woke

They don’t ignore the need, they don’t have the need anymore because they haven’t been trained to believe they can only fall asleep if their parent is there.

I’m always mystified why people think it’s a bad
thing that a baby can happily roll over and go back to sleep instead of needing a parent.

I’m very pleased that when my DS stirs in the night he’s happy and relaxed enough to go straight back to sleep. If he’s ever ill or teething he will call for me.

Everyone stirs between sleep cycles. He'll likely get quicker at it. Also he may look awake to you but he could be in an active sleep phase, which would be a lot of wriggling around, eyes opening and closing etc but actually sleeping and just transitioning through cycles. He will be a well rested little one 😊

I agree with the PP

there’s a massive difference between a baby who naturally stops ‘needing’ you to help them soothe when they wake up because they’ve reached that developmental milestone themselves, and a baby who wakes up and doesn’t cry for you because it’s been sleep trained and knows it’s cries will be ignored

a sleep trained baby doesn’t reach the self soothing milestone sooner, it just soon learns that crying = nothing.

your baby isn’t crying simply because they’ve realised you won’t go to them, that’s all

Couldn't agree more.

OP specifically said she didn't want to get into a sleep training debate, and it's particularly pointless when it's already been done. Never give advice that requires time travel, and if people do want to discuss sleep training being bad for the millionth time start your own thread.

@EJRB I’m not sure I agree because he does still cry out when he wants feeding. I’m still doing 3 full feeds during the night (reduced from hourly “snacking”) so he knows if he does cry out, I’ll come straight to him. I don’t ignore him. I’m not looking for him to “sleep through” the whole night. I sleep trained because the hourly feeds were mainly comfort feeds as he used it to go back to sleep between cycles and it was exhausting and when he cried during the night, it always sounded like frustration that he was awake and wanted to go back to sleep. Now he knows how to go back to sleep, he’s crying less and just nods back off, apart from when he needs something.

OP, how is his routine during the day? Naps/bedtime etc, sometimes a tweak to timings will help him settle into a deeper sleep.

This

Sleep training makes me so sad :(