Babies sleep

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Hi all

Just wanted to know if you believe in sleep training or not?

Have a 7 week old baby and interested to know if sleep training was successful, if so what did you implement and when?

Or did you find baby found there own routine and if so when?

Interested to hear responses x

My baby is 8 months now, first time parents

only thing I would suggest and I would do if I would have another would be to implement naps in a bed early. I didn’t, only contact napped and now at 8 months my baby doesn’t nap in his cot has to be on me and isn’t an independent sleeper. But try not to stress or worry too much, every baby is different and what worked for one doesn’t mean it works for all. Around 4 months we got into a routine with naps which helped with night sleep.

Sleep training is cruel and I think assumes children are like animals who need to be trained. Children sleep through at their own pace and in their own time.

One thing we did early on and I am so happy we did, was putting her in her moses basket in our room for both naps and bed time from 6 weeks. She's now 2 and never has a problem going to bed. Getting in that routine early was the best thing we did. We also tried a few things for helping with sleep that massively helped, we stopped with a dummy as every time it dropped out of her mouth she woke up, instead when she woke up we put our hand on her chest and gently rubbed, it seemed to really soothe her and helped a lot.

Please don't start any form of sleep training until baby is 6 months old - your baby is still tiny, and still doesn't know the difference between night and day. You can implement things to help with sleep, and getting them used to when and where to sleep, but please don't sleep train yet!

Justchillmama on Instagram is a really useful page for sleep advice

I don't think sleep training is cruel when at the right age and there are SO many ways to do it just not right now

Getting into 'good' habits is a start though

I personally don't believe in sleep training and would never do it, but everyone is different and you have to do what is right for your own circumstances. Regardless, no form of sleep training should be attempted until at least six months of age so I wouldn't even have it on my radar at 7 weeks. The stress of sleep deprivation might be making you think about it at the moment but you have to just ride out the first few months as they are at least. There's loads of things you can do to help sleep (right environment, timing etc) before you should even consider turning to sleep training.

Sleep training doesn’t sit right with me personally.

I did everything everyone tells you not to do. I fed to sleep, contact napped, co slept etc. I didn’t night wean, just let her drop feeds naturally at her own pace. Think her last night feed dropped at about 12 months. Then she went in her own bed at about 18 months. She has a floor bed so at first I would get in to get her to sleep and then go in when she woke up during the night and stay there and sleep with her. We’d get the occasional night that she slept through without waking at all and it’s become more and more frequent. Now at 2 I’d say she sleeps through without me going in 90% of the time.

Im about to have our second and plan on doing the same, just going with the flow and being led by the baby! I’m too lazy to be getting up multiple times or standing over a cot shhing for ages 😂 hats off to the people that do!

I started a routine with my baba between 4/6 weeks. He started to sleep through at 11 weeks. 18 months and still sleeps through. I'm not against sleep training but I prefer routine.

In his own room at 11 weeks. Got him used to his cot early. Did bed bath routine same time every night

Really interested responses
I think I might have mis interpreted the meaning of sleep training. I thought of sleep training as in timings (I.e Gina ford) bed time certain time with feeds at certain times and implementing a bed time routine

Yes it's the sleep deprivation that is making me panic and think I can't do this forever!!

Interesting about the naps, currently he just naps in his Moses basket down stairs (I never take him up to the next to me) and sometimes he sleeps on me in the day probably too exhausted to move him off me if I'm honest..

I'm similar to buckingmad. With my first I really thought she was broken and her sleep needed to be 'fixed'. Sleep training didn't sit right with me so we rode it out in a mix of co-sleeping and feeding to sleep. She slept through pretty reliably from 18 months, and stopped breastfeeding around the same time.

My youngest is now nearly one and it's been similarly challenging on the sleep front but it's helped massively to accept she needs me to be close, sleep is developmental and it's not linear.

@Cowlover89 interested to know what your routine was.
I think I have confused implementing a routine as "sleep training"

We went with the flow until 5 months when I wanted to start having a bit more predictability to the day. Started with wake windows leading to consistent naptimes and eventually a bedtime.

We started sleep training at 6 months. We did the Ferber method for two nights and by the third she was sleeping through. We never let her cry for more than 10 minutes at a time during that time, and I never let her cry now as I know that when she does wake up and can’t get back to sleep she really needs something. She’s now almost 12 months and sleeping at least 12 hours a night (for the moment at least!) I’m well aware that we also just lucked out with a baby who has always slept pretty well!

Our baby woke every 30-45 minutes until she was 5 weeks and every 1.5-2 hours until she was 7 months. Sometimes she'd wake and be awake for hourssss! We sleep trained at 7 months (also used the Ferber method) and after 2 nights she was sleeping through. She now sleeps 12 hours straight at 11 months old.

I sleep trained DC1 at 5.5 months, so a little bit earlier than advised but I knew he was ready. Used Ferber method, he got it within a day or two.
We have had a ‘routine’ with DC2 since we brought her home from the hospital. At night time she sleeps in her crib, in her swaddle bag with white noise. She won’t nap in her crib in the day and only contact naps but honestly i don’t care as she knows the drill at night time! Will be keeping an eye on her around 5/6 months to do Ferber again.

7 weeks is super early and his sleep is very likely to improve naturally over the next few weeks so don’t panic! (As hard as those first few months are 😥)

My little girl has been a dream with sleep and has slept through the night (12 hours) since 4 months.

We’ve definitely been lucky, but I’ll relay what I did on the off chance anything is helpful:

• Bedtime routine from 2/3 weeks + dark/quiet at night time
• I put her down for naps according to wake windows from around 6 weeks and moved towards set nap times when her wake up time was more predictable
• I had her napping in her bedroom cot from 7/8/9 weeks. She didn’t go down easily at first. She would cry, but I persevered with trying to make this work e.g. put down in cot, wait 1 min, if crying go back in to settle. If no nap after 3 goes try again in half an hour!
• Always put down drowsy but awake - do not feed baby to sleep!
• I moved her bedtime forward to 7pm at about 8 weeks I think (this is tough because then you don’t capture their longest sleep stretch, but I think it can be more difficult when they are older and their habits are more ingrained. We just went cold turkey and it worked)
• At 3.5 months I stopped breastfeeding and she went from 1 or 2 feeds per night to sleeping through within the week. Not suggesting you should stop breastfeeding if are doing so, just sharing my experience.
• At 5 months she started refusing to go to sleep at bedtime and would cry for anything between 30 mins and 4 hours. It seemed like it was set off by the June heatwave, but carried on for weeks as if it had become habit, or some kind of sleep regression. After 3/4 weeks we started doing some proper sleep training, so we would wait until she was crying at level 4 (out of 5) before going in, not pick her up, shh with hand on chest for 1 min, then leave the room. We did this for a couple of nights and then she was back to normal.

hope you are already seeing some improvements!

@BG01 can I ask you more about the cot naps? Did yours not get ridiculously over tired and take hours to settle? My 5 week old DD will only sleep in a sling/carrier, not even in the pram. I know it’s normal but it’s really causing issues with me looking after my other child so I’d love to find a way out of it soon. She will sleep on my bed on her tummy but only if she’s been asleep on me for a good hour or so first so it’s not exactly practical. I don’t know how I could focus on getting her to cot nap with a toddler hanging off me though!

Well that is a whole dynamic I did not have to deal with!!

My situation was a bit different in that she just didn’t seem to sleep much during the day. She didn’t like the sling at all and she would go hours without sleeping if she was in the same room as me her basket, but then cry all evening because she was overtired. Because of this, I started putting her in her cot in the dark after x hours was up, if she looked sleepy enough.

She did cry whenever I put her in her cot, but I would basically keep trying as described above and usually she would fall asleep after try 3.. otherwise I’d try again in a bit and failing that we’d do a pram nap. I found this got better and better over the weeks but it probably wasn’t until 3 months that I could ‘put her down’ and even then I would often end up taking her out in the pram in her third nap.

It definitely took quite a lot of energy and I can totally see why someone would not want to do this. My hand felt somewhat forced as it seemed like the only way to get her to nap without every nap being in the pram. On the other hand, I did have her napping in the cot twice a day at around 3 months which was SO game changing!

https://www.basisonline.org.uk/
For evidence based infant sleep information

Hi. Could I have some opinions on what to do if, when you are sleep training and going in at 4 min intervals to reassure, your baby gets an hour into nap time and hasn’t gone to sleep? Abandon the nap and get her up? I am abandoning each time and it’s a vicious cycle. Thank you

@MElizLB is baby crying or just lying awake? I mean some people would just keep going until they fall asleep, some would give it one hour, some two… I personally would abandon the nap after an hour but if it keeps happening then I don’t really know what to suggest. Maybe don’t keep going in at 4 min intervals- extend each interval so that eventually they are doing 20 mins uninterrupted

Thanks for your comments. Crying escalates, and moving around cot/sotting up. Not just lying awake. If only.