Those who didn't sleep train, when does it get better??

[Utterlyincandescently]

I'm lucky that my baby slept through the night for the first five months, but then she suddenly started to wake 3 times a night and has done for the past 6 weeks. She's usually asleep by 7:30 and then wakes at 11, 2 and 4, and then she's up for the day at 6:15.

She's always been a terrible napper but this was manageable when I was getting a full night of sleep. We're lucky if we get one decent nap a day now. I'm just so exhausted, with so few breaks. She needs constant entertaining when she's awake or she'll grumble and cry.

Will this get better?? How much longer do I need to do this for?

That's very good to hear!! Fingers crossed it'll work out the same for us.

At that age I would send my partner in for wakes before 2am. Then I would breastfeed (and not totally this rigid about timings, if he couldn't settle the baby after 1am I would feed, for example). Then the same for wakes till about 5am. Then same till 7am. The baby spontaneously dropped that 5am feed around five months.

Things that worked for us and may or may not appeal: bottle of formula before bed; we started weaning early and the first 'meal' we introduced was porridge with peanut butter at bed time. The combination of the two made me pretty sure wakes before 2am were not for hunger. The baby would settle fairly easily with a bit of shushing unless hungry.

For naps: some babies come to napping better just independently with age (I tried so much to get my baby to do better daytime naps, nothing worked, then at 7 months baby just suddenly grew into doing a long morning nap). So it may not be anything you are doing differently to other parents.

A full night of sleep? What’s that?

@OtterMummy2024 Thank you! Will try the porridge and peanut butter for dinner. I feel like I've tried everything for naps too so hopefully that'll just get better with time too.

Lol yeah, I may be unrealistic in my expectations.

I hear you. I was not prepared to sleep train under any circumstances and I knew I would never change my mind on that.

In my experience sleep is not linear, it may well improve for a while, get worse for a while etc.

What saved my sanity was buying an Owlet monitor sock to stop me worrying about suffocation, implementing the Safe Sleep Seven and cosleeping in an accessible top. That meant I could doze through feeds. He kept waking in the night until about 2, but honestly with that arrangement I didn't find it impacted me much.

Have you read/listened to Sweet Sleep by La Leche League? I found that really helpful and I think you would too as it sounds like it would align with your values.

Thank you for this response! I will go and look up Sweet Sleep.

Cosleeping does sound like a good solution but I think I might be too paranoid to do it. I've also never been able to get the positioning right for feeding lying down. Maybe I just have weirdly shaped boobs or something.

@Yourethebeerthief please can I ask what gentle method you used at one year old? We didn’t sleep train DC1 and she’s still a poor sleeper at 3! So I’m wondering if I might need to try something with DC2 or I feel like I might never sleep again! (We already co-sleep.) Thanks

I night weaned him from breast milk as he was firmly on solids and the milk was sheer habit. He couldn’t link sleep cycles and was reliant on the breast to get him back to sleep. He was waking more and more frequently and I was crippled with lack of sleep so I nominated a beloved teddy to help me explain to him.

He got his last feed before bed and I told him that milk was finished at night time now but if he was thirsty he could have water. When he woke in the night I brought a sippy cup of water in. He’d be standing up in the cot crying and I scooped up teddy instead and pretended to comfort teddy “oh dear you’re sad because you want milk. Shh shh it’s ok here’s a nice drink of water”, and then I’d pretend to let teddy sip the water and give him a cuddle and rock him a little then tuck him back in to bed. Much praise for teddy.

My son was crying during this performance but watching and taking the whole thing in. He wanted the water like teddy. So I did all the same things and put him down next to teddy and said goodnight. When I left he cried again immediately of course but I just came in and did the whole pantomime again. I felt it was the best way to get the concept across: simple language and acting it out on teddy first. Lots of soothing tones and consoling for teddy and the same for my son. Pat teddies bum and pat his bum and so on. Lots of understanding and soothing words. I just pretended it was really teddy who was going through the struggle. At no point was he left to cry on his own. Couple of nights of that and he was absolutely fine and slept through.

My son was a horrific sleeper. Never slept through the night. I ebf so it was all on me to do the nights! I was anti sleep training too, especially for a baby. Literally from birth he was a terrible sleeper, didn’t nap well during the day either. There was no respite.

I kept on being consistent with routines and one day when he was 13 months old it just clicked. He’s now nearly 18 months old and sleeps 11-12hrs at night. We’ve had the odd night where he’s woken due to teething or illness, but usually if he does stir, he’ll put himself back to sleep.

When he was around 11 months old, if he woke, I’d offer water before breastfeeding and found most of the time, he was just waking out of habit rather than thirst/hunger.

The trade off is that he refuses to sleep without a dummy and takes a lifetime to actually go to sleep. We’ve started gentle sleep training this week to get him to fall asleep alone without needing to be rocked into oblivion.

That’s very normal for 7 months. I will say it definitely gets worse before it gets better. 9-12 months were particularly horrific and I remember 22/23 months also being very difficult.

We bedshared as sleep was really important to me. They always went in their own room to start, but first wake up around 10/11pm always in with us for the rest of the night. After 12 months, things got easier, maybe only 1-2 wake ups (not for a feed, just waking and then back to sleep). But neither of mine slept through most nights before 3/4. Because I didn’t have to get up though, it didn’t affect my sleep much (from maybe 2, they walked themselves in to me and just went back to sleep), so I actually got plenty of sleep.

And then one day, they just slept through in their rooms and that was that. Even school age children wake during the night, but it’s a bit easier and you have a bit of a respite.

I would bedshare and breastfeed lying down on your side for all night wakes. That way you don’t have to get out of bed when the baby wakes up, you can just roll over and feed back to sleep. There is melatonin in breast milk at night, so it’s meant to be used for that purpose. So long as you bedshare safely with no bedding / pillows and ideally without anyone else in bed with you, you’ll be fine. Lots of advice online about how to bedshare safely. Honestly, at this age you’ve still got so many milestones to come, teething, sitting up, learning to crawl…. Amongst other things. Every milestone will affect sleep. So you can either push against it or lean into it.

Its not uncommon for babies to sleep well for the 4th trimester, lull parents into a false sense of security, and then everything changes. But things can just as quickly change back again, as everything is a phase.

We attempted to sleep train our first, and I’ve always regretted it. With our second I bedshared and EBF from day 1, and I think its the only way I’ve survived the last year. Everyone gets more sleep this way.

Good luck to you whatever you decide to do.

I found mine slept through reliably about 3.5 years old. I tried sleep training them but I couldn’t hack it for long enough (did it for 10 days but their will was stronger than mine!)

I don't think sleep training is necessary to teach a child to sleep through. If you don't do anything they will eventually learn to sleep. However for some children that could be at 9 months and other children 5 years. Also I don't think sleep training means your child will continue to sleep through forever anyway. As people have said, sleep isn't linear. Kids go through phases of night waking even when older and it's completely normal, if exhausting. My 7 year old was up about 4 times last night. That's not typical, they do generally sleep all night but they also have bad nights occasionally or go through phases of waking for a couple of weeks and then go back to sleeping through again etc. Totally normal.

DC1 was sleeping through like a 11-12hr ISH stretch from about 9 months (formula fed), DC2 from 16 months. DC3 is 6 months and the worst sleeper of the lot so far. He wakes regularly throughout the night, sometimes for milk and other times just for comfort and sometimes wakes upon transfer back into bed. He also typically wakes for the day between 5 and 6am. It's bloody exhausting especially on nights where the older two also wake in the night etc. But this being my third baby I feel more accepting about it all as I know the hardest parts will pass eventually!

The baby I sleep trained was sleeping through the night by 10 months.

The baby I didn’t do any sleep training with didn’t sleep through the night until he was 2 years old.

Make of that what you will 🤣🤣

My son is 8 months and only this past couple weeks has started to sleep 7-3, and then back down until 6 after a feed. Up until then he was waking every 2-3 hours and difficult to settle without feeding. The only answers I could find were to sleep train but I didn’t do it. He eventually has started to just learn how to sleep longer by himself, it could be a combination of learning and being established on solids.

This gives me hope! Thank you.

I tried to sleep train both of mine, it worked a treat with one and not at all with the second. With him, he got a lot better aged 3-4.

I did gentle sleep training with both of mine who were ebf. Totally understand if you don’t agree with it/want to do it but just to say it is possible. I continued feeding them when they woke up in the night- went from several times to once, then sleeping through at 18 months.

I make that they are different kids with different needs. 🙄

My children are all adults now. I didn’t leave them to cry but with my last one I had read The Baby Whisperer which was really helpful.

I’ll probably get hate for this but I don’t really get the whole sleep train thing, how I see it babies like us, sleep when they are tired and they are learning still how to soothe themselves when they stir in the night, like us we wake form time to time (well maybe not us mums yet we’re all zonked the minute our heads hit the pillow!) but generally speaking we wake a few times during the night but we’ve learnt how to soothe ourselves or relasie its night time and we still have a few hours so we go back off and most of the time we poebanoy don’t even remember doing this.

mine is a terrible napper! She’s 1 and hasn’t napped since 3 months unless I got very lucky on the odd occasion but to be honest I just go with it, if she does have a nap any time after 12 she’s a nightmare at bed time and through the night so although it’s hard and today has been bloody awful! She’s so so tired I know that she will go al the way through the night now, I don’t think it’s good for her she needs a nap but I’ve tried abetting she will not. But rightly or wrongly I literally just go with it now. My first I was more ‘sleep trainning’ getting up right about naps bed time etc etc he was up in the night loads my middle a lot more relaxed and he dropped his naps before his 1st birthday and he’s been a fantastic sleeper since so this one now, I’m just going with it completely.

they are all different not one size fits all you just gotta find your rhythm with it somehow and the more we stress/worry get frustrated with it the more they’ll do the opposite to what w e want.

it’s so easily said I know and like I say I’ve had a. Mare with mine today 🤦‍♀️ but she’s dog tired she’s done now for the night and I get to try and piece myself back together 😂

best of luck remember it’s not forever and you’ll probably forgets about this phase in a few years ☺️

My DD is 2 this month and still does not sleep through. The worst sleep was between 4 and 9 months though. Its gradually got better from 12-18 months.

Both my kids only slept through when I stopped bf at night, which was when they were about 14 months I think (I went back to work at 11-12 months and didn’t want to night wean at the same time). I kept the bedtime and morning feeds for a lot longer but once I’d decided to night wean I sent DH in with a cup of water for each night wake and within 2-3 nights they were sleeping through.

Hang in there! It’s just a phase that some bf babies go through - it will pass before you know it.

Oh and my kids were totally different from each other despite equal treatment - some kids really aren’t cut out for sleep training.

My DC1 would never nap in his cot and would have screamed to the point of vomiting if I’d tried to train him. My DC2 was happy to nap in her cot with minimal complaints and I’m sure that if I had sleep trained her I’d have chalked it all down to that as a sleep training success story. Do what you feel is right for your child - they are all little people with different needs and personalities, and a one size fits all sleep regime just won’t suit some of them.