how does this sound as a sleep training method and will it work???

[muslimah28]

hi

ive been reading NCSS and from what ive gathered she offers a number of solutions but her overall theory is that you can keep doing 'whatever you've been doing' to get the baby to sleep but you gradually withdraw it. so you keep doing your normal thing but only til baby is nearly asleep, gradually working up to them going down more and more awake.

OK, so if i've got that right then what we've been doing for nearly a week now is continuing to rock ds to sleep in our amby hammock but i watch him and stop when he's nearly asleep.

ok hold on he's woken....to be continued!! only posting this half post now so i don't lose what i've written already

PART TWO

ok so then he starts to cry because we've stopped rocking, and i wait til its a proper cry not a whimper but don't let him cry too much and then i start rocking him again to nearly asleep, keep repeating this til he's asleep

is this going to work? as it kind of feels a bit like i'm still rocking him to sleep basically, but just prolonging the process.

he is used to being rocked to sleep from a young age, for various reasons we went into 'survival mode' in the early days and did whatever it took to get him to sleep.

once he's down, he wakes frequently, only about 2 weeks ago did i notice a pattern to it: 45 minutes after he's gone to sleep, then 30 minutes after that, then 30 minutes after that then he'll sleep for an hour and wake and at that point i'll feed him and bring into bed with me and we'll co sleep for the night, with him waking every hour and a half for a feed.

but the wakeups pre cosleeping time (iyswim) are merging into onebecause the settling time is longer now. it does feel bit like we'vetaken a step backwards.

i kept a sleep diary and i know what the problem is: he can't self settle and he wakes every sleep cycle, needing either to be rocked or fed back to sleep.

to break the feed to sleep association at night i'm using the pantley pull off. had some success with that (except for last night ) so will stick with it.

my question is more about how i'm settling him for the repeated wake ups before he comes into our bed.

i don't want to do cc, and my goal is not a 'sleeping through the night baby' (though having had one from 5 weeks to 3 months i do miss it...) my goal is just for him to stop waking so frequently after he first goes down to sleep and for him to last a bit longer between wake-ups in the night.

btw we have a good prebedtime routine and daytime naps are fine,i really worked on those in the early days, so he's getting enough sleep in the day (though he's still rocked to sleep in the hammock), and in fact a month ago i dropped one of his daytime naps, which did help his first going down to sleep become easier and less of a battle.

sorry for such a long post and for it being in two bits! i just really want to have a small semblance of a life, just 2 hours in the evening that our just mine with ds asleep would be luxury and so nice right now, as i do feel like i'm constantly attached to ds day and night and i love him to bits, but no me time at all (and i don't want much) is making me become a bit of grumpy person and i feel bad for dh for that too.

any advice on whether this method of gradual withdrawal of rocking will work and any other advice at all really will be a great help!

Hello muslimah

I wanted to reply, although you should probably take my advice with a bucket of salt since I'm having problems with my 9mo at the moment...

But when she was little we did pretty much anything to get her to sleep, and eventually she would only sleep at nap times if rocked in someone's arms. So we started rocking her until she was almost asleep, and then putting her down so that she drifted off by herself. It took a while, but until everything went to pot a few days ago it did work nicely and we even started experimenting with putting her down fully awake, which was working sometimes.

During the night she feeds almost to sleep and then I do what I now understand to be the Pantley Pull-Off. If she woke during the night I would give her her dummy and she would fall back to sleep immediately. BUT we don't co-sleep.

So, a similar procedure worked for us. I hope that whatever you do is successful, you have my sympathy. :)

thanks for replying sproutpudding i was beginning to think my post wouldn't get any replies largely because after i posted it i realised that essentially id just written a big splurge of the muddle in my mind also i think my timing in starting the thread at the same time as someone started a seemingly innocent 'what do you think of gina ford' not realisng the MN controversy that would ensue didn't help to get anyone's attention to my problem!

im so glad to hear that it might work, as right now i just feel like ive gone from ds settling well to it taking ages! but the goal is to avoid the wakeups at all, so i keep reminding myself we have to take a few steps backward to move forward. it's just good to hear that we might be heading in the right direction, so thank you. good news, is this morning's nap where i tried the first stage of NCSS ds actually got himself to sleep from a far more awake stage than he ever has done before! its a one off i know but it gives me hope.

i haven't followed the NCSS advice to only work on evening bedtime if daytime naps have been fine- ive been doing the same process for (most) naptimes too. because we co sleep after about 11/midnight it feels like the opportunities for training ds in this way are more limited if i rock him fully to sleep at naptime and partially only at bedtime iyswim.

oh dear ive done another mental splurge again....

Heh heh!

I think maybe more people post in the evenings, so don't give up hope!

We're all blundering about in the dark I am beginning to feel! But it sounds as if things are going in the right direction - even one small change every day is something, and that sounds quite a big step so well done. And I found sometimes we'd have a bad day but then you just start again. You're right too about going backwards in order to go forwards.

Do come back and write how you get on tonight.

we did the ncss for my ds with night time self settling, he only went to sleep on the boob. It did work, it was a very long process, I think I said on another thread three weeks but actually probably closer to about 5. I put him down a tiny bit more awake each time, I probably could have pushed it more but didn't want any tears. I'ma bit less precious now!

Also I stopped co-sleeping I just don't think it was getting any of us more sleep.

I think you do take some backwards steps and also sometimes the forwards ones are so small you don't notice them. it did work for us but just slowly.

beachavendrea i can definitely hold out for 5 weeks i was worried it might take a whole lot longer than that!

amazingly last night ds slept for 2 hours after his first wake up. so, he woke up after 45 minutes, right on cue, and then when i settled him (settling times getting shorter now too ) then he didn't wake up til nearly 2 hours later! normally he would have woken up twice more in that time! i'm really hoping its not just a one off. today we're at my mums for the night, but we go there a lot so i'm hoping the change of scenery won't disturb the sleep training.

Pantley's pull off is working OK, not as fantastically as the brilliant night i had about 3 nights ago when it only took 1-2 goes before ds fell asleep, but better than before, he does give up eventually. i expect withdrawing the rocking will have similar ups and downs (no pun intended!)...

1-2 goes on Pantley's pull off is great! I remember the book saying it might take five times and some nights it took me at least 10!

well we had that on that very good night, and i hope we get back to that! Now its about 5 goes on average and sometimes around10. But at first it was about 15 goes each time and sometimes more so its getting better!