Help and advice needed on sleep training for 6 month old

[tam203]

Hello, long time reader (well 6 months) and first time poster. I'm dad to a joyful little girl Ada (6 months / 5 adjusted) who needs a little help learning how to fall asleep in her cot.

I'll skip the back story but where we are is we have (I think) taught her some strong sleep associations with rocking / breastfeeding and lullabies. I'm happy with the lullabies (I could play them all night to help me sleep) but the rocking and feeding is a problem when she wakes up 4, 5, 6 times a night. Night time is roughly 7 to 7.

We have good nights where she sleeps in her cot and only needs picking up and feeding/rocking back to sleep 3 or 4 times and we get a few 2 to 3 hour interrupted hours of sleep.

And then we have bad nights where she's waking every 40 minutes or hour and we usually end up all falling asleep mid brestfeed and mum has a very uncomfortable sleep and doesn't feel at all rested in the morning.

It's very very rare for her to fall asleep on her own in her cot (It's happened about twice) she will fall asleep in the car but I think that's the motion and white nose that helps.

I think we've taught her what she currently knows and now it's time for us to teach her how to fall asleep on her own but we are rather apprehensive!!!

I'm not sure we are ready for controlled crying so are looking at the 'gentler' methods, any suggestions?

Currently if we put her down before she is deep asleep she will wake crying instantly and usually we can not settle again with patting rubbing shhhsing etc without picking her up.

We give her a dummy when going to sleep/naps which seems to help, she doesn't have it during active awake times. We'd like to ween of this but it's not a priority and we don't want to do to much at once.

Also with these methods should we apply them to naps too? I'm reluctant to commit to always doing this as mum takes her to a lot of groups and activities and often the car ride is a good time for a nap, as is the ride in the carrier on a dog walk.

Any hint's tips help really appreciated.

Incase it helps below is an example day or two from the sleep diary, we tried to keep for a week (but it's hard to do a 3am).

14 Oct
Us to bed 2150.

2309 crying , can't comfort. Feed rhs at 2310 drop off to sleep and stop feeding quickly. Char have Apple. Drops in her rhs ear. Back into bed 2333 with dummy.

18. Wake. Feed LHS. 251 wake crying had spept in mums àrms. Food RHS. 303 back into be bed.

Wake 326. Cuddle Mum and suck dummy. Back in to bed 333.

403 wake. Feed RHS.
514 rhs
600 wake in mums arms. Feed RHS. Un-settled calmed on LHS.

730 wake up on mum, feed RHS.

15 Oct
730 Get up dressed and play for 1.5 hours.
900 feed both sides (and ear drops). Then try to get to sleep and got more wound up in bed, eventually screaming and quickly got more stress and eventually screaming..

1010 Come down stairs with mum who patted and hummed to soothe and sleep with dummy.

1045 wake and then play

1150 feed, difficult feed lots of whineing/discomfort seeming. Swap sides but didn't see to help much. Blanket and lights off seemed to help calm her down and feed better.

1219 fall asleep on mum after soothing with dummy and humming with blanket on head.

1234 drops in right ear.

1311 wake up.

1403 feed, squirming and squeals didn't really get much milk in. We abandoned fairly quickly.

1455 poop and feed.

1547 fall asleep in carrier

1715 wake up

1738 feed but only a little each side.

1855 feed.

1944 in to cot after falling asleep on mum to Roger the rabbit.

2139 wake (likely caused by us having showers and getting ready for bed). Feed RHS.
2156 was put back in to bed but quickly grizzled and unhappy. Took out and feed LHS.
2215 put Ada back in cot. And us to sleep.
2304 Ada wake.

....
140 back into bed
301 wake up
404 back in cot.
443 wake feed LHS
540 Up feed LHS RHS
640 get up for the morning

Both my DS1 and DS2 have gone through remarkably similar stages. The thing is of course you never know if when they change it is something you did or just them moving on to a different developmental stage.

I think that for us the key was a really strong routine both for naps and bedtime. One which can slowly replace breastfeeding and rocking. So coming up to baby's nap time have a routine. Mine (because I also have a boisterous toddler) starts with dancing to music whilst carrying until baby gets sleepy, then sitting in living room listening to lullabies whilst feeding, then to bedroom, into sleeping bag, and finally into cot. At first you'll end up removing from cot to feed to sleep again but eventually I think the rest of the routine starts to be sufficient and baby will actually be able to fall asleep after - dance-lullabies with feed-darkened room- sleeping bag- cot.
I'm currently in the process of doing this at the six month stage with my DS2 and it does seem to be working. Like I say though, it could just be a coincidental developmental change and it is meaning I'm having to stay away from groups and outings whilst I cement the routine.
Hope things go well for you.

We were having similar issues with night waking with our DS. Things which have helped us:

• stopping BF to sleep. We already did EASY in the daytime but at bedtime and dreamfeed I had kept the cosy, easy boob routine. However after the 4 month sleep regression, baby needs to fall asleep in the place where they sleep (otherwise on the normal periodic brief wakings we all have, they are freaked out that they've moved!). So now like pp it's boob, grobag, story, lights out & white noise on then wind down (see below)

• stopping rocking to sleep. Again for the above reason, and also because my 20lb son was putting my back out. We replaced it with walking round the room jiggling him under his knees occasionally and singing his goodnight song (same one every night). Once his eyelids are drooping, we sit with him by the cot, gradually go still, and put him in the cot gently.

• if he immediately stirs on being put down, we try to comfort him in the cot. I find it helps to move my hand quickly from behind his neck (as I put down) to across his arm and chest, then stroke his leg with my other hand. Sometimes he will grouse a bit but I only pick up if it's proper crying. If I pick up, then repeat a little walking/cuddle until calm and back into cot. The first few times will take a while - up to 40 mins in our case - but rapidly improved. We started with daytime naps esp first one of the morning then once he could go to sleep in the cot during the day we started doing the same at night. Note that I wouldn't say he self-settles; he needs us beside him hands on. But I'm ok with that for now.

All of this has seen him sleep better and longer. 6.5 hours last night! It was bliss. You can do things in stages too e.g. first stop the BF to sleep but keep rocking if that works instead. Then eliminate the rocking but still put down asleep. Then work on going into cot awake etc. Good luck!

Having had a good chat together we are trying to incorporate elements of pu/pd in to our routine trying to put DD into bed drousy and not fast asleep. Then trying to calm in cot and only taking our of needed and back in whilst still awake.

@RockinRobinTweets @FATEdestiny how do you deal with naps with something like pu/pd? At the moment she can spend the whole hour and a half of nap time just flapping around or screeching (but not in a very upset way) and we might or might not do some pu or other soothing (patting or shussing perhaps) but at the end of it she's not had a nap. Do we continue for however long it takes (we've gone up to 1.5 hrs with no sleep) or skip the nap at that point or what? Obviously the worse the nap the worse next sleep tends to be so we ideally don't want her while day begging missing naps...

Thoughts?

tam203, you need to look at the whole picture, rather than just "right, we'll do pupd". Because whatever sleep training you use, it's not going to work if baby's feeding is not sorted. You can't get a hungry baby to settle to sleep.

Likewise tackling over tiredness. You're not going to get PUPD working very well if you are putting baby down for a nap too late. Once baby is over tired, getting to sleep is significantly more difficult and do whatever sleep training method you use will be ineffective.

So I'd start off with working out a routine that allows for baby to be well fed and not over tired. Then do your PUPD (or whatever) alongside this.

The flapping around and getting agitated at bedtime is often linked to being over tired and the low-level grumbling but not settlibg could be hunger. That's why you need these sorted at the same time as sleep training, or your sleep training is pointless.

Once you know baby isn't over tired or hungry, then you just keep going with settling. You stop making nap time optional. On the basis that yoi are an adult with the cognitive ability to rationalise and analyse, when you know baby needs a sleep, then baby needs a sleep so don't doubt yourself just because baby 8s hard to settle.

Initially baby will be difficult to settle with a new sleep training method. But once established (within a week if you are consistant about it), then if baby is more difficult to settle you don't give up on the nap, but you do use this to figure out why baby was harder to settle (over tired? not fed well?) and use that to inform future nap times.

It is tricky - you don’t want to undo the hard work and feed to sleep but over tiredness is such a ruiner!

Personally, I’d make sure to start the pupd in good time, 20 minutes or so before you want them to be asleep. If after 20 minutes they’re still awake, I’d then do whatever is needed before they’re an overtired mess!

Then start again at the next sleep, always trying for what your end goal is and eventually they’ll get the hang of it. Pupd isn’t a quick fix and the gentle methods take a while longer.

Can I just say with pu/pd that to me it sends a very confusing message. Oh great someone responds to me when I cry and I get picked up and then oh no I get put down again. I sort of think that’s going to be more distressing than nipping back into the room and patting/shushing. But I totally agree that getting feeds and hunger aortedmwill help with naps and sleep. I really do recommend the sensational baby sleep plan which gives a literal step by step guide as to how to implement feed and sleep routines.