Ferber Method Experience?

[Sleeplesssleepseeker]

Interested in experience with the Ferber Method please?

I do understand the anti-sleep training POV so would respectfully ask that anyone who wants to tell me it's cruel please don't!

Particularly interested in hearing from those who went from bedsharing with a breastfed baby to baby in cot using the method. How did it go? How long did it take to have a positive impact on sleep? Any tips? I do have the book and have read the key chapters, but interested in personal experiences.

My 10 month old is a dreadful sleeper and wakes hourly, or more. Also will only contact nap. My husband and I have agreed to try Ferber for a week and see if it improves matters. We'll be moving baby into a cot in their own room. I'm not expecting sleeping through the night but a reduction in wakings to 2 or 3 would be enough to start with!

I'm quite nervous because it's not my usual type of approach (this baby is DC2) but it's a bit of a crisis situation. We (as a family, including DC1) can't carry on as we are and I don't think we have it in us at this point to carry out gradual sleep training, which could takes months and months. I'm genuinely on my last legs and having some incredibly dark thoughts at this point and my health has deteriorated significantly too. We don't have any support, I don't have anyone who can take baby during the day so I can sleep (which is always the advice that is proffered by those decrying the use of sleep training methods I find) DH does what he can to ease the situation but he's really struggling too as he has a stressful job and no downtime.
Anyway I am blathering on here trying to justify myself, which was not the point of the post!

We did this at around 8 months I think. To echo everyone else. First night was hard. Second night easier and the the third night was a dream. We’ve used a similar tactic in the toddler years to break bad sleep habits.

Definitely recommend. Good luck.

You can still feed them but I think you know if they wake up an hour after their last feed they don’t need another one. If it’s 5-6 hours then they may BUT the key is to put them back down awake. So (if I remember correctly as this was a few years ago!) you feed them and then do something stimulating like change a nappy and then they are awake and you put them back down.

The guy who invented it said it doesn’t be used before a year.

I've got the book, that isn't true at all. But yes you can still feed them overnight.
My daughter wakes every hour and there is no way a baby of 10 months old needs to fed that often. Ferber thinks that by three months baby should only need one night feed and that should be dropped over the next couple of months (so a baby of 5-6 months shouldn't need a night feed). I'm not 100% sure I agree with that (I fed my eldest at night until two+ years) but that's what the book says.

I'm pretty sure DD is getting a cold so we may have to delay (I told DH that would be
bound to happen if we put it off). We could have done it by now!

I hope this works for you op, but be aware that it doesn't work for all babies. I am saying this is to manage expectations as it were.
I know how it is to have a non sleeper, and when you pin your hopes on something that is going to improve the situation and then it doesn't it can be soul destroying.
I know this works for lots of babies and really hope it does for you. But if not, don't despair- they will eventually figure out the sleep thing. Good luck!!

@bumpertobumper

Honestly my expectations are quite low! I'm really expecting it not to work, more than I am expecting it will IYSWIM? But I'm.at rock bottom so feels like very little to lose.

On our sixth wake up so far tonight. It's truly brutal. I often day (night?!) dream about dying or being admitted to hospital, just to get sway from it. Or I imagine doing awful things like locking DD in the car and then going back to bed (I would absolutely never do this but I think about it) or just walking out of the house and staying in a hotel.

This was absolutely the stage I was at when we tried, I felt broken. In fact I rang a nanny agency and booked someone to come for 3 hours for 3 days so I could hand over my children and go to bed when she was here! I’m not sure about you but I had absolutely no family to hand them over to. I remember that lovely lady even though that was about 16 years ago!!! She saved me that week, I was on my knees! My husband took over as soon as he came home from work so it was bliss, I needed to just catch up on some sleep before I tried. I truly hope it works for you. One other thing that I remember is I took a pen and pad to bed to write down everything as sometimes you wake and can’t even remember what time you last got up etc.

This thread has drawn from me my very first post!

We have just begun ferber training our 8 month old at the moment. I believe the recommended minimum age for Ferber is actually six months, rather than a year.

We previously Ferber trained our elder daughter when she was 12months old. One point I would
make is that people’s fears about Ferber are often that their baby will need to cry every night for weeks and weeks. Our experience with the elder child was that it took about four days. I have to think that four days of crying nights is well worth it to have a whole childhood of ready access to sleep, and better rested, less grumpy parents (we both work full time so this is a real factor). I’m not seeking to invalidate anyone else’s opinion, but that’s always been ours.

Second daughter is a much poorer sleeper so we have started earlier. As with first child, I am handling the Ferber training while my wife is on a business trip. It is certainly not pleasant, the crying nights, but we are one night in and on thag first night she cried for about 50mins. I’m hopeful it won’t take her long to get the hang of settling herself either. I certainly think it would be unpleasant doing Ferber for weeks on end; I don’t know anyone who’s had to do that but it seems some have.

Our children never co-slept with us, both slept in their own crib/cot from birth, so in that respect our experience is not quite analogous to yours.

We tried the Ferber method and gave up on the 5th night.
The first evening it took three intervals and about half an hour in total before he fell asleep.
The main problem was when he waked up during the night, he could cry intermittently for 2-3 hours (more sobbing rather than crying when we went in to comfort him , but very distressed crying once we left the room). So it's like nobody could sleep from 1-4am.
And on the 5th evening, he cried for longer than any previous evenings. So we gave up and resorted to co-sleeping.
With hindsight, we probably started the training at too early an age (5 months). And that failure meant we never attempted to try controlled crying again.
Good luck!

Well, to update:

We started last night. I was incredibly apprehensive, but it was OK (although I didn't listen to the crying my DH dealt with it). I cried after feeding her and laying her down in the cot.

She cried for about 30 minutes before falling asleep, but it was predominantly intermittent "falling asleep" crying and not the constant hysterics I had feared.
She woke five times in total, but DH only had to go in the first three times. The final two were more like a single cry, then she went straight back to sleep. The first three wakes she cried out and then more grizzled for 5-10 minutes and then went back to sleep.
DH didn't follow the book exactly as he went in straight away, if she cried consistently for more than a couple of minutes. He rubbed her back and sushed when he went in to comfort her and repeatedly said "It's time to sleep".

She woke for the day just before 6am. I fed her straight away and she seemed perfectly happy. I can't believe she went the whole night with no milk.

So all in all only around an hour of crying over the course of the whole night, and most of it intermittent crying/grizzling. I don't feel too uncomfortable with that.

She's also gone down for a nap in the cot this morning, which involved about 20 minutes of very intermittent crying. I put her down myself, and was able to listen to her. She was crying so intermittently that I didn't go back into the room at all because the gaps between cries were 2-5 minutes long, so I think going in would have disturbed her.

I know that the first night can sometimes be easier and we may have more trouble for the next couple of nights, but still feels like a positive start and I am kind of hopeful that it could work. Definitely not what I anticipated.

Great news @Sleeplesssleepseeker , I've been thinking of you. I suffered 4 years of no sleep and wish I'd done something like this!

Yes worked beautifully with both my older two (one bottle, one breast) and youngest I didn't need to use it with as was a good sleeper from about 8 weeks

We’ve started this method this week, as in a similar position with a terrible terrible sleeper, who feeds very regularly. I’ve tried previously, a few varying methods, but not any where I’ve left him alone at all, but we decided it was time to try this.

Honestly, the first night I was ready to give up, well, I guess I did in the end. He cried for 2.5/3 hours(not sure exactly what time I started). It didn’t matter what I did, shushed, patted, said night night, put his lullaby sheep on etc, he would scream blue murder the second I was walking out the room, which would then settle to a whinny cry till I next came in. In the end at 11pm I felt like I was torturing him it was taking so long, so I picked him up and we had a cuddle and a feed, and then I put him back in his cot, and he slept. But he was very definitely asleep when I put him down.

Having taken so long, I debated whether to even try again the next night. But I did and it took about 8 minutes before he fell asleep half sat up. He slept for 3 hours before waking for a feed. But did then manage another 3 hours after that, which is definitely an improvement.

Tonight it’s taken 45 minutes.
I was dreading tonight, as I thought yesterday was most likely a fluke, and I couldn’t face putting him through 3 hours again. But thankfully it’s only taken 45 mins. I’m hearing the occasional sob, maybe every 10 minutes so I’m not convinced he’s properly settled yet.

Well done OP! We did CC at 6 months for DS, it's worked really well. That week was horrible, the first night he cried for 55 minutes, then 45 minutes the next and it eventually went down to only a few minutes. It took us about 10 nights, longer than the book says, but we put that down to how head strong DS is. He's 15 months now and even more determined and strongwilled.

I've heard people say the 5th night can be the worst, so good luck!

@motherofdoodles thank you that's kind!

@babycatcher411 oh no, that sounds rough, you poor thing. I am lucky that so far DD has been surprisingly quick to settle down, I'd have really struggled with such a tricky first night. Well done for persevering. Are you doing naps in the cot too?

I've heard people say the 5th night can be the worst, so good luck! Yes, I gather that on subsequent nights things might get worse. Dreading that but I think at this point we are committed to powering through!

DD went to sleep in about 10 minutes last night. Was asleep (or settled at least, the way she sleeps we can't see her face on the monitor but she was lying still s and not crying!) by 7pm or thereabouts and woke for the day at 7am! She cried out a few times in the night again, but literally one cry and then calm again. Bloody amazing!

She does seem to get more upset now when she's tired though? And as soon as I put her in her sleeping bag she cries. I feed and cuddle her in her room once she's bagged up. Then put her in the cot, at which point she cries very fervently but stops within a minute or so of me leaving the room.
I still feel bad about the crying, even though it's minimal. I'm just wondering if it will stop at some point or maybe she needs to have a bit of a about to settle down.

a bit of a shout not "about".

Are you me sleeplesssleepseeker?!
Honestly could have written your initial post. 10 month old breast fed, sometimes co sleeping, waking hourly at the moment. It has all come to a head since she got an overnight sickness bug a couple of weeks ago and none of us are sleeping! Related so much to your daydreams of leaving and going to a hotel ( especially as there is one 30 seconds away!)
You are giving me hope :) I think we are going to try soon so will keep an eye on your thread, please send updates :)))

@Sleeplesssleepseeker yeah we found that DS would get upset in the night time routine for some time, but that mostly stopped after 3 months for us, but DS took much longer than your DD has been so far so hopefully not as long for you!

I’m not doing day time naps in the cot as we are out of the house far too often for it to work, but I’m trying to make sure I allow for sleeps at about the same time every day- so I’ve been trying to avoid car journeys unless it’s nap time, and taking him for a walk in the sling when I know it’s about time for his last nap, and so far that part seems to be working fairly well. He’s had two 2 hour daytime naps which is completely unheard of!
Last night he woke again, had a feed but then kept whimpering on and off for ages before he finally settled.
Hopefully tonight is a little easier as I didn’t quite know what to do with him last night as he’s whimpering didn’t quite seem long enough to go in, knowing going in would probably disturb him more, but equally I felt like I was ignoring him for ages😩

How are you getting @Sleeplesssleepseeker?

Tonight is night 5 here, and we had about 20-25 minutes of tears. He’s asleep now, let’s see how the rest of the night pans out...

It's going really well on paper. She's more or less sleeping through the night 7-7. She has been waking 4-5 times a night but will generally let out a single cry and then go back to appearing to be asleep, so the waking seems brief. It's hard to tell exactly when she's 100% asleep because our video monitor doesn't show her face (sleeps on her front now) and there isn't any other way we can position it. But she's quiet and completely still for large chunks of time so I can only surmise that she's asleep. She generally cries very intermittently for 10-15 minutes at bedtime and before naps. The only times we have had issues getting her down is when she's needed a poo/done a poo shortly after being put down, which has happened a couple of times for naps.

DH has occasionally found what you describe, that she whimpers on and off for a while, so it can be tricky to know what to do. But there will be large chunks of minutes in between cries and so according the the book it's best not to go back in as intermittent crying means they're working it out. DH generally goes straight in if she cries in any meaningful way to reassure her, then does the prescribed intervals... but now we're at 30 minutes so he hasn't been back in for some time as she always quiets down.

BUT she's seeming really tired and grumpy, not quite herself and generally really clingy. It's making me paranoid that what the anti sleep-training brigade say is true - that she's just laying there still and awake because she knows no one will come. Although that doesn't 100% make sense really, as she hasn't been crying hard for ages at any point IYSWIM? My I'm feeling a bit sad/unsure about it all today though.

She's currently asleep in the sling, for the first time since we started. We had a bit of a tricky morning with her first nap (due to aforementioned pooing issue) and then she napped for two hours, but a bit later than she really should have... so her second nap was really late and I didn't want to risk a failed cot nap. I need to wake her shortly...

I have actually slept in meaningful way (for the first time since she was born!) though, which has been lush (DH is on baby night duty for the first week at least). Unfortunately not as much as I might like as 3.5 DS is having some sleep issues currently so I have been dealing with him. Night before last I slept ALL NIGHT though, which was delicious. Although my poor boobs are like lead each morning from no night feeds!

I just wish I didn't have these nagging feelings of doubt/guilt about it all. Do I sound deranged? I'm struggling a bit.

@Sleeplesssleepseeker I've read your thread with much interest. My baby is much younger than yours (13 weeks), but does the same as yours did and I'm at a loss at what to do, as any recommendations from people don't seem to work.

I therefore have no advice!! But I wanted to reassure you that you don't sound deranged and I am sorry you are struggling. Sleep training worries me too, but I totally understand why you are doing it and ultimately we want them to be happy and healthy (with our mental health in tact). I hope you work out what's best to do and the outcome results in more sleep for you all. Thank you for sharing your experience as it really is helpful to so many of us.

I'm sending you this as I am feeding mine to sleep

Nope you’d don’t sound deranged at all.
Tonight seems to have gone fairly well, we had about 20-25 mins of relatively half hearted tears compared to the first few nights, and he’s now slept for 3.5hrs which is a long time for him, but I know what you mean about doubting yourself. Whenever he’s crying, I’m questioning myself if I’m doing the right thing by him.

Thank you both.

DD cried three times last night.

Today she's only had a 45 minute nap (morning) because she cried non-stop before the afternoon nap, rather than her usual intermittent cry, so I got her up after 20 minutes. She's bloody knackered now so I hope she's able to settle OK tonight. She's been in amazing spirits this afternoon bless her!

Tomorrow is my first day doing the whole day on my own, as DH has to go back into the office (he worked from home last week) and I will also have DS at home all day, so kind of dreading how putting her down for naps will go.

@Sleeplesssleepseeker rooting for you, just try your best and do what you think is right for you both. Remember if tomorrow doesn't go to plan; there's always the next day.. or the one after that. Let us know how you get on.