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!

Hi @Livingoffcoffee!

How did you go with this?
We started after coming back from the holidays too, now on day 3 or so.

He falls asleep easier at night and wakes up less during the night but he’s started to absolutely hate his cot. He gets tense when I even approach his room. That makes me so upset! Nap times are also terrible and I just feel like an awful mother.

My partner wants to keep going as we’ve seen improcements overnight but I’m hesitant. Before we went away for the holidays our Bub was a pro at self-settling (terrible sleeper otherwise) but now as soon as we get close to the cot he gets hysterical and I feel like we’ve done more harm than good.

He’s also 11 months, so I’d be interested to hear your experience.

@BabyM2019 That sounds very familiar! Last night was night 6 and he's not grumbling/crying for about 5min and then lays down and falls asleep. Usually pops awake at 12:30, cries for 2min and then back to sleep till morning.

He is still getting upset at the start of bedtime routine - though not as bad as it was. We're trying to spend more quite playtime in his room so he doesn't get afraid of it. But I am still struggling with that, I'll admit

That’s what I’ve been trying as well. I just popped him in his cot for a little peekaboo in between his naps and he was happy. I really don’t want to make his cot a scary place! Good to hear it’s getting better for you guys.
How did the night wakings for for you? Our boy is still waking up a couple of times and definitely not putting himself back to sleep. Haven’t had a solid block of sleep for well over a year now so I’m really, really hoping this works!!

@BabyM2019 Honestly, it's like you're me a week ago!

The first 4 nights he woke up 1/2 times for about an hr each time - so was lots of going in and out to reassure him.

The next couple nights he woken up once for 5 min and put himself back to sleep. So he has definitely started to get the hang of it!

That’s awesome to hear!! Fingers crossed we’ll start to see improvements soon too!

I thought I'd come back, for the sake of completeness, and update.

It's all gone to shit here!

She still goes to bed OK, with a bit of crying but not much, but she has started to wake in the night and just not to back to sleep for 2-3 hours.
We've tried leaving her to cry and it no longer works, she just gets more and more hysterical. Mind you, nothing works! Being in the room with her, and shushing her, reduces the crying but she still takes forever to actually go back to sleep. The crying has also been waking DC1, even with white noise, etc. to help block it out.

Totally at my wit's end again and now it's worse than ever as we can't even go back to co-sleeping. We had a brief spell of this when she was really ill a couple of weeks ago, and it was hell. She now writhes around the bed and is a nightmare to sleep next to. So I feel like even the safety net has gone!

She now wakes anywhere between 4-8 hours after she first falls asleep and then all hell breaks loose and she just won't go back to sleep.

I'm at a total loss as how best to handle it. DH thinks we need to double down on the CIO/CC but I can't cope with listening to her cry for extended periods of time. Also (as mentioned above) the crying is much more intense, she sounds genuinely upset, rather than just grumbling.

I really don't know what to do!

Oh no @Sleeplesssleepseeker !
Could it be teething? Or that she's ill again?

Could be that she is learning something new? Whenever my baby has had a run of nights like that, she has come out with something new at the end. Especially as she is getting older with walking and standing.
Whatever it is, hopefully it is just a phase

Thanks both. She slept better last night, nearly 9 hours before she woke at 4am. She was then awake for around two hours, but I just put a mattress on the floor next to her cot, and she was relatively happy to lay quietly. I think she might have fallen asleep quicker, if it wasn't for the fact she's getting ANOTHER cold, so kept sneezing. Poor love. She eventually fell asleep with my hand on her back and was zonked until gone 7am.
I think I'll just continue to decamp to her room when she wakes and see what happens over the next few weeks.
I have to remember that there's always SOMETHING at this age, isn't there? Teeth, learning, leaps, endless illnesses... and she's starting nursery next month, so who knows what that will bring.
She's also been fighting her naps these last few days, so I do wonder if she's gearing up for dropping to one nap, or maybe it's just a blip. Who knows? I actually look forward to only having to fit in a single nap, as it's much easier!

Onwards and upwards anyway...

I posted about this exact problem with night waking a little while ago. We saw a sleep consultant who told us the 2-3 hour wake period is developmental and you just have to ride through it. It lasted about 6-7 weeks for us (with a few wonderful nights randomly thrown in the mix). In the last week her speech has exploded and she’s back to sleeping quite consistently 7-5 undisturbed, so it did pass.

So just reassurance that it’s unlikely a sleep training problem and the sleep consultant just said to be consistent whatever you do and wait for it to pass...it is absolute torture though!
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parenting/3783964-Is-there-something-wrong-with-my-one-year-old-and-sleep