Support thread for sleep training in lockdown

[Goostacean]

Hi all, I was on a similar thread for potty training (for my toddler) in lockdown and it was great to have some support and encouragement from those going through the same thing.

From tomorrow night we’re going to try sleep training our 5.5mo as he currently nurses/bounces to sleep and wakes multiple times a night.

Anyone else in a similar position, regardless of your child’s age?

I’m really pleased for you!

We’ve had a few night wakings here although they seem to be partially related to our toddler waking up screaming his lungs out occasionally (he loses his pillow... in his cot ). I’ve also noticed myself backsliding into feeding to sleep/ bf whilst he’s in the cot to soothe/ staying in the room for too long and similar. Have had a word with myself and tonight he appears to have settled in under 3 mins, of which only about 60s was yelling, so I must remember to be consistent!

Did you do the same procedure for naps? Or just night time sleep?

I did everything at once, thinking that consistency was key- plus in lockdown baby was largely napping at home in his cot anyway. Usually his morning nap was in the buggy, out and about with toddler, and two next other naps at home with the method.

DS has woke early the past two days so I think because before then he was sleeping through the night as a result of letting him cry it out, he doesn’t need as much sleep in the day anymore. We are dropping his half hour morning sleep today, so hopefully he will not wake up before 7am.

Hello again, how’s everyone doing? Thread has gone quiet so I started another one on my latest issue but maybe you lovely people will see this here (I’ll copy my OP from the other thread):

I sleep trained my 6.5mo around a month ago and he’s taken to it very well. I breastfeed him, pop him down into his sleeping bag with blackout blinds pulled and white noise on and musical light up bear playing... and he drops off with minimal fuss, usually just whining for a few mins. The bear stops after 30mins and I don’t use the white noise at night.

However... he now wakes at night 3 times! Which isn’t much better than what he was doing before I sleep trained. He went down to 1-2 wakings, and once slept right through 7-7. But now it’s around 12, 3, 6 and then he’ll sleep again til 8am or so. When he wakes I go in, don’t turn the light on or anything, pick him up, feed him again and pop him down ASAP.

Any ideas? Night weaning?

We had to stop because DS became unwell, so his sleep was all over the place but he is coming out the other end and in some ways, being unwell seems to have helped, in that when we tried to help soothe him to sleep, he actually got cross with us and settled off by himself. Hopefully it will continue!

Ah that sounds like progress! We had a slight regression where baby figured out how to suckle just enough that I thought he was still awake... but I nipped it in the bud and now we’re back to settling nicely. Hope your DS is fully better now!

My daughter is sleeping within 30 seconds of going down and till the morning. Best thing I ever done.

Amazing update! So she stopped falling asleep against the side of the cot??

Yeah haha and you know what she's a completely different kid, for the better. So much happier she isn't tired and we have such good times together now.

When she was still walking through the night and then waking at 4:30 I was getting ratty with her and then feeling depressed like I was a miserable mum. 3 nights of a few tears and mainly moans and ALL of that has gone. I'm so glad I read this thread

I hope you don't mind me joining this thread...... I am sooooooo tired.

My LO is 15 weeks which I presume is too early to start this sleep training? shall I wait until she is at least 5 months?

Her sleeping has got worse the last few nights and I am wondering if it's to do with the 4 month regression - she was doing 5/6 hour stretches but now we get about 3 and I am just feeding back to sleep as it's easy at the moment.

Any advice greatly appreciated

Hi guys, I've been following this thread but never posted because my baby was too young for sleep training when it started. But now my DD is five months old and after a few absolutely miserable weeks I've been thinking about whether sleep training when she's six months old might help us. Things have been improving slowly so I'm not as desperate now as I was a couple of weeks ago (the four month regression and two weeks of illness was a killer!), but I'd be really interested to know how your babies are getting on after you've done the sleep training?

DD is now falling asleep on her own in her cot and I'm not in the room, which is amazing as I used to have to hold her and rock her for ages before she went to sleep and then she'd wake as soon as I put her down. You all know what that's like!! Although things have really improved, she's still reliant on the dummy so I need to pop in to replace it just before she drops off, and because she needs the dummy to actually get to sleep she's often awake overnight for a while (1.5-2 hours after her second night feed more often than not) trying to settle while I replace it over and over.... Sometimes she has dark circles under her eyes in the morning and it breaks my heart (let alone me - sometimes I look like one massive eye bag haha!). So I'd also love to know if any of you sleep trained and used a dummy or took it away? The dummy seems like the last hurdle now, and I'm really in two minds about toughing it out for another couple of months until she can find and replace it herself, or taking it away.

@Goostacean @agteacht @2018isanewyear have been reading this thread over and over we are one night in and had an awful time with hours of crying :( looking for Hope to carry on and see it through!

Hi @Homelife124
How are you doing? How old is your little one? There is definitely hope, keep going! My little girl is 21 months now and we stuck to this method throughout, going back to it when we had the odd blip. I really believe it's the best thing to do, I know the first days are hard x

Hello! If you had asked me yesterday I
Would’ve have said ok, almost feel straight to sleep but then woke and cried for 20 min which isn’t so bad. Woke later and cried again but it was just about time for a feed. Woke early but overall still loads better than our usual waking every 1& 1/2 hours and having to be held rocked to sleep. But then last night ( night 3) was truly grim.
Cried for around 40 min at bedtime.

Slept until 12:45 then woke and cried ( screamed) until 3:30. Slept until 4:30 and then cried again finally slept 5:30-7.
So far last night was has been the worst and I’m really hoping it’s an “extinction burst”
We started off doing the check ins but they made our little one much more upset so we stopped. Just watching under a duvet of guilt and worry from another room.
Last night I really did not know what to do they were crying for so long and just not going to sleep it was torture. In the end I went in to sooth ( without picking up ) but it didn’t seem to make any difference and we did not want to undo any progress so far. So it’s night 4 tonight and dreading it… if it’s the same as last night we might have to call it quits x

@Homelife124

Okay that is grim but stepping back from it a bit tonight is a new night...

What method are you using?
What time is bedtime?
How old is your baby?
Are you feeding to sleep?

Start with mastering bedtime, don't worry about naps yet.

PS you can't undo progress so don't worry about that. I'm a strong believer in ignoring people who mention giving babies 'bad habits'!!

So we started with the Ferber method and going in to check 3min 5 min 8 min etc but it quickly became clear the checks were making things worse.
So after that, on the second night we didn’t go in after saying goodnight and he was asleep in 20 min.

So as not to confuse things we did that again on the third night only it took 40 Min to go to sleep initially.
But the wake up in the night was awful and he just kept crying & crying .
I wasn’t sure if I should go check and try to comfort. In the end that’s what I did because I couldn’t bear it any longer and tried to comfort from the side of cot. Before this we held rocked to sleep at every bedtime and throughout the night at every sleep cycle. They are 5 months now and started waking every 40 min - 1hour & half since 4 months. We had got to the point of serious sleep deprivation where it was affecting everything! I couldn’t go anywhere or interact that much in the day because I was so tired, my partner and I were constantly arguing and everything was just awful.
We don’t feed to sleep but are still doing two bottle feeds during the night so when they wake at those times they have gone back into the cot awake and gone to sleep themselves ( after a small amount of crying 10 min maybe )

Okay wow first you have twins?! you're a hero. Secondly five months is really tough, the toughest we had yet, we nearly got divorced...

I think realistically you won't see huge progress till they're six months so keep your expectations managed that it won't solve itself overnight. But if you're consistent you honestly will see a difference

We did intervals which is similar I think, you will read that back in the thread. Don't be afraid to go in but if it's not making a difference just prolong the intervals further