Right, talk to me about sleep training (please)

[Hiphopopotamus]

So my DH and I want to start sleep training our 7 month old as soon as possible (we’re thinking of starting on Monday) and I’ve got a lot of questions and I’m not sure where to start so please help if you can - I’d be very grateful!

Here’s the current situation - we co sleep with our DD in our large double bed. It’s been working ok but I’m now more than ready to have my space back at night and have DD sleep in her cot. I’m still breastfeeding and DD has taken to just grazing and latching on a lot during the night for comfort which is giving me a terrible nights sleep. She’s also being disturbed by us when we move around and I think she’d sleep better with more of her own space. Because she can’t be left on her own in the bed, I go up to bed when she does (about 8.30/9) and I’m ready to have my evenings back. We also lie on the bed with her for naps so she’s not used to sleeping on her own at all (yes, many rods for many backs!!)

She will fall asleep just lying on the bed with the dummy, though I put my arm around her - so she doesn’t need patting or rocking or feeding to sleep initially. However at night, when she wakes up, she won’t go back to sleep without sucking on my boob. Because she grazes on and off through the night I’ve got no idea how many night feeds she actually needs for hunger!

Ideally we’d like to try a gentle no cry sleep training and keep her in her cot in our room for the time being - is this doable and how do we do it?

Any help/advice/admonishment for being such softies welcome!

I assume by gentle sleep training that you are accepting of the fact that change will be slow and gradual, rather than you getting your evenings back next month?

So what is suggest is removing one side off your cot and match mattress heights, to make a sidecar cot. Then carry on doing the dummy and arm round her at bedtime, but it gets her used to the cot as a seperate space.

This is still going to need you to be in bed while she's in the cot, for safety reasons of pulling up.

Over night I'd aim for an in-cot cuddle with dummy for resetting at every wake up. Give it 10 minutes or so to try and resettle and if not working then do a proper wake up feed, rather than dozing sucking. Try to keep her awake for the feed, even if it means a nappy change. Then wake her up with a good wind after the feed so you can put her down and snuggle with a dummy to go to sleep.

In the daytime, try to m9ve your feeds so you feed when she wakes up, rather than feeding to bedtime.

Hi @FATEdestiny thanks so much for responding - I’ve seen you on other sleep threads and your advice always seems so helpful!

Would you suggest that gentle training is the way to go? I suppose after having her so close over these last months I don’t want DD to feel suddenly abandoned but I don’t know if I’m being ridiculous and over cautious

I would go the gentle route, if it was me. It depends on how quickly you want/need to see change. Because the premise behind gentle training is that you start a journey towards independant sleep, so make progress towards it but without the expectation that you get to the end-point fast.

At 7 months it is very likely she will still need milk over night. I would consider moving to a floor bed so you have leave her asleep in bed by herself.

Tbh I just left DD on the bed on her own at that age, but with a baby monitor constantly on in case she started to move (it helped that she was always very vocal when she woke up, and we lived in a flat, so we were there in seconds). We also had bed guards either side.

I’ve always chosen the lazy way out so can’t help much with the training bit!

I definitely wouldn’t leave her in the bed by herself - she sometimes wakes up very quietly but immediately wants to start crawling. I only just stopped her crawling off the end of the bed the other night when she woke up and decided to go for an adventure, and that was with me asleep right next to her!

I think gentle is the way to go. The floor bed sounds interesting but part of the reason I’m wanting to get her sleeping in the cot is to stop the all night latching on and grazing - it’s really starting to take a toll! I’d rather wake up and do a proper night feed then go back to sleep properly.

We were in a similar situation, and basically we just started trying to put our DD in a cot at night. We have to get her to sleep first and transfer her. She'll sleep 2/3/4 hours in there, which gives me some evening and then often we resettle her there before I go to bed so I get a bit of sleep on my own. I bring her in with me when she wakes through the night. The first few nights she woke up after about 20 mins, but then just got better at it (we've had ups and downs though). We haven't cracked the rest of the night. I think I was initially hopeful she'd just get better and better in her cot, but thats not happened as yet. However, this feels much more manageable.

Floor bed worked for us, but a bit older- could roll away after he fell asleep as he'd often then sleep a couple of hours deeply before I joined him for rest of night. Then gradually attempted to return to bed sometimes.
Nightweaned very gently at 21 mo and it all got better after that. He's now 3 1/2 and we get decent nights most nights now (or even a shout for DH not me!!). Doesn't mean I sleep well though, I never did