For those that have sleep trained, please help me with some advice!

[Sweetestp]

My boy is 7 months old and nights have been wild, waking anywhere from 10-15 times, last night he was wide awake in the middle of the night twice and i feed a gazillion times for him to get back to sleep!

He is EBF, with four milk feeds in the day and takes in a good amount of solids for three meals a day. His day schedule is: up at 06:30 then wake windows are typically 2,5/3/4 (last one is sometimes 5), total day sleep is 3 hours, bed time is 19:30 / 20:00.

I rock/hold him to sleep for day naps and feed him to sleep for night times. He transitions to his crib easily once fast asleep and i have been putting him down sooner, shush/patting if he is roused.

So for sleep training - i have been wondering if i should first gradually wean him off of being fed to sleep, by feeding before bath, and then rocking to sleep.. or do i just go cold turkey and start putting him in the crib and leave the room with timed check ins?

I am DREADING the crying, but i think my future self will be grateful when i dont need to work so hard to get him to sleep and if he can hopefully drop some night wakes in the near future 🤞
(i probably should have sleep trained my toddler who still struggles a ton to get to sleep at three years old!)

TIA!

We didn't fully sleep train, but got him used to going in the cot slightly awake rather than rocking him to sleep. He can pull himself up, so the cot had to go onto the lower seeing and we couldn't put him down without waking him any more and I wanted my evenings back! He comes into our bed when we go to bed. Overnight I feed him then pat him to sleep again, just like in the cot but in our bed. He knows I'm there and not leaving, so it doesn't feel cruel. The internet was right. The first day of putting him down to sleep he cried for half an hour, but angry cries, not miserable. It was 10 mins the next time. For us it only worked because we were certain he was angry and not distressed, no teeth etc. He still wakes a lot if he's teething, but otherwise it's just a quick feed once or twice in the night then back to sleep.

I started working on feeding him a half hour before bed in living room lights on ! Then getting dad to read him a book and take him down to bed

we rocked to sleep first
then switched to pat to sleep
then sitting by cot
then worked up to leaving him alone to go to sleep

basiclly went back in every few mins to reassure

now he’s 18 months and I literally put him in bed and say goodnight and leave and I see him on monitor playing / walking around and drinking his water then he eventually goes asleep

When he wakes in night sometimes he just goes back himself most times too

Grit your teeth. We realised we had been up and down stairs every night for weeks with our baby. You know they;ve been fed, winded, changed and loved. So you put them in the cot and close the door. Go downstairs and pour a glass of wine. 15 minutes first night, 5 minutes second night and then no tears. Our second child shared a room with his DS once he was sleeping through the night and he knew that once he went in the cot he would have to stay there as if we got him up she would want to get up too. We had an evening together which was good for our relationship. It’s the way we parented back in the 70s and my two DC seem to be happy, healthy and well adjusted adults.

Thanks for this, so you stayed with him next to his cot?

I rub his back until he goes to sleep, then leave in the evening. It only takes a few mins now, but the first night it took half an hour. I come back if he cries, but the going to sleep in the cot rather than rocking seems to have taught him how to self settle so I don't have to go through often. He was 8 months when we started

Four feeds during the day isn’t many. I would try feeding him more often during the day.

I know it feels impossibly hard but I would try and hold out for a couple more months, seeing as he's exclusively breastfed. They often take in a lot of their calories during the night.

Is your goal to not feed at all in the night? Because 7 months is still very young for that, especially with only four feeds in the daytime. I would try and wait until weaning is more established and he's eating three solid meals a day, plus milk feeds.

My baby was exactly the same and we stopped feeding to sleep, when she became impossible to transfer to the cot at about 12 months. We switched her to a floorbed and it's been revolutionary for us. We just lie next to her and she's asleep in 15 minutes. No more night wakes, no more hours feeding to sleep, no more failed transfers, and the best bit is my dh being able to do bedtimes now. Bliss, honestly.

5 hours before bed is way too long!! He is going to bed overtired.

The aim is to get them to sleep without input from you, as then they can replicate it during the night. This is key. We did the Ferber method - worked a dream in 3 nights. Look it up. DD was breast fed too, went from 15 wake ups a night to 2 or less.

No i am happy to feed him at night, but from around 2am he wakes every 20 mins and needs to be rocked back to sleep, if i lay still with him he just fusses and wakes himself up entirely. He is 10kgs and my back is done.. i just want him to be able to fall back asleep on the bed and wake up less!

Thanks, youre not the first to say this so i will keep an eye.. its interesting though because he is so chilled for an ‘over tired baby’.. as we speak he is on his fifth hour and happily playing by himself on the floor.. and i havent found an earlier bed time to make a difference with false starts/night wakings

This is definitely what I am hoping for!

Great choice to sleep train, you’ll only regret you didn’t sooner! For cold turkey vs rocking, you have to bear in mind that if you rock him to sleep he still might need to be rocked if he wakes in the night. So you’ll eventually need to wean off that too, and the whole process will be more drawn out. If you go cold turkey, it will be more horrible for the first few nights but done much more quickly. If he’s 10kgs already you clearly dont need to worry about his calorie intake overnight! But I agree with pp that four daytime feeds is unusually few, and since sleep training might naturally lead to him dropping some/all night feeds might make sense to up to five. Good luck with everything, you got this 💪

Yes, starting by stopping feeding to sleep will help. We did the gradual retreat. From 12 wakeups to one in the first night.

Stopping feeding to sleep was transformative for us. Did it at 11 months. I fed and did bath, DP did PJs, story and bed - had water on hand if DC wanted it. He did get upset but his dad was with him.

Personally I can't reconcile making a 7 month old baby go straight from feeding to sleep to being left to cry alone. Even if you know that no harm will come to them they don't know that!

Gosh this is sad. I couldn’t imagine leaving my baby to cry themselves to sleep. If people did this in the daytime in public it would be neglect!

Babies feeding to sleep and waking up in the night is completely normal and natural. I suggest you do some reading about baby sleep. It will get better over time. Can you co sleep for part of the night?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20220322-how-sleep-training-affects-babies

It’s a long article but very interesting

@HillbillyBackstroke cry it out is not the same as sleep training

i was a way worse parent sleep deprived hating my life and resenting my kids - once i got them sleeping I felt so much better and am a way better parent for it
people like you make parents (mostly mothers) feel terrible about themselves - I don’t care if you don’t want to sleep train - but some do and it’s helpful for loads of people.

most people sleep training aren’t leaving to cry it out - it’s teaching your child how to go to sleep independently - and there’s loads of ways to do that.

Surely if you’re letting your child cry themselves to sleep then it’s the same? The OP says they’re not reading for the crying and posters above have recommended drinking a glass of wine and ignoring your baby

@Fupoffyagrassholei’ve just read back what you did. If it was as simple as that and you’re being responsive to your child’s needs then there’s no issue but that’s not what many of the other posters mean by sleep training. Have a look on the r/sleeptrain on Reddit!

20+ years ago, I did sleep training with DD without realising that's what it was, at DH's suggestion. He didn't know what it was either. She was just a few weeks old and it took three days. The first night, she cried for 20 minutes in total, with me going in to her to reassure her every five minutes. She was exclusively breastfed but never fed to sleep. In those first weeks, she slept from midnight to 5am, when I would bring her into bed with me until about 8am. The crying was hard to listen to but I had watched friends have their families seriously disrupted by tiredness, and children aged five and older not sleeping through, and wanted to do everything I could to avoid something similar. Even now, it feels like an early investment for longterm gain, and DD remains a good sleeper.

So, OP, grit your teeth and go cold turkey if you can, so there's less pain all round.

Typo

Jesus Christ. Sleep training at only a few weeks old. 😢

I sleep trained my breastfed baby at 10 months old for this exact reason. I was broken.

I paid to do it under the guidance of a sleep consultant and she was AMAZING!!

If you want to hear how we did it, please PM me.

Seen in isolation, it makes me sound a harsh mother, I agree. What the post doesn't reveal is my appalled rejection of Gina Ford's prescriptive methods, and the relaxed approach I took to a whole range of things, including bedtime. Believe me, if you'd seen the anarchy that reigned in one family very close to me because of chaotic bedtime routines you too would be determined to do everything to avoid it.

Typo

You can sleep train without leaving them to cry, though.