Sleep training

How did this end up going (we are rapidly approaching to the "okay you're in your room for the night and we'll see you in the morning" point ourselves)?

it seems to have worked well. it was very successful while my wife and baby were at my mother-in-law's. since they've been back, we've had a couple of nights where she fell asleep very quickly and slept through most of the night without much fussing, and a couple of nights where she was a little fussier off and on (but still slept on her own). we're still figuring some things out, like what conditions are necessary, how quiet we have to be once she falls asleep, and the timing. right now we're tiptoing around the apartment and whispering once she falls asleep, which is kind of annoying. the main problems we're having now are 1) she's been waking up really early most mornings, like around 5 a.m., which is only about 9 hours of sleep, and 2) she won't nap in the cosleeper at all, no matter how tired she gets. for 1) we're trying to figure out if 9 hours is just the max she'll sleep or if other things are waking her up and she'll sleep longer once take care of them. for 2), I guess we'll need to get some blackout curtains for the nursery and then just work harder on training her to nap in the pack and play.

fyi we ended up using the Ferber method, though as I noted above, it's not really that different from the no-cry methods. basically he gives you a table of times where each night you let them cry a little longer before going in and soothing them, but I think even at the longest, you're only letting them cry for 20 minutes.

Yeah I've read a fair portion of the Ferber and Weissbluth books now. We're probably starting with Ferber (when I see we, I mean me, my wife despite being even more exhausted than I am has an absolutely visceral reaction to hearing the baby cry so she's sleeping upstairs for the nights while I am doing this) for at least the recommended 7-9 days. I'm not looking forward to it, but it beats where I'm at and so far our various "no-cry" interventions appear to simply be making him cry more.

thats what we did nick...well done.

http://soundcloud.com/rickjamesbiotch/go-the-f-k-to-sleep

not feelin that

it seems self-congratulatory, like these parents who never stop telling you how hellish their nights are, how they haven't slept well in ages, yada yada.. and ooh look at you mr big grown-up, using bad language! naughty naughty!

I really think it depends on the kid. I remember agonizing over the ferber and cry it out methods with beeps because she just wouldn't sleep. we were very anti co-sleep but only because we were scared she would suffocate if we rolled on her or the covers and blankets were over her or some retarded fear like that. She would often take 2 hours or more to go to sleep and would wake at 1 or 2am and be awake until 5 or 6am. We eventually got a bed in her room and started taking turns sleeping in there so we could jump up and soothe her the second we heard any peeps out of her and she would never quite wake up enough to get into another four hours of rocking. Anyway, when she finally went from crib to bed she would just walk into our room and get in our bed, sometimes unnoticed, and fall straight back to sleep. Now she is 4 and this is still the case. She always starts off in her bed but id say 13 out of 14 days she ends up in ours. Except for getting kicked in the stomach, neck and face a billion times a night if you happen to end up with the feet side of her (she always ends up perpendicular somehow) I still love knowing that I'm going to go to bed and not be up in an hour for the next 4 or 5 hours. I assume she'll get embarrassed by sleeping with us at some point so I don't worry about it anymore.

Now Henry is 19 months old with zero sleep training and he falls asleep in 5 minutes and sleeps the whole night in his crib probably 80-90% of the time. Go figure.

For me this is all about what can be done to make sure you as the parents get enough sleep because everything unravels very quickly when that's not happening. I wonder now if this isn't an industry making a lot of money from parents sleep deprivation and fears that their kid must be able to do this by this time. Societal pressure is going to take over at some point for most things. Beeps was late with potty training too because she just wasn't interested but when her 2 and 3 y/o classmates started calling her a baby because she was the last girl in diapers things turned around pretty quickly.

our girl has always been pretty good about sleeping, only waking up in the night when she's sick, really. the lame thing currently is that she wakes up in the morning screeeeeeaming bloody murder. i don't even mind the 530am wake-up (well, i mind a little) but the high drama of a screaming 22 month old is a seriously terrible way to begin the day. once you go in there, she's happy as a clam. hope this phase doesn't last too long!

yeah youve got a terrible two. wait until she freaks out so much her eyes glaze over like she has no idea where she is or what anyone is saying. joys!

also Henry slept from 9:30pm - 2pm. SIXTEEN HOURS. Jealous much?

whoa, that is an intense night (and morning and afternoon) of sleep! he must've partied pretty hard the night before.
since i wrote that, she's actually gotten a little better. slept until 645am this morning, woke up pretty happy.

No-one told me that you'll never get solid sleep on a continuous basis anymore. lolololol. Thank god (or rather contraception) we only have two: we always seem to have a kid in our bed. Or two. hahah. I don't really understand why people get all "OH BUT YOUR PRIVACY". Uh, we got kids, I am perfectly okay with them sleeping in our bed. I know sleep deprivation sucks but it is soooooooo sweet to see your kid sleeping next to you and being able to cuddle. Anyway, I do have to say that the first two years with Elisabeth were sheer hell. I tried the CIO method (at four months I think or was it three?) because I was really freaking out. I couldn't do it anymore. Not my thing. I do realize that maybe I did run to her too quickly and didn't give her a chance to fall back asleep. But yeah first two years: HELL. At one point I cried regretting breastfeeding because she wouldn't stop waking up and also didn't want to stop BF. (She did at 13 months finally.)

we don't co-sleep, but yeah, when i get to see her sleeping it's one of the best things ever.

Now that he sleeps on his stomach watching him sleep is really funny. A lot of ass straight up in the air.

I don't really understand why people get all "OH BUT YOUR PRIVACY".

some people like the sexing

True, but what parents are getting busy at 4 am anyway. I wish the anti-co-sleeping brigade would just be honest and cop to being tired/not horny.

i'll cop to being selfish. it's my room, and i want to sleep! i don't want my kid squirming around all night and kicking me in the face. it is unreal how much noise and movement a sleeping child can make.

^^^OTM

we're going into round 2 of sleep training this week, out of town again. basically she sleeps in the crib all night now but usually wakes up a couple of times between midnight and 6ish, often have to give her a second bottle to get her to fall back asleep, although at this age (1+ years old) they're supposed to be able to sleep through the night without nursing. basically she's fine as long as she stays asleep but if she wakes up she doesn't know how to comfort herself back to sleep. so my wife's taking her to her mom's this week to do some "cry it out" time for a few days (can't do it in our apartment due to neighbor issues probably mentioned upthread)

I read this thread whenever I feel broody. It's a great contraceptive!

haha

n/a have you tried a dummy, or putting her thumb in her mouth? that can work. it's true that she doesn't actually need the milk. i think after like 3 months or something they don't actually need to eat during the night. tiny stomachs!

She doesn't really have a sleep crutch other than us, unfortunately. No thumbsucking, no pacifiers, no "lovey" or favorite stuffed animal. We've tried to get her attached to a toy that could calm her down but it hasn't taken.

I recommend Dr. Weisbluth, "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child," for pretty much any sleep-related issue. Some stuff may seem hardcore - they call him the Sleep Nazi for a reason - but everyone will end up better in the end. Kid in their own bed, you through the night in your own. There's basically no transitory kid behavior - from bottles to pacis to sleeping in their own bed - that can't be fixed with a solid routine. So much of it is, honestly, growing tolerant of screaming, because that is their primary mode of communication at that age. They're not mad, they're not unhappy, they're not uncomfortable, necessarily - they just want your attention because they want milk, or to sleep in your bed, or something else, dammit! And they'll keep doing it until you stop giving them what they want. And then they sleep through the night like angels. It's all about taking the plunge and enduring the cry it out.

(Admittedly, it's hard to listen to them cry it out! I had no trouble sleeping through it, but my wife had to wear earplugs and sleep on the couch for a couple of nights.)

ugh i wish we could do the cry it out thing without having to worry about our neighbors being dicks about it. baby's sleep has gotten totally erratic and weird over the past few weeks, i've ended up sleeping in the armchair in the nursery with her on top of me several nights recently. last night she only woke up once during the night but then woke up for the day at 4:30 this morning. this isn't sustainable but we're not sure what to do about it.

what's the worst your neighbors could do?

I know neighbors that have called child protective services over crying kids!

That shit follows you around, too. Total dick move. It came after various noise complaints, just a totally passive aggressive slap. Eventually our friends had to move. So there's that.

Maybe you could call the landlord and explain the issue and see if s/he will help intercede on your behalf.

I know neighbors that have called child protective services over crying kids!

wow that's insane

n/a do yourself and babby a favor and just take her to your bed. there's plenty of time to sort this all out in a permanent way.

In my experience, or at least those of my friends, co-sleeping is just post-poning the inevitable cry it out. I have friends with 5 and 6 year olds who still end up in their bed. You're tired and frustrated now, but this turbulence will pass. But kids with fleeting attachments to pacis or the big bed or whatever all need to be weaned from their habits. They won't do it on their own, because why should they? It's like folks I know with older (relatively) kids who wake them all the time to be nursed. Who wouldn't want that? They only stop when you turn off the tap.

We relented and opened the floodgates. Now, with them knowing that they can get up and waltz in any night they want, they stay in their own bed most of the time. We've never talked about it that way, but it's how it is now.

The boy called from the crib twice last week and slept the night with us. It's like he's on a 5-off, 2-on schedule. Beeps comes in maybe once a week or two. Their visits are diminishing. I remember too well those nights with her where I'd try to rock her back to sleep with no luck. Now it's like, come on up and if it gets too crowded, I go sleep in her bed, like a little princess.

i have no problem with bringing her to bed with us other than that she only slept in bed with us for the first six-eight months or so and we finally got her to sleep in the crib so i don't want her to revert to only sleeping in bed with us.

the nice thing is we never have problems getting her down at the beginning of the night. we've got a solid routine and once she's had her bottle she passes out pretty quickly. her new schedule for the past few days is sleep from 8 to about midnight, wakes up to be nursed for a little bit, falls back asleep (all this is great) then wakes up for the day at 4:30 a.m. (this is the sucky part).

well yeah we have a non-negotiable start in your own bed and if you wake up in the middle of the night and want to sleep with us then come on in because the princess and i have burned more than our allotment of frustrating 2-5am rocking rule. so yeah the getting them to sleep in the first place is a whole different thing.

sleep from 8 to about midnight, wakes up to be nursed for a little bit, falls back asleep (all this is great)

personally i don't think the nursing at midnight is great. but who the hell knows, every baby is different. we tried this thing for awhile that i think is termed in several places "the dream feed" (...) where at like 11pm you give your six-month-old (or whatever) a bottle while he/she's asleep. the idea being that the extra milk will obviate any hunger pangs in the night and everybody sleeps through. well, he woke up at 2am and 4am like clockwork. and the day - the VERY DAY - that we did not do the "dream feed" he slept through the night. logic!!

we enjoyed a summer of pretty great sleeping (after a few months of terrible sleeping)...now she's doing fine, but is waking up super early, even if she goes to bed later. oh well, not going to stress about it...

update: asshole upstairs neighbors moved out. new neighbors moved in but we still weren't sleep training. baby's sleep started getting worse and worse, finally decided to just let her cry for a while. she fell asleep pretty quickly, a couple of nights in a row. but i was stressed the new neighbors would complain about her crying. went upstairs to explain about the crying during sleep training, new neighbor said "oh we hadn't noticed. we're pretty heavy sleepers." so we went into serious sleep training mode over the past week or so. it's been going well, had a couple of nights where she basically slept through the night, and the rest of the time she's at least sleeping for longer chunks before waking up and crying. also she's been sick and teething so i think that caused some of the wake-ups.

dude that is awesome!

we're essentially doing the ferber thing (let her cry for a predetermined amount of time before going in and comforting her briefly, then putting her back down) but jumped straight to the longer time periods before comforting because i think she's old enough to understand what's happening.

also it was funny the first night because after about 5 minutes of screaming and crying, it turned into her just yelling angry gibberish at us, like MOMMY BREEAASSHCKAA LLAAMMAS! KREESCCHAA BAALLA MOMMMY!"

yeah it's been a relief because her sleep was getting so bad - she needed us to comfort her to sleep but was getting too big to be comfortably held so she'd just be tossing and turning.

Congrats on getting better neighbors and better sleep!

i'm starting to think we'll be embarking on some version of CIO next weekend (waiting until after our dr appt on wednesday)

ok, we kinda started this tonight. i'm giving a live action update. i put her down at around 11:20, set the alarm for 3 minutes. she cried hysterically. at 3 minutes i checked on her, didn't pick her up but i told her i loved her and that it's time for sleep. she cried for the next five minutes. i checked in again. ten minutes. checked in again. 8 minutes into the next set of ten, she finally just got quiet. i haven't checked in on her yet -- giving her a few seconds before i creak the door open to look (her mother is on the other side of the room as her so i assume everything is okay) -- but maybe she put herself to sleep? that would be awesome.

she's asleep. thank god.

hopefully it'll just get easier from here on out.

she pretty much slept through the night! a couple times she woke up, cried for a few minutes, but went back to sleep. she woke up at 8! pretty miraculous.

when we went through this I thought it was so strange to learn that sleep patterns are a learned behavior

cool that you guys are having some success with this stuff!
we're in a weird stage w/ our 26 month old where it is just totally unpredictable.
well, it's predictable that she'll go right to sleep, but she might wake up at 4;45am, 6am, 7am, even 8am sometimes. anytime before six, we're trying to go in and explain to her that it's not time to wake up yet. which has worked occasionally and also failed miserably.

Ours has just turned 3 and we're still in with her. We never tried ferber or anthing like that, she wasn't waking a great deal or for long periods but it was persistent and ultimately it was easier to be in the room with her and shush her back than actually having to get out of bed to do it. Obviously she's institutionalised to it now and it's hard to see how we'll break it, but otoh it's not so bad when she doesn't have a cold or whatever. Which of course is most of the time.

I keep reading it as 'febreezisation'

my baby is 13 months btw, I wouldn't really bother trying much before that (with my two) let alone at 3 or 6 months!

Birds tweeting.
Sunlight playfully peeking through the curtains.
The strange experience of waking up in the morning of my own accord and not too a screaming baby...

The first time that happened for me I ran to my kid's room in a panic, assuming some horrible tragedy had befallen him during the night.

haha! I've been there.