Sleep training

Baby is about 6.25 months. Right now, she sleeps in bed with my wife and I. The good thing is, she sleeps through the night, every night, waking up only a little bit to nurse. The bad thing is, she never ever sleeps unless she is in bed with my wife or on top of my wife on the couch. She has slept on me like once, and she never sleeps on her own. This means she doesn't really nap very much, maybe an hour/hour and a half per day at most, if my wife has time to sit on the couch and let her nap on top of her.

So we're talking about sleep training. The main reasons we want her to sleep in the crib or cosleeper are related to convenience for us: it would be nice if we could put her down for a nap on her own for an couple of hours each day while we get other things done, and my wife would like to be able to stretch out while she sleeps. But I'm also not sure if the baby isn't getting enough sleep, since we don't go to bed until about 10 (though the baby usually falls asleep around 9) and she doesn't really nap. She seems pretty energetic, but the baby books talk about babies going to bed at like 6:30 or 7 and napping 2-3 hours during the day.

So: should we try to sleep train or just be happy that the baby sleeps through the night? Any good sleep training tips or methods or books to recommend?

We're thinking about starting out by trying to sleep in the cosleeper for at least part of the night, since she'll still be able to see us and go to bed at the same time as us but hopefully get used to sleeping on her own. But maybe it's better to just go full-out and try to get her in the crib first?

"She seems pretty energetic, but the baby books talk about babies going to bed at like 6:30 or 7 and napping 2-3 hours during the day."

So I don't have any advice for your particular situation (as my baby is 1) younger than yours and 2) doesn't have many sleep issues at this point) but I can say that you shouldn't worry about what baby books say is the norm. If you daughter wasn't getting enough sleep you'd probably know by this point since she'd be flipping out left and right from exhaustion and you'd have torn half your hair out.

yeah probably. still would be nice to sleep train for our convenience.

last night we tried waiting until she fell asleep in bed with us then transferring her to the cosleeper, which had been warming up with a heating pad. didn't work, she basically woke up and started crying right away.

Actually I do have one other suggestion (gleaned from conversations from other parents at group). Assuming you have a normal routine (i.e. M-F 9-5, etc) try to make any routine changes happen on Friday evenings, that way you can make a couple of attempts (put baby down in new way, fuss, sooth, try again, etc) on a couple of nights where you can both sleep late the next day if things don't work out immediately.

going to try to put this into effect starting on Friday. kinda worried. we decided to just go all-out and try to get her to nap in the crib and sleep in at night at the same time, figured it would send fewer mixed messages. she is not going to be happy about it though.

well this sucks

my wife and i did the cry it out method, cole took to that in 3 days. Of course he has been a fantastic sleeper since the day he was born.

how's it goin n/a?

ugh. i think i posted about it on another thread but we're essentially taking a break from it for now, at least for a short while. the first weekend we tried a couple of variations on no-cry solutions. it turns out they are bullshit, they pretty much all rely on some amount of crying. then we got into an issue about the noise with our upstairs neighbors that kind of put things on hold. we got that settled down, with the understanding that we'd try to keep the noise down if possible. so then we came up with a new method where first we'd try to get her used to sleeping in the cosleeper next to us, thinking maybe if she could see us and be in the bedroom with us, it might be easier. the idea was then once she was used to that, we'd move the cosleeper further from the bed, then into the next room, etc. however, my wife has trouble waking up enough to move the baby into the cosleeper continuously through the night (understandably). and now the baby is teething pretty badly, so we decided to wait until the worst of that blows over before we get back into serious sleep training. we need to figure it out. i wish we could just do a cry-it-out method but we really can't with these neighbors. we even talked about my wife taking the baby to her mom's house for a week to try and get started on real sleep training (ie crying it out).

are you sure you want to do cry it out? read all the pro/anti articles?

im all for the crying it out. we also bought these rockabye baby cd's which i put on my ipod and played for him which seemed to help.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DPGVED9SL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

and this thing called the sleep sheep.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qqb5TqHsL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

and nick the idea of sarah taking her to her mothers seems like a viable option.

ha, we have the sleep sheep. it's not that i really want her to cry it out, i'm just not sure what else is going to work. she's so dependent on being next to my wife and nursing to be able to sleep. she literally does not sleep at all unless she is right next to my wife. and like i said, the "no-cry" solutions we looked at still involved crying, you just let the baby cry for a certain amount of time (some of them have you wait like 5 minutes, others have you pick her up as soon as she starts crying) before you comfort her. so there's going to be crying no matter what.

thats what we did, first night 5 minutes, second night 10, etc...30 max. by night three he was out instantly.

also that is one reason why my wife and i refused to let him sleep in the bed with us since day one...cole was in his crib within a week and sleeping on his stomach. YEAH WE ARE HORRIBLE! Haha.

on his stomach?? i'm calling the police.

exactly. he was completely miserable on his back.

definitely wait until the teething has passed to try anything fwiw

but yeah there's gonna be some crying. you just have to suck it up. yr neighbors have to be told to fuck off, basically.

There is going to be crying, it's how much there is that makes the difference. Whether you agree with recent studies about the effects of prolonged crying on a baby's brain (and I don't mean 30 minutes crying, proper crying it out is shutting the door and leaving them no matter what). I agree that the neighbours need to mind their own and buy ear plugs if they're really having such a hard time with it.

"Whether you agree with recent studies about the effects of prolonged crying on a baby's brain"

It's nonsense. No one knows anything and they certainly can't isolate that three/four nights of even the most severe cry-it-out sleep training has had any long term effect on anyone. Probably all of our parents were sleep trained that way and sure they're all psychos but they aren't any whackier than the next gen of Ferberized or gentle sleep folks.

Should clarify I mean that it's nonsense as it applies to sleep training or scheduling or whatever. Obviously neglecting a screaming child for hours, days on end appears to be pretty harmful.

Like I said, do your reading up and reach your own conclusions (unless you're a scientist yourself!) IMO there's no right or wrong way to do it (Though obviously some things are beyond the pale) Personally I can't stand the 'it didn't do us/them/me any harm way of thinking about it without doing research, and for me personally my problem with crying it out isn't just about chemicals in the brain, I don't want to leave my baby to cry for a couple of evenings so that they get to the point where they stop crying because they know no-one's going to come to them.

As I said, other parents read the research and reach different opinions to mine? That's just fine.

n/a, did you decide what to do, did you have another crack at it this weekend?

no. i think my wife is going to take her to her mom's house next week. btw she checked out the newest edition of Ferber's book, and the whole intro is about how he thinks he has a bad rep as the "cry it out" guy, and what he really believes in is "controlled crying," which doesn't really sound that different from the no-cry methods we read about. also he says he regrets not writing more about co-sleeping in the past.

she'll come home all set.

Fingers crossed here that she will.

I agree that Ferber was portrayed as the bad guy, from what I've read he definitely doesn't recommend the traditional cry it out method, I feel quite sorry for him really.

Did you read any co-sleeping books beforehand? I didn't really co-sleep with A, he slept in the moses basket next to the bed though he did often end up staying in the bed with us. I'm thinking that it would probably be safer to do it properly this time and need to find a good book or two to read...

"I don't want to leave my baby to cry for a couple of evenings so that they get to the point where they stop crying because they know no-one's going to come to them."

I'm more into my baby learning to sooth themselves to sleep so my wife and I aren't waking up every two hours to reassure him. Feel like both of us are better parents when we aren't exhausted.

"As I said, other parents read the research and reach different opinions to mine?"

What research exactly are you talking about? I've read a bit on this and I don't believe there are any studies which indicate that controlled crying/CIO sleep-training/sleep-scheduling cause "brain damage" or whatever nonsense baby fear mongers are been pedaling this week (look closely at any of the research papers cited for example by Dr Sears and you'll find every one of them basically address either a) babies who experience severe trauma and neglect or b) babies who are already on the extreme end of fussy/crying). The only study I've heard actually on this subject at all is one done in Australia recently which basically concluded that controlled crying results in better rested infants and saner parents.

Right, crying it out is not the same as controlled crying and all the other methods out there. Crying it out is closing the door on your LO and leaving them to it. I've done sleep training, A has cried, just not with me shutting the door and leaving him to it. Thought I'd made enough of a distinction, but obviously not.

And as for the role cortisone can play on a baby's brain

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/apr/21/leaving-baby-to-cry-brain-development-damage And there's a section in 'The science of parenting' book that I can't find much of a reference to online http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Parenting-Jaak-Panksepp/dp/0756618800

Have to go and pick A up now otherwise I'd see what else I could point to.

I really don't think we feel all that differently, just a misunderstanding over terminology...

Penelope Leach doesn't cite one study which claims controlled crying or CIO causes brain damage (because these studies do not exist). That Sunderland book is similar nonsense, I imagine, although I confess I haven't read it. I have read <a href=http://www.askdrsears.com/html/10/handout2.asp>;this</a> which gets cited quite a bit with Sunderland and it's a <a href=http://mainstreamparenting.com/2008/06/25/of-sources-and-straw-houses-the-annotated-dr-sears-handout-on-cio/>;joke</a>.

The question is not whether or not cortisol plays a part in brain development. It's whether or not the limited crying present in cry-it-out causes deleterious effects on infant brain development. And again every study indicates that it does not.

Penelope Leach doesn't cite one study which claims controlled crying or CIO causes brain damage (because these studies do not exist)

Oh, I must have missed the bit where I said they did. Silly me. Except I have never said that CIO causes brain damage.

Alex, do you actually believe that CIO is an acceptable method of sleep control, as opposed to controlled crying, or are you just arguing for arguing's sake?

"Except I have never said that CIO causes brain damage."

Hey you cited her article, not me. It sez it right in the url. Also you alluded to "recent studies about the effects of prolonged crying on a baby's brain", I assumed you were talking about her "recent studies".

I think people should do what they find works for them. But no I don't think even full blown night/nap time CIO is "unacceptable" in principle.

honestly the idea of "let them cry until they stop" seems like it could be - depending on the situation - i.e. if they're colicky or whatever that could be... two hours? - horrendously disturbing for the parents, regardless of whatever's going on with the baby. my own breaking point is probably 15 minutes at the outside.

listening to yr kid cry while you do nothing = the feeling that time has stopped

even so, it must be done, at least to some extent, if they are ever gonna learn to sleep without you

i definitely feel bad about letting her cry for any extended period of time. i feel like if i was going to do a real cry it out method, it would have had to have been when she was really little. but now that she's 7+ months and understands connections a little more, i think just leaving her in her crib in the dark with no response and no phase-in would make her think either that something was wrong or that she was in trouble, making it less likely that she would fall asleep. i think my wife is going to do one of the graduated methods where you let them cry a little longer each night before responding and soothing.

^^^that was mostly what we did but even then you still have to sit through like 10 straight minutes of crying. and then 15 straight minutes of crying. and then 20 straight minutes of crying. etc. then eventually it stops and they only cry a little bit before putting themselves to sleep each night.

and then eventually they don't cry at all.

nick, cole was around 7-8 months when we started the cry it out with him.

Hi.

We're going to get a pack n play for the sleep training, take it home afterwards and set it up in the nursery, and then switch her to the crib a little while later. Fingers crossed!

Vicky, I did do quite a bit of reading about cosleeping before we had the baby. I was really into attachment parenting a la Sears/Motherhood Magazine and still mostly am, but something had to give. As it is, I can't ever leave the house in the evening. No one, not even Nick, can get her to sleep. There are lots of other reasons, but anyway, yeah, I'm kind of shocked by how much I'm feeling Ferber.

thats how it started with cole, and we didn't do co-sleeping. we rocked him to sleep for 7 months, then my wife went out for the night and i rocked him for 4 hours straight and he would not sleep. I got in the car with him and drove around for an hour and he passed out. The next night, we started the cry it out/ferber.

"when my wife went out for the night and i rocked him for 4 hours straight and he would not sleep"

Ouch. I'm joke around that Dalton can't stand my touch because when I lay him down to sleep he's out in minutes whereas he tortures my wife for like half an hour plus sometimes.

he'd fall asleep for two minutes, wake up, cry, fall asleep, wake up cry. I put him in and out of the crib like 15 times. I was ready to pull my hair out.

KitCat, I'm with you on something having to give! I always fed A to sleep but it was the two hourly waking that drove me insane, to the point where I'd be walking through a park and just burst into tears I was so tired. So yeah, night 'weaning' was started when he was around 7 months old. I didn't totally night wean him, but definitely tried to ensure that he wasn't just wanting a snack out of habit! I hate how people assume that attachment parenting is rigid and can't involve any sleep training at all, it's crap. It's just how you do it.

In fact I hate the labelling that happens. You decide what works for you, some will be one style, others will be something different. Does it matter so long as you and baby are happy? I hadn't heard of attachment parenting until A was over 12 months old. It sounds as though it's quite similar to how I like to parent, but some of it is very different indeed.

I feel like the biggest issue I have with attachment parenting is that the many its biggest proponents (both in print and even more noticeably on parenting message boards--not a dig at anyone here seriously) strike me as completely crazy/inflexible/judgmental (not that mainstream parents on message boards are anything to write home about either--although I can understand their knee-jerk defensiveness a little better). Which is too bad because most of AP I find personally really compelling (it largely was how my mother parented me and how my wife and I are parenting out son).

parents can be self-righteous about just about anything

lol too true!

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.

this long weekend we're going to try to work on

* getting evie to go to bed and go to sleep without one of us being in there singing songs or holding her hand until she's totally asleep (which can take 45 minutes - an hour); and
* sleeping in her bed all night

any tips for either? i might actually sleep on the floor in her room for a night or two in hopes that she'll be more likely to stay in her bed and get used to being there all night. but i think both are just going to have to involve being tough and dealing with a lot of crying and screaming

dr. ferber imho

yeah i guess. that's what we did when she was a baby.

shes a bit old for that no? i think you at least need them not to be able to get up and walk! I have no advice for you since we still do this with a 6 year old although after reading a book and turning the lights out she does fall asleep in about 5 minutes so its not exactly difficult for us. We have progressed from last year when she insisted we lay in her bed with her. Now we get to sit on her beanbag and look at our ipads or whatever.

This thing helped immensely with her fears of the dark, btw:

http://www.dreamlites.com/Largeimages/rainbowunicorn.png

http://www.dreamlites.com/

Listening to him cry makes me furious. At myself, at him, at the stupid sleep experts. Thank god it finally seems to be working. We used a "chair method" (sitting on a chair next to his crib, every few nights moving the chair closer to the door). We don't have the collective stomach to let him cry in his room by himself so chair method was apparently more "gentle" but would take longer to work. It doesn't feel very gentle, though, to sit and watch him scream for up to 70 minutes every time. Poor wee man. He is 8 months old.

this long weekend we're going to try to work on

* getting evie to go to bed and go to sleep without one of us being in there singing songs or holding her hand until she's totally asleep (which can take 45 minutes - an hour); and
* sleeping in her bed all night

lol

as usual we made some progress on this and then we went on vacation and it all went out the window. she still comes in and gets in our bed every night and i don't know what to do about it. i wouldn't care except i'm not getting any good sleep bc i'm a light sleeper and she likes to be awkwardly pressed against me or kick me in the head or scrape me with her toenails. i end up on the couch every single night.

learn to sleep already

ha is that addressed to her or to me

that is addressed to my 7-mo old son

been doing the cry-it-out/Ferber thing for a few days, it's sort of working (altho not as quickly as it did with my daughter)

I gotta say nothing is funnier than my son glaring at me while angrily sucking on a pacifier

i wouldn't care except i'm not getting any good sleep bc i'm a light sleeper and she likes to be awkwardly pressed against me or kick me in the head or scrape me with her toenails. i end up on the couch every single night.

IANAP but I wonder if flipping this around would make her want to sleep in her own bed, i.e. figure out a way to make sleeping in your bed a really uncomfortable experience for her so that she just voluntarily goes to her own bed

it's really just a matter of making myself get up and put her back in her bed every time but that's hard when you're tired and drifting in and out of sleep and know that it's just going to lead to crying and yelling. at that moment it's a hell of a lot easier just to go sleep on the couch.

i moved to the couch and now they both end up on the couch with me. wtf?

you're just too snuggly I guess

I GUESS

justine, the only flaw in your suggestion is that little kids dont get uncomfortable. They can sleep in the craziest positons with people talking loudly over the top of them and they dont move

for example, trying to wake up H they other morning pp and I were having a whole conversation over him and then pp was clapping his hands and poking him and all WAKE UP and the response was continued, even snoozy snores

yes evie will occasionally try to sleep on the couch with me, which is worse. usually i get up and go back to bed and leave her on the couch and then lay awake worrying that she will sleep-pee on the couch.

so J's sleep is pretty terrible. he's almost 12 months now. like waking up every 1-2 hours, usually to nurse. his sleep has always been pretty bad, but there have been brief intervals of great sleep that make us think he's changing, but then he'll be teething or sick or in a growth spurt or its too hot or cold in the room and everything falls apart. as all you guys know, there's like 100 reasons you could come up with on the spot for an given fussy night, so it's hard to pinpoint what exactly is going on. it also doesn't always correlate to what kind of day he had, like if the napping was good, ate some good solid foods, had a lot of stimulation, etc. sometimes that stuff correlates to a good night's sleep, but not always.

newborn days were hell for sleep (obviously), but it was awesome from months 2-3, when he sometimes had 6-hour stretches and had maybe 2-3 brief wake-ups. at 4 months, shit fell apart pretty much and the longest stretches we'd get were 2-3 hours. it's been pretty much like that since then -- between 7pm bedtime and 6am wake-up for the day, he'll be up every 2-3 hours typically, sometimes every 1-2 hours on a really bad night.

there have been some good nights starting around 8 months, where he'd wake up maybe twice throughout the night. but every time we get a week like that, something happens and it all goes to shit - a cold, teething, who knows.

so bottom-line is we don't know what to do. we're trying to think of ways to really cut down the nursing during the night, but like i said, even a good solid foods day doesn't always equate to a good night's sleep. neither of us are really predisposed towards the "cry it out" method, and we have good evidence of J's crying stamina in other situations that we don't think it would be very successful. J's cried for 45 minutes to an hour straight in car rides, even when totally exhausted, burning out his throat and sounding like he's gonna vomit, so we're not keen to try that.

in my experience, you'll ultimately have to do some kind of "cry it out" method, unfortunately. there are gentler variations, like the ferber method - they take longer and are more of a pain, but they are gentler. i think you'll find that it will suck really bad for a night or two, but you'll start seeing positive changes pretty quickly.

Marcos, nip it in the bud. Do Ferber. It's not even really healthy for your baby to be waking up every 1-2 hours at 12 months, and it's probably making it harder for you to be good parents too.

And you have to make some rules for yourselves about the "exceptions" cuz right now it sounds like you have exceptions for everything (teething, growth spurt, bad day, etc.). I've been there buddy, but it ain't good. Sleep training is partly also about training yourselves, imo.

And especially if he is waking up to nurse, that means his stomach is accustomed to eating every 1-2 hours. I don't think it's going to get unaccustomed to that unless you change something, or at least it will take a very very long time to happen on its own.

agree that some version of "cry it out" has to happen. in my experience. we aren't quite all the way there yet with our lil guy (8 mos) who is still waking up at least once a night to nurse, and if he wakes up a 2nd time I put him back to sleep myself (no bottle etc.) So he'll sleep, but he needs to be held/rocked to sleep, and it will be letting go of that that I expect will involve a few nights of serious crying

I sometimes think human babies are probably best adapted to sleeping with their moms on a mat on the floor, and not sleeping alone in their cribs, and that's probably why we do indeed need to "train" them to sleep through the night in a crib. I'm not really a big believer in the primacy of supposedly "natural" human habits though, and I think we're pretty adaptable to a wide variety of modes of living. If you can handle co-sleeping, more power to you, but we couldn't. And if you're not going to co-sleep, it seems like some kind of crying method is required.

And especially if he is waking up to nurse, that means his stomach is accustomed to eating every 1-2 hours. I don't think it's going to get unaccustomed to that unless you change something, or at least it will take a very very long time to happen on its own.

yea based on the good nights we've had, (which only happen probably 25% of the time) there's some hope that he'd 'naturally outgrow' the need for night nursing. but i'm not confident anymore that that would happen anytime soon. night-weaning in some form has to be a serious part of this.

we don't co-sleep, which i'm grateful for. i feel like that would be an entirely different problem we'd then need to deal with -- how to get him out of our room as he grows older. at the beginning i think we liked the idea on principle but it just didn't work for any of us. not even really for J, b/c he couldn't handle us shifting positions or really moving at all. and we couldn't handle his moving, either.

also i have horror stories from my brother and his wife, who co-slept and had to "forcibly evict" their 3 year-old who still wanted to nurse throughout the night. that freaked us out enough to move j to a crib eventually in his own room around 6 months

how often does j nap? bee was a terrible sleeper until her naps were cut out. now shes often asleep in 5 minutes and for all of the night mostly. im guessing at 12 months there are probably multiple naps. can you cut out the last one?

IANAP(yet) but I was reading about sleep regression after aero's post either here or in another parenting thread and could that be part of the problem? I don't know what impact that would have on your approach but if it seems to fit, it might at least give you some hope for it being temporary.

I very very vividly remember being a small child and 1) not being able to go to sleep unless a parent was in the room with me and 2) getting up and getting in bed with my parents at every available opportunity (I even remember climbing out of my crib). It was 100% about being scared/anxious about something and there was such palpable relief at being nestled next to a parent. It was like toddler Xanax.

I was a generally a very worried little kid, though. I hope this child doesn't inherit that tendency, the poor thing.

fwiw, we've never enforced a policy of complete dead time all night or anything. We sleep in the same room for now, and we still often go to her if she calls out (which is rarely more than once a night), and if she gets completely hysterical then we absolutely go to her, but we do have a "no picking up" rule unless she's sick or something. We also found that picking her up never seemed to calm her down anyway, in fact she'd get more agitated as she came more out of sleep. But you have to learn your own child, they're all slightly different.

how often does j nap? bee was a terrible sleeper until her naps were cut out. now shes often asleep in 5 minutes and for all of the night mostly. im guessing at 12 months there are probably multiple naps. can you cut out the last one?

― "Max's Original Starship" Vol. 3 (sunny successor), Thursday, September 12, 2013 3:00 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wait, you went no naps at all? We did start a no naps after x hour policy at one point (now it's not an issue because she's down to one nap a day) because we found that if she woke up after 4 or so she couldn't fall asleep at night.

also i have horror stories from my brother and his wife, who co-slept and had to "forcibly evict" their 3 year-old who still wanted to nurse throughout the night. that freaked us out enough to move j to a crib eventually in his own room around 6 months

― marcos, Thursday, September 12, 2013 1:53 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, we co-sleep and don't really have this problem. Maybe because we didn't really breastfeed, but my girl's almost 3 and sleeping with her doesn't bother us a bit. Our boy slept in the same room with us consistently until he was like 7 before we started to ween him off. I mean, as with all aspects of parenting, different people and kids are gonna have different results.

xp: if my girl falls asleep ever during the day, she's up until at least midnight. we've had an official no naps policy for almost a year now.

When are kids supposed to stop napping? Fuck.

Seeing the crazy sleep habits of the kids (and parents!) of some co-sleeping families we knew was definitely a factor in our decision not to do it, but it's so anecdotal, and I know a lot of people make it work. Anyway we were also terrified of crushing her and the few times we tried having her in the bed we couldn't fall asleep. We've occasionally had her in the bed on the road now and it's much easier because she's huge and not easily crushable.

K does seem to like sleeping in the bed with us, or with mom anyway, she seems kind of indifferent to sleeping in the bed with me.

evie seems to be in a transitional phase re: naps where if she takes a nap, it's a pain in the ass to get her down at night, but if she doesn't, she's loopy and passing out at 6:30. i assume she still takes a nap at school but i'm not sure.

Our worst phase was when she was getting tired around 3 or 4 o'clock, which was right when my wife would have to take her on a long car-ride to meet me as I was getting off work/she was heading to work.

Yeah I pretty much can't tolerate K by the late afternoon if she doesn't take a nap, sorry K.

IANAP(yet) but I was reading about sleep regression after aero's post either here or in another parenting thread and could that be part of the problem? I don't know what impact that would have on your approach but if it seems to fit, it might at least give you some hope for it being temporary.

I very very vividly remember being a small child and 1) not being able to go to sleep unless a parent was in the room with me and 2) getting up and getting in bed with my parents at every available opportunity (I even remember climbing out of my crib). It was 100% about being scared/anxious about something and there was such palpable relief at being nestled next to a parent. It was like toddler Xanax.

― carl agatha, Thursday, September 12, 2013 3:37 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think the fear of throwing abandonment on top of the anxiety stopped us from doing any kind of cry it out. both of our kids are nighttime worriers and frequent nightmare havers. Just last night bee appeared saying she had had a nightmare that she was at her grandfathers house but the house included a room from our house (our ex-office/spare room filled with crap). Her father was standing at the door to this room yelling RUN! RUN! RUN! This morning she woke up very fretful her grandparents would not show up for grandparents day lunch at her school. Poor kid. So much fretting over nothing.

<3 poor thing!

i mean the cry it out may well have worked fine but really i dont have the stomach for it. My parents were very anti-co-sleep and i was a very very fretful kid who had multiple nightmares per night. it wasn't an option to wake them up so i ended up pretty alone and fearful all the time getting 0-3 hours sleep a night. i cant risk even the slightest chance of that.

Yeah, I have memories of some dark, dark nights of the soul at age 4 or so.

Also, specific memories of two things that were on my parents TV when I went downstairs to tell them I missed them. One was a blonde woman in a white bikini. The other was an explosion!

I had a sleep with the light on phase around ages 4-5, but it subsided. K is relatively well adjusted and non-anxious so far, but I'm a little worried at what's going to happen when we move in a couple of months and she gets her own room.

Marcos, nip it in the bud. Do Ferber.

^^^^^

lifesaver imo.

I didn't see any immediate bad results from the sleep training we did though, and in fact once she hit about 14-15 months she started actually asking to go to sleep when she was tired, like she actually gets annoyed if we prolong putting her in the crib too much.

Obvs can never really know if there was some deeper trauma from it though.

that's one of the joys of parenting, never knowing if something you're doing is causing lifelong trauma until it's too late

you can only hope that they can convert that trauma into artistic success. it's the best you can hope for.

Anxious kid high fives to sunny and how's life.

FYI I don't think my parents did anything to make me anxious as a kid (all of their traumatic parenting mistakes came later lolol). My mom has told me that she went against all of the parenting advice of the day about not picking up crying babies, etc. I just had a lot of trouble on my tiny mind.

I find there's a lot of nuance to all these things that isn't really covered by any of the advice books/methods, whether Sears, Ferber, or the French asshole who runs Tribeca Pediatrics and whose name I have probably deliberately blocked out (he advocates full cry it out at 2 months). For example, there are different kinds of cries, especially when they get older and more cognizant, and you start to learn the differences. So I find the Sears idea that if you don't respond to every cry you're somehow sending a message to your child that his needs don't matter a little hysterical, and at the same time I find the idea of not responding as a policy very cold and gross. And there are also certain kinds of cries that are just hysterical, overtired or overhungry cries where your "response" doesn't matter unless it's food or putting them to sleep.

that's one of the joys of parenting, never knowing if something you're doing is causing lifelong trauma until it's too late

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, September 12, 2013 5:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol otm sadly

I find there's a lot of nuance to all these things that isn't really covered by any of the advice books/methods, whether Sears, Ferber, or the French asshole who runs Tribeca Pediatrics and whose name I have probably deliberately blocked out (he advocates full cry it out at 2 months). For example, there are different kinds of cries, especially when they get older and more cognizant, and you start to learn the differences. So I find the Sears idea that if you don't respond to every cry you're somehow sending a message to your child that his needs don't matter a little hysterical, and at the same time I find the idea of not responding as a policy very cold and gross. And there are also certain kinds of cries that are just hysterical, overtired or overhungry cries where your "response" doesn't matter unless it's food or putting them to sleep.

― #fomo that's the motto (Hurting 2), Thursday, September 12, 2013 6:16 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also otm

we feel like J is in a transitional napping place right now. he still does a short morning nap around 9am or so, and a longer afternoon nap from 1:30-3pm roughly. we're thinking we'll eliminate the morning nap pretty soon, though J can still be crabby enough that it seems necessary for the time being.

The long afternoon nap is a beautiful thing. I think my enjoyment of life went up like 50% once that happened -- you have more time do do stuff with the family on weekend mornings cuz you don't have to rush back, and then you get a nice long afternoon break.

yea i'm excited about going down to one nap. i remember when we we're still at 3 naps a day and it seemed like you basically couldn't do anything (though we took a lot of long walks with J sleeping in the ergo). going down to 2 naps seemed like our day totally opened up, though it doesn't feel that way anymore

Obvs can never really know if there was some deeper trauma from it though.

― #fomo that's the motto (Hurting 2), Thursday, September 12, 2013 4:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i seriously doubt it. i know a lot of my fears relating to this I project on them.

For example, there are different kinds of cries, especially when they get older and more cognizant, and you start to learn the differences.

This is definitely key.

Beatrice was such a terrible sleeper as an infant. she'd sleep for max an hour at a time. Usually more like 10-20 minutes. We ended up buying a miracle blanket after trying pretty much everything else and she got a solid 8-12 hrs a night from that point on. Even when she grew out of it she maybe woke up one a night.

ha, the miracle blanket! it's amazing: 1) how much things change week to week, month to month, in that first year; and 2) how much i totally forget about those earlier changes! i had to think for a few minutes, "miracle blanket, miracle blanket, i know i've heard about this" and i google it and remember that, oh yea, we put J in that swaddle every day in the first 3 months. lol

it really is a miracle!!

its the only thing i give at baby showers and it never ever gets used. im not sure why. i did give one to pp's best friend and his wife fairly recently and when their kiddo was a few months old we got a 2am text just saying "THANK YOU"

miracle blanket never did anything for us, at least no more than standard swaddling, but i know it works for lots of people

we've started a new routine where we put her down but only stay in her room for 10 minutes (telling her how much time is left), then we leave, we close her bedroom door most of the way but i sit in the hallway where she can see me but can't talk to me. it's still an incremental move to her going to sleep by herself but this way i can play on my phone while waiting for her to fall asleep instead of just sitting in the dark, which makes it more tolerable. she had an epic tantrum the first night but since then it's been pretty smooth.

I have no idea why I started reading this thread, but a couple of my friends have been won over by this. I had to google it to even find out wtf it is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Easidream-Ewan-the-Dream-Sheep/dp/B0040JSN7Y

xp yea as i mentioned we used the miracle blanket all the time b/c it was much easier to get a cozy swaddling wrap than by using a regular blanket. so we appreciated the 4 or 5 blankets we received as gifts from people

lol naps, after the first six months we should have been so lucky

as to "sleep training": I'm just glad we made it out alive and still married.

^^^ this

never thought to see if there was a sleep training thread on ILX. Here's what I just posted to some private facebook group:

Hello, Dad here looking for some help for my wife and our baby Opal. Sorry for this epic post but this seems like a great community and I thought I’d reach out.

Opal has been a “spirited”(fussy!) baby since birth. Initially she’d only sleep on one of us, she hated the bassinet no matter what we tried. We moved onto careful co-sleeping (mattress on floor) and that was ok for a little bit but eventually Opal would just be up every 20 minutes kicking and fussing and crying, so nobody was getting any sleep.

So around 4mo on the recommendation of our pediatrician we did a full cry it out training in her crib in the nursery. Everybody said “oh it will take 2 nights, maybe 3”. Over a week later she was finally sleeping through the night, however she would cry and scream every time she went down, and she would only nap while being carried outside in an ergo…no crib, no stroller, just walking outside, which got very trying for my wife. A month later she was still screaming to sleep and not napping well.

SO, around 5 months and a week we hired a sleep consultant. She gave us good tips and helped come up with a Ferber-style interval training program to try to fix nights and get naps going and it was pretty successful. Within a few weeks she was going down around 6:30 and sleeping until 6-ish, with 1 night feeding around 1 or 2 am. She finally started napping however never long enough.

The real problem through all of this is even when it was going well, she would cry and scream her head off overtime she went down, every nap, every evening! Usually less than 15 minutes (if more in the evening we’d soothe her without picking up and that would work).

So we felt like it was working and was trying to accept the fact that maybe she’s one of those babies that just has to cry like crazy every time they go to sleep. But then the sleeping habits started to get worse again.

We hit 8 months and think we’re dealing with an 8 month sleep regression (and it wasn’t perfect before that), plus she’s definitely teething, and maybe transitioning naps. Then last saturday was daylight savings time and she got a cold this week, so it’s been really bad!

We know the cold will pass but we’re trying to figure out why her naps are so short, often we’ll put her down and she’ll cry for 15 minutes, sleep for 20, then wake up crying.

I’m not sure what other information is helpful, she doesn’t have any sleep crutches (we think), she nurses a while before she goes down. We have a simple ritual and there are days where she’ll have been up for a few hours, she’ll rub her eyes and yawn, we put on the sound machine, read a little bit, sing a song, she seems sleepy, we put her down awake…and soon as we leave she cries for 15 minutes. We get her home and she sleeps in her crib for every nap. Her third nap is often nonexistent, it seems like she’s transitioning, but the first two naps are still often really short. We feel like we’re struggling with several issues at once and not sure what else to try.

Sounds like you're having it pretty rough, my sympathies. It's awful when teething & a cold & everything hits all at once. Our daughter is 20 months now and she's always been a terrible daytime napper, taking ages to go down and then waking like clockwork after 25 minutes. I think she was a bit older than yours, maybe a year, when we spoke to a sleep consultant and really tried to sort it, with modest results. In theory the problem was that she wasn't connecting sleep cycles so we had to try and help her do that - in practice that involved being in with her and, before she was due to wake up (either by timing or by her breathing becoming louder/shallower), starting to 'sh-pat' - rub her back (she was on her front by then) and go 'shhhh', and keep doing it as she woke up in the hope that a) she would go back to sleep and b) longer term she would managed to do it without assistance. We had some success with a), b) not so much. She did start to nap for longer but we pretty much always stayed in with her, maybe she did go a bit longer without assistance or go back easier if she did wake but we never achieved the dream of getting quality down time while she slept for an hour or more unassisted. Writing this it's incredible how much I seem to have forgotten given that it seemed to occupy our every waking moment at the time! I think at the beginning we really did have to persist with the sh-patting, even if it seemed like she was wide awake & upset and would never go back she eventually would, even if it took another 10-15 mins; gradually it got better till you could rest your hand on her just in in case but she barely woke or went back easily if she did.

thank you, that's interesting, but goes against some of the theories of sleep training, where you're creating a crutch and she won't be able to go back to sleep without you there. We do that at night if she wakes up and screams for over 15 minutes, go in with the interval check and pat and shh, but she's too alert during naps. If she even goes down soon as we walk in the room she lifts her head alert and crying!

Dan, firstly sorry to hear this, sounds terrible and have seen friends and relatives going through the same, takes such a toll on everyone.

I have an odd perspective on this as my wife is Chinese and first few years of our children's lives were in China with her family. Coming back to the UK we were surprised at all the sleep training stuff our friends and my family were talking about, this is completely unheard-of in China, but then we found out they kept their babies in different bedrooms, structured days to what seemed like an insane amount, followed huge lists of arcane, often contradictory rules - it all sounds like following an instruction manual for an exotic pet, not doing the very normal thing people have done since the start of time. Not saying it was easy for us, anything but, but I'm not sure how it's such a traumatic experience for all of us over here when we are awash with people who are supposed to be studying it. I'm not really a "wisdom of the east" guy usually, but really sounds like we've got something wrong in this particular case.

So anyway, a hippyish friend has said that our experiences tie in to this - http://www.continuum-concept.org/cc_defined.html - cannot vouch for it personally at all, but she swears by it, though it looks like a complete lifestyle transplant for a couple of years at least. Worth a look if you are desperate at least.

thank you, that's interesting, but goes against some of the theories of sleep training, where you're creating a crutch and she won't be able to go back to sleep without you there.

yeah well that's more or less correct; although we haven't really chanced it she probably could go for an hour or more without us there now, but that's after the best part of a year and dropping down to one nap.

Continuum concept, attachment parenting, gentle parenting, I would imagine many western parents looking for answers have come across those or similar ideas. That's more the route we've gone down, partly from inclination and partly because although naps were bad she wasn't really much of a crying baby at all & it really would have felt wrong. At the risk of sounding judgmental I do think we in the west are too quick to try and force routines & separate sleeping - I think we can all agree that capitalism is the real enemy here. (otoh I'm sure not every Chinese baby sleeps happily through the night either!) At a certain point I'm sure you have to try whatever works for you as well as for her and it sounds like you've reached that point, Dan, I hope you find something that works.

To be clear our older son didn't sleep through the night until he was nearly 2, but it was alright, he needed a feed or to be held, we'd all be back to sleep within half an hour. But when I hear my sister describe nights taking care of her baby it sounds like a nightmare.

we were theoretically ok w/ attachment parenting but it didn't work. Our baby was so fussy that she wouldn't even sleep, she'd kick and scream through the night causing neither her or my wife to get any sleep, which just wasn't tenable.

now both her and I have a bad cold so it's a bit of a mess around here!

We thought we were finally getting somewhere with nights - more or less sleeping through till 4am - then she got a cold and it all went downhill. That was over a month ago and she's only just getting better!

colds will always be rough. best to embrace chaos and regroup after recovery. there's truth in some of the continuum concept stuff, but their description of western hospital birth is outdated. for example, I think most hospitals do skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth now, if it's safe. the appeal to evolution within the text also feels a bit overplayed. we would not have evolved into today's low infant mortality rates without the modern hospital birth. for the whole population, there must be an optimum somewhere between the hospital and continuum concept birthing center approach. on a case by case basis, I would never judge someone for doing whatever works for them (if it's safe for all of course).

we did sleep training at around 6 months. I stayed up for all of one night, soothing the baby every so often but never picking him up. he has slept through the night (when not sick) ever since. lately he wakes up around 4:30 or 5AM, though, which is a separate problem. strength to all struggling with it itt. I'll be joining you once again here shortly.

I finally read that link about the Continuum Concept. As mentioned above, I think conventional wisdom of western practices now are certainly somewhere in between. My take on these things is that there is no one right answer and you have to pick and choose and see what works. Our hospital was very much about skin-to-skin.

As I mentioned above, we would've been happy to follow that concept, or "attachment parenting", but our baby wouldn't let us! I've read a lot about fussy/"spirited" babies, that something like 17% of babies are just born wired a certain way where she was very very hard to please. We were forced into sleep training as the only way to allow her to get any sleep...and likewise us.

Back to the continuum concept link, we do have scheduled naps, and somewhat scheduled feedings, but based on her needs as well. I think that page presents two extremes that don't really represent the reality. Yes, cry it out and interval checks and things like are needed, but I wouldn't say we "belittle or punish" her for crying!

I am possibly about to embark on some kind of sleep training. after half term. and after the teeth are through. I am dubious that anything will work but I gotta try something. we still rock him to sleep and he's almost a toddler.

Since the posts above…she’s been great. Around 1 year she finally got good. There were some bumps but for the most part she sleeps from 7:30 pm to 7:00 am give or take whiteout too much fuss. And 1 nap at 12:30 which was sometimes over 2 hours but a few weeks ago she hit a regression caused by mental leaps and only sleeps around an hour. Sometimes less. She doesn’t scream but she lies in bed singing and telling stories. I think her mind is just a mile a minute.

Still I consider ourselves lucky after a hellish first year. Being forced into training has gotten us to a point where she’s now a better sleeper than most. At least at night and her nap. She still won’t just nap anywhere.

With ophelia it went so easy, but elisabeth was three hellish years. I was a zombie. Literally didn't know if it was day/night. I wonder now if I just should have done co-sleeping. I feel guilty. :-(

I never got into co-sleeping despite trying it as the only way to get sleep some nights.

So with my eldest, turns out in retrospect he was a great sleeper. We had an awful first 3 months with him, colic/awful screaming most nights, but it eventually settled and he was sleeping through, 12 hours, by about 9 months. Because I still thought of him as a bad sleeper every little blip worried me that he was regressing or whatever. At one year he had a period of being awake about 2-4am and would only be rocked and couldn't be put down! But he's a super sleeper, has been since he got over that.

The baby wasn't so bad to start with and is veeeery slowly improving but every tiny thing throws him. The worst issue is the rocking to sleep. I'm sure with the eldest I just put him in his cot and waited for him to fall asleep. The baby just screams if you leave him in the cot.

Oh and the 5 month and 8/9/10 month regressions were bad

So Casper is a nightmare at sleeping, and he's nearly 13 months now. Emma's broken. What can we do?

Context: he slept quite well as a small baby in the first 4/5 months - only waking 2/3 times a night for a big feed, which was way better than Nora. Then diagnosis, steroids, chemo, 50+ nights in hospital etc blew that out of the window.

Since November he's been on the new treatment and effectively not poorly from his disease - no steroids, no chemo, only one night in hospital (with a temperature) since then, so we've been able to establish something close to a normal routine.

Since January he's been in a cot alongside Em's bed (our bed; I'm still in the spare room), which is open and level with Em's bed for easy access. He wakes every 1-2 hours in the night, and some of those wakings are still relatively big feeds. We put him down circa 7 and he's normally out by 7:30/8pm, but he pretty much never gets through to 10pm (our bedtime and his meds time) without waking at least once and needing settling. Those wakings are happening less often and he is settling quicker overall, but it's still rubbish.

I generally take him and his sister downstairs about 6am so Em can have 90 minutes extra unbroken while I give them breakfast and get Nora ready for nursery.

Em desperately needs some longer periods of unbroken sleep.

Because of his illness and everything we've been through we're very, very loathe to put him through anything stressful like harsh sleep training. He's also, despite his very cheerful demeanour in photos, a stroppy little bastard who cries immediately if he doesn't get what he wants (and then stops instantly if you give him the tinfoil / duplo / toast / sharp kitchen knife / whatever he was reaching for etc etc).

We're generally 'gentle' and baby-led in our approach, but pragmatic, to a degree. What can we do?

I'm leaving off until the 1-year-crazies (technical term) subside tbh. both of mine had periods of waking for HOURS around the time they turned 1, so C is still doing that. Also dropping a nap and has constipation a lot so I think that can wake him.

I can send over the notes I got from someone if you like that I'm planning to use? They sound a bit ambitious though...

Oh and C was a total chilled out baby but now is a totally stroppy demanding DIVO too.

I've read plenty of anecdotes that imply that the babies that are easier sleepers at the beginning are eventually not. Opal was a nightmare for most of the first year forcing pretty early and pretty intense sleep training but for the last year (she's nearly 2) she's been fantastic at night. The ferber style interval sleep training is a pain but it might work and isn't as harsh as extinction/cry it out. It took a while but worked for us.

does he feed every time he wakes? Mine used to be ok with a 11pm feed then just being rocked by me/ his dad in future wakings but recently won't stand for that and screams for a feed much more often which is often just for comfort as he doesn't actually feed much and just tries to get away (then cries for milk if you let him )

my understanding of sleep training is all about the crutches, and any time you feed a child to calm them/put them to sleep, it's going to reinforce the association. By that age, so long as they're getting their nutrition, kids should have no problem sleeping through the night, so when they're crying to be fed after bedtime, it's not really because they're hungry.

yeah I thought we got out of that habit but somehow we've gotten back into it for the sake of getting some sleep.

so. it begins. I'm timing it so one of the worst nights should be when I'm out...

you might be surprised! when we did "ferberization" i think it literally took like 2 nights and then it was done.

yeah it's like two-three nights that really suck and then it's ok

starting with holding him but not rocking, for a couple of nights. The tough bit will be leaving him to sleep in his cot.
He's toddling around now! I mean, not now. But in general!

ferberization took us several attempts over several months and each attempt lasting for a few weeks! I think she just had to be ready. Now it's a breeze.

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...
(really it's raining and I expect the recycling lorry woke me up but still, he slept 8 hours after a few evening wake-ups and didn't have a night feed...)

it's probably coincidence though, that and having pooed loads in the day so that wasn't waking him up. I hardly think one evening has changed anything, but I'll take a win where I can!

so - I never genuinely thought it'd work - but - touch wood - it seems to be going well. Far better than I ever expected!
We (mainly him indoors) have done 3 days of putting him down in his cot (rather than letting him get to sleep in our arms). Staying with him, singing, shushing, putting him back down 100 times. No feeding after bedtime too (which is why he's doing it not me).
First night - an hour of screaming and crying before he tired himself out, then another hour or so when waking up at 11pm. Pretty horrible but then he slept until 7.30.
2nd night - about 20 mins crying at first but not as bad as the first night, then about 10 mins when waking up around 9pm then slept til 6.30! 9.5 hours which is unheard of.
3rd night - got up lots when trying to put him to bed but didn't cry much. couple of short wake ups and one long one.

Next step is to not stay right by the cot but we'll see...

Ferberization didn't really work for us. I think a lot of it is about the kid.

I just looked at the wiki for the ferber method and i feel this sentence: "A few babies are capable of sleeping through the night at three months, and most are capable of sleeping through the night at six months" is lacking an all-caps drudge siren CITATION NEEDED.

yeah, we tried it at six months. We tried it for three or four painful weeks. We made a second attempt a few months later that did temporarily work but wore off when we moved. K has had persistent sleep problems since. With E we just co-slept and she naturally transitioned to sleeping on her own around a year and is much less anxious at night. But I really believe it depends on the kid, because I know co-sleepers who were still in the bed with the kid at 6.

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.