Sleep training

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.