Ferber/CIO - 5 month old waking every 1-2 hours at night! Please help :(
Baby girl is going through the dreaded 4 month sleep regression. She turned 5 months on Aug 14. It started about 3 weeks ago. She wasn’t the best sleeper beforehand. We would maybe get a 3-4 hour stretch before if we were lucky. We are thinking of sleep training because we are exhausted from the lack of sleep. We follow wake windows for naps so as soon as she starts showing sleepy cues I contact nap her because her crib naps don’t last long and I want to protect her sleep. She naps about 2.5-3 hours a day. First nap is 30-40 minutes, second nap is 1.5-2 hours and last nap is 20-30 minutes. Her wake windows average around 2-3 hours. Focus right now is nighttime sleep first naps later. She sleeps in her crib beside our bed. Bedtime routine is change to pjs, moisturize, read 2-3 short books, bottle while twinkle twinkle plays on the hatch, switch to brown noise and burp and transfers to crib. We give her a bottle before bed and she usually falls asleep drinking it between 7:30-8. When we go to transfer she wakes and sometimes we can settle without picking her up but most times we have to pick her up and rock her back to sleep. Once she is finally asleep she wakes up every 1-2 hours. Each time we either have to give a pacifier or pick up and rock to sleep. She still feeds twice at night. First time between 11:30-12:30 and second time between 3:30-4:30. The second half of the night starting around 2am is the worst. She gets up almost every sleep cycle (45-50 minutes). Around the 5:30-6am mark she rarely settles back in the crib and I have to contact sleep her and she will sleep until 7-7:30. We were first thinking a gentle form of sleep training but if she sees us patting her and shushing she just cries more. So we are thinking Ferber at bedtime to teach her to fall asleep on her own and CIO for night wakings that are not during her usually feeding times. Looking for thoughts, opinions, advice, really anything at this point! How do you handle the crying. As much as it hurts we are so desperate for some sleep. Need to hear some success stories. Also first time parents! F(37) M(40).