r/sleeptraining

My baby is almost 5 weeks old and I’m having a lot of trouble with her sleeping. She will sleep fine if she’s laying on me or my husband, if she’s in her swing seat (even though we don’t turn the swing on), or in her car seat. She will NOT sleep in the bassinet. I have to get her fully in a deep asleep for at least 20 minutes before I put her in the bassinet and most times she will pop her eyes open and be wide awake as soon as I put her down. She won’t even immediately cry, she will slowly build up to a full cry over the course of 15 mins. She even did this in the bassinet attachment of the stroller while we were on a walk! I need help or advice because it’s the only place I can put her down to safely sleep if I also want to try to sleep (which I desperately need to do).

Our baby girl will be 6 months on Saturday. Her sleep is not great by any means. We follow age appropriate wake windows, have a bedtime routine, and a designated wake up time. In between sleep cycles, she doesn’t fully wake (eyes are closed), but scream cries in her sleep. If I put a hand on her and tell her it’s okay, she immediately settles, only for it to happen in another hour. We also experience a false start nightly, and only get 2-3 hour chunks of sleep at a time.

Is Taking Cara Babies worth the cost? I keep seeing that it’s modified Ferber, but on her Instagram she just recently made a post saying “it’s so much more than that.” But like obviously she would say that because it’s her own program? I purchased her 3-4 month old book when our baby was 3 months and it didn’t tell me any info I didn’t already know. I was less than impressed.

Any experiences or advice are welcome!

For those who have purchased the program, would it work well for a baby that is EBF?

I’m so exhausted. I don’t understand what is happening or how to help my baby sleep.

My daughter just turned 11 months old and has decided sleep is for the weak. During the day she has 2 naps typically. 1 hour in the morning and then usually 1.5-2 hours in the afternoon. We have a solid bedtime routine around 7pm and that has been going fine. We read her a few books, change her diaper and get her dressed, put the sleep sack on and sing her a song, I breastfeed her with the lights on and then put her in her crib awake to snuggle with a breathable lovey and her soother. She typically puts herself to sleep in under 10 minutes.

The problem has now become at around 9-10pm, she wakes up fussing and crying. She used to sleep until about 12-1:30 and then wake up to eat, and go right back down. Now when she wakes up I’ll try to feed her and sometimes she will settle again but the second you transfer her to the crib she wakes up, stands and starts screaming. The past few nights she has been up for over 3 hours and just will not settle back down. Any attempt to put her down will have her screaming again. Any attempt to rock her in her chair and she’s just unsettled and wiggly and cranky.

I’ve tried the timed moments of leaving the room for 1 min, 3 mins, 5 mins, etc. but she will never actually settle down. It always reverts to screaming. I can’t let her just cry it out either because she would literally stay up all night screaming until she throws up. I’ve tried sitting in the chair in her room and talking to her, cribside comforting, rocking, rubbing her back, everything I can think of and she just will not sleep. Any time she settles, as soon as I take one step away, she wakes up and loses it.

I am at my breaking point. I go back to work in the office full time next week and I’m actually worried about having to drive in this tired. I am open to any and all suggestions to help this baby get some sleep!

Hi! I’m a mother to a 7 week old sweet baby. He was doing all fine until now. Sleeping fine whenever we put him down. But now, since he had his 45 days vaccine, he got a fever and led to a mild stomach infections. He has also been a super gassy baby. So, since the last one week, he’s only been sleeping in my arms for his morning and evening naps. The minute I put him down, he wakes up either crying or wanting to show his new skills which is cooing and talking. However, as soon as it’s night time, he feeds well and sleeps on his bed until the morning. Is this the peak of the 6-8 week phase? Please help!

My baby (7 mo) has been sleep trained since 4 months and falls asleep independently for nights and naps with minimal fuss. He’s always been a bit low “ day sleep” needs. We recently transitioned to 2 naps, though some days we still need a small bridge nap around 5pm if naps are short.

Naps are hit or miss, sometimes 30-40 min, sometimes 1h15-1h30 if he connects cycles. Current schedule is roughly 3-3.5/3-3.5/4-4.5 depending on nap length, with bedtime at 8:30pm.

For a long time he has reliably woken at 7am, but recently he’s been waking at 6am. Is this common after transitioning to 2 naps, or does his schedule need tweaking?

Thanks!

Not a FTM here so feel a bit ridiculous posting this as thought I had it all figured out (ha ha!) but my second baby is a slightly different kettle of fish sleep wise. Plus my first is 9 years old so think I’m forgetting a ton! 🫣

Baby boy is 8 weeks old yesterday but born 1 week 5 days early and born on the small side (6.5lbs). First couple of weeks he was - relatively speaking 😄 - a great sleeper. Gave me a 4 hour stretch at the start of each night, plus I was in bed recovering from a planned c section for 2 weeks so - compared to pregnancy I felt quite reborn. From about 4 weeks onwards though it started to go a bit downhill.

I was - perhaps - a bit foolish and didn't really 'support' any independent sleep from an early age. He co-slept from first coming home from hospital - in fact even IN hospital as he stopped going in the bassinet from night one so they just passed him to me on the hospital bed.

I also hadn't realised he was actually doing more (dangerously) than just co sleeping as he was sleeping literally on my chest, not on the bed beside me. Only at the 6 week health visiyvisit - and when I started reading sleep forums - did I realise my error! To my (hopeful) defence, I'm not drinking, taking sleep medications or smoking - and I am a VERY light sleeper. But he got very used to my chest!

Once I realised this is not co sleeping and always unsafe I have been trying to move him off me and onto the bed beside me and things have started to unravel a bit sleep wise for us.

Simultaneously;

He has never slept int he bassinet during the day. Only ever contact napped or napped in the sling. I occasionally got about 30-40 mins in the bassinet if I slipped him in already asleep - but that seems to have stopped.

He sleeps GREAT in the baby sling.

He screamed his head off in the car seat. Car journeys do NOT calm him down - although we had to drive 2 hours to my daughter's gymnastics competition this weekend - which basically equated to extinction crying in the seat with me next to him- and ever since then he seems to have gotten a bit used to/ resigned to it. I felt awful all the way through - sat next to him
Rubbing his tummy- horrific.

He continues to really object being moved off me in the night. He also wakes a LOT during the night for his age (I think?!). He goes to bed (With me of course 😄) between 8-9pm- wakes up between 11.30 - 12.30 then again about 3am then again about 5am. He nurses and then falls asleep but I need to wait for this to try to move him off me, and sometimes (often!) he wakes up when I move him and I have to start the process all over again.

He is also quite colicky at night although this is tapering off slightly the last couple of days. Early bedtimes seems o help but then I obviously have to go to bed with him which is fine for my exhausted self but upsetting for my older daughter who feels she never ever sees me. I now don’t get to do her bedtime story as I have to go to bed. With the baby and he is nearly always on me after school (my husband tries to do a lot but he’s nearing the witching hour after school and quite fretting if not on me specifically)

He is honestly (obviously) the most adorable and lovely baby but I am so tired I can't see straight and feel something has to change. I barely slept through my last trimester so Im on like 5 months of not sleeping more than 2 hours at a time (aside from his first couple of weeks). I have tried everything gentle in terms of supporting the bassinet (warming it for him, drowsy but awake, white noise, blacked out room, lying beside him and patting his tummy etc etc). Nothing seems to work! The only way I can engineer it is by moving him asleep- so then as soon as he wakes up he screams for me.

This is not only impacting my ability to function ( I nearly had a car accident on the way to the GP yesterday) my daughter ( I have a 9 year old who keeps crying that she never gets to see me without the baby - the baby who also happens to be quite fussy so hard for us to do stories etc, me to pick her up from school in the car etc) and my own sanity.

I don't know what else to do besides let him cry/ fuss a bit in the bassinet- but he would go for an hour or so I think and it seems far too young for that. However some books seems to suggest its okay to do some sleep training earlier if it supports the baby to get good sleep (healthy sleep habits/ happy child suggests as young as 6-8 weeks in some cases?) but then other sources equate it to child cruelty!

I don't care about him sleeping through or anything like that - I just want him to get some good sleep, me to get more than a couple of hours and my daughter to feel like she has a present mother again. My husband thinks we need to start leaving him the bassinet in the morning for 30 mins or so (I tried doing in 2 minute stints, rubbing his belly etc but that just seemed to make him crosser). My husband also argues- which I get - that he has to get used to the car seat in this way and it seems to have worked - but then I read all these posts about the horrors of sleep training before 6 months.

To be clear again - I don't want to sleep train per se, I just don't have a family lifestyle that is conducive to contact naps only and I think its harming both mine and his mental functioning by now. He still sleeps great in the sling but his contact naps (which are effectively also his night time sleep 🫩) are getting shorter by the week!

Any advice (please be gentle with me)? I just want the best for all my family and feel so caught between my daughter and my contact hungry baby!

My 3 month old sleeps fine for my husband but wakes every hour for me 😭. He is a healthy thriving boy with no conditions, however, he is not a big eater and prefers small meals during the day (60-120 mil per feed)

Looking for advice or similar experiences because I’m starting to lose my mind overnight.

Our current setup:

• My husband takes the first shift from about 8pm–1am so I can get a solid chunk of sleep.
• During his shift, baby gets pumped breastmilk from a bottle and usually sleeps a pretty decent 3-hour stretch.
• Then I take over around 1am or 2am.

The problem is once I take over, baby starts waking up EVERY hour — like 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am. Sometimes he actually eats, but other times he just wants to be held or soothed back to sleep.

I breastfeed him and then usually put him next to me in bed following safe sleep guidelines because I’m exhausted and it’s easier to settle him quickly. But now I’m wondering:

• Is he waking more because he smells me / knows breastfeeding is available?
• Is this more of a comfort thing than hunger?
• Am I accidentally reinforcing the hourly wakeups?
• Should I start putting him back in the crib after feeds instead of keeping him beside me?
• Why does he sleep longer for my husband than for me, is because he is not full from breastfeeding?!

Would love to hear if anyone else experienced this around 3 months and what helped. Thank you so much ahead! This channel has been helping me so much throughout the journey.

My son will be a year old in a week. I sleep trained him around 5 months old (intended to do Ferber method but ended with CIO- really would like to avoid doing CIO again). BUT We were successful and everything was great for a few months! Then he had the flu AND was cutting back molars at the same time, he was so uncomfortable at night and I caved and started co sleeping at night.

Fast forward a few months, and he naps great during the day and can independently fall asleep in his crib. At bedtime, he will fall asleep in his crib and wake up at 10pm frantic and screaming until I put him into our bed and he IMMEDIATELY falls back asleep.

He gets about 2 hours of daytime sleep, and has a consistent bedtime routine. I feel that his wake windows are all okay, I think it’s just a separation anxiety issue, maybe? He sleeps perfectly throughout the whole night since we’ve been co sleeping.

He never wakes up in a good mood anymore, he always wakes up crying and screaming if I’m not beside him- even for naps. I’m soooo tired of co sleeping with him, but all my attempts at getting him back to being comfortable in his crib at night time have failed. Has anyone else had this happened? What did you do to re-transition to independent sleep at night? Is there another way besides CIO? I was unable to breast feed due to a medical problem, so Ive always felt like the bond we have isn’t as strong as it could have been. I’m scared that CIO will cause attachment issues and hurt the bond that I do have with my son. :( Any tips would be appreciated!

*his crib is still in my room, if that matters! Thanks!

My baby girl is 11 weeks old, and has always been a fantastic sleeper. As a newborn I would have to wake her for feeds, from week 4/5 she slept in 4 hour stretches, by week 7/8 she was sleeping in 6 hour stretches, only waking once in the night for a feed and a change.

This last week that has gone completely out the window. She’s now waking up every 1.5-2.5 hours, and her daytime naps are non existent, we’re getting 30min naps maybe 3-4 times a day and that’s it. I’m trying hard to follow wake windows but it’s impossible when she won’t go down. I have to assume this is some kind of sleep regression, I know there’s one coming up at 4 months but is it possible she’s getting this early?

She feeds to sleep, so I’m having to feed her constantly throughout the night (she’s fed breast then bottle), and often she’s not even eating, just using the food as comfort.

I’ve always been very specific about making sure I’m making night and day obvious for her - her daytime naps are all done outside of my bedroom, we have a cot downstairs, and I don’t adjust the light or noise in the room. At night she sleeps in a bassinet next to my bed, the room is dark, there’s a little soft red light for nighttime wake ups and I have white noise on throughout the night.

She doesn’t roll yet but is out of her swaddle. She doesn’t seem like she’s about to roll and she’s not using the nighttime wakes to practice. In the last two weeks she has learned how to bring her fists to her mouth and chew on them (can’t tell if maybe she’s teething?). I don’t pick her up when she fusses because I want to give her the opportunity to self settle, but every fuss turns into a cry.

After a week of this I’m starting to crack a little, I’m exhausted, she’s exhausted, my partner works long hours and commutes so isn’t available to help during the day, and my mother who usually can help me is away. Could this be the 4 month sleep regression coming early? Or is there something I’m missing? Is there anything I can do to help this?

I keep seeing people say that you can’t start sleep training at all before 6 months because babies can’t learn to self settle before that. At the same time though I also see a lot of baby books and sleep trainers encouraging parents to utilise methods that look like sleep training (eg putting down drowsy but awake, extending time before soothing, etc.) at as early as 8 weeks. And these do seem to work for some parents so what is actually the truth?

For context, I do rock my 8 week old to sleep most nights and I’m wondering if I’m creating bad habits for when we do eventually train.

i’m debating trying this first, however, i just don’t really understand how it works. would the intervals not distract the baby & keep them up longer? my son knows that when he cries, i show up, but once im gone, he’s back to screaming. i’m concerned it would just become CIO & im trying to avoid that because im just not comfortable with jt.

My LO just turned 6 months. We have officially transitioned from 3 naps to 2. Honestly the transition went great. I thought it was going to be tough, but she did good. However we are getting a lot of 4-5am wake ups. She’s on 3/3.5/3.5, DWT is 7am and bed is 7:30pm. We have been experimenting with nap length and total daytime sleep. We’ve gone from 2.5 hours total, to 3 hours, to 2, and everything seems to give the same result. Some days she won’t have any EMW and others will. I noticed when I go in and give her the pacifier and just falls back to sleep & other times I have to actually rock her back to sleep after about 10 minutes and she’s out till 7am.

All naps she goes down independently. I go in, put her in her sleep sack, give her the pacifier and lovey and leave. She is just fine.

Bedtime we do bath, bottle & story, and then some cuddles/ rocking and bed. Again she is put down awake.

Not sure if this is just a transitional thing and maybe she will grow out of it. But her crying at 4am is pretty hysterical not just fussing or talking to herself. Which is why I always go in. I’m not against the CIO but we’ve never sleep trained and 4am doesn’t seem like the time to start.

Any advice?

My toddler recently had an ear infection and was very unsettled
This resulted in nursery cuddling him until he fell asleep to comfort him
Fortunately we have now cleared the ear infection but we have a bigger problem
He has formed an association with being cuddled and held to sleep
He expects to be held throughout the night and will cry blood nursery when we try to leave
We have had multiple night wakes for the past two weeks and we have literally now had to hold him to sleep until day break ( effectively cosleeping).
For reference this is someone who was sleep trained from 6 months old and has sleep independently in his own cot/bed since then and has always slept through the night.
I feel like I have no choice but to do sleep training again cuz it’s wreaking havoc on my mental health.
I wanted to get any tips from anyone who has had to retrain a very strong willed 2 year old and also how to manage the message with nursery without outright telling them please refrain from cuddling my toddler to sleep. His details for reference are
Age: 2 years 5 months
Current Schedule: Wake at 7;30am , does a 5 hour wake window with one 2h30m nap at 12:30 - 3 then another 5-6 hour wake window and in bed for 9pm
Bedtime routine: previously it would be shower, book and into bed

Any help or tips you can offer is much appreciated

We tried Ferber for two weeks and saw some improvement but then she got sick and now we're back to square one. She falls asleep on her own at bedtime fine but then wakes up constantly all night looking for comfort. Do we need to retrain or is this just normal for some babies? I'm losing my mind a little bit.

Hello parents. First time dad to a 4 month old and hit a breaking point last night. In desperate need of some advice and as I’m sure other people have talked about this on here, I wanted to share our specific scenario and just see if what our plan moving forward is makes sense.

Our little guy has been a tough sleeper since the beginning. For the first 2 months he had bad reflux so we could never put him down to sleep. If we did, he would stay asleep for 30 minutes and wiggle himself awake after that 30 minute sleepy cycle was over. Which led to us having to carry him and rock him back to sleep in our arms. Lots of contact napping and contact sleeping at night with failure to keep him in his crib for more than 30 minutes.

This has continued and he’s 4 months and 1 week today. Both my wife and I are back to work and you can imagine how hard it’s been managing it. For naps we follow the wake windows and he goes down pretty quickly/easily and we try to put him down while “drowsy” and when he does go to sleep we get 30-40 minutes and then he’s up. He won’t stay asleep longer. This totals to about 3 hours of nap time total during the day.

At night, this continues but he knows it’s night time so he just keeps sleeping but needs to be picked up and held after the 30 minutes. We tried the gentle sleep training methods and nothing is working.

My wife and I are doing shifts so we each get atleast a few hour stretch of sleep but forget our sleep, I’m worried about him only sleeping for 30-40 min before waking up. I don’t want it to impact him negatively in the long run. We are entertaining the idea of the cry it out method because we’re losing our minds with barely any sleep and afraid this will go on if we don’t get him on a better schedule soon.

Every story we hear it’s that the kids atleast slept for 2-3 hours and stayed down when put in the crib. Man if we get 1-2hours at night I’ll rejoice. Please help or let us know we’re not the only ones. Have an appointment with the doc next week but i envision her telling us it’s normal 😅.

Things we’ve tried with no success:
1- swaddle
2- night Time routine
3- make sure he’s full by giving a few extra ounces before bed
4- put him down and pat him to sleep before him falling asleep in our arms - fail
5- paci

Do we have another option besides sleep training the cry it out way ?🥹🥲. Any advise or info I’d love to hear from you guys. Thank you in advance. I love him to death he’s a really happy baby during the day and when it doesn’t come to sleep. Hate to know I’ll be making him cry if we try the sleep training method but I think we must for both him and us.

Me (27M) and my wife (27F) of 3yrs this October. Had our first child. She is 5Weeks right now. My wife and I tried sleeping in separate beds. For two weeks (it has been brutal on me. I’m not sure how she feels but she says she doesn’t like it either. (Don’t know how true that really is or how bad it is for her). She is sleeping with the baby in the bed. Which we have been trying to get her(baby) in the bassinet we bought (it swivels so it can get right up next to the bed and close to momma.) baby doesn’t sleep at all but maybe an hour or two at a time and only once during the night in it. Anyway I have tried communicating to my spouse that I’m having trouble and she doesn’t seem to either understand or know what else to do all she wants to do is hold baby. And take care of her she is saying nothing at all matters about our relationship now that we have a baby. (Which I feel is not correct.) I am trying to communicate but she’s feeling stressed overwhelmed and burnt out to the point she’s sleeping till 3-4pm and constantly holding baby. I NEED HELP and helpful advise. I feel worried and anxious about our relationship along with trying to get our baby sleeping.

TL;DR
I need advice on how to help my marriage coping with sleep divorce and a 5 week old new baby sleeping. A stressed out mom and dad. Our fist baby.

My 7 month old was sleep trained around 4.5 months and was previously falling asleep independently really well. But over the last few weeks, as wake windows stretched and feeds didn’t (he still feeds every 2 hrs), I accidentally slipped into feeding before naps/bedtime… and now we’ve created a strong feed-to-sleep association 🫠

The issue is he now seems to only properly feed when he’s sleepy, using the boob to fall asleep. Then when I transfer him to the crib, he often wakes screaming. Sometimes he cries 15+ mins and it makes me wonder if he basically had a sneaky boob nap. I can’t tell when he’s sleeping on the boob cos he continues to swallow!

Current rough schedule is around 3.5/3.5/3.5-4 but sleep routine has gotten messy because he always falls asleep on the boob.

Would love tips from anyone who successfully broke the feed-to-sleep habit at this age without going full scream-fest. I’m okay with some crying, just hoping for a gentler transition back to independent sleep!
I try to feed earlier or in a different room but lately he refuses until he’s ready to nap!

My nearly 5 month old baby goes to bed about 10.30 every night. I know it's a tad late, but we are hoping to move his bedtime earlier soon.

The Iast two weeks he has been having false starts, and waking an hour after bedtime most nights. In the past week, he has started to have am additional wake, 2 - 3 hours after his false start. He then sleeps until 8.30/9am.

My question is, does anyone have any advice to prevent false starts and the early night waking? Perhaps bedtime is too late?

He does not have a schedule during the day for naps, he is a 30 minute napper, following wake windows, and really only sleeps on me or my partner.

I breastfeed him to sleep for naps, or my partner rocks him.

I'm unsure what to do at his age. Gentle sleep training? He sleeps in our bedroom, so not sure if this will work?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

LO has been fighting second nap for the past week and I’ve tried shortening second wake window in case baby is overtired, increasing ww in case she needs more sleep pressure. Baby has also been waking up at 5:30am every day for the past week and bit in which case first nap is between 9-9:30am (apparently this is so that we don’t get into the early bedtime early wake cycle which we are in anyways so maybe I I can try napping her earlier???) and capped at 11, second nap is 2:30-3pm capped at 4. Bedtime 7:15-8pm. Waking up at 5:30 seems to be like not a long night and I’ve tried the snooze button feed, doesn’t work. What can I do 🥲

my baby is 6.5 months old. I was totally against sleep training tbh, still quite skeptical about it. But lately, she has been waking up 5-6 times at night, immediately starts crying! around 1/3rd of times, I can feed/rock her and put her back to sleep but the rest, she just resists and cries every time I put her down in her bassinet.

I have a nanny but I try to handle nights so she takes care of most things during the day. I feel like I am dying because I am someone who takes a while to fall asleep and by the time I sleep, she’s awake. My back hurts when we cosleep because I am so stiff and hardly get space plus it just stresses me out, the blankets, my husband on the same bed, her rolling/crawling out of the bed later on. I really really think a separate sleeping space is the best option for me but it has not been working out lately.

So I’ve been considering gentle sleep training, something like the pick up put down method. Has it worked for anyone?

Edit: We sleep in the same room at the moment but eventually want to shift her to an adjoining small room. The nanny sleeps there currently and I wake her up when I am too tired to do anything.

I want to add that I’ve tried a few things before that worked as one off situations like I play the songs we usually play when I am feeding her to sleep. And I put her down in the bassinet after walking around with her for a while.. then gently patted her head while she was in the bassinet, followed by walking around or standing next to it. She sucked on her fingers and went to sleep but this only worked because it was very late and she must’ve been very sleepy imo