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This post is part of a monthly series where I invite newsletter subscribers to ask me questions and I share our email exchange with readers. If you want to participate in a future Q&A session just sign up for the newsletter for more details on how to join in!
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Alexis,
I’m really glad I found your blog. Sheesh, the internet is a SCARY place, and I’m so relieved to find your safe, understandable unbiased little island of inspiration!
What I need help with is establishing a routine. I need an initial outline. I’m a terrible habit-former. As in, I smoked cigarettes for a few months, then one day realized I hadn’t smoked a cigarette in a while because I FORGOT TO SMOKE THEM. I don’t wake up to an alarm because I can’t get into the habit of setting one in the first place. I eat, generally, during the day at various points when I wonder why my stomach hurts and then realize I have hunger.
So you see where my main problem lies, and add to it the sleep deprivation is creating fantastical worries of child protective services coming in and declaring us unfit because the infant won’t sleep.
I’ve been reading everything on your blog, and I think we’re at the cry it out stage. Caleb is almost 11 months old and we had a great thing going for a while and then dundunDUUUN – the holidays, travel, in-laws, and catastrophic schedules. It was like a sleep tsunami.
Then I had him going down with a little (5-10 minutes) crying, but my LOVING PARTNER IS A YELLOW BELLIED SAP SUCKER and nixed it because he “doesn’t like it!”. I will admit to you if you never ever ever let him find out that partly I think I may have gone back to boobing the baby to sleep out of spite, instead of sticking to my guns and getting him on board. I am equally at fault. Never tell.
But now, Caleb is too big for a swing, a method I thought would work well since he loves being in the Ergo. He’ll sleep in ten minutes if I walk him in that but that. He’s exhibiting crappy day time naps, late bed time, and frequent wakings, and I’m exhibiting the defeated “fine, I’ll let you nurse just sleep for the love of god!” behaviors.
Also, this child has decided to be a “thrasher” and every morning around 4 am when he’s usually in our bed he begins to toss and turn and throw himself around. I have bruises on my face from his head smashing into mine as he violently tries to “snuggle”.
His bedtime is around 10:30 now too when it used to be 8pm.
I’m going to give you what I’ve come up with for a plan, and see if it’s even remotely reasonable. My higher functions are dull so I don’t trust myself to retain much of what I’m reading. Would you let me know where any faults or flaws lie in this approach? How can I mail you chocolate and presents for your help?
The Proposed Sleep Plan
Night 1:
9:00pm – Caleb gets a bath.
9:15pm – Caleb gets lotion and jammies.
9:30pm – Move to bedroom, Caleb gets stories while we nurse.
9:45pm – Loud white noise, lights dim, a little snuggle-bounce, maybe a song.
10:00pm – Caleb in crib. Kisses, good night song, leave the room.
10:05pm – If he’s crying, go in to soothe. No talking, just lay him back down and give a few head rubs. Leave.
10:15pm – Repeat.
10:30pm – Repeat.
10:45pm – repeat? How long do I keep going with this? Assume he sleeps by 11 per usual.
Then he wakes up around 1:30-2am when I normally nurse him and bring him to my bed. (Rarely I’ve been able to rock him back to sleep w/o nursing). Should I feed him? Should I leave him to cry? How long? Do I go in to soothe him?
Night 2: Begin process at 8:45pm
Night 3: begin at 8:30
Night 4: begin at 8:15
etc until 7:30-8pm is bedtime and he sleeps by himself.
Will fixing bedtime fix naptime as well? What do I do about the terrible day time sleeping? Do I make sure he’s not nursing when he wakes up that first time BEFORE we try to let him CIO? After? Is that 4am nurse still a legit feed at 11 months old or can he make it to breakfast? I didn’t even know night weaning was a thing…
Oh gosh this email is so long. It feels like I’m telling you the same story you’ve heard a million times. I hope this all sounds typical and you can offer some guidance or point me to some specific articles and passages on your blog to study (powers of retention are very limitied these days… I may have read the answers, I have no idea.)
One Thing at a Time
Hey Jennifer,
You can definitely mail me chocolates but you may not want to because I’ve already emailed your husband and told him all about your spiteful night nursing so probably that killed all your chocolate-sending instincts. *sigh*
Methinks there are 3 different things going on and you probably want to tackle one at a time vs. all at once:
#1. Naps are crappy.
#2. Bedtime is waay too late (you must be EXHAUSTED).
#3. He’s nursing to sleep and thus nursing all night. You’re also co-sleeping but you don’t want to. And you’re getting cuddle wounds, so that’s not really working out for anybody.
As a result of this you’re all pretty wiped out. But sadly you can’t fix everything all at once, much as you might want to.
The Sleep Training Plan, Bedtime, and Naps
If you’re going to do CIO you need to put him down when he’s used to going to sleep. What time does he fall asleep now? 10:30 PM? So THAT’S his bedtime. Do CIO at THAT time. Yes it’s too late and all the baby books talk about not letting your baby become overtired so there is a tendency to rush to an early bedtime to avoid the dreaded “overtired baby syndrome.” But Caleb’s biological rhythms are currently set up to sleep AT 10:30 PM so putting him down earlier is quite likely to lead to him simply crying until 10:30 PM.
Personally I would strongly advocate for no checks but your sapsucker probably isn’t keen on that. Fine – checks are acceptable. But don’t muck with the time he falls asleep until at least 5 days post-CIO so that you get him falling to sleep solo settled in BEFORE you start mucking with bedtime.
You don’t mention what time Caleb wakes up. Often kids who have a really late bedtime also sleep late(ish). For those kids, you want to wake them up earlier to shift things up. So if caleb is sleeping 10-11 hours at night and thus waking up at 8/9 AM you’ll want to start shifting his nights up by waking him up ~15 minutes earlier each day (9:00 AM, 8:45 AM, 8:30 AM, etc.) If however he wakes up fairly early (6/7 AM) already your plan of inching bedtime up by 15 minutes a day is a good one.
So start with sleep training at bedtime aka helping Caleb fall asleep without nursing. Then work on shifting bedtime up. Your goal is to do what you can do to extend his night sleep to 10-11 hours. Because increasing the duration and quality (fewer wakeups not changing location) during the night will create a much stronger foundation for your success with naps.
And yes an almost 1 year old can definitely go without food for 11-12 hours. Of course if he’s used to eating a ton at night he’ll continue to demand to do so. Night weaning is DEFINITELY a thing. For sure. But often the desperate and constant night nursing is really about his boob=sleep association that is created AT bedtime. When you separate nursing from bedtime the constant night waking/nursing can quickly and organically turn into 1-2X feedings at night. At his age you’ll definitely want to gradually wean off those feeds but Caleb won’t fight you on it so viciously once you’ve separated the boob=sleep association at bedtime.
So think of this list as your “to do” but remember things go more smoothly when you do one thing at a time.
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-
Bedtime Sleep Training
He falls asleep solo. No nursing near to bedtime.
-
Bedtime Shifts Earlier
Either by waking him earlier or by gently moving bedtime up.
-
Everybody Gets More Sleep
Total # of hours of sleep at night increases substantially!
-
Naptime
Work on putting Caleb down for naps while still awake.
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And Then What Happened?
Holy crap. It’s working.
Now, I don’t want to get to excited and do something stupid and mess it up again, but we are now on Day 10, and not only has he slept through the night the last two nights, but he’s going down to sleep with hardly any grumbling at all.
I took your advice about bedtime and just started inching it up after he was showing good progress and responding to the new bedtime routine. Last night he went to sleep at 9 pm, a full hour and half earlier than he was going to bed the last few months. THANK YOU GODS.
We kinda did everything all at once, though. I started before I received your response, and figured I’d best not mix things up AGAIN so I continued with the double-down of trying to fix naps and night time at once. For my kid, I think it was a good choice. But I’d hesitate to advise anyone else on doing it this way. I think this guy is more responsive if he knows what to expect all the time and the consistency of nap time and bedtime having similar routines helped him figure it out, I think.
So it looks like I am made good progress with #1 and #4 in your plan, at the same time, and now we’re beginning #2 by moving bedtime up slowly. Partly this seems to be happening naturally and I’m trying not to rush it. He’s still rising about the same time though, so it seems #2 will fall into place naturally extending the length of night sleep he gets. It feels like it’s all working out relatively smoothly though!
I’m so glad I found your site, and all it’s great advice and thank you so much for the personal response. Having a solid resource to present to my ever-loving sapsucker really helped too. He read your links and was less adverse to CIO, even though the ONE night I asked him to go in when the baby woke up at midnight he went in there for 15 minutes came back out with the kid still wailing and was like “I tried for like, an hour!” (WEAKLING. This is why the women bear the children. I see it now.) Now, though, that the baby barely even grumbles to sleep and stays down for 8 hours, Papa is fully supporting the endeavor!
I took notes this first week and for the purposes of research and data (aka, reminding myself what the heck I did when the next kid comes around), I’ve included it here.
Grateful,
Jennifer (100% less likely to want to murder a loved one), Michael (the sapsucker/Papa) and Caleb (the now peacefully sleeping cherub)
SLEEP TRAINING LOG – 7 Days
Night #1
9:00pm – Nursed. Potty time, clean diaper and jammies.
9:20pm – Move to bedroom, books in bed; held and rocked. White noise on loud. Laid down, kisses. Left room. (9:35)
5 minute timer – Went in to hug, no holding. Sing, head rubs, lay back down. (5 min? 9:45)
10 minute timer – Went in, hug, laid down. Left room. (2 min? 9:50)
10:00pm – silence, baby sleeps!
11:00 pm – I go to bed.
4:30 am – Woke crying. Nursed, rocked. Put down.
4:45 am – Woke. Put back down. No nursing, just a little head rub.
5:00 am – Woke, or still awake. Sent Michael in, he gave up by 5:13am. I went in, took Caleb to cuddle, no nursing, slept til 7 am.
notes: even this first night was less typical. He seems to “get it” a bit already. Fingers crossed…
Day #2, Naps
#1 – 10:30 (9:30 nursed), clean pants, potty time, white noise in room. Held and rocked. Settled nicely in my arms. Put down, some head rubs, some fussing, went to sleep.
12:00 – woke
#2 – 2:30 pm clean diaper, white noise, rocking. Settles somewhat. Nursed laying on my side, but he got restless, so I laid him in the crib.
5 minute timer – soothe. lay down.
10 minute timer – soothe, lay down. Slept 3:10.
5:00 pm – woke
Night #2
9:00pm – potty w/ Michael, jammies, diaper. Nursed ~8:30pm
9:30pm – story, rocking, lights out, white noise, Thomas in room for observational purposes. Laid down, left. Crying.
5 minute timer – went in , cuddled, laid himself down after a quick minute. BIG sigh. Left room.
10:00 pm – asleep! no fussing.
note: so glad he’s recognizing that he can lay himself down! I thought this was a big step for him, since he has never shown that sort of acceptance (defeat?) before.
Night #3
9:30 – bedtime routine, forgot to write down timers. No memory. ugh.
12:45 – woke. I thought it was 4 am so I nursed him back to sleep :/
3:00 am – woke, took him to cuddle til 7 am. Obviously. still sleep deprived. ugh.
Day #4
Naps got all messed up during errands.
Night #4
9:30 – bedtime routine, nursed first. Stories, etc. Cried when I put him down.
5 minute timer – cried, soothed. Laid down. No holding.
10 minute timer – soothed, head rubs.
15 minute timer – went to sleep before it was up.
4:00 am – Woke. Yay! Nursed to sleep, laid down. Woke right up. Soothed again, and laid down.
8:00 am – woke!
notes: nap and night time def related with this guy. Bad naps made night time a little more difficult. But pretty good compared to last week. He was really ready for this and all signs point to successful outcomes.
Day #5
Nap #1 – skipped, brunch w/ friend
Nap #2 – 2:10, fell asleep on Michael shoulder during our walk, slept ~1 hour in the cargo bike as we walked around the ‘hood. Great weather for outdoor napping! (Also, add to list of places I can get my baby to sleep!)
Night #5
9:15- Bath, jammies. potty.
9:40 – lavendar on temples, lights down, white noise, 2 stories. Rocked in arms. Laid down. He quietly tossed and turned. No cries.
9:50 – left room. Quiet.
10:00 – peek thru keyhole – asleep! no timers needed.
3:00 am – woke, nursed, laid down. Cried a bit. Laid back down. Head rubs.
6:30 – woke. White noise cut out! gggrrr. Stupid radio.
notes: personal goal of getting him to nap anywhere is being realized! Also, white noise effect proven! Need a more reliable radio/machine.
Day #6
Nap #1
9:30 – diaper, white noise, some rocking and cuddles. Laid down, briefly then picked up to get him drowsier. Rocked more, laid down. Toss and turn, head rubs, left room. One squawk, then silent.
12:20 – woke!
Nap #2
3:30 pm – diaper noise rocking. Laid down. Cried.
5” timer – Soothed, laid back down.
10” timer – Fell asleep (bit rougher than AM nap.)
4:20 – woke. stupid radio cut off again.
Night #6
8:30 – Sponge bath, nurse.
9:00 pm – Noise, lavender, stories, rocking (lights out completely now). Put down awake. Toss and turned a few minutes.
5” timer – cried 3” then sleep.
1:45 – woke, soothed, laid down, went to sleep.
3:30 – nursed. radio out again. accidentally fell asleep with him on the bunk. 🙁
7:45 – woke.
note: radio batteries died. Plugged it in instead. Hope this hasn’t mucked it all up.
Day #7
Nap #1
10:00 am – diaper, potty; noise and a quick snuggle, laid down. Cried as I left.
5” timer – soothed. Laid down.
10” timer – cried, then quiet, not asleep.
11:00 am – awake, but calm and quiet. Leaving him be.
12:00 – crying out. No sleep. 🙁
Nap #2
3:00pm – after bike ride/park, clean diaper, nursed in room with noise, laid down, fussed. Head rubs, then left room. No cry, passed out!
Night #7
8:30 – nurse, potty, diaper/jammies. Noise low lights, 2 stories. Seemed ready to sleep, so I laid him down with no rocking. Toss and turn a bit, 2 songs. Left room, no crying.
9:00 pm – asleep!
6:30 am – Woke up, cried a few minutes, then slept another hour. Michael picked him up at 7:30ish.
WOOOOOOO!
Closing Thoughts
Jennifer made HUGE progress in 7 days. The keys were that she was persistent and consistent for both nights and naps. She started where Caleb’s bedtime was instead of where she wished it to be. Also she never lost hold of her amazing sense of humor. Is persistence, consistency, and a sense of humor enough to get you through the dark days of sleep deprivation?
Yeah pretty much.
Clearly I used Jennifer’s email because she is hysterical AND included all the nitty gritty details. Because I’m assuming you want details. Is this true or is this TL:DR?
And also to hopefully give you some hope. You could be 7 days away from some really great stuff. Honestly!
Did her journey resonate with you? Anybody have anything they want to share?
And don’t forget, if you want to participate in future Q&A sessions you can only do so by subscribing to my awesome and free newsletter. Cheers!
That was an awesome post! I loved all the details. I poured over your site when I finally resigned myself to CIO and you helped SO MUCH. Now I’m saving this one again for #2 in case I need reminding 🙂
Stephanie,
Awesome feedback 🙂 Already thinking about #2 eh? That’s a great sign. The idea of #2 scared me for so long that wine was required to have the conversation. But #2 is so much easier & fun than #1 because now you are a seasoned pro. And of course you won’t need any of these CIO articles then (but best to bookmark, you know, just in case ;).
Alexis
I’m wondering how everyone trained #2 (or #2,3 in my case). They are twin girls born at 36 weeks, and by this age (they are now 5 months, 4 if you adjust their age) they still only last 1 h between naps, go to bed around 6-7, wake up twice, and sleep in swings, they scream bloody murder if I put them in the crib. With my first (who is now 2.5 y) she followed the Weissbluth sleep chart like the wrote it-she easily fell into the 9 and 1 naps at about 4-5 months, and I only briefly did Ferber at 6 months to get her bed time to be earlier, and after that she slept 11-12 hours straight to this day. We are losing our minds from the sleep deprivation and don’t know if we should be already training the twins, wait until they are “really” 6 months and how to get them out of the swings (we tried the gradual approach and they screamed until they woke our 2yo…) HELPPPPPPP
Lucy,
I could them as 4 month olds which means they have PLENTY of time to get out of the swing. They’re itty bitty – not ready yet. OK no problem right? We’ve got tons of time. When they’re 8 months old we can sweat our transition plan but for now they’re telling you they aren’t ready. This is great information!
They’re sleeping through the night with 2 wakeups at 4 months – ALSO great! Are those wakeups at the same time? That’s the only thing I would really press for because otherwise you’re effectively up constantly.
But honestly what you’re describing is not that far off the mark for many 4 month olds. I would start trying to stretch the amount of time they’re awake between naps if you can. Like what happens if you slightly stretch it out to 1:15 or 1:30? Something to experiment with?
But I don’t know that you need to sleep train or sweat the swings today. What outcome are you hoping to have come from that?
Thanks for quick reply. I failed to mention they both have torticollis, and flat heads (now starting on helmets) which is why dr pushing to sleep in beds. They are also starting to want to roll. They wake up at different times, but I always wake the other one up to feed together. I’ve pushed them by 15-30 min and it results in that one becoming over tired and crazy hyper, and then it takes 1 h plus to fall asleep, even in swing. I I’m trying to arrive at the point where they take naps that happen with less frequency (every 2 h for example) and they become more predictable…and my eyes aren’t on fire 24/7 🙂 It’s impossible to go out with our toddler since we never know when one of the babies will need food/sleep etc since they are all over the place…For twin training-would you eventually train them in the same room, at same time? We have to share a room and they are loud enough to wake their older sister (and each other) but we only have 3 bedrooms….also do you wait for 6 mos adjusted age? THANK YOU
Ouch. Torticollis is rough. How does the doctor feel about napping in the swing and crib sleeping at night? Maybe worth asking.
I totally hear you – you are stuck at home with a 2 year old and two newborns and it’s EXHAUSTING. Here’s my answer: TV and used toys from craigslist. This is how you get through the first few months with a 2 year old. What, you were looking for sleep help? Well that’s the help I’ve got for you.
As for napping, predictability is a great goal but it sounds like your real focus should be on helping them stay awake longer. If 15-30 minutes makes naps a huge mess, start with 10 minutes. Stick with 1:10 for 3-5 days. Then make it 1:15. Continue this way until it’s no longer working.
As for sleep training, again I’m not sure what your goal is. Sleep training is generally the answer for babies who can’t fall asleep alone and are up all night due to object permanence/sleep association issues. I’m not hearing you have this issue. I AM hearing that they need a lot of soothing – this is totally normal for preemies (exhausting yes! But also normal). And now you have to give up the swing. This is brutal but I’m not sure sleep training is the answer. How can you give them MORE soothing? Definitely loud white noise and swaddling. Maybe pacis (I know this is usually the age you want to get out of the paci but you’ve got some challenges there so on net, might be a good option).
I hear you saying they’re really sensitive little peanuts and you’re exhausted. How about throwing $$ at the problem – can you hire a good baby nanny or postpartum doula to free you up 1-2X a week so you can get out with your 2 year old? Might be worth it!
I have twins too and they are now 2.5 years old. But I remember the horrible sleeping times I had when they were about 4 months old (they were term though). I used to carry them alternatively in slings and walk the length of the house just to soothe them, until I got hold of two hammocks, which saved my sanity. So I say, stick with the swings! I only used the hammocks for naps and stuck with the crib for night sleep, they never got confused. I always had them sleep together in the same room. And today, they can still sleep through each other’s noises. I found that sleep training them at 4 months didn’t work at all. But I used whatever soothing technique I could to help them sleep and stuck to routine like glue, and somehow I survived their babyhood. They still like routine and they like doing things together and at the same time. I feel your pain though, but be assured it does get better.
Thanks glad to hear another twin parent survived! To add to the fun, one twin now started rolling and when I put her in the crib she gets stuck face down and wakes up. We tried day crib naps and they are lasting 30 minutes in there. When we do swings, they go 1 h, then stay awake 1.25/1.5 hours (worked on keeping them up longer last week.) At night they can sleep in the crib for the second half of the night, then they wake up and freak early morning (got up at 4am this weekend.) They refuse swaddling, especially now that one is rolling, and aren’t huge fans of packs. NO really, they ARE trying to kill me. So I guess we’ll try to do overnight crib, and keep adding day swing naps? I can’t remember when this all got better with my older one, 6 months??? AHHHHH
This site is full of great advise!! Alexis gave great advice here too – I have a nanny a couple of days for my 5-mo twins to get out with my toddler and love it. I also have childcare for the 2 yo a couple of days. The twins are a full time job!
I could use some pointers myself. My twins are ok sleepers – good at self -settling in cot for naps (with pacifier) – though mostly need it replaced at the 45min mark – and no more night feeds but still wake to have paci back. Massively fighting swaddle though since rolling started (including double swaddles!)
One twin also treats 6/7pm bedtime as another nap and is really tough to get to sleep at night (has been held/rocked a number of times when we ran out of energy/patience).
Any pointers Alexis or other sleep wizzes out there???
Alex…I see you posted at 3am..clearly I’m not the only zombie:) I actually work full time and commute, so I do get help. It’s more the overnights, weekends…So re: your pacifier comments, I have similar situation and what I’ve done is lose the swaddle so they can roll over onto hand and suck on it and slowly getting rid of paci because replacing it stinks. One twin is almost there, the other is halfway there at self soothing. The key was rolling onto belly and hand sucking.
I have same with 6/7 pm bedtime vs nap, what I’m doing is putting them in swings at that time so they both stay in bed mode…then when they wake the first time I diaper, feed, crib. I find that they hit a wall in the evening and need the motion to soothe into official bed mode.
As I mentioned we also have torticollis and helmets to content with, but we’re doing enough combo crib vs. swing time, plus physical therapy that things are progressing. Other than the fact they were cramped in utero, I’m certain the main cause of the head issues was from initially sleep in a rock n play which I’m now convinced are evil and recommend highly against due to lack of neck motion and hard sides.
So…getting a little better every day and yes this site is a lifesaver, I share it with all my friends.
This is not going to make you feel any better, but your twins’ sleeping habits sound like what my daughter was like at their age. She was also born at 36 weeks. She didn’t sleep through the night until she was 9 months old (then she stopped for a month, and then finally settled down at 11 months old). We did EVERYTHING right (no sleep associations, no pacifier, etc), but she just wasn’t able to go a full night without food until she was 9 months old (she’s always been a little skinny). I’m just telling you this because sometimes we freak out when our kid isn’t doing what they’re “supposed” to do. What I learned was to just roll with it, keeping the end goal in sight (and making sure I didn’t create sleep associations), and drink a lot of coffee.
I agree with Alexis, though. If you can afford it, hiring some help would be a huge relief. The first time my husband took the baby away for the day was probably one of the best days of my life.
I love the details here. My 4 month old goes to sleep just fine but wakes every 2 hours or less through the night! I’m exhausted and as much as I want to help him get more sleep I’m starting to resent breastfeeding! He also only as for 30-40 minutes at a time during the day x 3. It’s so challenging to get him back to sleep without nursing him which I’ve been trying to do for a week. He cries and cries and doesn’t aettle without a pacifier finally. But I’m just replacing one issue with another. Does anyone have suggestions of how to ease him back to sleep without using or pacifier in the night? My goal is to get him to sleep 7 or 8 hours then feed at 2am or 3am and maybe again at 5am if necessary. Ideally love to have him sleep til 3 then til 7 or 8 to wake up. He’s 17 pounds. A big boy. He doesn’t feed well though in the night. He eats for five minute and passes out. I’ve tried everything to keep him awake to eat but he just sleeps through it or strikes it off. Ugh! Wits end!
Best. Letter. Ever!
This was awesome and so helpful. It gives all of us sleep deprived mom/dad zombies out here some hope! You know it’s getting bad when the “You look really tired” comments come flying. Gee thanks :/
The details were great and worth the read. The logs were especially helpful, so thanks Jennifer. Your letter was hilarious.
Keep the letters coming Alexis!! The more detail the better!
Maybe the next one will help all of us working moms and dads out here on dealing with naps…eh…eh…???
Thanks again!
So what do working moms/dads want to know about naps? Truthfully am working on a book and I want a chapter devoted to going back to work (how to prepare, looking for great childcare, pumping at work, sleep, etc.). However I didn’t go back to work (I flirted with it for a while but it wasn’t right for me) so I plan to crowdsource most of this chapter.
Anyway this is a long winded way of asking – ye working Moms – what do you want to know?
My trouble with daycare was trying to tell them exactly what to do about naps. It was especially difficult before I found your website…ie naps were either short, in a swing, or didn’t happen. After I found your website (she was about 5 months old at the time), I told them nap happens after 2 hours of being awake. This.changed.our.lives. Seriously. But then we had the issue of weekends, transitioning to crib (naps were in the swing at daycare), and, believe it or not, the ride home became nap time too (we live ~10 min from daycare). I guess to boil it down:
1) Do I ask daycare to schedule nap times, or use an increment based system?
2) Baby will be sleeping in different places on weekdays/weekends…but most of the solutions I’ve read here are about consistency. How do we keep it consistent?
3) Do I ask daycare to have a routine for nap time that’s similar to bedtime routine?
4) Do I tell daycare that naps can’t happen after a certain time (ie when do we stop naps and keep baby awake until bedtime)?
5) Related to 4, do I let wake baby up when we get home if she falls asleep in the car ride or let her finish napping?
This is not at all complete, but it’s a list of some of the issues I ran into. Hope it helps!
I second all of Amelia’s questions.
I think valuable info for working parents may be:
1. Is it ok to wake your baby in the morning? What are some good ways to rouse baby without them being just a puddle while trying to get out of the door?
2. If the baby is taking a late nap on the way home from daycare, should bedtime be pushed back? Esp if the nap is on the longer side (30-45 min ride home)and from about 430-530 pm.
3. Related to #2 and what Amelia said, if baby is still sleeping when we get home, do you wake her up? What time is the cutoff for late naps to have a reasonable bedtime?
4. What IS a reasonable bedtime for babies that are sleeping on the way home from daycare? Right now, bedtime is 730-8, but maybe that is too early with the late nap??
5. How to deal with crappy naps at daycare if nothing can be done to change the room setup (make darker/quieter, etc.). Do you give a schedule? Intervals? Routine?
These are awesome questions. I don’t have answers to all of these (daycare is a tricky wicket because some will work with you and some require you to adhere to whatever their standards are). If it helps at all here’s a good rule of thumb:
Over 6 months ideally naps are happening at the same (ish) time everyday with the same routine. So as much as your daycare can help you with this goal, that’s great. Similarly you want bedtime to happen at the same time every night so you want to “defend” that by not allowing babies to take naps/catnaps late in the day IF they mess up bedtime. If a 10 minute catnap on the way home doesn’t interfere with bedtime then who cares, right?
I’ll definitely have a chapter on going back to work, daycare and sleep, etc. But in all honesty it’s something I need to do some research on, and probably a bit of crowdsourcing too. But I’ve added your questions to my “to research” list for the book (not that it will help you but hopefully others!)
As a working mom of a 9mnth old who still doesn’t have consistent naps and not always STTN, yes answers/ideas to handle all those questions would be helpful.
My personal exp: Most daycare providers are pretty good at following instructions.BUT, I wouldn’t want them/or anyone else use CIO with my child. Maybe its me, but I am not comfortable with the idea of someone else letting/making her cry…So, I am settled to let naps happen however they can at day care. They put her to sleep in a bouncy and transfer to a crib.In the weekends I use the swing for naps or sometimes I will put her in the playpen and roll it back and forth, with lullaby music on. She sleeps in the crib at night again though. Some days she goes down easy, some days she wants me to hold her/nurse her till she drifts off and then she would STTN sometimes..But I see that the days she gets good naps and eats her solids, she sleeps well.So yes naps are imp, but meals/milk/formula intake during the day is also impt.
Also, 730/8pm bedtime seems to be working for me. We have to be up at 6-615am for daycare.
Nice work Jennifer! I wish you were my neighbor so we could be friends.
I know, right? My neighbors are mostly old people who like to talk about the value of mulching. Jennifer and I would have far more fun.
Alexis ! You are a magician and when your book is out I will buy it for every baby shower gift! Oh wait, are we not supposed to tell moms to be that babies sleep like crap? Also, congrats because in Jennifer you found your sense of humor twin:-) makings a of a great blog post.
My little guy will be 11 months next week. I have done all the thugs you mentioned. After his solid dinner he gets no breast or bottle at bedtime. I have tried but he wakes up a lot more when I feed him before bed. White noise is amazing! The little fellow has been going to sleep on his on since 4 months. All the time! Why you ask? I have a 4 year old who needs more attention! Any how, the 11 month old wakes up on an average twice each night. Between 12-1 am and between 3-4 am. Sometimes he goes down with just a hug and cuddle but sometimes wails until he has been fed. Almost always he is up for the day at 6 am. He naps like a champ for the most part and goes to bed between 6:45 and 7:30 pm. What am I doing wrong ?
Hey Swapna,
Thanks for the vote of confidence. I’ve been spending every free moment for the past year on this book and it’s nice to know that at least one person who is not a blood relative will buy it 🙂
As for your 11 month old, I think these are habitual wakings. You’re doing all the right things at bedtime – YAY. So it’s not about a sleep association a la “I can only sleep when I have food.”
There are a few ways to break out of this habit.
– Go in, use your words for a few minutes, then leave. There will be wailing. But you’ll see results quickly.
– Disrupt his sleep cycle by waking him just slightly before these “routine wakings.” Essentially you’re trying to break the pattern by breaking up HIS sleep pattern. Sometimes works, sometimes not. Worth some experimentation though.
– Wean off the feed. So you give him bottle/breast upon request but reduce the amount after which you’re DONE. If he wakes up after that you can go in for 1-2 minutes of brief soothing but no more food. Fini.
None of these are huge changes, I think you just need to rustle up the pattern a bit and possibly draw a bit of a line in the sand. He’s almost 1, he can handle it 🙂
This is great! Please do continue the series. My six-month-old is currently making sloooooow progress with the swing, but progress nonetheless, so thanks for all the great advice on here.
Definitely will do!
Sorry the swing progress is so slow. I’m assuming the progress you refer to is getting him out? If so don’t worry – he’ll get out eventually. Maybe you just table the swing thing for a week or two and try again? Sometimes what you’re most sweating today turns into “no big deal” next week.
good luck!
Ah, if only 🙂 Getting her out of the swing is still a distant dream. But from a starting position of “wakes up every 45 minutes, day or night, unless being held”, she’s now sleeping for up to three or four hours at a time in the swing. Which is huge progress, and has definitely improved everyone’s quality of life around here.
I still haven’t got her to fall asleep on her own in there, despite numerous attempts, but I know that’s because of my reluctance to let her cry. But at least we can all live with the status quo for now.
DO it. Let her cry a little bit. For starters, it will very likely not be as bad as you imagine. And secondly she’s going to outgrow that swing before you know it and then things get REALLY challenging.
For real. Take the plunge. The water isn’t as cold as you think.
Hello! So I have an almost 10 mth old lil man that used to sleep 9-11 hrs at night in his bassinet until he was right at 7 months and then he got too strong and broke out of his swaddle like the Incredible Hulk. Well coincidentally I had just found out I was 3 mths pregnant and Mama was one tired, miserable, girl that honestly did whatever it took to get him back to sleep! Which meant bringing him into our bed. I know…bad me…
Well now we are approaching week 3 of CIO after 2 weeks of attempting crib sleep with my prego self laying on a cot in his room next to the crib did not get us anywhere.
He is a very happy baby. He’s kind of a freak of nature in the fact that he is sleep deprived but grinning from ear to ear! He has definitely regressed on the napping too. I’ve been,per your blog, doing whatever it takes to get his two naps in a day. So that he will be rested for CIO. It’s usually only successful by car or stroller. Well he has made NO improvement at night with CIO. By day 3 he started screaming as soon as the bedtime routine started. With his bath, which he usually loves, because he knew the crib was coming. He cries close to two hours every night. Then he wakes frequently crying sometimes for up to another hour during the night. I can visibly watch him on the monitor after the first hour try to go to sleep by attempting to get comfy, but it’s like he can’t turn his brain off, and he’s standing back up again. It’s up down, up down. It’s exhausting to watch!
Well last weekend we had a family trip planned and we were staying in a small house where we couldn’t let him CIO because of everyone else’s sanity. We were reluctant to go and mess up his routine, but we realized no visible progress had been made, and well we REALLY needed the vacation! After all our baby #2 will be here in 2 months! (I just got a chill) 🙂
So of course, he slept a full 12-13 hrs in the bed with us. No waking. I was so happy for him because he obviously needed it, but worried it would be even more difficult for him to go back.
Well last night was crying for two hrs, attempting over and over to go to sleep with no luck, and it was so hard to watch since I am watching him try to sleep but being unsuccessful and exhausted…knowing I could take him out and he would sleep great. I’m really at a loss of what to do. I want to do what is best for my child of course, but everyone else sees results pretty quickly and he has not made any progress. Plus there is such a drastic difference in the bed. Please any help would be greatly appreciated!!! We are desperate before there are two 🙂
Thanks so much!
Kelly
It sounds a lot like us, we are at the one month mark with CIO, he’s not crying as long as your little guy – only half an hour – but it is heart breaking. No improvement after doing this for so long seems wrong, as you said everyone else sees improvement after two weeks at the latest it seems. We don’t have another baby on the way, I cannot even imagine how stressful that would be. I hope things get better for you guys – and us too 🙂
Hey Kelly,
Phew that’s rough. And definitely not the norm. To be honest I’m sure there is something that would explain why you’re having such a rough slog but it’s not clear to me from your post what it is. But I’m guessing it’s a combination of these two things:
– He just really wants to be with you. Which would be great if you didn’t have a new baby on the way.
– Inconsistency. Things like trips or what have you often reset his assumptions about where he sleeps which, in his worldview, is your bed.
Truthfully if you had all the time in the world we could discuss a more gradual approach to wean him off co-sleeping. But most people in their 3rd trimester are barely functional and you don’t have much time to sort things out before the new baby shows up. Which is why would probably make one change which is to get you out of the room. I’m not sure if your well-meaning presence is helping and it may be hurting.
Other things that may be tripping you up (not that you mention them but I’ll throw them out anyway):
– Bedtime is too early/late
– Environmental factors – room to bright, cold, hot
– Lack of soothing (if you can’t swaddle what about a merlin magic sleep suit? also you’re using loud white noise right?)
– Long/dark winddown prior to bedtime. Keep lights super dim for at least 30-45 minutes prior to bedtime.
My heart goes out to you. Good luck!
Wow, I need me some of that please. Seven days! Impressive.
For white noise, we just use a white noise app on an iphone connected to a small portable speaker in the nursery. Works pretty great for us.
What’s the beat way to spend the 20-30 min between nursing and putting babe to crib in your experience? Reading stories? Rocking? In the dark/light/nightlight? In the jammies? How about bath? I’m so scared to stop nursing to sleep, I feel like my little leachy will eate alive.
Hey Anya,
A popular bedtime routine would go: nursing, bath, jammies, books/songs, bed. It is scary to stop nursing to sleep but it doesn’t get easier – younger is better. ANd look at this this way, billions upon billions of moms have managed to do this and thus you can too 😉
Cheers!
Dear Alexis,
Just a quick update to say that breaking the nursing to sleep association issue has WORKED really well for us, and was also super easy to my huge surprise.
I followed your bedtime routine advice and then just started inserting one bedtime routine step at a time between nursing and crib time and eventually we settled on this: jolly jumper to wear out the hamster, some solids, nursing, bath, jammies, book, turn nights off together, hold in arms for a few min to calm down, gnite kiss, then crib.
Also, totally off track, but wondering if it may help to have radio button polls on your blog for stuff like hot topics for your new book and just feedback from ppl on what sleep tricks work (or would this be too hard/expensive to set up/maintain? sorry if this is annoying unfeasible advice).
I also need wine to talk about possible baby #2, but would totally be up for quadruplets when your books comes out 😉
I could have written this, complete with the sappy husband and the equally-at-fault nixed first attempts. We were extremely successful with using the methods listed in the response to Jennifer with our (then) 8 month old. Naps are consistently better/longer, nights are easier, and everyone is happier…at least until our happy girl hit a wonder week (the fantastic 9 mo sleep regression). No matter, we have stayed the course, and it’s still working! I think the answer is well defined in the Closing Thoughts: persistence and consistency.
BUT the consistency part can be difficult for working mommas…which leads me to my topic requests. Maybe a future topic could be about how to deal with naps when consistency is out of the question?? And what about vacations? I’d love to read your suggestions on how to handle temporary changes like that!
Thanks for being awesome! I love this website 🙂
Consistency is hard for everybody, honestly. There is always something tripping you up. And frankly it never ends. My youngest peanut has been pulling shenanigans at bedtime and I’m all like, “Dude, I’m a sleep lady on the Internet. I can’t let you pull this BS at bedtime, it’ll ruin my credibility!” Meanwhile I think he’s upset about preschool coming to a close for summer and he’s processing his feelings by being a turd about going to bed. So…consistency is always hard.
But enough about me 😉
When is consistency out of the question. Like for working Moms? I need more details please! Definitely working on a chapter specific to working parents (daycare difficulties, naps on the way home, etc.).
The reason I haven’t written about vacations is – there’s only so much you can do but no magic elixir. Travel, time changes, and screwed up naps are pretty much the deal you sign up for when you book your trip. The key is to only take trips that are worth the sleep debt your child will accrue while you’re gone. Truth.
PS. Thanks for the kind words 🙂
Wait…I thought the bedtime shenanigans and BS ended precisely at one year old? Ha! Don’t we all wish.
Exactly, consistency is impossible for working moms. Weekday naps are not in the same place as the weekend naps or as bedtime (I assume bedtime location vs nap location is less of an issue, though), the same person isn’t always putting baby down for her naps, the room isn’t always quiet and dark, etc. So, when we started getting really firm on nap schedules (~4-5 mos old), I had a hard time giving them guidance that was practical in a daycare setting…such as, they are not going to put her in her crib and let her cry because that would be disruptive to the other babies, but they also don’t have the time for a routine for only one baby out of the five they are responsible for. We had quite an issue for a while because they were patting her back until she fell asleep and at home she refused to nap without that process. I also ended up giving them our [unused, hated] Sleep Sheep, so she could have some white noise (aka miracle sleep-noise). It ended up working out: she’s 9 mos now and naps are at ~10 and ~2, but I feel like there could have been a lot less tears and frustration. Of course, I feel like that about many things related to child-rearing…
Seriously, your website has made our lives incredibly easier, and I’m convinced we have a happier baby now too. Thank you.
Hi Alexis. Love your site and like others it has been the key to helping get my 9monthnold back to sleep. In your book, maybe you could include a page on dealing with jet lag. I live in Australia and just returned from 6 weeks in Europe which completely ruined my baby’s very consistent sleep routine. We are getting back on track slowly, and the one thing that my husband suggested which really worked was getting baby in sunlight as soon as they wake up in morning & after naps to reset their melatonin and to not let them oversleep in the day. So we nursed in the park a lot as soon as she woke. I am sure others have alternate strategies which I would love to hear in case this does not work next time. I look forward to buying your book!
Great details, thanks! My baby is 5m old. Bedtime used to be a 3h disaster but is blessedly, after CIO, now easy. At 630 I put jammies on, then feed him, then stories, then put him in his crib at 7. Draw the shades, give him his lovey, put on the white music, and leave. Usually he doesn’t fuss and is asleep in 10m or so. Once in a while he fusses for 1h. So eventually I backed down and decided one quick 15m feed then we all go back to sleep is preferable to everyone awake for 2h. So now we’re back to a pretty consistent feed sometime between 12 and 430 (it’s all over the place!)- but he goes back down. So my bigger problem is 2: early wake up. I would kill to have him sleep til 7. But he usually gets up more like 6. Sometimes even 5. I’ve tried making bedtime later, but he’s just unbearable and cranky for the last hour, and it didn’t make a difference. I tried making it earlier (weissbluth seems to recommend earlier bedtime for everything so I figured I’d try.). Didn’t help. Do I just have to accept my baby gets up at 6? And finally- naps are I consistent and often crappy. He’s tired about 1.5h after getting up. I do the same night routine- sleep sack, story, lovey/dark/white noise. Sometimes he fusses 10m and goes to sleep, sometimes he cries for an hour. If he sleeps sometimes (usually) it’s 40min, occasionally 1.5h and very rarely 2+ hours. Maybe he doesn’t need as much daytime sleep because he gets a lot at night? But *I* need him to sleep or else it’s 5pm and I realize I still haven’t brushed my teeth or taken a shower. I know he’s still young but I’m jealous of all these moms with great nappers!! So summary of my questions: 1: how/when can I drop the night feed? As it is he’s only taking 2oz. 2 (the biggie)- how do I get him to sleep past 6?! 3: why are naps still crappy? Are they just not consolidated yet and there’s nothing I can do but wait? THANK YOU!!!!!
Hey Alexis,
But wait I’M Alexis! 😛
Do you have to accept your baby gets up at 6? Yes – you and everybody else who has a baby. If he goes to bed at 7 and sleeps till 6 AM that’s a wonderful 11 hour night. YAY!
Do I like getting up at 6? Absolutely not. Do I? Yes. I have kids and thus I get up at 6. Sure some will sleep till 7/7:30 but more often than not, 6 is simply the normal time for kiddos.
Don’t make bedtime later. That almost never works. Just accept it. And work out a deal so your partner lets you sleep in on weekends. That’s my move anyway.
As for this question, “Are they just not consolidated yet and there’s nothing I can do but wait? ”
Yep. That it.
Acceptance. Pretty much what parenting is all about 😉
Whoa there is a chunk missing- I was saying he goes to sleep in <10m at bedtime, but wakes up at night (usually 3ish but quite variable) and I tried letting him CIO but he'll go an hour, so I finally backed down and decided a quick feed and right back to sleep is better for everyone- but I fear I'm just reinforcing what I'm trying to stop. And after the first night of CIO we had a good week of 7-7 with no feeds. A few wakings but he'd go back to sleep on his own. So I know he can go without the feed.
Sorry one more quick bit of info- the first nap is usually the best. He fights the other(s) much more, and then tend to be shorter.
I am so glad things worked well for little Caleb but it makes me worry even more about our baby. We have been letting him CIO for thirty days now, he is still crying for about thirty minutes every night, it isn’t improving and I am stressed that bedtime is becoming a traumatic experience for him. In addition he is having anxiety during the bedtime routine, sometimes crying in his bath already – something he used to enjoy. When does the crying stop? I would seriously rather go through labour again because physical pain is easier to take than the heartbreak I feel at hearing him cry every night:(
It seems like typical culprits are 1) overtired baby or 2) wrong bedtime. Are naps okay? Is he overtired? I have found that I have to put my baby down to bed before he is cranky tired, or he will cry. If he’s already cranky, bedtime is too late and there will be some crying. Also, I would make that bedtime routine short and sweet to reduce anxiety. Could he have a bath at another time of day, at least temporarily? If my baby was anxious during bath, it would make me anxious, which would probably make him more anxious, etc. etc. etc.
Thank you so much for the suggestions. :). Maybe it is the naps then, he is touch and go with them, sometimes sleeping really well and so entires not so much. He averages about two to three hours in naps a day, is that too little? We start his bedtime routine at 6:30 and he is put in his crib at 7:00. After he falls asleep he generally goes until anywhere from 2:00 am until as late as 5:00 am before waking. I go to him and feed him then he sleeps until 7:30. Should we start his bedtime even earlier? Thank you again for your reply and suggestions, I so appreciate them!
If he is in bed at 7:00 and cries for 30 minutes, then he is asleep at 7:30. So, sleeping 7:30-7:30 is 12 hours, which is the gold standard and awesome! I wouldn’t expect that he could do more, so I wonder what would happen if you put him down at 7:30.
So we were going to try 7:30 today but he was so tired and rubbing his eyes already at 6:10…. I wonder if we should actually move bedtime up. Would a 6:30 bedtime be too early? I don’t want him getting up too too early either….
He’s crying so hard right now I just feel awful…
Aww I hope it gets better. The way I started was by rocking my son really drowsy, until his eyes were closing, then putting him down, in a swaddle. Is your guy still swaddled? You could try adding that for extra soothing. Without the swaddle my son’s arms just bang around and he can’t settle down.
Hi Alexis,
My husband and I are struggling with when to set bedtime. Our daughter is 14 weeks old, and bedtime is a disaster. We have tried to put her down at 8, 8:30, and 9, but she does not fall asleep and stay asleep until 10, sometimes even 11!
If we try to put her to bed when she starts yawning, she freaks out. Cries hysterically and won’t stop until we unswaddle her and take her out of her room. Sometimes she starts freaking out when we take her into her room. We have tried putting her down earlier, around 7, but all that happens is that she wakes up an hour later and won’t go to sleep, and we do the whole freak out process again.
We do a bedtime routine, which includes boob, diaper, change clothes, warm washcloth to face and hands, lullabies, swaddle, and bed. She is freaking out by swaddle time, so bed is actually rocking or walking her up and down the stairs until she’s asleep. Then, after we put her down, she will wake up, and we have to calm her back to sleep.
Once she’s asleep, she only wakes 1-2 times to eat, and is usually up between 6:30 and 7:30. We’ve had nights where she’s slept 8 hours straight (not often!) so we know she can put herself back to sleep.
How do we know when to put her to bed? My husband and I would love to have our evenings free of screaming and crying. How can we make that happen?
Thanks!
Christina
This sounds so much like our son around that age – so my heart goes out to you… Only he started out with 1am bedtime lol.
When you say bed, do you mean crib or swing? Things got much better for us when we switched him to swing for a bit (see Alexis’ post on swings: http://www.troublesometots.com/the-ultimate-baby-swing-sleep-guide-for-swing-hating-babies/). We were worried this would be a step back b/c he was crib trained before but it was very helpful amd weaning off swing wasn’t hard at all (Alexis has another post on weaning off swing).
Also you mentioned rocking/walking up and down the stairs – we sid that too until my arms started falling off, then got a yoga ball to bounce him and it was a lifesaver.
As for wiping her face, maybe a bath as part of routine could help? It used to be one of very few things that would calm our peanut down & get him sleepy.
And lastly, you may just have to give it time – like i said, we started with 1am bedtime (*goosebumps*) & are now around 8pm mark at seven months, so hang in there!!
Hi,
My daughter is almost 5 months old. She’ll only go to sleep in the buggy during the day or at my breast at night. (Won’t take a bottle; we’re persevering with this.)
We’ve tried various things. (Moses basket in different places, picking up and putting down again for daytime naps, gradually lengthening amount of time after night feed before sleep.) We’ve had somewhere between limited and no success with these methods and have decided that we’re just going to have to sit it out til she’s 6 months and try CIO. (It’s summer and I’ll get myself a good pair of walking shoes.)
We’ve tried different things for so long and have kept hoping she’ll grow out of it, but we’re at the point where we really do see the 6 month CIO as the last-chance-saloon. We need to know exactly what we’re doing and stick with it. We’ve got a month to sort ourselves out. We’ve read that it’s a good idea not to hit daytime naps at the same time as night-time ones, but we do need to get both sorted.
Your thoughts are appreciated.
My little girl is 10 months old. She had always slept by herself in her bassinet or crib until she got sick and didn’t eat for a week and had only Pedialyte. I eventually caved and let her sleep in our bed because none got sleep. That was about 2 and a half months ago. Since then not only it’s she in our bed but Skye it’s waking up all night to take a bottle. I have it to her because I thought she was starving. Two and a half months of no sleep, I decided something had to give. I thought I tried everything to get her back in her bed. I was at my wits end. I did research. Finally, I found your website and this article. I did the CIO for two nights now. The first night she cries for about 15 minutes and was asleep in 30 minutes total time by herself. Last night she didn’t even cry for 10 minutes and was asleep in 20 minutes total time. She has also slept all night both nights for the first time in 2 1/2 months. Thank you for everything you do. I am so thankful.
Kim (finally resting peacefully mommy) and Christina (now sleeping through the night again)
Please help! my 1 year old is crying through his nap again. We are trying CIO for naps, nights are already great. Down at 6:30 with no fuss. But he wakes at 5 am and then the trouble begins. No napping is happening. We tried the Weisbluth method of 1 hour but he has cried the entire hour for 3 days now. He just stands and screams. NO NAPS.
I am losing it and my sweet baby is miserable. Please help! Keep going or try something else?
I have an almost 10 month old who cat naps all day long (generally 4 30 min-1 hr naps a day). I would LOVE to get him on a more consistent shcedule of 2 longer naps, but fear I have created a sleep spoiled monster….Since he was born, he has napped pretty much on me. Occasionally, if he is really tired, I can transfer him to the bed after he has been aslepp for a bit. But usually, if I try to put him down in the crib or our bed he wakes up immediately.
I also have to nurse or bounce him to sleep for naps. (I started CIO sleep training a month ago for bedtime and it is working great.)
How can I get him to nap 2 long ones, instead of 4 short ones? Do I have to do CIO again….? (I hate it. He still cries when I out him down at night.)
Thank you for your wonderful site!
I could have written something like this (bad at scheduling, 11mo old, struggles to nap, will not go to sleep alone, nighttime wakings are becoming hellish hour+ long ordeals), but with the added problems that she wakes up SCREAMING (both naps and nighttime wakings and morning wakings) and that I can’t let my husband help with any of the nighttime wakings because I can’t trust him to be gentle with her.
If laid down anything other than completely asleep, she will sit up and pull herself up on the side of the crib and grab for me and cry. Nothing seems to soothe her then but me holding her. Getting her to nap is sometimes 5 minutes of rocking/walking with her, and sometimes an hour involving squirming and rolling and wailing. And now she’s started crying any time I’m not physically right next to her (even if I’m on the outside of the play yard!).
I’m at my wits end and exhausted all the time but can’t stop staying up until 11pm or midnight because it’s the only time she doesn’t want to be ON me.
Hello all, I have a 9.5 month old who has NEVER slept through the night, NEVER self soothed and NEVER even got regular with when she wakes / feeds. I won’t bore you with the details but I have tried EVERYTHING to avoid CIO and things seem to work for a few days or weeks then splat, back to waking every few hours or more. I have tried co-sleeping, feeding to sleep, rocking to sleep. She is now improved by the fact she is night weaned so I don’t need to worry about hunger and she will stay in her crib all night, I just need to rub her back until she goes back to sleep aaaaaaaall the time. She will not settle if she wakes and I’m not there. I have got to the exhaustion point of needing to try CIO but I am so worried about it. I am worried for two reasons, 1 – that she is such a high need, clingy, alert baby that she will NOT settle at all and end up just absolutely traumatised and it will affect our bond. 2 – I am concerned I don’t know when enough is enough. Do you leave them to cry no matter how long it takes? If I start CIO I am determined to do it right and by the book. But what if she just doesn’t settle and screams and screams? When do you draw the line?
Please HELP-! I wanted to write a funny email but I’m too tired!!!
Alison
I forgot to mention naps are really good. Sleeps for about an hour twice a day at set times. Only in he cot at home but I can cope with that.
My 9 month old son is on a good daytime schedule – he wakes around 7 am, naps for 1.5-2 hrs at 9 am, then another 1.5 hr nap around 2 or 3 pm. Every night we do bedtime at 7:30 and he’s usually asleep by 8 pm after I nurse him to sleep. Trouble is he is up every 3.5 hours to eat. I nurse him and he goes back to sleep immediately but it is really wearing on me and I don’t know what to do. The CIO method breaks my heart especially now that he sits up in his crib and wails “Mama”. Any advice?
Hello all!
We are the loving parents of two troublesome twins! They are just past 4 months and were both full term. We are on day 9 of our CIO and have been having little to no success.
Nighttimes are 6:30 bedtime prep 7:15 in bed. Same routine every night.
The crying has lasted a different amount every night for each baby
Silas Ellison
1) 1:15 1:15
2) 1:35 :40
3) 1:00 :30
4) :30 :45
5) :5 🙂 1:00
6) 2:30 🙁 1:00
7) :30 :30
8) 1:10 :45
There has been a little bit of progress that seems to not last very long.
Naps are the real terror. We can’t seem to find any good advice on how to approach naps. We started with full extinction for both naps and night. Naps were awful. 0 sleep (literally) whenever we put them down. Just crying for an hour. After a 30 minute break we would put them down again….no luck, just screaming. After talking to some people and doing rudimentary research, we decided that naps were too important to be skipping, so we resorted to whatever works except the previous crutch (i.e. breastfeeding, stroller or carrier is OK, bouncing on the yoga ball is not). We have been doing this for the past 7 days but they still wont nap consistently. Some days they get 2-3 hours over 2-3 naps, other days they get 20-40 minutes over 1-2 naps, and 2 days Silas has gotten 0 sleep from naps (scary).
I know this is poorly written and I apologize that this may not be enough information for any help, but we are concerned that 9 days of little progress (except for 1 or 2 days)is evidence that CIO is not working. We have only a little support and need more encouragement that we are doing the right thing.
We are also open to any suggestions as to how to navigate naps along with nighttime sleep training. Should we do extinction in both at the same time? Should only train nights and do whatever it takes to get them naps?
Thanks for any help or encouragement you can provide!
Justin
Justin,
Hmmm…that is rough. But there could be a few things going on here:
– They’re young. Can you give them MORE soothing? I would love to see them swaddled in a swing if that’s a possibility? Are you using loud white noise?
– I’m thinking that you do whatever you need to for naps (stroller, etc.) for now. Little dudes getting NO sleep is bad. You can’t force the issue? What about swaddling him and strapping him into a baby carrier? Car rides? For now anyway.
– And I’m wondering if bedtime is too early? Younger babies tend to take a lot of mini naps and as a result, bedtime is often even LATER (8-9 PM) and then it slides up to closer to 7:30 as they get a bit older. Some kiddos DO go to bed at 6:30 but based on how much crying you’ve got going on, it feels like they’re bedtime might be too early.
So the biggies I’m thinking are:
a) Way more soothing (no paci) and
b) Nudge bedtime back.
Thoughts?
Hi Alexis,
We gradually transitioned our almost 2-year-old from co-sleeping and nursing multiple times a night and during nap, to sleeping in his own room, own bed, and falling asleep alone, in the course of the summer. He seems truly fine with falling asleep by himself, usually talking or singing himself to sleep. One of our problems is short nights (he often sleeps only 8.5 hours a night!).Another problem is that he is sometimes awake as long as 2 hours at night AND will still wake up at the usual time. I normally check on him a few times during these long wakings, but he is basically happy to lay and talk to himself in his room. He naps about 2 hours a day, and I cannot believe that he is ready to drop the nap. He often is not tired enough to nap until 1 or 1.30 pm. Falls asleep for the night between 8.30 and 9.30 pm at the latest. Wakes up around 6.15 or 6.30 am. Am I off with the timing anywhere? It seems like he is often not tired enough for bedtime, but I would hate to move his bedtime even later! Thanks!
Hi Juliq,
I know this post is a year old, but I was wondering if things have changed for you and how everything worked out… We are going through the exact same thing with our 16 month old!
He goes to bed around 7.30pm and falls asleep between 8.30-9pm. Most of the time he is perfectly content just playing in the crib and talking to himself. He wakes up every day around 6.30am and naps around 2 hrs after lunch (usually around 1-3). As of recently he sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and starts singing or whatever for an hour before he falls asleep again…
Hi Alexis,
I LOVE your site! Thank you so much for all the wonderful info. I have a question about nap training. I have a 7 month old and we’ve been sleep training (CIO w/checks via Sleep Easy Solution) for about 3 weeks now, and she has really done well. She falls asleep on her own very quickly (most nights) at 7pm. I’m still working on weaning feeds but I think we will get there slowly. The BIG problem now is NAPS! They are terrible. I am following your naps schedule as to how long to keep her awake between naps, I put her down when she shows sleepy cues, loud white noise, short pre-naptime routine, SUPER dark room, designer crib (haha)…. etc. But then she will cry for an HOUR or more. And its wide awake, screaming frantically, angry kind of crying not sleepy nighttime crying. 🙁 IF she does finally fall asleep she sleeps 30 minutes max so it hardly seems worth the terrible hour! I’ve sadly fallen back to my old routine of nursing her to sleep for naps and now she won’t even let me put her down anywhere once asleep. I used to put her in the swing once nursed to sleep. Even with me now holding her on the boob, she still only naps 30 minutes. (side note: she HATES the car and has never once slept in the car so that is not an option) Help!!!!!
Alexis, help me PLEASE! My 1 year old is a HORRIBLE napper! We sleep trained at night, he goes down awake in his crib at 9:00 (after reading everything again on your site, I know that’s too late and I’m going to start moving it up. Will 8 be early enough?)…anyways, he’s been great going to bed for a month or so, he wakes up to nurse once (maybe twice) at different times, then usually wakes up for the day at 6:30 when I’m getting everyone up for school. I can live with nights but napping during the day is horrible. Usually he falls asleep nursing and I try to lay him down where ever I can…or not, and an hour is the longest he’s ever napped. I have been trying cio for naps but it isn’t working…I caved after an hour and a half today. That’s just too long for me. I don’t know what to do!!
Hi,
I am desperate for some help and am praying I find it here!
My DS is 7 months old today!
He is able to self soothe and we’ve recently established a bedtime of 7. He goes down for naps and bed no problem. He is waking 3 times a night to feed but we are weening him off that. Currently he only nurses for 3 min at each feeding.
My struggle is naps! He has never taken a nap longer than 45 minutes unless he is super beatt.
He gives me tired ques after about an hour – an hour and a half. We end up having 5 plus naps a day because it’s just up and down up and down.
Something I read say stretch his waketime but he seems so exhausted .
Not sure what’s right and I really trust your option!
Help!!! 🙂
My daughter will be 9 months old in 2 days and everything has recently gone to hell with her nighttime sleep. Let me give you a little background information… I have been putting her down awake for naps and at bedtime since she was 3 months old and she sometimes fusses a little bit, but usually goes to sleep on her own with no problems. She also has a very consistent 2 nap schedule (she wakes for the day between 7:30 and 8, naps from 10-11:30 and again from 3-5/5:15 and then goes to bed for the night at 8). For a long time, she would wake once or twice in the night to nurse and then she would go right back to sleep. This was manageable, but in the last few weeks, the nursing hasn’t always put her back to sleep and she is waking more frequently.
I don’t understand why she won’t go back to sleep on her own in the middle of the night when I know she can because she does so for naps and at bedtime.
I don’t want to feed her in the middle of the night anymore. She is 20 pounds and healthy. Am I supposed to just stop going in there in the middle of the night? Let her scream? She is fierce and will cry for hours and hours and I’m not sure I can take that in the middle of the night. I feel like I’m dealing with a newborn again and I’m tired and frustrated and crabby with my other kid (he is 4 and an awesome sleeper) all of the time. Help please!
Hi Courtney,
I think that naps are too long. She need 14 hours of sleep, and if she sleeps 12 hours during night she needs just 2 more hours during day. Try to wake up baby after one hour nap.
Alexis,
I ruined everything!!!
My, now, almost 9 month old has not ever been one of those babies that sleeps 10+ hours. Do those babies really exist? But, she has been doing much better and waking only once per night. That was doable for me. Then, out of pure exhaustion, I created a monster! I need help!
We do our nighttime ritual, bath, bottle, story and bed, and she falls asleep in my arms and I take her to her crib. She started sleeping from 8-5 and I don’t go to bed until 2, so at 5 am, I am pretty tired. One morning, I fell asleep and woke up to a sleeping baby, empty bottle, and 2 extra hours of sleep! It was so easy and glorious! I should have known, anything that is easy when it comes to parenting, is wrong! Now, my baby starts waking up at 3 and continues every 1.5-2 hours. I know EXACTLY what she wants and it is my fault. How do I get her to sleep in her bed all night long? We just started putting her in her bed awake, and that is about a 10 minute CIO fit, but I am hoping it gets easier. If she wakes up at 3 am, do I go get her and feed her back to sleep, like I have been doing, or do I let her cry and pray she goes back to bed? Same thing at 5 am? This morning, I did not feed her, but battled the beast for an hour and a half, until I, finally, let her fall asleep on my chest before returning her to her room. I know this is not what I am supposed to do, but I was desperate for some sleep.
Please help me!!
Leslie
I didn’t clarify, my baby wants to sleep in my bed. Her naps are in her crib and, usually, only 45-1 hour. Thanks.
Hello all!
My baby boy is a liitle over 6 months and he is just a bad sleeper. Always has been. He started sttn on his own at 2 months only to stop at 3 🙁 His naps got really short, so a week before reaching 5 months I was exhausted and unable to put him to sleep at all – bf didn’t help, rocking didn’t help… And we sleep trained using cio. First bedtime, then naps. And it worked. After a lot of experimenting, this is the current schedule
WU 6.30
Naps 9.20 – 10.30 (this is the time he is asleep, i put him about 10-15mins earlier)
Naps 13.00- 14.10
Naps 16.45 – 17.05 or 17.10
Bedtime 19.20 or 25 and asleep by .40
He falls asleep on his own with no fussing, except for nap3, where it is simply not worth the cry and we usually are out in the stroller.
At bedtime we do our routine, with feeding 20mins prior to bedtime. No proble there either.
But then night comes and he wakes every 2 to 3, very seldomly 4 hours and only feeding helps. Unfortunatelly, we sleep in the same room. Will have to, for a month or two more, so cio means nobody sleeps. I have tried it when dh is away and baby cries for an hour, falls asleep and is up after 3 hours.
I have tried soothing and failed desperatelly. I cannot soothe him with words, shushing, bed sharing doesn’t work for him. His crib swings, so i try that. But in most cases, he falls asleep and wakes after 10 minutes screaming again.
So at some point after hours (my maximum has been 3 hours) of doing whatever, i just give up and feed him. Burp him, put him awake and he sleeps….
I honestly do not believe that he is hungry every 2-3hours at night. He eats well, has some solids and he weighs over 18lbs, so i know he is not starving.
I just don’t know what to do. I hope that when we move to our new place and he has a separate room, things will gwt better. But i fear, they might also getvworse, firstly due to separation anxiety and then also as i will have to get up and go to him, rather than stay in bed and swing with one hand…
Any suggestions are more than welcome. Please help a desperate mom
And an update. We were at the doctor’s today and baby has gained way too much again. His fontanelle is closing, so I should cut at least one, if not two feedings. So night weaning it is 🙁
Hey Antoinette,
I’ve never heard of a baby gaining too much weight. What does that mean exactly? Don’t babies just grow as they’re going to grow? There is no such thing as a fat baby.
But here’s the deal – he’s used to eating a ton at night and I suspect you’re nursing at or near bedtime right? He’ll fight you on the night weaning as long as you’re nursing at or near bedtime so night weaning starts there. I know you’ve struggled with this and yeah it’s hard. You’re options are:
1) find a way for him to fall asleep at bedtime without nursing (rocking or what have you). This doesn’t necessarily fix things immediately but it creates the opportunity for you to wean and moves you to something you may have more luck gently weaning off of.
2) CIO. I know you’ve tried this but the key is commitment. Yes he will cry for an hour. And yes he will wake up 3 hours later. Why? Because he’s USED to eating then! So separating his nurse=sleep association doesn’t fix everything, but it creates the potential for things to be fixed. Frustrating, I get it, but there it is. I would say you feed him after 3 hours but make sure you put him down awake after this feed. Then you start shortening a feed (pick the one that prevents YOU from getting a long chunk of sleep) and go from there.
It’ll take a while – weeks even. But you can totally get there. Good luck!
Alexis, thank you very much for your reply and for the hope you give 🙂
I don’t know too much about big babies, but he’s gained 1.6lbs this month. The problem, as far as I got, is that he needs the Vit. D as rickets prevention for the fast growth, yet his fontanelle is closing, leaving no room for his brain to grow….
I have separated feeding from going to bed by 20mins. I could extend if this helps. My worry is that he will get even less sleep before he wakes up for his feeding. Unfortunately, it goes down to the second point you’ve outlined and I am really getting cold feet.
I will try get some help during the day, so that I can afford not sleeping and give it a try.
Cross your fingers
So my wife and I have been trying to sleep train our 13 month old daughter now that she’s preparing to go back to work. We had moved to one nap shortly after she turned a year and need her to go to sleep on her own. She had always been rocked or nursed to sleep at night, and we co-sleep. She has slept through the night for quite some time save for her 5-6am feeding. She’s always been a shorter napper, however, naptime has been a disaster, as she wakes up crying after about 30-45 minutes and can’t fall back to sleep on her own. Initially we would pat her to sleep in her crib so she would get used to it and that would get her down fairly quickly especially if she was drowsy (but not asleep) from being rocked, but she does not stay that way. I stumbled across this website, and we’re trying CIO now for her nap which predictably has led to, one week in, an hour or two of crying. Let’s just say I’m a big softy and having my heart melted for an hour or two a day hasn’t been the most fun.
I guess my questions focus on naptime v. bedtime routine. Does the fact that we have her sleeping in her crib for naps vs. the family bed at night hinder our CIO efforts? Should we be putting her down completely awake at night as well (as opposed to drowsy)? Any other tips to help ease the transition for her? I feel quite guilty changing her routine this much after she turned a year old.
Hey Joe,
Well my first thought is – is she ready to have only 1 nap a day? Naps are hugely tricky. I’m working on the book and the nap chapter is mammoth. Why? Because they’re tricky. If she’s over/under tired going into naptime it’s going to be a rough go. So my first thought is – how sure are you that it’s time for 1 nap a day?
If you’re trying to get her to nap at the wrong time it won’t work. Unfortunately babies don’t have gauges so you have to figure out what the right time is. But “standard” 13 month nap schedule would be at 9 AM and 1 PM.
Also if she cries for 1 hour, naptime is done.
But no – the crib for naps and bed for night shouldn’t be an issue. Should you be putting her down fully awake at night? Yes. Although she’s currently sleeping well at night so it’s not a pressing issue. But overwhelming odds are that if you don’t put her down fully awake she will EVENTUALLY stop sleeping so well at night. Although if you’re planning to continue to co-sleep maybe not. So you could definitely argue, “We’ll deal with that when it becomes a problem.”
Hey Alexis!
Thanks so much for such a quick response. Good point, I’m actually not sure about going down to one nap. She had been taking a 9:30 or 10 (up around 8am usually) and 1:30 and 2pm nap, but the the 9:30 was only lasting about 30 minutes, though that could potentially be a factor of her being a short-napper in the first place. Her second nap was often getting pushed back if she slept longer meaning bedtime was often more like 10pm than 9pm. Definitely hard to gauge.You’re right, overtiredness can definitely be a factor. I hadn’t considered that until I found your website. My wife is hesitant to fight the nap battle twice instead of once, but perhaps that would make it easier.
We’ve been putting her down at 12:30 now (7:30am wakeup, 8-830pm bedtime). Yesterday we put her down fully awake for the second time and she cried on and off for about 75 minutes (no visits) before putting herself to sleep and mostly staying that way for another 75 minutes which was a big improvement believe it or not because when she woke up she’d cry for a minute or two and immediately put herself back to sleep. Is the 75 minutes too long to let her cry prior to falling asleep for a nap?
Just for the record, our prior strategy for the first week was to put her down a bit drowsy and then visit briefly after 15 minutes of crying when she woke up, but we abandoned that after unsurprisingly saw no improvements. Thanks again, I’m very glad to have stumbled upon your site. Very helpful!
Just wanted to follow up here – been meaning to for awhile. Rousing success. Within a week – she would cry for less than five minutes before falling asleep, and while she would often wake up and cry for 1-10 minutes, fall back asleep and get 1.5-2.5 hours. What an improvement, she probably hadn’t taken a nap over two hours before! Well, of course a trip home for the holidays probably came at the worst time, after about a week and a half of great naps, and totally threw her off. Basically started from scratch when we got home, but after another week she was back to where she was before we left. Now she even knows when nap time is, and often requests (points and picks up her blankie) to go into her crib during the naptime routine and almost never sheds a single tear! As someone who once thought attachment parenting and “cry it out” were mutually exclusive, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Couldn’t be more thankful for finding this site when we finally embarked upon this process in December. Just wanted to share in case this is helpful. Thanks again, Alexis!
Hey Joe,
Thank you so much for circling back around to share your great news. Congratulations! I love what you have to say here, “As someone who once thought attachment parenting and “cry it out” were mutually exclusive, I couldn’t have been more wrong.”
I totally agree. There is no conflict between wanting to have a nurturing and connected relationship with your child and valuing the quality and quantity of sleep that they get, especially given how crucial sleep is to our health and development.
Well cheers to you and all your great work!
Alexis
Hi there
Such a great site. I really appreciate it.
I wonder if anyone can help? I have a baby boy who is just 8 months this week. His bedtimes have always been great, goes to bed awake self soothes sleeps through or wakes for one feed early morning etc. his nap times…not so much. He was born very small and I couldn’t resist cuddling him during the day, which eventually moved to before naps. And of course when he wakes 20-30 mins later he can’t self soothe. This week I thought enough is enough and we are going to CIO. Awful first nap – cried 35 mins or more slept for 20mins, second one fell asleep immediately and slept for 30 mins. When he woke I left him to hope he would resettle but he got hysterical. I feel awful but I left him the rest of the hour to see if he could calm but he didn’t. I had in my mind to go in after an hour whatever, but now I’m stuck. How long should I leave him to see if he does settle himself back? Because in a way I wonder if me going in after 30 mins crying is reinforcing this – but obviously I can’t leave him there indefinitely! Do some kids just take 30 mins naps and that’s that? He used to do 45, never more apart from after swimming.
Also, as he woke at 6 this morning rather than 730, I put him down for nap at 8 rather than 9, he was really sleepy. He slept for 30 mins and laid awake playing for another 30 before I picked him out. But that meant he needed another nap at 1130 which seems really early – which I put him down for, no tears, wakes 30 mins later. If I had pushed him to stay awake longer to his usual 1230 nap would it have let him nap longer do you think? I am trying to work out whether he is better off extra tired before nap or whether that would make him over tired. Any advice? It’s a minefield, I just want to have an idea and stick with it! After his last 30 mins nap he’s not crying just wriggling about in the cot for 30 mins – again, should I just fetch him after say 20 mins of being awake or leave him until he’s been in bed an hour (no reason for this time, just something I read!) or longer?
Sorry for the long winded question! I’m new to this! Thanks for any advice anyone might have.
Sarah
Hi Alexis!
As the parent of a less than fabulously sleeping (I still love him) 5 month old, I love this site. My first was a champion sleeper (all by pure dumb luck) and still is. My 2nd…well lets just say if he was the 1st I may only have 1 kid…Im desperate for consistency.
He goes down awake at 7pm, no sleep props, in his crib, alone and on a good night wakes around 3:00-3:30 for one feed and then goes back to sleepyville until 6:30-7am.
I will take this routine everyday for the rest of my life! Well, maybe not the rest of my life but I’ll take it.
Then there are the other nights. Sigh.
Where he wakes 2 hours after putting himself to sleep crying like someone is RIPPING HIS ARMS OFF. I’ve checked the monitor, no one is.
I wait, I don’t go in. I let him CIO for 5-10. He doesn’t stop. I go in comfort him with a gentle snuggle just to calm and then back in the crib (awake) where he returns to wailing. Repeat process potentially 547308439 times. Eventually he goes back to sleep until his normal wake up time. Often his eyes are closed through this…like he wants to sleep…and scream…together…at the same time.
Neither routine is consistent and I can’t for the life of me figure out what is making that arm ripping off routine happen more?! Naps are pretty much the same, 2 hour awake times max…followed by 1.5ish hour naps…3 naps a day…
Just when we get to point of maybe being a little cocky…”Oh I can stay up till 12 and have an extra glass of wine” BOOM! Up all night.
I so want to get to that 11 hours of sleep (or just 7-3 without scream fests). Any idea on what I am missing or doing wrong? Im tired of running to bed at 8:30pm cause I am scared of a 5 month old 🙁
Hi,
I just discovered your website today and I love it! And am really looking forward to your book now.
For the past 5-6 months, I’ve been pretty militant with my baby’s schedule. My husband makes fun of me, but I don’t know how to do it any other way. My baby is just a few days away from 8 months old. Over the past months, his wakeful time has extended and this is what his current schedule is:
8:40 I wake him up for the day (I know – too late, but it used to be 9:00 and I am working on moving him back by 10 minutes at a time slowly)
8:45 feed him food followed by breastmilk
11:15-12:45 nap (85% of the time I wake him from this nap)
12:45 feed him food
3:15-4:15 nap (I always wake him up from this nap)
4:15 breastfeed
6:15-6:45/7:00 nap (sometimes I wake him, sometimes he wakes up)
6:45/7:00 feed him food
9:00 breastfeed
9:15-9:30 falls asleep
(2-3 times a week he wakes up at random times in the night and cries for 1.5-2 hours – not-so-yay, but the rest of the time he’s sleeping 11 hours – yay!)
The reason that I wake him from naps is to feed him as I thought you are supposed to feed babies every 4 hours. Maybe now that he is almost 8 months, I don’t need to do this anymore? But not sure how to change it!!
So this daytime schedule was going along great (except for the night wakings) until about a week ago. Not sure if it was related to me visiting a couple of friends on separate occasions in the afternoon and he couldn’t nap when he was supposed to. The last few days he doesn’t seem to want his 3:15 nap until later – today I just got him to sleep at 4:00 but other days he doesn’t seem tired until 5:00 – that’s a long time to go when he gets up at 12:45! I’m used to waking him up from naps, but now I don’t know what to do – just let him sleep as long as he wants? So his afternoons have been getting messed up but what’s bothering me a lot is that the past few days he’s cried for 30-45 minutes when I put him down for his morning 11:15 nap. He used to just roll over and suck his thumb and go right to sleep! I’m not sure what is going on but I’m not liking it! And because I’m so used to a schedule in the day, this is stressing me out. Now instead of sleeping 1.5 hours in the morning, by the time he finishes crying and falls asleep, he’s only getting 45 mins-1 hour – I’ve woken him up at 1:00 as I don’t want him to sleep too long and mess up the rest of the day. When he was younger he used to give a lot of sleepy cues, but the past month or two there isn’t very much, so I just have stuck him in his crib at nap time and that has worked out as he would always just roll over and fall asleep…until now. Is he trying to extend the time between naps and drop down to 2 naps? Or is this just a glitch as a result of not having his regular naps for several days when I was visiting friends and I should stick to the old schedule even if he cries a lot when I put him down and doesn’t seem sleepy?
So in summary, I’m not sure how to change my baby’s schedule to go with the flow.
Oh my gosh I don’t know what to say besides THANK YOU! CIO was my last resort and with my belly getting bigger I could no long handle my 10 month old kicking and turning all night in our bed. It took about 5 days to get him used to falling asleep alone at night and soothing himself back to sleep when he wakes at midnight. We are now working on naps and they are a breeze! He is asleep in 5-10 minutes with little fuss and resting for 1.5 hours consistently! He has even started to skip his 4 am feeds which is a dream for this tired mama. I don’t know if I would have had the willpower to push through the crying without reading your articles.
How did u manage to do this dear.. please share details…
Well, all I have heard is about 4 month regression. My lo is already regressing at 3 1/2 Months 🙁 what do I do? He use to sleep from 7-Midnight and Feed once at 4AM. Now it is 6 or 7 til 9:30. Again at 2 & 5. Ahhhhh!!! During the day he sleeps 4 half an hour naps.
I have to add more before I typed up a long paragraph and it deleted what I had so I wanted to make sure to get the main issue in. He self soothes fairly well. He doesn’t take a pacifier but he does hold on to the animal attached to it. I always wake him up at 7 am or my Husband does. He naps different times every day. I do recognize all of the sleep cues and try to get him swaddled, lay him down in his crib at least 10 minutes before he has been up for two hours. Why these crapy naps when he doesn’t fight going down but startles himself so quickly in his nap? I have seen him take three 3 hour naps before. Also I read it is best to keep him napping in his crib for the first two naps and then out and about is fine. How do I just keep him up all day to sleep better at night or just stop taking 4 naps and instead I would love for him to take two long naps. Please help!!
Thank you for listening
Rachel
A question on sleep training. My almost 5-month-old twins are still in their swings, swaddled with white noise and a dark room. We’ve been able to get Twin B to put himself to sleep but Twin A is proving more difficult. If we do check and console with him, do we do that with him in the swing swaddled, or do we need to do that in his crib where he will eventually be sleeping? I guess I’m just wondering if we check and console sleep train him with him swaddled in the swing, if we will need to re do it when we transition him into the crib un-swaddled?
Hi Alexis,
I am so happy to have found your blog! We are in the midst of a tough time trying to get our 6.5 month old to sleep. Now I realize after reading your posts that we have been creating this problem. We have just been trying to get our son on a schedule and are in need of some advice. We are wanting to try the cry it out method that’s more traditional as we have not had much luck with the Ferber method. We have been inconsistent with nap times because of his lack of sleeping at night. Usually we do a bedtime routine of 6p dinner then 6-7p play then bath 7p and 730p nurse and then he is asleep. I can see now that nursing him before bed has caused him to associate nursing with sleeping. Then usually he wakes up anywhere from 1130-100 and we had been trying to Ferber him by going in and comforting him to where he just gets angrier when we see him. This leaves us up until we finally get him down by 3 usually by giving in and picking him up to rock and sing and soothe him (the same way we get him to nap). We cut out his night time feeds a few weeks ago. Not by night weaning but more like cold turkey. I can tell that he isn’t hungry at this time and that it’s more that he needs help getting back to sleep. Then he usually nurses around 430-5am and has no problem sleeping until around anywhere from 730-830. Then we would have him nap anywhere from 10-11 and then again around 2-3. We try to rock him to sleep and then put him in the crib when he was sleeping. He would sleep for about 30min. In desperate days we would put him in the car to nap which I now realize doesn’t help. Occasionally he would take another nap depending on how tired he was and that was usually on me after a nurse for about 20 min.Then we start all over around bedtime. After reading your post, I am wanting to set a more schedule by getting him up around the same time everyday and putting him down around the same time with naps and feeding times staying consistent. My questions are should I start worrying about getting him to sleep at bedtime first before having him cry it out for naps and if so do I still rock him to sleep for naps and then have him cry it out for bedtime? How long do I let him cry for at night or nap time? Also since I’ve cut out nights feeds other than the 5am one which I am fine to keep for now do I let him cry it out when he wakes up multiple times throughout the night? My goal now is to have him get a new bedtime routine that doesn’t consist of me nursing him right before bed and then to set a nap time routine at the same times and to set a schedule to get him on a normal clock. Thank you for making this blog and I hope to hear back from you!
Hello..
My 11 months old is suddenly waking up almost every hour and a half.. She has never slept through the night but over the past one month she had been sleeping at least 3-4 hours a stretch, however now suddenly it goes back to 2 hours.. Need help..
She’s co sleeping, and fed to sleep in the night however goes to sleep in a rocker during the day at the house with my MIL..
I m terribly sleep deprived..
HELP PLEASE!!! My now 11 month old has never been the best sleeper. I am still nursing and around the 8-9 months we managed (through CIO and other methods) to get him to only wake up once a night to nurse, and he would sleep about 10-11 hours nightly. Naps have always been crappy and inconsistent with him, but I was over the moon because I thought that day would come.
We then went on vacation, where I had to share the bed and room with him, and boom it all went out the window and now I am DESPERATE… the old tricks we used don’t work anymore and he is now waking up 3-5 times a night. He freaks out every time we leave the room, or even if we stop touching him. On the positive side, I still only nurse him once a night still but he requires rocking, cuddling, patting, etc to go to sleep. He was up for 3 hours last night, and nothing seemed to work, not even the patting in the back, rocking, nothing! Every time we stopped touching him or left the room he lost it. We thought he was asleep and then he would scream again.
We have a consistent night routine of bath, jammies, sleep, but the time is still all over the place because of the 4 hour time change we experienced coming back and I’ve had to resort back to nursing him to sleep because otherwise he will cry for an hour or more! I am so exhausted, angry, frustrated, I don’t know what to do anymore.
I know I am not alone in our struggles with my son’s sleep, so any advice would be welcomed!
Need advice. My baby, who’s almost 5 months, wakes 2-3 times a night. I put her to bed awake and she falls asleep on her own. She goes down at 7:15-7:30 and only cries for a few mins sometimes not at all. She has her last feed at around 5:45-6:15, which is a bottle of formula (otherwise she’s breastfed) so she’s not being nursed to sleep or near bed time. She is only giving us about a 4-5 hour chunk and then wakes 2-3 hours after that. I nurse her when she wakes. I’ve tried to let her CIO but she’s gone on for an hour and I just don’t think thats healthy. Any advice would be appreciated
Same boat
I had the same experience as Jacqui — I went as long as 90 mins with my youngest daughter and then gave in. Plus my husband isn’t supportive of this type of parenting.
Hi there
I NEEDDDD help!!!!! My 10 months old would not sleep her self.
Last two days she has been sleeping 11 hrs only in 24 hrs.
She has been co-sleeping since she was born. We sleep train her when she was 6 months old, everything was fine until she turned 7.5 and nothing is working since then. Whenever we try to train her she vomits. And cried like anything. Apparently I am her sleep association so she goes to sleep while I keep my hands on her tummy. once she is asleep I leave the room. 30 or 40 minutes later she is up and standing in her crib if I go and try to put her to sleep she wont sleep it takes me again good 15- 20 minutes to put her to sleep back. This happens atlas 3-4 times since last one week and last two nights she ended up sleeping with me in my bed post midnight ( I was too tired and exhausted to try to put her sleep again in her crib) Same thing with her naps. Hardly 30 minutes. And because she has so messed up sleep routine there is not set time for her to wake up.
My husband and I are very worried and tired as there is nothing working in our favour.
We are more concerned about her throwing up while sleep training.
Please please advice.
Thanks
Hi Alexis,
I have a sleep problem (surprise surprise) with my 3.5 month old that I haven’t found too much information on. Basically, she goes down for naps at daycare (has been going there for about a month now) without any of the pomp and circumstance that I have to do with her at home in evenings and on weekends. They swaddle her, put her in a swing (she has reflux, so doctors ordets) turn it on and leave her. She sleeps at least 1.5 hrs at a time, sometimes she even has to be woken to keep from napping too long. For me, naps are typically a big fight. I have a consistent nap routine: swaddle, white noise, black out curtains, rock and lullaby until sleepy then into her swing a little awake. I’m also very conscious of her wake times and try putting her down after she’s been up about an hour. Lately she has been terrible for me. She cries and fights the nap, then when I put her in the swing she starts crying. Sometimes I can’t even turn the swing on because she just stares up at it while the motoring gets going and is wide awake again. I’ve become so fearful of her waking up and having a disaster nap that I’ve resorted to either holding her until she’s in a deep sleep or holding her for the entire nap. I’ve tried not turning the swing on (it’s off while she sleeps at night) but that usually makes her wake after 40 mins. I just want to be able to do our little routine then put her down in her swing awake and not worry about her becoming wide awake, crying for me a few mins after I leave the room or sitting in her swing wide awake for half an hour then starting to cry uncontrollably because she’s overtired (yes she has done that).
I have a 7 month old son who I don’t think is ever going to sleep well. I have spent countless hours researching what to do about his sleep and while it is some what better than when we started out it still isn’t as good as I would hope for. I started sleep training just after Mother’s Day, night time first and then naps. Boy was it harrrddd and it still is because there are days when he will still cry when I lay him down :(. He has no sleep associations for nighttime or naps. At night I nurse him 20-30 minutes before he is placed in his crib and for naps it’s usually an hour or more, we do not use a paci at either time. We have a routine we do before naps and bed. He is placed is his crib very awake and will put himself to sleep. Bedtime is usually around 7:30 and he takes 3 naps a day. At night he will sleep in 3-4 hour chunks, I usually wait a few minutes before going in his room to see if he will fall back asleep on his own. I usually end up feeding him twice at night, sometime around midnight and then again around 4..he always wakes up 4-6 no matter when he previously woke up and nursed. At 7 months old I just feel like he should be able to go longer than 4-5 hours without eating (he has solids 3 times a day and nurses 4-5 times during the daytime). Naps are sometimes long and sometimes short….there is no pattern to them, I keep a sleep log to look for any kind of pattern and can do the same thing every.single.day and about 50% of the time he will just take a 40 minute crap nap. I feel like I have tried everything, has anyone else had any type of scnerio like this? Will he eventually outgrow this and let me sleep for longer than 2-3 hour chunks? After all the crying and sleep training I was really hoping for better!
I am SO GLAD i found this! Caleb sounds a lot like my 11 month old! He is not my first.. but my 5th! I have never had a problem with my babies napping.. or going to sleep at night. I have realized though.. we were all always on a good schedule with those babies. For this one, things are very different. I plan to follow the advice on here. Thanks so much for posting, it was so helpful to read it all!
Thank you for all this super helpful information! My 10 month old is a lot like Caleb. I do have a question about naps. In your to do list it is #4 on the list, so do I just continue to nurse/rock anything that works for him to take a nap? But not nurse to sleep for bed time and only work on CIO for night time sleeping and then once that is good then I start CIO for naps? If so is that sending mixed messages that during the day he can nurse to sleep but not at night?
Also what should I do if at nap time he has gotten to the point that I can’t even stand up out of the rocking chair and he is awake and freaking out, and then its pretty much a lost cause of trying to get him to sleep even if I lay down in my bed with him(which used to work), the only thing that sometimes works is walking around holding him, which I can’t do because my arms feel like they are about to fall off after 2 minutes of holding a dead weight 22lb sleeping baby. He also does this at night for bed time but with starting CIO and nursing earlier I’m not concerned about bed time, but unsure of what to do for naps in the mean time until we get bedtime sleep issue resolved.
Thank you in advance. Im so glad i came across this site, it is very reassuring.
Tina
I have a 6 month old who is still waking up multiple times a night (2-4 depending on the night; average is 2). She has had a solid nighttime routine since the age of 2 months. We have bath time, pj’s and diaper change, feed, and rock until eyes half closed, then lay her in the crib. She is in bed around 6, usually fusses slightly when initially put down and may wake for her pacifier a couple times within the first hour of sleep. However, when she has slept for four to six hours she wakes up. She has gone nights where the pacifier is all she needs to soothe her back to sleep, but recently she is getting so fussy that the only way to soothe her is to feed her another bottle. I have gone from 5 ounces to 3 in hopes of weaning her from night feeds, but she is starting to cry uncontrollably now until you feed her a full bottle. After this first waking, she usually then wakes again 2 to 3 hours later (4 if we are having a good night) and it cycles again. I have tried feeding her more before bed, more solids throughout the day, etc. and nothing seems to work.
My husband and I have tried the CIO method on various occasions, as well. Last night we fed her at 10:30 after her initial waking, 1:00, and then at 3:00 tried letting her CIO. She lasted over an hour of crying. She gets herself somewhat calm for two minutes then starts to wail out of control. She gets to the point of coughing, etc. that we ended up feeding her another 3 ounces to get her to sleep and to give us an hour more before the alarm.
She wakes up in the morning usually between 7 and 7:30 regardless of how well she sleeps. She naps two to three times a day (2-3 hours after being up) and is usually napping 45 minutes to an hour (this is recent. She only used to sleep 30 minutes if we were lucky). We are at a loss for the night time wakings. She has slept through the night on multiple occasions and last did so four nights in a row but then started popping a tooth and got her first cold. If you have any suggestions I would greatly appreciate them.
I forgot to add that we do use a sound machine at bedtime and naps as well.
My husband and I are going nuts. She used to sleep great around 4 months and she is now 6 months. In the last two weeks she went from only waking up at 2am and 6am (initially feel asleep at 10pm) to waking up at 12, 2, 4, 5, and 6:30am, where i give up and take her to bed with me. The she only kinda sleeps for an hour, but is thrashing so much i get kicked out of bed.
We have never set actual nap times, the only consistent nap she gets is 3pm – 5pm. I’m wondering if i made a big mistake by having her cuddle with me every night and fall asleep in my bed before i transfer her to her crib. She does transfer really easy i just wish she would stay asleep longer. She is getting a bottle everytime she wakes up and before when she only woke up twice in the night it wasn’t so bad, but now we are thinking she is taking advantage of us (can a baby do that?)
Also all of her naps are on a blanket on the living room floor. She just falls asleep when ever she gets tired. But if i put her in her crib for a nap, she just babbles, coos, and plays away, rarely does she fall asleep.
The hardest part of all this is my husband not being consistent. He sleeps in so she does (kinda), he stays up so she does, she naps when HE does. it is really frustrating. He had agreed to help with sleep training though so hopefully we can work together on this.
I’m just so tired……
My son was a pretty good sleeper until he started rolling over. Now if we put him down awake he immediately rolls onto his belly and starts crying. We kind of tried Cry It Out. We only got to 15 minutes and then he got a cold so we abandoned it. We’ve been rocking him to sleep but most night he wakes every couple of hours. I worry CIO will just get him so upset it will take hours to calm him down again. Help!
Thank you, what great advice all over this site!
I have a question about toddler sleep. Our 2.5 y.o. is now (after a LONG, HARD row) a solid night sleeper and napper and night weaned. Yikes. Hope I’m not gonna jinx it by talking. It has been HARD. He still nurses to sleep and first thing in the morning. No idea how I’m going to break that habit – he is very attached to it.
However, he has a late bedtime (9-10) due to our version of not being good at routines. This leads to late morning wake-ups (7-8), (which feel early to me because Mama often has not slept enough, having squeezed in 45 min to “myself” to get life logistics work done before crashing to sleep asap), which leads to frenetic mornings getting to school, which leads to … Mama spends the second half of the day recovering from the first and then we get back on the merry-go-round.
We live in a cramped apartment where the little guy can easily get out of bed (climbed out of his crib at 18mo; he’s high-energy, über-physical, very loud) easily come to our bed, and there is no way to isolate either him or us unless someone sleeps in the tub (I tried once).
My question: How can we can get him on an earlier bedtime routine? He currently goes down anywhere between 9 and 10:30. Occasionally I’ve been able to work him back to 8:45 (2x at 8pm when he skipped his daytime nap entirely, but that’s not ideal, as he gets cranky!), but then we have an event or Daddy comes home later and he waits up or something else. I fantasize about him going down by 8pm and having 1-2h to myself &/or with the hubs. Am I dreaming??
Very few brain cells left due to cumulative sleep deprivation so advice would be welcomed warmly!
Alexis,
I have soo many questions…
Our 8.5 month old daughter who is exclusively breastfed wakes every 3 hours at night to nurse. I am going to follow your advice for weaning a nightnursing baby.
I work full time and we have a wonderful nanny. Our daughter takes 1-3 naps a day, usually anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes each (there isn’t consistency). We have a bedtime routine that we start around 7:15 PM each night, with the goal of her being asleep by 8 PM. She sometimes usually fights sleep a lot by crying and sitting up in her crib. I have to go in every 10 minutes or so and help her lay back down and I usually give her her pacifier and that calms her.
Question 1: Do I wean the pacifier? When? How?
Question 2: How long should I go between the last nursing session and bedtime?
Question 3: If she has a head cold and is terribly congested, the only thing that gets her to sleep is to cosleep with us. I’ve propped up her bed, added a humidifier, given her infant Tylenol and the only thing that helps is for me sleep beside her in our bed. As soon as she’s showing signs that she’s feeling better I return to our routine of her sleeping in her crib.
Question 4: How long do I let her CIO before I go into her room and soothe her by patting her back, shusshing her, holding her hand, etc? Or, because of Object Permanence should I do NONE of these things?
Question 5: During the day do you recommend we stick to a strict nap schedule, a strict nursing schedule, and/or a strict solid food schedule so as to set our baby girl up for a good night’s rest?
Thank you in advance. My brain is mush and I cannot cope.
Heather
Hi there!
Please help! I’ve created bad habits rocking my baby to sleep for naps and night time sleep. My husband and I would also run in too quickly at night to soothe him. He’s a big boy, already 16 lbs so I know he can sleep longer.I’m trying to sleep train now. He’s just now 4 months. I started last night letting him CIO, which I swore I’d never do, and it was rough. He wakes frequently at night after a 7/7:30 bed time. I woke up 4 times last night, one for his night time feed at 3:20 am. He wakes up during naps around the 30 minute mark every time unless we’re in the car or I’m holding him (again…bad habit). Do you have suggestions on what my husband and I could do?
You just described my situation to the T! Following for direction!
Did you get a response. I’m in the same exact boat.
Did you hear back? Your experience is the same as ours currently. Our babe is 3 months, 17lbs. He is accustomed to being held to fall asleep for naps and those last 30 minutes. I think 3 months is too soon to CIO, right? Night time is better with a 7:30 bedtime and he wakes twice a night to feed – 1am and 4am. Up for the day just before 6.
I want to help him learn to self soothe. Please tell me what worked for your little one.
thanks,
Katie
Hi Katie! I ended up sleep training and after a week or two he was sleeping through the night. His naps gradually got better. I have to say I miss my baby sleeping on me. He’s almost two now and only sleeps on me when he’s sick. Enjoy those sweet baby cuddles while you can. If you’re at your wits end, I’d do CIO even though it’s painful. Their sleep patterns change at 4 months, so you might want to wait until then to see how he adjusts.
This was fantastic and hilarious. Love hearing personal experiences.
Hello there!
I guess I ended up in your website because I’m really in the end of my rope here… my son is now 1 year old and he is a very hard one to put down for naps… he does sleep through the night and will take a nap after 2-3 hours in crib with many many check ins and stuff but I just feel so exausthed and so freaking frustrated with this situation.. it seems like it’s never a good time to put him down.. too early and he is not tired enough. too late and then, oh well, it’s too late! I have gave up on morning nap because I don’t seem to be able to conciliate putting a baby down for a nap and picking up my daughter at school!
I neeeeeeed help as I grow more and more frustrated by the minute.. I feel like all I’m doing is trying to put him down and can’t get anything done and this is also affecting the way I talk to my husband and oldest child! This really makes me feel sad!
His schedule is roughly this:
7am – wakes up
7:15ish – nurses
8:30 -9am – breakfast
11ish – 1:30/2 – trying for a nap
2pm – lunch (he is now refusing to eat solids- hopefully a phase that will go away quick)
He has a snack at some point of the day depending on the time he wakes up from his nap, if he takes one!
6pm – dinner
7:30/8 – sleep
Hopefully you will have some tips for this very frustrated mama here!
Hi!
I need a serious help with my third baby.
My oldest and middle children were awesome babies and they still are. Have had no problem since they were 3-4 months to sleep and I didn’t even have to try hard. I am a firm believer of bedtime routine and all, so when I was pregnant with the third, I thought I knew what I was doing. Oh boy was I wrong!
This one was not so bad at first. We went outside of the country for about a month when he was a month old and he was doing good then, but as soon as we came back to US, everything changed.
He eats every 3-4 hours during the day, but he wakes up so many times at night and I am so tired I just don’t know what to do.
My husband is not so patient when it comes to the baby waking up at night and since our older children had no problem like this it has been very difficult and frustrating.
He naps pretty good 2-3 times a day once around 10 and another one at 2. About 1-2 hours each time and he goes down once more between 5-6 for 30 minutes nap and then goes down for night between 7-8.
He wakes up so many times and trust me I’ve tried CIO and it doesn’t seem to work with him.
What do you suggest? I really am desperate!
Oh my gosh, this is my son exactly. We’re all going a little crazy over here What did you end up doing that helped?
TIA!
Oh I totally forgot about this website!!!! I was so desperate back then and I still wake up to put him back to sleep, but I don’t need to get so hard to put him back to sleep anymore.
I don’t know if it will help you at all, but I could’ve used any suggestions myself, so I will try to put everything I did.
I stuck with what I was doing.
Except for the last nap.
He still goes down by 8 at night, he wakes up, but I don’t feed him. I mean he is almost 11 months now, he shouldn’t be anyways-
When he woke up when it’s not time to eat, I held him for about 5 minutes and told him to go back to sleep and put him down. I kind of rubbed his back while I set him down on his side for a few minutes. A lot of times he’d cry because he was so used to being fed every time he woke up. It was hard, but I really pushed myself to stand strong. It took about 2 solid weeks: I think I woke up like 7-8 times through out the night. I fed him every 4 hours even at night, so all the rest 4-5 times I was just trying to put him back to sleep without feeding him.
After 2 weeks, he started sleeping in longer stretch! He woke up every 3-4 hours only, so I ended up feeding him pretty much every time he wakes up.
After about 2 more weeks, I thought to myself maybe I should try to stretch it even longer. So I didn’t feed him until 2. So 6 hours without nursing. At first he didn’t like going down without being fed again, but he learned to deal with it in about 3 days? Then he would wake up around 6-7, and I fed him then. He most of the times fell asleep again after.
About a month of doing that, he started sleeping longer and longer for the first block. Which was great! And I eventually was able to go all the way to 6-7 o’clock in the morning from 8.
Sometimes he will wake up, but I will just go in and put his pacifier back in his mouth and put the blanket over him and he will go right back to sleep.
Until he started getting his top teeth out
And it was hard again because he was in pain obviously, he will start crying all of a sudden and had a hard time calming down. I almost gave in to nurse to put him to sleep, but I didn’t.
He is almost 11 months now and doesn’t wake up to be fed. He wakes up sometimes twice through out the night or none at all. It really depends on the nights, but really the time helped and consistency.
It was really challenging I am not going to lie, but don’t give in! Stay strong! You can do it!!!! Good luck
I forgot to give you his daily schedule!
He wakes up about 6-7 and my husband puts him back to sleep and he will wake up 8-8:30. I nurse him.
Play and snack
10 first nap. Usually lasts 2 hours
Noon nurse
2 baby food
2:30 second nap. Another 2 hours
4:30 nurse
6:00 baby food
7:45 bath time
8 nurse / bed time
Hi Alexis,
As others have mentioned, your blog is really amazing! I have a 6 month old, and we are starting Night 9 of CIO. We put him down between 7:15pm-7:45pm (awake). I try to start nursing by no later than 6:30pm, but last night a friend came over so I didn’t start his last nursing session til 7pm. Last night (Night 8), he fell asleep after only 5 min of crying (amazing!), but he woke up a lot more than usual (good nights it’s been 3-4 times, only feeding 2x in the night (12-2am range) and (4am-6am) range. My husband and I take turns, he gives a bottle during the 12-2am shift, I do the 4am-6am shift. So he hasn’t been really consistent about when he’s waking up in the night, and last night was pretty terrible. Woke up at 11pm SCREAMING, I nursed him, then 1:30am – screamed for 30 min, my husband fed him but he wasn’t really hungry, only ate an ounce. Then he woke up at 4am, cried for 15 min, then at 5:00am – I nursed him for 10 min, he fell asleep, I set him down, he woke up again – thinking he was still hungry I nursed him a bit more put him down at 5:30am, woke up at 6:30am, cried for 10 min, then slept til 8am.
I have two quick questions:
1) I’m trying to follow your advice about feeding twice a night, is his inconsistency about waking because we’re not being as consistent as we could about the exact time we’re putting him down?
2) We haven’t tackled naps or night weaning yet. Should we do nap training next then night weaning, or vice versa, or can we work on them simultaneously?
Thanks so much!
Hi Alexis,
Just wanted to share an update – I reread various blog entries more carefully, and decided that our problem was too inconsistent wake-up times and that we were feeding him during the night too inconsistently too. The last few days we’ve been much more consistent (though I have to admit, I did hit snooze this morning and woke him up at 7:55 instead of 7:45am), and have not been bringing him back to bed in the morning for a snuggle. We are also only feeding him after 2am and then after 5am (even if he wakes up before those times). The last two nights, he’s fallen asleep now without any crying, and one of the nights he only woke up once!!
I also decided (based on re-reading your blog entries), to start nap training before night weaning, and so far so good. We started during afternoon nap yesterday, and have continued today. He cried for about 10 min and then falls asleep for an hour in the am, and in the afternoon, he’s been putting himself back to sleep for a total of almost 2 hours of sleep.
I share to say thank you for your incredible work, and also for any parents going through similar experiences, in hopes that our trouble-shooting is helpful. My husband and I are TERRIBLE about consistent schedules/routines, so this is not easy for us, but it is definitely worth it to learn!!
Thanks so much!
I have an 11 month old that’s started screaming crying and totally hysterical before every nap and bedtime the last few days. She will eventually go off after 20 minutes of crying for her naps but bedtime she won’t stop until we go in and hold her she drops of in minutes and after 10 minutes she’s put in her cot and doesn’t wake until 7am is this a phase or SA? I’ve never had to do this before. Not sure whether waiting 15 minutes before going in and comforting her is too long or not long enough. Naps range from 35 minutes to 50 minutes. She’s only having 2 naps a day up 6.30-7am bedtime 7-7.30 but seems to be more like 7.30. Nap times 10am and 2.45pm
How do I begin night weaning, when my 6 month old wakes up randomly throughout the night? She goes down at bedtime by herself, but there is no consistency to when she will wake up through the night. I have tried reducing the amount of time she feeds for, but it doesn’t seem to help.
Thank you
Blaik
Blaik,
I am wondering the same thing! My 6 month old goes to bed at 7 pm every night has a great bedtime routine with nursing at the beginning so as not to associate sleep with nursing. I put her in her crib awake and she falls asleep on her own no problem. But she wakes up at least once every night often twice and sometimes more. There is no rhyme or reason to how often she wakes up. Are we supposed to use sleep training in the middle of the night too? We wait a few minutes before checking on her to see if she can calm herself down. Also thinking about night weaning but concerned she won’t get enough milk as she only takes 12 ounces of milk from 8-5 from our nanny. I feel like night nursing sessions are her catch up.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated!
Elizabeth
Hi Alexis
My baby is 3 months and feeds every 2-3 hrs,even though the night. He is completely breast fed and I’m really looking forward to the night where he would sleep for even 5 hrs at least as everyone tells me he should by now. So basically I don’t have any sleep time routine or nap time time routine. He usually wakes up at 6am for a feed n usually goes back to sleep. Then I try to stretch the next feed to the 3 hr mark but can usually just take it up to 2 1/2 hrs and he normally falls asleep during/straight after most feeds if I try to wake him up or keep him awake for play he just cries continuously so I just give up and let him sleep. He has around 10 feeds in 24 hrs. During the day most naps come to an end after 40 min-1 hr and sometimes he wants to go back to sleep but needs my help. During the day I have to rock him to sleep in his rocker where he remains sleeping and also takes a dummy. My main concern is the night time sleep. He has no problem going to sleep on his own with a dummy but will wake up after 2-3 hrs so if he sleeps at 10 pm he wakes around 1 pm and then every 2 hrs. If I give his dummy back he still doesn’t go back to sleep and will only sleep if he is nursed.Please help me understand why he isn’t sleeping continuously and how I can make tht happen.
Thanks!
Hi Saf! From what you described about your baby, I think everything sounds typical for a breastfed baby at this age. I would suggest that you take a look at this
https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/are-you-keeping-baby-awake-too-long/
You mentioned that you are trying to stretch his feeds to the 3 hour mark (during the day im assuming?) which may be too long for him to stay awake at this age and that’s why he falls asleep when u nurse him after 2 1/2-3 hours. At his age, he should only be awake for about 2 hours before his next nap. He may be very overtired by bedtime and that’s why he’s having difficulty sleeping overnight. Is he swaddled, using white noise machine, in a dark room? Do you have a swing that he could sleep in?
As for naps, it’s very common at this young age for babies to take short naps. Usually naps lengthen when they are over 6 months.
Try not keeping him awake longer than 2 hours during the day (that may 3-5 naps during the day) and maybe 2 1/2 – 3hours awake before bedtime. Try it out and see if it helps! Good luck!
Please help! I have a 7 month old, who eats every two hours at night (and has since she was 3 months old) – though I would love to sleep in longer than 2 hr increments at night my issue is naptime. She is a terrific napper if you are holding her or wearing her…. if you put her in her crib or anywhere else to take a nap she screams at the top of her lungs for 2+ hours and doesn’t stop. I have tried letting her CIO, but it just makes bedtime difficult because she is so tired and she is literally terrified of her crib in the evenings if I try to have her nap in her crib in the previous days. I have tried naps in the pack n play (so her bedtime routine isn’t confused) but to no avail. I am desperate to get her to nap not on me – not only for my sanity, but because I know she will get a better quality nap! What can I try that might be successful?
Can you get back to me about naps? My little one sleeps well at night but naps are a different story. 1 in 7 naps he will sleep in his crib. He’s 9 months old. Crying it out during naps is brutal. He is very persistent!
Hello,
I love the humour and knowledge of your writing! Thanks for sharing your experience and expertise.
I have a few challenges to overcome with my 3 month old and I’m hoping you can provide some guidance. I expect that some feel that 3 months is young to be worried but sleep, but I feel that we need to get things on a track that we can continue on, long term.
My challenges are (in relative order of importance ) :
– falling asleep independently at night (currently rocked/walked)
– falling asleep when dad (or someone else) initiates bedtime (nap and night)
– falling asleep independently at nap time (currently rocked, carrier, Moby wrap, stroller, car ride, cuddle – This is not super effective. It often takes 30+ mins to fall asleep, and babe will often wake up when trying to transfer. Also, my body is struggling with the carrying and yoga ball bouncing.)
– extending nap length (currently approx 30-40 mins)
We follow the EASY model (Eat, Activity, Sleep, You) for our days. We are moving bedtime earlier incrementally. We started at 11:45 at around 5 weeks old and are now around 9:30 at 12 weeks. It’s still later than we’d like but we’re still working on it. Bedtime routine is bath or sponge bath, jammies, nurse during songs and bedtime story, rock or bounce to sleep, ninja move into bed. White noise is on a timer for 45 mins and I usually reset it before I sleep.
Baby’s sleep is inconsistent at night. Many nights, the first stretch is 4-5 hours, but it has been up to 6.75 hours. After the first stretch, there’s often a 2-3 hour, then maybe a 1-2, taking us to 6:30-8:30am. I nurse during each waking. I am not super concerned by night feedings at this time, but would take advice if given 🙂
I like the gentle approach suggested in the “Baby Whisperer” and “Sleep Sense” but am nervous. I am not opposed to CIO but am also nervous. I’m not sure I’m patient enough for gradual extinction of sleep associations.
Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve used your methods before and was on the Facebook group and all of it worked wonders for our newborn daughter. That same daughter is now 7 months old and isn’t napping like
She used and wakes up randomly at different times a few nights a week and sometimes just sleeps through ( like she used to)
I’m not sure how to get her back “ on-track”
I’ve since deleted my Facebook account and can’t get the support there and I am a bit discouraged on what to do-
My husband doesn’t seem to fully understand how important a schedule is for a baby. He has said “sometimes it’s good to get off -track, because we can’t always get her to bed/nap at the same times all the time,so she’ll learn to adapt.”
I COMPLETELY disagree with this ! Can you please help me figure out how to get my sleeping through the night napping in the day little baby back ?