There are many big challenges with a newborn baby: figuring out the soothing thing, unbreakable swaddling, learning how to feed a baby, wrestling them to sleep, etc. Usually by the 3 month mark, those hurdles have all been conquered. You are now a confident parent rocking the baby play groups, champion of navigating the grocery store with a baby, and chilling with other parents at Starbucks.
Champion parents will also have already read What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through the Night Part 1. It’s long and not particularly funny but it will explain the single most important thing you need to know to stay the course towards sleeping all night long. Go read it and then come back when you’re done (I’ll wait).
Now you know why it is so critical that you teach your baby to fall asleep without you (nursing, rocking, cuddling, etc.).
Note: A small percentage of babies will continue to sleep well even if they are being nursed, rocked, etc. until they are fully asleep. If you are the parent of an older baby who is sleeping like a champ (then you probably aren’t looking for answers for sleep problems on the internet but….) then you may have one of these rare babies who CAN be nursed, rocked, etc. until they are completely asleep without any problems. YAY!
For the other 98% of babies, failure to teach them to fall asleep on their own leads to many sleepless nights and days filled with short crappy naps.
Putting Your Baby Down Awake
By the time your baby is ~6 months old (give or take 2 months) you need to have figured out how to put your baby down awake and have them fall asleep without your assistance.
If you have already mastered the ability to put your baby down to sleep awake, good for you! Now stop gloating and please go away, the rest of us are still struggling with this.
Every parent has read that it is important to put your baby down to sleep awake. And every parent has tried this at various points in their newborn babyhood. Some babies are pretty cool about the whole thing and after a few minutes of futzing about, fall asleep. Most babies aren’t as keen on this plan and express their displeasure loudly and at length. So you fall back on whatever technique has been working successfully for you up to that point (rocking, nursing, etc.) and you continue about your business. Until this stops working. In a big way.
How to Put Baby Down Awake
1. Use the Baby Swing
If your baby is under ~6 months of age the baby swing can be an excellent tool to help your baby fall asleep without your personal assistance. Further, if you are currently rocking, bouncing, or wearing your baby while walking around to help your baby fall asleep then your baby is telling you that they really need motion to fall asleep.
You can choose to ignore what they are telling you and try to force the crib. Or you can hear this message and embrace, temporarily, the baby swing.
If you’re going to try to use the swing to help your baby fall asleep on their own make a commitment to work with the swing for 4-7 days. Often parents will put baby in the swing for one nap, it won’t work well, and they’ll write the experiment off as a failure. You’ve spent months teaching your child to fall asleep in a specific way, and now you’re asking that child to adopt to a new method. It may take a little time for her to figure it out.
Once baby is happily sleeping in the swing, gradually decrease the speed of the swing (6-5-4….). If your baby continues to sleep peacefully great! If lowering the speed results in shorter naps or difficulty falling asleep, then your baby still needs the speed. No problem, you can try again in another week or so. At this age babies are developing so rapidly, what didn’t work this week can work like gangbusters next week.
Eventually you’ll find yourself with a baby who is sleeping in a non-moving swing. At this point the transition to the crib is relatively painless. Put the non-moving swing NEXT to their crib for at least a few days. Then, keeping everything else the same (sleep routine, white noise, etc.) just put them down to sleep in their crib. They may grumble for a few minutes but most babies accept this transition without much drama.
For younger babies, or babies who are motion junkies (love to be bounced, rocked, etc.) the swing is my favorite method for teaching them to fall asleep alone. Bar none.
2. Make it Gradual
This is one of the most challenging methods and the easiest to mess up so let me say this first: take a good look at you and your partner. How are you guys doing? If you are ground to a pulp (sleep deprived, just recovering from the flu, stressed out, have little/no support) then skip this method, it’s not for you. On the other hand if you’re feeling fairly chipper, read on.
Basically your job is to take whatever technique you are using to help your baby sleep and gradually make itty bitty modifications (typically over many weeks) to slowly wean baby off this technique. By the way, this is pretty much the entire message of The No-Cry Sleep Solution (minus the guilt-inducing part that makes you feel like a failure if you can’t pull it off). So there, I just saved you $10.
Take co-sleeping as an example. Your baby is now used to falling asleep in your bed, next to your body, and the routine probably involves nursing. To gradually wean off this you might put the crib in your room, put a futon mattress next to the crib, drop the side of the crib and replicate (making sure that the scenario is safe for baby) the co-sleeping environment only now the baby is sleeping in her bed instead of yours. Of course you are now sleeping on a futon next to the crib but hopefully this is temporary.
Over weeks you might work on nursing baby until she is drowsy but not asleep, gradually moving the futon away from the crib, putting the crib side back up, etc. Your goal is to do this so slowly that baby barely registers the change.
This can be difficult. Babies can be remarkably observant about your efforts to monkey with their system. Also illness, teething, etc. can all interfere with your progress. And if you are tired and frustrated it is FAR TOO easy to simply fall back to whatever works for you and let your baby nurse to sleep or pull her back into your bed, undoing all the progress you might have made.
I just LOVE this picture. Been there, done that.
For these reasons I suggest this method is really challenging. Thus my initial question – how beat up are you? If you and your partner are shuffling zombies your chance of success is low. You are welcome to try, and I encourage you to come up with a plan and give it a go. But don’t beat yourself up if, after a few weeks, you’re feeling frustrated by the lack of success.
Note: This method can be extraordinarily challenging if your baby uses a pacifier to fall asleep. Most pediatricians recommend loosing the pacifier by 6 months of age because this little tool which was so helpful for baby sleep when they’re little can become the bane of your existence when they’re older. I have never found a gradual way to remove the pacifier as they seem very binary – either you give them a paci or you don’t. If anybody has any “gradually loose the pacifier” methods, please share in the comment section!
3. Cry it Out
1. If your baby is older than 6-8 months old and…
2. she’s sleeping poorly (waking up frequently throughout the night, taking short naps, fighting naps, etc.) and…
3. you’ve tried the other two techniques, or for whatever reason, they didn’t suit, you’ve pretty much landed in cry it outsville.
Cry it Out is a big topic and you can lots of information about how, when, why, and why not in this sleep training resource page. But I want to briefly make a quick distinction here: cry it out is a technique that forces babies to learn to fall asleep on their own. And frankly, if done right, it’s a really effective technique. Cry it out is NOT the best way to get out of night feedings (another topic of an upcoming post). Parents often mistake these two issues.
If your baby has been consuming lots of milk/formula all night long and you decide to go cold-turkey and simply stop night feedings, both you and your baby are likely to have a pretty miserable time of it. Also there are more effective and gentler ways to night-wean. I would suggest you consider cry it out as a method to help your baby fall asleep solo at bedtime but that when they wake up at their regular night-feeding schedule, you go and feed them.
If you have stumbled upon some other way of helping babies learn to fall asleep on their own NOT covered here, please share in the comments! Otherwise it’s time for the final step on sleeping through the night, read up on how to gently finish night feeding your baby.
If you haven’t already done so you may also want to check out the other posts in this series:
What you need to know about sleeping through the night: Part 1 and Part 3.
Please help! My 7mth old will not nap more than 20 mins during the day. She sleeps her nights (12hrs) with occasional wake-ups. She goes down no problem at night. We darken the room, use white noise and rock her for 2-3 mins. We do the same for naps and when she just starts falling asleep, I put her down but she fully wakes instantly and wants to play. I can’t let her CIO cause she doesn’t cry, she just kicks and plays and talks and is happy as can be. I know if I leave the room, she will just play and never get any sleep, then is cranky at the end of the day. What can I do to teach her to fall asleep on her own?
TIA
Jamie
My daughter is 7 months now. And when she has a hard time falling asleep or is taking cat naps, I find taking her outside for some sun time gets her tired and she sleeps at least for 2hrs (naps). You know how the sun can get you tired sometimes? Well same works for her. If you are able to, try it. Might work. Good luck.
Sometimes it’s a matter of timing. I tried the dark room technique but I’m finding I’m an hour ahead of his “nap clock” and 10am, 3pm and 7 pm seem to be his nap and sleep times when I thought it was more like 9am, and 2pm. I can’t seem to make him adjust so I will have to adjust my efforts to make it work. Dark room, swaddle, nurse, limit all stimulation, and put him in the crib once sleepy enough.
My daughter is 4 months old and went from 1-2 wake ups over 12 hours to MANY wake ups over the same period.
I don’t own a swing – and the advice for CIO is fo babies 6+ months, and the gradual shifting (strategy #2) isn’t recommended cause it can be challenging especially if illness/teething comes into play….so – what should I do with a baby of this age if you don’t own a swing?
Thanks!
Hi! It sounds like it is the infamous 4 month sleep regression.
https://www.preciouslittlesleep.com/the-thing-about-sleep-regressions/
Good luck !
Yep, my daughter went through the same thing at 4 months. Sleep regression. But it was gone after a week or so. I started the CIO at 5 and half months and in 3 days she was sleeping on her own.
Hi, can you share your process to get your baby to sleep on their own in 3 days!was this only for night or did it also work for naps?
Sadly it’s been about a month of the same! I’m planning on sleep training when she’s a bit older, but it’s been a rough go.
Our daughter is 12 weeks old. I currently rock her to sleep at night, at which point she sleeps for 3-5 hours then wakes 3-5 more times throughout the night. She currently screams if we try CIO and we are not ready to do that just yet and would like to transition her slowly using her swing (which she loves BTW and we actually used for about a month for her complete nightime sleep as it was the only place she would sleep). I’m wondering if I can be in the room when she falls asleep in the swing and we gradually lower the speed as I think she should be able to do that, or will this be counterproductive as the idea is to get her to go to sleep on her own without us there? Also, she currently takes 5 naps a day of only 30 minutes each( which I rock her to sleep for ) no matter what I do. Do you recommend having her fall asleep on her own for naps now too or tackling that after nightime sleep has improved?
Wondering if you solved this as my 4 month old is exactly the same, except she just sleeps 1-3 hours to start with, then wakes every 1-3 hours. Always had to rock her to sleep for naps and bedtime. Her 5 naps are always 30-40 mins long. We have a swing but not used it since she was tiny as she’s never fallen asleep in it – did it work for you?
Hello
My daughter is almost 1. We did the CIO method around 6 months and it worked beautifully. She falls asleep on her own and just about anywhere for naps and bedtime. The problem is she wakes up every night between 11-2 AM screaming and crying. My husband hates to hear her cry and brings her into our bed. What should we do to stop the co-sleeping? Do we have to let her CIO in the middle of the night (again)?
Jennifer
Hi Jennifer! Is this a new problem or has she always been doing this? Is she used to feeding overnight? Is she awake long enough prior to bedtime? Is she wide awake when put into crib or almost very close to sleep?
Our son is a year old. We can get him to sleep easily but not on his own. We lie him in our bed at about 7.00-7.30 and give him his milk. When he’s finished his milk, as long as one of us is led next to him he’ll fall asleep. Then we transfer him to his cot. He will then be fast asleep till about 11-12 give or take an hour and then needs his dummy put back in a couple of times. Then by 1 or 2am he crys but putting dummy back in doesnt work and then we end up bringing him into our bed. Where he sleeps fine. I would let him cry him self to sleep but my girlfriend will not. And says she needs sleep and that’s why she brings him in. I heard people say this will go on for years if not sorted. Has Any one been in this situation before and knows how to sort it ?
I have the exact problem with my 9 month old girl Kenzie. Did you ever find a solution?
Hi! Read part 1-3 of this series and that should help you understand what’s going on and what changes need to be made. good luck!
My little guy is 6 months and we have always struggled with sleep. We always put him down awake and some days he goes right to sleep and takes nice long naps. Most days however he cries for an hour and still doesn’t sleep! Then his whole day and night is ruined. I don’t understand it. I try to put him down same time every day but it only works about twice a week. He also still wakes up 1-2 times per night now even though he slept 12 hours through two weeks in a row. Help please!
Following because I’m going through the same thing with my 6 month old. Maybe one or two nights out of the week she’ll go down without a problem, but the other nights she can cry and cry for an hour or more if we let her. Usually after 10-15 minutes I can’t take it anymore and go to try and pat her or pick her up to try again later. She started sleeping through the night for about a week and is back to waking up at least once through the night and if we don’t feed her she won’t go back to sleep and will cry and cry and cry. Not sure what to do since she should be able to sleep through the night without a feeding (ff baby).
Hello,
My 5.5 month old sleeps amazing in his rock and play but is getting too big for it. I am trying to transition him to the crib and as soon as I put him down in his crib he is wide awake. The rock and play makes him feel secure so I tried the swaddle and rolling towels under the sheet to make it feel like the rock and play. I have tried letting him CIO in 5 min cycles going in to let him know its ok and go back in every 5 min. I would love some type of suggestion to let me know how I can help him feel secure and comfortable in his crib.
Perhaps some snuggly toys around him would help? And a thicker blanket around him so you can really tuck him in tightly?
We had this same problem at the same age when we transitioned from the rock-n-play in our room to the crib in the nursery. We ended up elevating the crib mattress (with thick blankets or books) so she is more inclined like the rock-n-play. We also rolled swaddles/ towels under the sheet to create a little nest. She sleeps in her crib for long stretches (occasionally through the night), but still wakes up 1-2 times. But this helped eliminate the immediate crying when we put her down.
Maybe try a pack n play. Thats what we did. Its smaller than the crib but bigger than the rock n play
When we transitioned my son to his crib from the rock n play we actually made a makeshift “dock a tot” by putting him on his changing pad in his crib to make him feel a little more snug. Worked great!
Hello!
I have an 11 month old son – Jake – who has been sleeping beautifully throughout the night from about 4 months old… however in the last 2 weeks (10.5 months this started) he has been waking up maybe 6 times a night? He is usually sitting upright but incredibly rigid and refuses to let me lie him down again – and if I do manage to get him down he crawls right back up to the seated position and cries.
In the last week he wont sleep anywhere but in his pram during the night, and we aren’t sure whats going on?
Tonight we are trying the cry it out until he falls asleep initially, but any advice on what to do when he wakes later would be hugely appreciated!
Should we be trying something different when we put him down?
Look forward to the advice – and huge thanks in advance! x
Thanks for all the helpful information. My 3 month son is a motion junkie. He slept great in a rock n play from the start but once he outgrew it he just didn’t do well in his crib despite raising the head of the bed and mimicking a snuggly alcove around his head (under the fitted sheet). He would constantly wake up and need to be rocked back to sleep. He was previously going to bed around 7/7:30 and walking up about 2-3 times a night with his first waking not anytime before 10 pm.
We decided to try the swing and he’s still using it a high speed. He does great with it for most of his naps going down with either no protest or fussing for a few minutes. At bedtime he always protests for 5 minutes or so but then goes down but like clockwork within an hour he’s awake and I’m pretty sure its not due to hunger as he generally still cluster feeds in the later afternoon/early evening. I give him another 5-10 minutes but he doesn’t go down. Its like he wants to be rocked to again be placed in his swing. We usually give in go pick him up and then place him back down sleeping and then repeat this every 1-2 hours all night, with feedings in between of course as well.
I’m just not sure what it is about night time sleep. At night I do use a sleep sack with swaddle as I think its warmer and I unzip the bottom so I can safely strap him in. In the daytime I use a miracle blanket but watch him like a hawk since he can’t be strapped in. I’m not sure if its the different in swaddle/blanket but at night I’m just not sure how to strap him in while still keeping him swaddled.
Open to suggestions. He also naps and sleeps in the same place – in his room by his crib.
The Zippadee Zip sleeper is a wearable blanket that is often used as a swaddle transitioner. It is also of a shape/style that allows for buckling in swing, car seat, etc. I buckle our LO right over top of it in the swing.
My 6month old daughter has always hated her sleep night or day she is not a fan of it, we joke by saying she has FOMO (fear of missing out). The last 2 months have been rough she turned 4 months old and was waking up every night at 1am and then you have her up every hour, I thought it was that sleep regression that every one says happens. Now she is up every hour from the minute we put her down. Now she has been sleep trained, I put her down awake but drowsy and she goes to sleep for naps and bed time. She is on 3 solid meals with 1 snack with 4 bottles in a 24 hour period. (she is a big girl at 9.7kg and eats well). I can’t seem to get her to sleep through the night she wakes up to play not to feed or be changed how do I break this naught habit.
Hello — I have a question about my 3 month old. I have been rocking him until he’s sleepy – but not quite asleep – and putting him down in his bassinet. He will typically drift off on his own (sometimes he’ll wake right up and I need to do it a few times). My point is – from what I read, we should not be rocking the baby to sleep. But what if I rock him until he’s tired, and then he falls asleep on his own after I put him down? Is this ok or does rocking need to be omitted altogether?
For now, this is perfectly fine. In the next few months (by 6-ish months usually), you’ll want to try putting him down more and more awake. But at 3 months, the fact that he’s able to fall asleep on his own after you rock him is great.
The swing option sounds awesome, but isn’t sleeping in a swing a SIDS risk?
My daughter is 8-mos old, and a stinker. She’s totally learned how to fall asleep on her own at daycare (they don’t even rock her anymore, just put her in the crib, and tell her to go to sleep). But when she’s home? She SCREAMS BLOODY MURDER every time we try to transfer her to her crib (asleep or otherwise). We’ve been bed-sharing for the last few months (a series of unfortunate decisions), and now I just want her to sleep in her crib at home the way she does at daycare. What am I doing wrong?
Help. My 6month old is killing me. She will only fall asleep in the carrier and if I set her down she instantly wakes up and freaks out and won’t calm until she is back in carrier. When she naps in the carrier during the day it’s 30 minutes tops! She somehow stays asleep when I transfer her at bedtime into my bed with me but wakes every hour or 2 tops! Even putting her to sleep in the carrier is torture lately. it takes a long time and some serious body swinging/bouncing for me to calm her to sleep. Even just holding her during awake time she struggles and whines. Also I’m not sure how to set a comfortable routine for her during weekdays because I have a toddler to take care of too that I can’t leave to tend to baby. Please any advice??? I’m so tired!
Hi, my 3 month old has a soother. She sleeps ok at night (could be better but I’ll take it) butbshe isna crappt napper! 30-40 minutes max. I kmow ots bwcause she wakez ip without her soother. And I also know that I will.most likely need to let her cry it out because there is no weaning with a soother.
Unfortunately she will be going to daycare next month and I would like to kick the habit while I’m home with her. But it says that cry it out is for babies 6m+… can I still try it? How long should she cry and what are signs that she is self soothing? Please help I feel like a horrible parent
Please help!! My son is 11 months old almost one and still isn’t sleeping through the night some nights he gets up to nurse and the past couple of nights he’s been waking up and if I put him down he cries till I hold him then he goes right back to sleep! Please help this momma needs sleep
If doing the swing experiment, does it matter where in the house the swing is located? Because of space constraints, our swing is located in our rec room. Should it be in a bedroom? What about other considerations like dim room Vs natural light? Thanks!
Hi, my daughter is 4 months old and has very short naps and wakes up frequently at night. She sleeps swaddled in a bassinet next to my bed in a dark room w/ white noise and a pacifier. For naps and bedtime i do the same routine..I swaddle, give her pacifier, white noise, and lay her down awake and then leave the room. She falls asleep just fine. But her naps last 30-40 min and then she is tired an hr later. She ends up taking 5-6 naps a day and she wakes up frequently during the night. Sometimes at night I just pop her pacifier back in and she goes back to sleep, sometimes she needs to eat.
I’m wondering, is the pacifier the problem here? How do I wean her off of it? She loves/needs to suck and can’t fall asleep without it.
How do I get her to sleep past the 30-40 min mark to get a longer nap?
Hi , my baby is 6 months and a half .. and she has been nursed to sleep every time and i tried sleep training when she was 4 months old and it didnt work .. she wakes up every two hours for feeding sometimes between 2am till 3:00 she wakes up wanting to play .. am very exhausted sleepless … longest stretch is 3 hours.. would the swing trick work now or its too late ? She is 8 kgs she still fits in her swing ..
Hi! you could try the swing and give it a shot. But it may not work at this age. Why didn’t sleep training work earlier? What does her bedtime routine look like?
Hi sam ,
She was 4 months old i went for consultation she gave me a schedule to follow for naps and night sleeping.. i got exhausted forcing the naps on time and bed time was not rational at that time.. my baby kept waking several times for breastfeeding at night. My baby refuses to take a bottle or a pacifier though she kept taking them till she became three months. Plus it’s my first baby and she didnt advise me not to breast feed her till she sleeps ! And when i read your blog esp part 1 i felt shocked how no1 ever told me that i should put her awake to sleep. When you explained why babies keep waking it just hit me hard…
The only advise i get from ppl is let cio and i cant at all do that. I dont know where and how to start again … we both are exhausted .. i tried the swing last night but it was a disaster.. she cried alot.. maybe because she was too exhausted ill give it another shot after a day or two ..
I really don’t know whats my next step ..
Hi sam ,
She was 4 months old i went for consultation she gave me a schedule to follow for naps and night sleeping.. i got exhausted forcing the naps on time and bed time was not rational at that time.. my baby kept waking several times for breastfeeding at night. My baby refuses to take a bottle or a pacifier though she kept taking them till she became three months. Plus it’s my first baby and she didnt advise me not to breast feed her till she sleeps ! And when i read your blog esp part 1 i felt shocked how no1 ever told me that i should put her awake to sleep. When you explained why babies keep waking it just hit me hard…
The only advise i get from ppl is let cio and i cant at all do that. I dont know where and how to start again … we both are exhausted .. i tried the swing last night but it was a disaster.. she cried alot.. maybe because she was too exhausted ill give it another shot after a day or two ..
I really don’t know whats my next step ..
Hello, I am absolutely at my wits end. My 8 month old is draining the life out of me. Her sleep schedule is so random and different every night. The routine before bed has always been the same: around 8pm we start dimming lights and quieting down play time or she gets a bath. After bath or changing and getting lotioned up if no bath, she gets an 8oz bottle of formula and sits with me in the rocking chair. Sometimes she falls asleep, sometimes she doesnt. I then take and put her in her crib, usually waking her up if shes asleep, I rub her back for a minute, give her a kiss and she goes to sleep. She will usually sleep from 9pm-midnight without any problems, just like the article said. Then at midnight, it all falls apart. I am usually up every hour and 40 minutes with a screaming baby. Sometimes she will eat and go back to sleep only waking once more, or not at all…other times it’s brutal. I maybe get 2 night’s a week when she will sleep from 9-4am thrn like 430-730ish. So I know she is capable of this… I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong the other night’s to have this drastic change. I am physically getting sick and cry a lot simply from exhaustion. I don’t know what else to do.
Hi, I’m no expert but from my experience, it seems she might still have a sleep association because you’re feeding and rocking her so close to bedtime. Her falling asleep on you and then being woken up is not enough to count as “being put down awake” – she needs to be going to sleep completely independently every night. Try moving the feeding and rocking up to at least 20 minutes before putting her in the crib for bed, and see if that helps. It’s so hard – hang in there!
In the same boat with our 9 month old… We only get about 3 – 5 hours of consistent sleep if we are lucky..
I have found with my 9 month old that if I take his paci away from him all day even during nap time and only give it to him when he goes to bed then take it away when he is drowsy. He doesn’t rely on it much anymore. I have started giving him a blanket to replace his paci to have something to be attached to. We have been doing this for about a week now and it seems to be working great.
Help! My 10mo has never slept through the night, but lately she is only letting me get two hours of non-sequencial sleep a night and I’m struggling at work! What can I do? She’s breastfed but doesn’t seem to be eating when I have her latch overnight, she uses a shallower latch and isn’t swallowing until she falls asleep. She eats solids and breastmilk during the day and she’s doing great on the growth charts. We tried to CIO last night, but she went for two hours and didn’t stop so I had to go and see to her/ nurse her back to sleep. She also struggles to nap much in the day but does better with CIO in the day.
Thank you thank you thank you! A month ago I was sure that I would be jogging around the dining room, jumping on the spot, and holding my baby ‘just so’ forever! My first daughter decided she wanted to self settle on her own at 4 months and screamed if she was bounced and wouldn’t sleep with me in the room. It was amazing. My second daughter has not been so keen to let me go and it got to the point that I was THE ONLY person who could get her to sleep, even DH can’t do it. I had found your website and the awake times specifically when my oldest daughter was a colicky mess and realised that she was just constantly overtired and not suffering for bloat or gas, etc, so when I thought about sleep I thought of you.
Tried the swing (mamaroo, pricey and supposed to really do the trick), but after a week of really trying had to pack it in. B rolls o to her front when she sleeps and I’ve stopped rolling her back as it seems she’s most comfortable that way and I’d be rolling her umpteen times a night. I think it’s why she wouldn’t settle in the swing. She has decided she’s a tummy sleeper.
Anyway, opted to attempt the gradual approach. Started with my routine of jogging around the table but added in a comforter/lovey for her to hold, then switched to walking, then stepping side to side in the nursery with white noise on, then swaying, then static cuddling, and for the past week she has fallen asleep IN HER COT with me stroking her arm as she strokes her little lovey. Tonight I left the room when she was very nearly asleep and she still fell asleep. It’s not perfectly there yet, but I didn’t not believe it would happen and thought it would take much longer than the month it has been.
THANK YOU!
Is using the swing safe? I’ve read that they are not recommended for unsupervised sleeping due to deaths occurring in them. I’d be happy to use it but these stories have scared me. Or is there some kind of swing that is ok for sleeping at night?
Any helpful information on multiples?
Hi, I need help, my baby is 9 months old and she is been sleeping with us in the bed, she had gas and comics so forcso long the only way to make her fall asleep was breastfeeding–
Now, even when she slept with us, she never sleeps more than 1.30 straight, now it is getting worse, she wakes up every 45′ or so, Im exhausted, have no more energy, i need to sleep trained her, but how? She cries a lot and the only solution is the boob, I dont do formula.
Any advice will be appreciated
Thanks
So regarding method number 2 for a baby who nurses to sleep: to me, nursing seems pretty binary like you said you find giving a pacifier is binary.
I don’t know how to gradually go from nursing baby to sleep to nursing baby to drowsy. I have been working on this for roughly 2 weeks. Everytime I take out my breast when he’s drowsy he wakes up fully and demands the nipple. If I refuse, he gets very upset, pretty much the opposite of drowsy. Please help!!
SAME! They are demanding.
My baby will be 9 months tomorrow.
She will not fall asleep without being swaddled. She is a mover and wakes herself up!
We also can’t put her to bed before 10pm as she gets medicine at 10pm and 6am.
She has to be fed/rocked to sleep.
If we lay her down even slightly awake she gets out of her swaddle (I swear it’s tight!) and either screams for 20+ minutes or I give in and go nurse her back to sleep.
She does share a room with big brother so I don’t want her screaming too long because then I’ll have two kids awake.
How do I wean the wigglest baby ever from swaddling?
We have a routine and she knows it- she screams SO LOUD if she sees us turn on the white noise, grab her blanket, or turn off the light. She’s a smart cookie!
Check out the zippadee sleeper
Hey I have a four month old baby boy and I want to give him the right tools.
He is currently taking his bath at 5pm and he will have his bottle at around 6 pm, he will become extremely drowsy or even sleep towards the end of the bottle I then put him into his crib where he will sleep until the next feeding. If he is still quite awake( not often) I will put him in the crib with a pacifier and a blanket and after about ten minutes he will fall asleep. The same happens for all other night feedings, he is practically eating while sleeping so he isn’t really learning to sleep independently… What should i do? My oldest soon was a very good sleeper, he stopped night feedings at 4mo and we did a gentle CIO at 6 months, but the little one acts differently and I don’t want to make mistakes as sleep hygiene is very important to me.
Thanks
Hi, my little guy will be 6 months in a few weeks. He naps really well in his swing 3 times a day, falling asleep on his own. At night we feed in the rocking chair and wait till he is sleeping to move him into the crib. He stirs throughout the night, not waking but making noises and moving a lot. He’ll sleep from around 10 pm till 6 am. I have multiple questions here… are we doing his last feed too late? We wake up multiple times during the night to put his pacifier back in or rub his chest to get him to fall into a deep sleep again. Should we try putting him to bed awake?
My daughter is 8 months old. She usually sleeps pretty well. We’ve got our usual pre-bedtime routine which is then followed by me laying her in her crib, giving her a soother, saying goodnight and leaving the room and she falls asleep no problem no more than 5 minutes later. This has been our routine since she’s been 5 months, even during naps. She has about 6 soothers with her in her crib to help her find one if ever she wakes up during the night. Two days ago, she started crying intensely any time I put her in her crib. She wants the soother but then spits it out, cries until I come back into the room; does not give up crying either (I’ve tried the CIO method) the screams just get more intense until she starts hyperventilating and by that point I’m back in her room. To add to this ”joyful time”, she used to sleep from 7pm to 5am, eat and go back to sleep until 7:30am and for the past 4 nights she has been getting up 7-8 per night. I don’t know what to do. Why this sudden change?
Hi! I love your articles, the humor helps me feel more like a normal and sane person, not such a crazy, stressed out, sleep deprived mombie
My daughter is 6 months old and not the best sleeper. Her night wakings are all over the place! Sometimes once a night, sometimes 5!!! Just this past week for the first time ever she slept all night with ZERO wake ups. Of course that hasn’t happened again. The thing is, I nurse her at the beginning of our bedtime routine and she goes to sleep COMPLETELY unassisted for naps and bedtime, no paci, no rocking, nothing. She just kicks and talks and falls asleep. From everything I’ve read, and according to our pediatrician, we are doing everything right. So why does she wake up so much?
We have pretty much resorted to CIO if she wakes up before an acceptable time to nurse. As I’m writing this, she has been crying for 30 minutes Because she woke up only 3 hours after bed (she is teething so we gave Advil), and I know she’s not hungry. However, if we do “checks” she just gets more worked up. I hate that we’ve resorted to this method, but I really don’t know another way. I am desperate for help…
Hey we’ve been sleep training for 2.5 weeks and have gradually worked into timed checks, we’re at 15 minutes now. Baby takes anywhere from 30minutes to 2hours to fall asleep (really bad teething nights). We had one night of almost 9hours straight of sleep, unfortunately that hasn’t happened again yet. Our baby is a co-sleeper and boob fall asleeper so my question is, when he wakes up in the middle of the night and eats, do I let him fall back to sleep on me and transfer him while he’s asleep? Is this ok for the middle of the night feedings since CIO isn’t the answer after initial bedtime? Or will this continue to confuse him? He’s still napping on me for the most part as we haven’t tackled naps yet.
Thanks so much!
Hi Alexis!
I’m struggling with naps AND nighttime sleep I think primarily due to the object permanance that you discuss here since she has just started this struggle in the last few weeks (she’s about 6.5 months old).
This page SEEMS to target primarily getting them to sleep themselves for night sleeping. Should I work on that first and then move to naps? Or should I try to do it all at once?
On a possibly related note, when I try to put her down drowsy during the day she just perks back up as soon as she gets into her crib even if she is completely asleep when I put her down.
Your advice and writing is awesome, looking forward to more!
So I think I’ve done a pretty good job about putting my 6 mo son down awake and I’m pretty sure I’m hitting his awake windows but he has started to move and play in his crib so he keeps himself awake by moving and playing in his crib. He plays pretty independently in general so this isn’t the only time he gets to play like that. There is only a small teddy bear that we only give him for sleeping. Eventually he falls asleep but it can be anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.
That’s a preeety long amount of time to fall asleep. I would experiment with pushing bedtime later by ~30 minutes and see what he does with it.
My baby started sleeping through the night at 6 weeks (7-8 hours a night). Starting at about 3 months, he’s started waking up at least once to feed if not more times. He’s now 4.5 months old and only sleeps for 3-4 stretches at a time during the night. Naps aren’t super consistent as he fights sleep allllll the time and then is overtired by the time bedtime rolls around. I know it’s all a cycle and I’m hoping if I can get his naps more consistent, the night time stuff will work itself out. But I’m worried that since I’ve started feeding him at night because I thought it was a growth spurt, he’s used to that routine. I know he CAN sleep through the night, but I don’t know how to help him get back to doing it!!
Hello, my little one is 9 months old and has always been a happy baby, recently he has became really wingey and clingy, he cries when I put him down if I leave the room and especially at night time! He has been co sleeping with me and my partner for the last two weeks due to being really poorly, he will fall asleep at around 7pm with his bottle, I put him in the crib and he wakes at around 10pm and will not settle, I e tried nappy changing, feeding, white noise and the dark room technique but nothing seems to be working other than bringing him into my bed. His night time distribution has been happening since around 5 months but has gradually gotten worse over the last few weeks. Me and my partner are so sleep deprived and it’s really getting us down thinking we’re doing something wrong, any advice would be really appreciated thankyou x
Is he teething by chance? I had a nephew do that when teething.
I need help for a 3 month old. He is great at falling asleep on his own. In fact, for naps and first thing at night he almost prefers just being partially swaddled (I say this because he HATES his hands in and will cry and thrash until they are let out) and laid in his crib. He will usually go to sleep on his own in just a few minutes. Recently, at night he has started getting up at 3 am for his night feeding and refuse to go back to sleep and if he does go back to sleep it isn’t very soundly. He will whimper and thrash about even if swaddled. Thought?
I have a 6 month old who sleeps great….once she actually falls asleep. The problem we have run into is that she becomes a bag of snakes when we are trying to help her wind down and become drowsy before putting her in her crib. She’s generally somewhat awake when we put her down so I don’t feel like she’s necessarily made a sleep association with me holding her. But who knows. Maybe I’m wrong? My question is: do we keep wrestling said bag of snakes? Or should I just put her in her crib and let her try to figure out how to calm herself down and fall asleep that way?
We “accidentally” stopped using the pacifier. After 4 months of heavy paci use, I misplaced all of my daughters (now 5.5 months old) pacifiers and bought a couple of new ones from the pharmacy, they only had some pretty large ones (which must have been for much bigger kids). Anyways tried a few times to give her this larger paci, only to have her spit it out straight away… a few tries of this led to her not wanting a paci at all ever again, even when I managed to fid smaller ones, she had just decided they were not for her any more.
My 10M has been a terrible sleeper from the beginning. Truthfully, The only thing that helped him sleep was a pacifier or nursing. We can now put him down awake for naps, walk away and he will fuss a little bit but then will put himself to sleep as long as he has his pacifier. He never protests for naps or going to sleep at night for more than a few moments. He will sleep a stretch of 4-6 hours and after that he is beside himself. He wakes up, stands up and just looses it and screams at the top of his lungs. The only thing that has let us get sleep lately is to put him in bed with us but even now, hes waking up multiple times to fuss or cry. I feel like I loose even more sleep with him in the bed. Hes awake when we lay him down,full, clean andThe room is dark when we put him down, we have been phasing out his singing mobile but he still uses the pacifier. When he wakes at night that doesn’t seem to really console him either. Its a hit or miss with the paci. He needs it to fall asleep but isn’t using it to go back to sleep. I’m feeling so helpless and will take any help I can get.. I am so exhausted.
My 10M has been a terrible sleeper from the beginning. Truthfully, The only thing that helped him sleep was a pacifier or nursing. We can now put him down awake for naps, walk away and he will fuss a little bit but then will put himself to sleep as long as he has his pacifier. He never protests for naps or going to sleep at night for more than a few moments. He will sleep a stretch of 4-6 hours and after that he is beside himself. He wakes up, stands up and just looses it and screams at the top of his lungs. The only thing that has let us get sleep lately is to put him in bed with us but even now, hes waking up multiple times to fuss or cry. I feel like I loose even more sleep with him in the bed. Hes awake when we lay him down,full, clean andThe room is dark when we put him down, we have been phasing out his singing mobile but he still uses the pacifier. When he wakes at night that doesn’t seem to really console him either. Its a hit or miss with the paci. He needs it to fall asleep but isn’t using it to go back to sleep. I’m feeling so helpless and will take any help I can get.. I am so exhausted. I have tried CIO at night but he refuses to go back to sleep and that’s when I give in and put him back in the bed. 9/10x he is not hungry because I have looked at that as maybe a cause.
Alexis! Thank you for this amazing resource. I have a question:
1) What do you personally think about trying CIO before 6 months
2) My baby wakes at 7 every day, won’t really nap after 3 and is super tired by 7 when I try to put him down. Then from 7-10 I end up nursing, putting him down, nursing again, putting him down, rocking, putting him down – you get the idea. He falls asleep and starts crying the second he gets put in his swing. Any tips?
Hello there! My son is 8 months old and he doesn’t like naps and also wakes up 3-4 times a night. When putting him to sleep, it feels like I have to wait until he is 100% asleep to put him down because if not, he start crying and he will pull himself up and stand in his crib crying. My son fights his sleep all the time and it is a mission to put him down. I was wondering how do I let him learn to be by himself because he won’t stop crying until I come back.
Are we supposed to tackle naps and nighttime sleeping at the same time? Or start with nighttime and work on naps later? My 4 month old used to sleep through the night and now wakes 1-3 times per night (how many times have you heard this?). Of course, he is grown accustomed to the pacifier, the rocking chair, my special bouncy jiggly dance, the white noise machine and my warm body to fall asleep.
Do I pull all these crutches away at once? At.nap time or just at bedtime?
HELP!
My 7 month old went from sleeping for 10-12 hours with one if any wake ups to waking up either 6 or 7 times a night and going right back to sleep as soon as we pick her up or once/night and staying up for hours. I’m not opposed to trying the CIO method BUT when she wakes up, she does not stay laying down. When she does wake up, she no longer is interested in a bottle…so I am assuming she does not need a night time feeding anymore. She will sit up or stand up in her crib literally immediately. What is the best way to handle this? Any advice?? Please help! My husband and I are going on 3 weeks with very little sleep and we are so exhausted.
Hi! what is your bedtime routine? How does she fall asleep at bedtime? Read part 1 of this series- I think that will explain everything!
Our routine is: breathing treatment (she has asthma), bath time, visit with daddy, bottle, then bed. We were rocking her to sleep but started last night just putting her in her crib. Our biggest issue is that she will not stay laying down. I read part one and part two.
So looks like bedtime routine may need some changes- move the bottle earlier, either before or after her treatment- and it’s good that you stopped rocking her to sleep. That’s probably the root issue. You can commit to CIO, just go over Alexis’ how to on it and commit. Does she know how to sit back down/lay down after standing up during the daytime? If so, then I would just leave her be when she wakes up at night and stands up. If not, you may need to practice sitting back down/laying down after standing up during the day. Good luck!
Alexis,
I just ordered your book. I’m a FTM of a 4 month old daughter. She has never been a good sleeper and has slept in a bassinet in our room at night. She usually ends up in bed with me though because I cannot function without sleep. During the day she takes terrible cat naps and has to be held. For the last month I’ve been trying to familiarize her with her crib. It’s not going so hot and I cannot do CIO. she either has to be nursed or bounced to sleep and she’s starting to teethe early now. I’m at a loss because I don’t want it to get even worse and I worry for her brain because I know she’s so sleep deprived (and ahead of her milestones). Helppppp!
This is us! 4 months also and exactly the same! PoeEe help!
Hi! Help needed! My 11 month old falls asleep fine on his own every night around 7. We have a night time routine that we stick to strictly. But we wakes up around 12-1 and I let him fuss for about 5-10 minutes then falls back asleep. But then wakes up again around 1-2 screaming so I still feed him a 6 oz
Bottle over night. I have tried weaning it down to 4 oz but he can tell and screams until I go fix more. Should I try to dilute the bottle with one less scoop of formula? Thanks!!!
Hi there, I’m just looking for some advice. My second child is now 6months old (we also have a 2year old) for the past 10 weeks he sleeps no longer then 2 hours max, most of the time at night when we put him down at 7:30 he wakes every hour till about 4am then he will sleep from 4-6am soild.
He wriggles so much with his legs up and then sometimes he will let out a couple of farts, I’ve noticed in the mornings when he gets up at 6am he lets of like 20 farts at a time.
I’ve tried changing formula, I’ve tried wind drops, nothing is working.
At night the only thing that gets him back to sleep every hour he wakes is a few sips of milk and then he’s out to it for sometime 30mins sometime 1 hour then the wriggling starts and he screams.
I’m exhausted and out of ideas any help and advice would be much appreciated, my husband and I have no time together as one of us is up every hour. Need advice! Cheers
Hi, I’m looking for advice on how to transition a 7 month old to sleep awake. I notice your article only mentions the swing for less than 6 months and CIO as options?
New born baby is used to sleep with mom. Getting baby sleep in crib really difficult for mom. Thank for a guide to put baby sleep in crib. Really helpful guideline.
My little girl has had a cold on and off for the past month. She is congested and it is really messing with her sleep. We’ve done all the recommended things for her age (6 months); saline, suction, cool mist humidifier, breathing in steam, and letting her sleep propped up. We’ve tried everything to help and for awhile letting her sleep in her Rock-N-Play worked, Now she can roll over and likes to sleep on her side so the RNP and car seat are out, Next we elevated her crib mattress a little bit but it doesn’t last long before she starts to get fussy and cry. All that seems to help is letting her sleep on me. I’m exhausted. Any ideas for helping her (and me) get some much needed sleep?