What I want to know: If we do the modified sleep training (soothing every 5, 10, 15min) at night to get to sleep, do we do it all night long too (he can't transition between sleep cycles)? Do we let him just cry in the middle of the night too What about naps (I seem to remember you dont' expect naps to get in order until 6-9mo or so)? Do I continue to nurse him to sleep for naps but not at night and is that confusing??
I thought I'd start forcing him to make it 4hr without nursing because surely he can make it that long - he's 75% height and 75% length so no weight gain issues. Then after that for a week, do a longer stretch the next week - I'd be happy with one feeding/night (heck I'd be happy with 2 feedings at this piont). If he wakes crying at night after about 4hr, will is mess him up to feed him when it has 4hr just as a start?
Background: DS2 is a 5mo old baby who LOVES nursing, will not take any pacifier (believe me I've tried), will not suck his thumb or hand or anthing. He loves to hang out and nurse and just keep my boob in his mouth while he sleeps. I can tell that most of the time he is not actively nursing for milk at night - he's just lightly sucking.
DS1 is 2.25yr old and "spirited" child if you know what I mean. He's just "more" of everything and that's part of the reason some of the issues with DS2 have developed because I just didn't have enough sleep to get it together for a few months there and I just let things slide.
We have got to get our lives back on track so I'm trying to sleep train. I really don't like the idea of it and didn't do it with DS1 but I realize that he is honestly not hungry and completely depending on me - er - nursing for all soothing purposes. I also knwo from DS1 that it will only get worse as he gets old.
At this point, at night, he is waking every sleep cycle just about (45min) at night to nurse for a few moments to fall back asleep. I just am having a hard time dealing with that. He will sleep longer in the car for naps.
So, the first issues is his needing to nurse to sleep. The second issue is the hands in the face thing (which I was swaddling for but am not going to anymore since he hates it anyways). The third issue is sleeping with me. The fourth issue is that for forever, he thinks bedtime is at 10pm or 11pm and when I put him down at 8pm (and intentionally get him up at 6:30am so he's ready for that 8pm bedtime) he just doesnt' sleep as well as at 10. DH and I NEED him to get that 8pm bedtime down. It's frustrating going up there every 30-45min starting at 8.
Meg
ETA: We started last night. He went down easily at 8pm. Woke at 9pm and cried (we went in to try to soothe him) until 11pm when I finally was able to rock him to sleep because that just seemed so long. I DID NOT nurse him to sleep. Then he woke at 12pm and since it had been since 8 that he'd woken, I fed him and he fell asleep quickly. He woke again at 2am and I let him cry and it took about 20min to get him settled. Then he woke again at 4am and again since it was about 4hrs I fed him. Then he woke at 5:15 and took an hour to get back to sleep. Got up for the day at 7:30. LOTS of crying from him going on here. Rough night. He is not a huge crier in general so it's hard to do. Did his normal nap at 9:30 but only took about a 30min nap. He feel asleep at 11am but I could not put him down without him stiffening up and screaming himself awake. He is obviously so tired but not sleeping. Poor thing. :(
((Hugs)) to you, that's so much to deal with, I can't even imagine how exhausted you are. You absolutely should sleep train because A) Rested mommy is a happy mommy, is a GOOD mommy and B)Your baby is not getting the rest he needs waking every 45 minutes. It is not good for him and you are not doing him any favors by keeping up the routine.
For starters, it is totally fine to nurse him to sleep for naps, strangely enough different parts of the brain handle night/day sleep, so it's not confusing for them. Weird huh? Because of his age, and because keeping him from becoming overtired is important it's really best you start with nights and then work on naps later.
Since he is used to eating all night long, your idea of feeding every 4 hours is reasonable. I personally did better with 'times'. So I would not nurse/feed before midnight, then I let the rest of the night go however it did. And then I moved that feed to 3am (no feeding before 3am) etc. We quickly got to no feeds before 5am and kinda got stuck there before I finally had the guts to quit feeding all night.
As for the method - I think you need to drop all crutches - swaddle, you, etc. Nurse him (keep him awake) and lay him down to sleep. If you like the 5,10,15 minute checks then stick to that. And yes, it means if he wakes up at 11pm you start all over with 5,10,15 checks. This method was not something I was able to commit to, and you have to be 100% committed for it to work. You need to really think about it and make sure you won't cave in after 1hr of crying just because it's 2am and you really need to sleep! Because of this, I implemented the 1-check at night method where I'd give him a few minutes to see if he was fussing or really crying, then go to him 1 time to say night-night, fix his blanky, offer a soother and I wouldn't go back period. This way, even if I was laying in bed listening to the crying, well at least I was laying in bed. Also, I found checking on my DS would just piss him off more.
You will probably want to put a shirt of yours or something that smells like you in the crib.
Yea - I'm not sure if the checking is really helping...we'll see. The crying has just begun...same time as last night. I was dreading this all day...I KNOW he's full.
I like the shirt idea too - totally didnt' think of that.
Can you tell me more about the times method you were using? That sounds more my style and it makes sense too...did you nurse to sleep after midnight and/or just fed whenever baby was hungry? How did you transition from the 12am to 3am and how long did that take?
Thanks so so much for your post! It was encouraging.
I'm sorry, I didn't notice your post until now! How are things going?
To answer your question about the 'times'. Well it started with a plan of feeding at midnight & 3... but then I got all confused and not sure what to do. For example, if he woke at 2:45am... do I feed him? I mean it's close to 3, right? Or do I let him cry for 15 minutes, and feed him at 3am on the dot? Well if I did that, wouldn't that just teach him that if he cries long enough he gets fed? Phew!
So we decided to do things a little more gradual. I decided the crying before midnight was much easier for me to handle, so that's why we started with no feeds before midnight. If he woke at midnight, or later I would feed, and put him back in his crib. If he fell asleep nursing, great. But if he was still awake after 15 minutes of nursing, (or sometimes we did a bottle), then too bad, he'd have to cry himself back to sleep. Most of the times he went back down great awake or not. Other days he would cry. :( After midnight I didn't watch the clock. I mean, be reasonable, 45 minutes didn't get a feed. That would be a check, soother, blanky, 'night-night'. But 2 hours, I'd feed if I felt it would get us all back to sleep sooner. Still though, if he didn't fall asleep feeding, I wouldn't sit there holding him either, it was back in the crib!
I found a MAJOR improvement after 2 weeks of not feeding before midnight. It's like he understood he had to go back to sleep if he wasn't hungry and he knew how. Then I decided to push that out to 3am. I was really scared, but it was so EASY! I went in, did my check, night-night, soother, blanky and walked out. I thought he would really protest, but 10 minutes and he was back asleep. So I didn't feed before 3am.
We did something funny to phase out the 3am feeding. By then it had been a while... and he was fully on the bottle. So I started giving him a little water in the rocking chair, rock for a bit, back in bed. It worked. So after a week of that, I didn't take him out of the crib, just gave him a few sucks of water, soother and walked out. It was so easy! He just quit waking for the water and would wake at 5am instead.
I had a big fear of dropping the 5am feeding. He had already slept 10 hours, and could so easily be 'up for the day' if I didn't rush in and get him back to sleep with a bottle. So I hung onto it until he was 9 months. Crazy. When I quit giving it to him (doing the water method) he went back to sleep most of the time.
Thanks - it is going better I think. The first two nights were pure torture and really had me double thinking all this - he cried for TWO HOURS both nights falling asleep and I finally just let him cry awhile and then when picked him up and he just collapsed against me and fell asleep. About broke my heart.
So, I really got to thinking that he really doesn't have any idea how to soothe himself. I mean no pacifier, no thumb/finger sucking, nothing. He just doesn't do it. He does seem to respond to noises and shushing so last night, I found a noise machine that has wave sounds and when he cried, I turned that on and I also shushed him. Once he was asleep I took the wave sounds away (we already have a fan going in there). I did it for 15 min and he was asleep. He did it again before midnight and again within 15 min he was asleep.
So, last night he fell asleep at 9:20pm (it was an off day and his bedtime was unusually late), and didn't wake after the two wakings to eat until 2:45am. That was very encouraging.
He's woken once tonight and the shushing him to sleep has been helping and at the end of this waking, I heard him sucking his hand a little. It was maybe 10min of my shushing.
So, I'm not completely breaking him of my presence at the moment but I'm hoping he's learning to self-soothe and that he doesn't need to eat all night. I thought that after the shushing works, I'll try just the waves and then by then hopefully nothing.
So far, he seems to pass out from a feeding after waiting that long because obviously I'm pretty full by then since I'm used to him eating a lot and that means he has a really full belly ya know? Then I put him down. Last night, I was so tired though when I did do the feeding I completely fell asleep too and woke up two hours later. I was thinking I had messed things up since he was all cozy snuggled against me but it seems okay afterall.
Of course, he is crying again after it only being another hour (he woke after an hour already) and is not settling down well and I'm hyperventillating shushing him...so I'm frustrated with that...
I really hate this sleep training stuff being in it but I'm really really praying it works so that we can have a life again!!
