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The sleepiest little dog with stinky corn chip feet.
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The sleepiest little dog with stinky corn chip feet.
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I didn’t sleep train my baby. She started to sleep longer hours at night (at 4 month) by herself and eventually she can sleep the entire night. I have to lay down with her to put her to sleep though. I think sleep training would have made things easier ( so I don’t need to lay down with her).
Any reason in particular you want to avoid sleep training?
Mine was a great sleeper to start, but sleep training meant she learned self soothing early, along with general sleep discipline. She started “asking” for naps pretty early, and has never fought us at bedtime or nap time. I cannot tell you how much freedom that provides
Realistically, full sleep training is only really possible after about 3mo. I think we did it around 5/6mo if my hazy memory of that time is right. That’s about when she hit a sleep regression that had me at the end of my rope.
Before that we were just really consistent on naps. She developed her first nap by 6 weeks (it was an hour or so after she woke up), and her second nap pretty quickly thereafter. The third nap took slightly longer to stabilize, but the routine was set by 3mo
If baby wants to develop a decent schedule on his own, fine don’t sleep train because its not necessary. But babies can be sleep trained and honestly it’s a skill they need. They will be happy and healthier with good sleep hygiene and getting enough sleep. And so will you. If you are opposed to cry it out there are other less aggressive nudges that you can start with
Thanks BCG1. Crying out is the part that freaks us out . Any lighter or alternate version suggestions ?
Sure. Give a pause / brief wait before going in when they cry. Just to give time to resettle on their own (versus instantly rushing in). Slowly decrease middle of night feed. E.g., if middle of night bottle is 7 ounces, start taking out 1/2 an ounce every third day. By the time you get down to one ounce they may realize they don’t need it. With breastfeeding same idea but just decrease time per breast slightly over time. If they cry and you don’t think they need food, pick up, soothe, put back down. Or pat/rub chest briefly and do shhhh. Use all of these techniques together to help push away from baby needing you for 30 min every night (or however much time it’s taking up). And pray for some luck! If that all doesn’t work you’ll have to decide how much cry it out you can take. E.g. we were willing to do it for a few min at a time. And we’re lucky we never had to do longer periods.
Didn’t sleep train. I had a great sleeper and bad napper until the 4month sleep regression started...once we overcame that, we went back to sleeping well and napping badly. He’s 13mo now and still naps badly (esp in daycare).
No sleep training but wish we did. We had a round the clock baby who needed attention for 60 out of every 90 minutes, which after a few weeks became 45 of every 90 minutes. Very gradually got better over time. But we were a mess
Naps are tough. My first was a 20-minute napper and she was a toddler before she started taking longer naps (still only 45 minutes). My second takes great naps! I don’t know what the difference is - maybe just their own personalities
Oh and we found the book babywise very helpful. They talk about the importance of giving full daytime feeds, techniques for making sure baby learns that day vs night are different, etc
Sleep should be considered holistically throughout the day. What I don’t like about sleep training is that it usually seems to only deal with night sleep but in your case the fact that the baby doesn’t have good napping patterns is certainly contributing to the whole sleep problem. I’m not a sleep specialist but you could consider getting your baby to learn to link sleep cycles so the naps are more substantial. Once the napping is sorted the sleep should sort itself out. You can help with linking sleep cycles with some techniques that don’t involve sleep training: turning them on the side, patting their bum, putting your hand on their chest, and sleep aids such as dummy. Once they get the hang of it with your help, you slowly withdraw your help until they can link the cycles themselves, and that should theoretically be the first step of falling asleep by themselves / self soothing