3rd attempt at Sleep training finally worked - did 1 thing differently!

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opsthryl

New member
I wanted to share this in the hope that it might help someone who is going through something similar. My baby was waking every 1-2 hours at night to nurse for weeks and I was about to lose my mind until we figured it out.

TLDR: (the short version!)

My EBF baby J is now 5 months old. We had 2 previous failed attempts at sleep training (Ferber method) and were giving up on hope. J would wake up every 1-2 hours at night wanting to nurse. The 3rd attempt worked and in hindsight it was incredibly obvious but I didn't see it at the time:
  • The key: Follow a strict daytime schedule (this let him know when to expect food and naps)
    • Enforce the dreaded 4th nap (he fought this all the time, but I would rock him until he gave in)
    • Strict on feedings (if he did a half-ass feed, too bad - need to wait until the next meal. This somehow reset him and adjusted him to eat more calories in the day, which unlocked night weaning)
After about 3-4 days of strictly following his daytime schedule, he slowly didn't want to eat at night anymore on his own accord. In the last few days, he has gone 11-12 hours without feeding at night and finally has that huge morning feed we're looking for. He wakes a few times in the night but is able to self soothe for the most part. Once in a while, I need to help him find his pacifier.

Details:

J's sleep background:

At around 3 months, we just got a nanny and I had no idea what I was doing, so I gave her the Taking Cara Babies schedule to follow. Somehow, J started to have a 7/8 hour stretches and I would only need to feed him 1-2 times a night. At around 3.5 months, we did our 1st sleep training (with Pediatrician's approval). It failed overall, but the best takeaway was that J learned to sleep independently. We previously rocked him to sleep before putting him in his crib (it was terrible... literally didn't know what we were doing).

At around 4 months, he started teething and getting his 4 month sleep regression. Things got really bad because I read online that when babies teeth, you have to be more nurturing. As a result, we didn't try sleep training until we met our Pedi again and she let us know that babies will teeth for MONTHS and we should just do sleep training again. Our 2nd attempt was for 5 days but ended when J's dad couldn't take it anymore. Plus, J was super hungry at night. This failed because his day schedules were already a mess... I let J sleep in every morning because I was so tired I wanted to sleep in. This led to poor daytime feedings and super hungry baby in the middle of the night. Also, it was easier to just nurse him than do the "pop ins" and try to sleep train him. We were too tired.

At close to 5 months, it was unsustainable. He had no schedule. His feedings were every 2.5-3 hours in the day whenever and his naps were solely controlled by his wake windows. We did NOT enforce the 4th nap, so his last nap would be around 3-4 and then he would stay up until 7/8pm. He would wake at 9PM, 11PM, 2AM, 4AM, 530AM and demand to be fed. I literally felt like dying on the inside because I gave into all the feedings. Once again, it was easier to feed him then let him complain because his dad and I were so exhausted and we needed to sleep to work the next day.

Here's what happened:
  1. We followed this schedule below (the key was that I enforced a wake up time for me and him)
  2. Because of the 3:30AM dream feed, he would eat less at 7AM and only nurse for 3 minutes. He'd be hungry at 9:30AM but I would make him wait until 10AM per schedule. As a result, he did a full feed at 10 and had a bigger appetite the rest of the day.
    1. UPDATE (Since I got some questions in the comments): I wouldn't let him rage cry out of hunger though! Sometimes I'll give him enough to get the edge off but try to get the full feed during the scheduled time. But if it was close like 15-20 min away from scheduled time, I'll give him the paci and distract him so he's less mad, then full feed him at the timed feed)
  3. He started to expect the naps and would fall asleep faster because they happened the same time every day (except I have to force him to nap on nap 4)
  4. I did the 2 dreamfeeds in the beginning and but every day decreased the number of minutes (but I realized the 330 dream feed made him NOT hungry at 7am)
  5. I double fed him at 6:15pm (feed, bath routine, attempt feed again) to make him more full before bed. I did NOT let him nurse to sleep.
  6. By Day 4, he rejected my 1030pm dream feed (I was shocked)
  7. By Day 5, I stopped the 1030pm and the 330am dream feeds.
  8. Day 7, he started to eat like a starving baby at his 7am feed
His schedule:

6:45AM: L & J Wake

7:00AM: Feed 1

7:30AM: L & J Walk

8:30AM: Nap 1

9:30AM: Wake up

10:00AM: Feed 2

11:00AM: Nap 2

12:00PM: Wake up

1:00PM: Feed 3

2:00PM: Nap 3

2:45PM: Wake up

4:00PM: Feed 4

4:45PM: Nap 4 (mini nap)

5:15PM: Wake up

6:15PM: Feed 5 + bed routine (This consisted of playing baby lullaby music, low lighting in his room, then feed him (Try to full feed), then bathe him, then relax/talk, then try to feed again, the upright for 10-15 min, put him in the crib, put 5/6 pacis by his head, say my ferber method speech and leave the room finally)

7:00PM: In Bed

10:30PM: Dreamfeed (optional -- then wean)

3:30AM: Dreamfeed (optional -- then wean)

In conclusion

I wish I knew these things earlier and I really hope to share this with more people because it was so obvious but I didn't do it. I didn't realize that the day sleep was that important and I see it now. I hope J's trend continues and I regret not being more prepared and reading about baby sleep earlier, but it's never too late
 
@hanya @hanya

Thank you! We did... the important thing is keeping to a schedule and nap routine. So each nap became easier because he would expect to nap at a certain time. Now we plop him into the crib during the nap time and he just knows he has to sleep :D
 
@charlesdidge Damn, that sounds amazing. But doesnt the nap schedule change while baby gets older. So each month or so the nap time is half an hour later? I am not experienced tho, its my first baby.

It is hard to keep the schedule, because i can only leave the house for her wake time. Well I will have to try harder.

Thank you for your reply.
 
@opsthryl Sorry for my ignorance, new to the sub. But how/when did you transition out of rocking him to sleep? How does he go down for naps or sleep now?
 
@tef85 Hey there! We used to have to rock him to sleep until he was asleep in our arms and then gently put him in the crib to not wake him (realized this was unsustainable!)

We used the ferber method:
  1. Put him in the crib w/ a pacifier. Put 4-5 pacifiers around his arms/head (So if he drops his paci in his mouth, he can find another one). We also gave him a soft lovey to hold since he likes to rub it on his face. Sound machine on, super dark room.
  2. Left him in there. 5 min later, did a pop-in, stayed no more than 15-20 seconds. We would put the pacifier back in his mouth or help him find one. We also rubbed his head and eyebrows to calm him down. Then right before leaving, we said "mommy and daddy love you, go to sleep good night" and walk out and close the door. He would totally freak out.
  3. He would cry for another 10 min, then we would do another pop in.
  4. We did 5/10/10/10 etc until he finally was so tired he fell asleep.
The goal is to train him that if he cries we will NOT pick him up, so he must learn to sleep on his own. And the pop-ins were to make sure he knew he was not abandoned. After repeating this pattern many times, he learned that crying does NOT equal picking up. And that it is best to just go to sleep.

Exception: We would make sure his needs (fed / burped!) were met though so sometimes we had to break our own rules
 
@opsthryl Thanks so much for this post. This was a gem and worked like a charm. This helped my baby get off of the milk/sleep association and led to sleep train success! Thank you a million times over for posting this!
 
@opsthryl My baby is on feed schedule from her day one and it works amazing. I am trying now to make a nap schedule more predictable. Are you strict with it? What if baby had a short nap, and wake window gets too long until the next nap time?
 
@scvet7566 I still try to stick to the baby sleep cues… sometimes that means adjusting the next nap time if baby wakes too early from the previous nap, but If they don’t show the cues, I just wait till the scheduled nap. Just being careful not to make them overtired and they don’t want to nap anymore 😆
 
@dtom So in the beginning I had to use each dream feed like a normal feed (~10 min total). Then we weaned him so every day I dropped a couple min until it got to zero. But it took for us to get him to eat more in the day to get to 0 without him having a total meltdown!
 
@opsthryl Ah ok so gradually you weaned him…I guess the pls book also mentions you can wean by giving less and less.
My 4.5 month old struggles to eat enough because of different reasons but mainly bc he’s so distracted and he also changes his mind about what bottle he wants and it’s super annoying!
 
@dtom Hahaa my baby too! Any noise distracts him so I feed him in a quiet room with the door closed. Sometimes I let him hold a toy so he doesn’t turn his head to look around the room when he gets bored of eating :p
 
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