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

[opsthryl]

@svjoyner Good luck!!! You got this

 

[beechcott]

@opsthryl Wow. I wish I had your pediatrician. I wanted to sleep train at 4 months and mine said to wait until 6.

 

[opsthryl]

@beechcott I think it depends on weight right? Our baby is pretty heavy so he was okay to sleep train.

 

[beechcott]

@opsthryl I don't think so? Of course, I don't know for sure. My kid was born big, but grew pretty average. If my husband hadn't been in the room with me I would've just gone ahead with my plans. I always felt like that doctor was judgy anyway.

 

[maggie1909]

@opsthryl I am where you were and need to start making changes, so thank you for this. A question though - what do you do when baby is crying and wanting to be fed but it's not the scheduled time yet?

 

[opsthryl]

@maggie1909 Hi! I should probably revise my post above (will do it after this).

So for the most part, if he is SUPER hungry, I will feed him a little to take the edge off but give him the full meal at the scheduled time. I don't want to starve him or make him mad. But let's say if the next meal is 4PM, and he's starting to get fussy around 3:40, I'll give him a pacifier and we'll play and distract him until it's 4PM.

This doesn't always work and sometimes I will have to feed him a little earlier - I think the important thing is just to stay as close to the schedule as possible? Then again everyone's babies are different!

 

[minh0256]

@opsthryl Just curious, why did you start sleep training if he was already sleeping 7/8 hours at night? Our 3 month old spontaneously started sleeping through the night and I know regressions can happen, but hoping we will be able to avoid hardcore sleep training.

 

[opsthryl]

@minh0256 haha... that's a good question. I started working full time and my pedi told me he doesn't need to eat at night anymore since he hit the min. weight. We decided to try and sleep train for 2 reasons 1) he didn't know how to sleep independently... those 7/8 hours a night were from us rocking him to sleep and 2) I selfishly thought he could drop the 3AM wakeup feed haha...

Turns out he was too young and we were too weak to go through with it all the way

 

[cindyfernandez]

@opsthryl So glad it worked for you! We love our schedule too (really kicked in with two naps at 7 months).

That said, you weren't wrong in how you approached things with a newborn, it's just as an older baby schedule really helps.

 

[godjesusandchocolate]

@opsthryl This sounds so much like my baby. Thank you for posting this, it’s so helpful!

 

[opsthryl]

@godjesusandchocolate @godjesusandchocolate curious - did you try it and did it work for you?

 

[godjesusandchocolate]

@opsthryl I did and have used this as a baseline my daughter is almost 4 months and 18lbs so still waking at night for feeds but it’s worked well for feed and naps. Right now I’m trialing adding in another daytime feed to see if I can get her better loaded for calories before bed.

 

[opsthryl]

@godjesusandchocolate Just saw that your daughter is under 4 months! she probably still needs the night feeds My baby couldn't drop them until 5 months, so might need to keep doing a middle of the night feed until baby is ready.

 

[godjesusandchocolate]

@opsthryl For sure, I’m just trying to get it from every 3 hours (so 3 feeds a night from 7pm to 7am) to 1 or 2. Any advice?

 

[opsthryl]

@godjesusandchocolate What if you try to decrease the minutes of nursing every night? Since the goal is to get her to want to consume more calories in the day time. This way she is getting her fix at night, but slowly (without her noticing 1 less minute of nursing every time) she is getting more used to eating less at night. Until eventually she doesn't want the night feeds.

I realized this happened with my baby after I dropped to about 3 minutes (from 8) and when I went to do the 10:30pm night feed, he refused to open his mouth and would rather sleep! That's when I knew he was ready to drop one of the night feeds (But not the 3:30am yet). Then in a couple days, he dropped the 2nd night feed. Hope that helps!

 

[godjesusandchocolate]

@opsthryl Thanks! I’ll start trying it

 

[opsthryl]

@godjesusandchocolate That's awesome Great job mama!!!

 

[viveri]

@opsthryl Thanks for posting this. With sleep training, you are asking baby to learn how to fall asleep on the own. You need to give them every tool to do this - perfect environment, sufficient opportunity to feed during day, enough daytime sleep to not be completely overtired and pumped full of cortisol at night.

When you give them every tool, even if they don’t need to use it, if they DO need it they have it. Then you are just asking them to put the pieces together.

I would agree that it takes away some flexibility but, to me, sticking to a nap schedule is a small price to pay to in turn have a child who sleeps well, predictably, and is in a good mood. I think everyone needs to decide if giving up some flexibility is worth it, but you can’t expect baby to sleep well without a nap schedule. Some babies will but a lot won’t.

 

[teresa3231]

@opsthryl OP - I wonder if also feeding closer to wake up rather than nap time helped a bit? I originally thought “stuff him up before bedtime so he’ll sleep longer” but ironically he started sleeping longer when we had more of a wake, eat, play, sleep routine.

 

[opsthryl]

@teresa3231 @teresa3231 to be honest I am not sure? I just found this schedule online and slightly adapted it to what I wanted our schedule to be. That's really interesting that your baby did better with Wake Eat Play before bed. Sometimes if he doesn't eat as much as I think he should at night, we will play a few minutes and I'll try to feed him again haha.