Chair Method/Sleep Lady Shuffle - Success for my God Awful Sleeper

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snapdragons_

New member
Just wanted to share our success with using the method from Kim West’s book Good Night Sleep Tight.

A few weeks ago I was scouring this sub for any success stories I could find with more gentle/gradual sleep training methods after we bailed on Ferber after one night (or should I say 4 minutes).

I’ll say this though about our Ferber experience. It gave me really valuable info about my baby. When I left the room he was crying like he never had before in his life - hyperventilating, choking on his spit, it was horrible. When I went in for our first check in at 3 minutes he was calm with in 2 minutes and when I left again that’s when it escalated past even remotely tolerable. This experience definitely showed me that my son needed a more gentle/gradual approach as it was my leaving the room that escalated him. I know a lot of babies are triggered by having their parents in the room during sleep training so I felt this was valuable info as it informed what method we decided to go with instead.

Anyways, here are my notes as I found other people’s detailed experiences really helpful when I was researching sleep training. Couple of details - my son is ten months old, he’d been unswaddled since 2 months, night weaned at 6 months and in his own room since 8 months. Prior to sleep training he was waking every hour or two (6+ times a night) and needing to be rocked back to sleep. It was unbearable. Any way without further ado:

Chair Method/SLS

12/4 Night 1 (Position 1)

-in crib at 7:48, out at 8:35 (47 mins)

~9.5 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 6:01 AM

12/5 Night 2 (Position 1)

-in crib at 7:00, out at 7:23 (23 mins)

~7.5 hours, ~2.5 hours

-1 wake (67 mins)

-rise at 6:26 AM

12/6 Night 3 (Position 1)

-in crib at 7:00, out at 7:04 (4 mins)

~7 hours, ~2 hours, ~1.5 hours

-2 wakes (19 mins, 4 mins)

-rise at 5:27 AM

12/7 Night 4 (Position 2)

-in crib at 7:05, out at 7:10 (5 mins)

~3.5 hours, ~7 hours, ~1 hour

-2 wakes (3 mins, 38 mins)

-rise at 7:00 AM

12/8 Night 5 (Position 2)

-in crib at 7:22, out at 7:27 (5 mins)

~11 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 6:23 AM

12/9 Night 6 (Position 2)

-in crib 7:02, out at 7:06 (4 mins)

~9.5 hours, ~1.5 hours

-1 wake (10 mins)

-rise at 6:33 AM

12/10 Night 7 (Position 3)

-in crib 6:50, out at 7:11 (21 mins)

~10 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 5:19 AM

12/11 Night 8 (Position 3)

-in crib 7:05, out at 7:21 (16 mins)

~2.5 hours, ~1 hour, ~6.5 hours

-2 wakes (3 mins, 11 mins)

-rise at 5:54 AM

12/12 Night 9 (Position 3)

-in crib 6:43, out at 7:03 (23 mins)

~9.5 hours, ~1.5 hours

-1 wake (3 mins)

-rise at 5:56 AM

12/13 Night 10 (Position 4)

-in crib 7:27, out at 7:45 (18 mins)

~9 hours, ~0.5 hours

-1 wake (75 mins)

-rise at 6:26AM

12/14 Night 11 (Position 4)

-in crib 6:50, out at 7:01 (11 mins)

~10.5 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 5:22AM

12/15 Night 12 (Position 4)

-in crib 7:33, out at 7:42 (9 mins)

~11 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 6:25AM

12/16 Night 13 (Independent)

-in crib 6:48, out at 6:56 (8 mins)

~11 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 5:45AM

12/17 Night 14 (Independent)

-in crib 6:41, out at 6:55 (14 mins)

~11 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 5:35AM

12/18 Night 15 (Independent)

-in crib 6:55, out at 7:09 (14 mins)

~11 hours

-0 wakes

-rise at 6:05AM

A few more details for context - we put the baby in the crib after doing our bedtime routine of (1) pajamas and night dipe (2) read 3 books (3) bottle (4) gas med (5) sleepsack (6) lights out and white noise on (7) rock 5 mins

Also when I say “wakes” above I mean that’s how many times he woke up upset enough for me to go in and do the process over. Even on 0 wake nights there were still times he woke up and whined for a few minutes before falling back asleep.

Okay! This probably a boring over share but I hope it helps someone desperately typing ‘chair method’ into the search bar after an awful night.
 
@snapdragons_ Hey, i know it’s been a while but your post has inspired me to do this with my LO and we’re on night 3 right now! Thanks for sharing.

I’ve a question - when you say “redo the process again” during night wakes do you mean you’d keep LO in crib and just shush/pat till he’s asleep again or feed / rock to sleep?
 
@butterflykisses91886 Hey! I didn’t see much progress after a few days - it was still taking him 30 mins to fall asleep and actually got worse one night taking over an hour. Granted, I could’ve kept going longer (usually 2 wks is a good timeline to “try” something new) but I gave up 🤣

Research shows 80% of infants need assistance falling asleep in the first year of life, and moreover 20-30% of infants experience sleep problems like night wakening or difficulty falling asleep in the first three years of life. I figured rocking / holding him to sleep currently works for my lifestyle and developmentally he’s not ready to wean off my assistance. And knowing that it’s totally normal as per research made me feel better. In fact, there’s no evidence that infants who sleep well (either independently or as a result of training) end up good sleepers in toddlerhood, etc. So it’s not like I’m creating any bad habits by meeting him where he is developmentally at the moment! I’ll probably start again in a couple months.

TLDR I felt he wasn’t ready and stopped.
 
@whalefood Yes! And I’d keep the chair in the same spot so like if it was night 4 and the chair was in position 2 then if he woke up in the middle of the night I’d go sit in the chair and shush from there
 
@snapdragons_ Makes sense, thanks for getting back to me! I guess this would work for a night weaned baby which yours was at that point. My LO still eats at night so it’ll be a while till I can replicate the “training” for night wakes but hopefully I can still teach him falling asleep independently for bedtime :) we’ll see how it goes lol
 
@whalefood Totally! Best of luck! I don’t know if this is helpful but some friends of mine who sleep trained before night weaning set “rules” for themselves about when to feed like if baby wakes before two hour mark I do a sleep training response but any more than that and I feed or I’ll always respond with a sleep training response unless it’s the midnight-2am wake and then I’ll feed
 
@snapdragons_ I’m trying that now as we’ve been dealing with false starts for a while and granted he was doing way longer stretches before I first try to soothe without feeding. I’m pretty sure these last few weeks were a regression but it’s getting way better the past couple nights🤞as he gets older we’ll probably night wean and also wean the paci. Your success with this approach gives me hope!!
 
@snapdragons_ Did you keep a dim light on while sitting in the room, so that baby can see that you’re still there? Im going to try this method soon and usually keep the room pitch black - wasn’t sure if I should start keeping a nightlight on after turning off the big light. Thanks for sharing your experience!!
 
@snapdragons_ What do you do when he wakes up in the middle of the night? I can get my son to fall asleep in his crib but he wakes up an hour or two later and then every 2 hours for a bottle. 9 months old.
 
@bubblies The waking for the bottle is a sleep crutch instead of him learning to put himself to sleep and back to sleep between sleep cycles.

Make sure your baby’s last feed ends half a hour before baby is placed in the crib completely awake. Don’t offer a feed until after 3am. You can break the bad habit if you are consistent. Get rid of the pacifier too.

Read Precious Little Sleep.
 
@bubblies So at 6 months we night weaned so instead of feeding a bottle back to sleep we replaced with rocking back to sleep.

Now at 10 months with sleep lady shuffle sleep training we just do the same process during his wakes that we do at bedtime like I go to the chair and do my best to soothe him without picking him up
 
@snapdragons_ Wow, this is great! When you were sitting by his crib, did you pat him, hold his hand, etc? Did you ever pick him up?

Did he try to stand up in the crib? If so, what did you do when he did?
 
@amcillwain Yes! I really loved that the book had a flexible approach to that and not like - don’t ever pick him up or you’ll ruin it.

So first three nights yes I rubbed his back and patted his bum but tried not to do it so consistently he was relying on it.

I picked him up once on night two when he got into a sitting position and kind of “fell” out of it and scared himself. But i put him back down pretty quickly as he got calm.

The crib mattress is lowered all the way so he couldn’t stand up but he could sit up so I did what the book said where I would lie him back down twice or so but not every time to where it became a game for him.
 
@snapdragons_ I’m really impressed with your commitment! 12 nights sitting in there seems tough!!! Does the book say anything about a max amount of time to attempt before stopping? If not, did you have a max? I wonder if this would work for my son but I worry he would cry for hours because I was sitting there and not picking him up.
 
@amcillwain That’s a really good question! I don’t now of the top of my head. I didn’t have a max in mind because I felt like I was at the last house on the street. I could keep rocking him back to sleep every hour but I couldn’t tolerate a more severe approach either. I was committed to making this work (out of desperation)
 
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