HELP: sleep training

H

hischild1002

New member
TLDR: we’ve tried EVERYTHING and baby will not be sleep trained. WTF AM I DOING WRONG?! HELP!

My baby is a week away from being 6 months old. This is my first and baby was born on their due date but was very small (5lb 13oz) and needed tube feeding in NICU her first night and we fed her donor milk until my supply came in.
Until recently baby has always fallen asleep in our arms or on our chests, it nursing on a bottle while being held.
The last month and a half I’ve tried the pick up/out down method, the chair method, the Ferber method, the fading method and we are now on night 6 of the cry it out method. NONE OF THEM HAVE WORKED or resulted in any improvement- I’ve been on the phone with multiple mom friends that did these methods so they can talk me through it and make sure I’m following the method correctly, encourage me, help me make judgement calls, and distract me from the literal ache in my body I get from hearing my LO cry. Some have even done breathing exercises with me on the phone to help me stay calm. These ladies are AMAZING, but now we are all completely stumped as my baby isn’t responding to ANY of the methods despite following them to the letter.

I absolutely A-D-O-R-E my sweet baby, but hubby and I physically cannot do it anymore waking up every 3 hours at night to feed baby and wait until baby falls asleep and then pray to all the gods known to man that baby will stay asleep when we lay baby down in the crib. When she’s awake during the day, she drinks 4-6oz every 3 hours. At night she drinks 1-3oz. We have tried adding new sleep associations and then removing the old ones we don’t want and she hated that and didn’t take to it AT ALL.

Bedtime routine: pour her bath & make a bottle
turn lights off in living areas
Undress for bath
Bathe her 10-15 minutes.
Dry off, apply lotion and massage.
Put diaper and pajamas on
Grab bottle, sit on couch and feed
Lay her down for sleep in crib with white nose, door shut, blackout curtains.

What am I doing wrong here? We’re both desperate for sleep and need it for safety at our jobs. What do I do? What do I try next? The pediatrician has nothing to say that will help us. I’m going on a trip with baby and she will be 7.5 months at the time and hubby cannot come with me. I need to figure this out well before then if I’m to have any hope of surviving it. Again-please help!?
 
SECOND UPDATE: We have been consisted for the past 3 weeks (approximately) since I made this post. She now gets three hours or less during daytime naps and sometimes she only takes two naps. Her bedtime routine is now bottle, bath, book, and down into the crib she goes. We also took a HUGE leap of courage and moved her crib out of our bedroom and into her nursery. She goes to sleep peacefully on her own so much easier now! She still wakes up in the middle of the night but it’s only once a night which is a serious improvement given that she’s so close to having her teeth pop through the gums as well. I think when her crib was in our room we were waking her up when she was trying to connect sleep cycles and so she was waking us up to feed or be comforted multiple times every night. Now that we’re separate, everyone is getting better quality deep sleep. We’ve had more nights of her sleeping through the night in the last 3 weeks (5 times so far) than we had in the 6 months prior to these changes. Prior to this we had only 3 nights that were absolute miracles where she slept through the night for 7-8 hours or so. We are fully expecting a regression soon as well because she’s mastering how to crawl, go from crawling to sitting and so on, and has started babbling a lot more. Again, I can hardly say how grateful and thankful I am to you all. If you have more insights on what’s to come in the 7-10 month stage, please, PLEASE feel free to comment, reply or message me your knowledge and experiences!

HOWEVER, I seriously can’t thank this community enough for giving me the valuable insight, encouragement and feedback.
 
@hischild1002 Are you putting her down awake when you’ve tried sleep training? Unclear to me based on your bedtime routine. Move the bottle to the start of the routine. Avoid any drowsiness in the last wake window and into the crib wide awake. Also yes 5 hours of daytime sleep is way too much 3.5 tops but my LO did better with 3!
 
@hischild1002 When you tried sleep training, were you making sure that your last feed ended at least 30 minutes before bed? It also might be helpful to share the schedule that you're following (wake windows and naps).

I know that some babies just aren't ready for sleep training on the first go and some seem to just not take to it at all, but I'd try to rule out a) anything medical, b) schedule issues and c) a lingering sleep association like feeding first.
 
@gaconvn Schedule: she is almost 6 months, weighs 14lbs
I TRY TO LIMIT HER DAYTIME NAP TOTAL TO UNDER 5 HOURS (1.5 hrs, 2.5-3 hrs, and 0.5-1hr naps respectively during the day)

2am wake & feed (1-3oz) SLEEP

4am wake & feed (1-3oz) SLEEP

7am wake, diaper change, feed (5-6oz), play time

10am diaper change, feed (5-7oz) NAP

11:30am-12:15pm wake, diaper change, feed (4-6oz)
Play time, tummy time, read books, sing, physical therapy exercises for crawling coordination

3:15-3:30pm diaper change, feed (4-6oz) and nap

4:30pm wake up, diaper change, feed (3-4oz) play time until bed.

6:30-7 start/do bedtime routine above

7:30-8:15pm bedtime

MIDNIGHT wake & feed (1-3oz) SLEEP
 
@zangella Small update: today I let her take a 1.25 hr nap this AM 8:30-9:30am, a 1.5hr this afternoon from 2:15-3:45, and a 0.5hr from 4:45-5:15pm. I flipped the bedtime routine on its head and did bottle, bath, book, bed. She went down into the crib and within 20 minutes she fell asleep at 7:45pm. While she was in the crib there was ZERO crying or even fussing. She’s out like a light and we are so happy and relieved. Now the hard part-getting my mother to comply with the new routine over the next two days while I work. 😣
 
@zangella SECOND UPDATE: We have been consisted for the past 3 weeks (approximately) since I made this post. She now gets three hours or less during daytime naps and sometimes she only takes two naps. Her bedtime routine is now bottle, bath, book, and down into the crib she goes. We also took a HUGE leap of courage and moved her crib out of our bedroom and into her nursery. She goes to sleep peacefully on her own so much easier now! She still wakes up in the middle of the night but it’s only once a night which is a serious improvement given that she’s so close to having her teeth pop through the gums as well. I think when her crib was in our room we were waking her up when she was trying to connect sleep cycles and so she was waking us up to feed or be comforted multiple times every night. Now that we’re separate, everyone is getting better quality deep sleep. We’ve had more nights of her sleeping through the night in the last 3 weeks (5 times so far) than we had in the 6 months prior to these changes. Prior to this we had only 3 nights that were absolute miracles where she slept through the night for 7-8 hours or so. We are fully expecting a regression soon as well because she’s mastering how to crawl, go from crawling to sitting and so on, and has started babbling a lot more. Again, I can hardly say how grateful and thankful I am to you all. If you have more insights on what’s to come in the 7-10 month stage, please, PLEASE feel free to comment, reply or message me your knowledge and experiences!

HOWEVER, I seriously can’t thank this community enough for giving me the valuable insight, encouragement and feedback.
 
@hischild1002 Way way way too much daytime sleep. When we were on 3 naps we did 60, 90, 30. Move the feed to the start of the bedtime routine and cap her naps then retry something like pick up put down. She’s way undertired at bedtime.
 
@hischild1002 Seconding Teary Eyed Gardner. Your baby doesn't have enough sleep pressure to sleep at night with 5 hours of daytime sleep. This would be more appropriate for a
 
@gaconvn Got it. Will shorten the daytime naps. The other moms is been talking to said 5 hours or under. I’m hopeful this will shift things. The hardest part is going to be getting my mom to comply as she watches our daughter when I work weekdays. If I work weekends hubby is with her and he’ll follow my instructions/recommendations but my mom, bless her heart isn’t so keen on listening to me on how to care for our child…she lets the baby call the shots even when it’s not a good idea.
 
@hischild1002 It's always tricky navigating childcare and other caregivers. You can only control so much. But at the same time, if you're the one dealing with the consequences at night, it's fair to ask caregivers to at least try and follow your request.
 
@gaconvn She almost always passes out on the bottle and if I try to keep her awake during the feed, she won’t settle down for sleep no matter how long we give it. Her record is 7.5 hours being awake in an overtired state from not being allowed to fall asleep on the bottle. Went through that hell all for nothing. Her pediatrician says there’s nothing wrong that could be causing her pain. She had a few spurts of teething pain before we started this and it hasn’t come back. Still no teeth, but no teething symptoms either.
 
@hischild1002 So, when you were putting her down to bed during sleep training, was she going down drowsy or asleep? Because you really need a fully awake baby to be able to train anything. Otherwise, you may as well just feed to sleep and then transfer her. Have you tried moving the last feed earlier? Say before the bath?
 
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