I’m in tears…

@bobezeh What time would you say would be ideal wake up time? For you both! you can totally select this, just know later the wake up—the later the bedtime (esp as she gets older!) also, this is really when you should begin aiming for 11-12 hours of overnight sleep (typically 11 is more achievable)
 
@bobezeh Every baby is different… obviously.. so that this for what you will… but I too thought my baby was over tired and finally figured out she was under tired and has low sleep needs. I figured out around 7-8 months that she would act tired about 2 hours before she actually needed to go down and I was putting her down for naps and bedtime too early, then fighting with false starts and short naps and her whole schedule would be wonky. When I started keeping her up for longer wake windows (within reason, for what her age can handle) she started doing much better. She also started sleeping better once she started crawling just because she was much more tired by the end of the day. 🤷🏼‍♀️ good luck friend
 
@bobezeh We didn't sleep train our son until he was about 7 months old; that was around 2 months ago. Before then, he would sleep for 30-40 minute stretches (complete 1 sleep cycle) and wake up screaming with me or my wife having to rock him back to sleep; which took about 20 minutes, only to start the whole process all over again. We were also so jealous of the people complaining about their LO's sleeping 1.5 hours at a time. Once we sleep trained him (Ferber method) everything changed for the best. Yes, the training was hard; my wife couldn't deal with the crying so it fell on me to do, but it was so worth it. He now sleeps fairly solid through the night with 1 feeding around 4AM; if he does wake up before then he self soothes and puts himself back to sleep. Hang in there, it gets better; you're doing an amazing job!
 
@bobezeh I didn’t sleep train my first until 9 months old and it was much easier.

I always said he was the worst sleeping baby in the world and woke up hourly — hind sight, I believe it was his dairy intolerance and my breast milk hurting him, I didn’t realize how much dairy was in and only cut out the basics.. now I’m on number 2 and she’s also dairy intolerant, but I’m reading labels and cut everything out. She’s so much better than he ever was, she still wakes 3ish times a night and some times more requiring a binky to be put back, but it’s just so much better.

This time around I don’t see myself sleep training in the CIO sense.. I follow heysleepybaby on Instagram and she’s changed my whole mindset on how to approach baby sleep, she’s so helpful and has a ton of info on her page

Follow your gut mama
 
@bobezeh After eating pizza or something with a lot of dairy he would be miserable for a couple days. He had a lot of spit up too. There are sooo many symptoms though, we found out with my daughter because she didn’t poop for 8 days when she was 3 weeks old. I had to cut out all dairy and it wasn’t until she was probably almost 4 months old when she started pooping regularly.

Again though in hindsight, I exclusively pumped for him and he drank really weird (I forget what he did but my mom always comments on how much easier it is to feed my daughter when she has her) and he wouldn’t ever finish his bottles at daycare so I think the milk was hurting him until I ran out of breast milk at 9 months and he switched to hypoallergenic formula — light bulbs going off again lol we sleep trained at 9 months too and he did well with it, his belly was probably feeling better and my hormones were starting to lift and make me feel like a normal human again
 
@bobezeh With false starts my kid would cry for 20 minutes tops. Now it's down to 3 minutes. We stopped picking him up when we realized that makes things way worse for him. I haven't sleep trained for the beginning of the night but with false starts (under 3 hours from the time he fell asleep) i just don't go in and it's been working really well. He's 4 months old.
 
@bobezeh Our 1st was an awful sleeper. Like 2-3 hour stretches until we sleep trained

We tried the gentle approach but that just made it worse

We went straight extinction with a 90 min cut off where we would rock to sleep

First week he cries for the full 90 min. And then practically passed out in our arms

Second week was 45-60 min and putting himself to sleep

And each week kept getting better.

He’s 3 now and absolute champion of a sleeper

And my wife didn’t handle the sleep deprivation well and she said she appreciated and was a better mother when/after we sleep trained

You got this!!!
 
@bobezeh Some very good comments here already! Not too much to add to discussion, but a few thoughts to share from when I was in your shoes (have a 1 year old, former super false starter!)

-we decided to sleep train viewing it as giving him a learned skill. We fought for years for our baby- eight miscarriages, three years of IVF, and suffered the loss of his big sister, who had a healthy full term pregnancy and lived for three days after a labor incident. We absolutely do not ever want our son to suffer, but I had a change of thinking one night- I teach high school and often have students who come to 9th grade ill-equipped. Their parents, in best interests, made middle school too easy for them. So the result was they suffered too much in high school because they didn’t know how to do certain things. I realized sleep training might be the first big parenting moment- it is hard on us, frustrating for the baby, but once they learn the skill- everyone is happier. No different than teaching a 13 year old to start homework on their own or use an agenda. I realized I was as hurting him by not teaching him the skill.

-Second epiphany I had: I also wanted to do this “gently” and the more I researched CIO, the more I realized this was a gentle way to do it! Check ins increased frustration, CIO nights should be paired with very fun, fulfilling days (really drive home the point that night is to sleep, day is to play/eat). CIO is also short- we were over the worst in 3 days (and night two was not bad at all). Know your baby, understand the difference between “need” and “want” cries. We didn’t sleep train until we were confident that we could understand the difference and things like night poops, need to help burp before bed had stopped.

Whatever you decide, be consistent! You got this. ❤️
 
Back
Top