I’m in tears…

@bobezeh I swear some babies were born just HATING being babies! It’s so beyond exhausting. My son is 6.5mo and I am JUST now getting to the point where I can get about a 3-4 hour stretch of sleep since we started sleep training just over a week ago. I suffer with such bad postpartum insomnia though (I had it bad pre-baby too) that I wake up multiple times anyways, so I’m really not getting that 3-4 hours of straight sleep 😭 if it’s not the baby, it’s me and I’m so so tired. Just know that when you’re up in the middle of the night with yours, I am up with mine, you are not alone!
 
@bobezeh Things can be both wonderful and hard! Venting or looking for comfort does not diminish your gratitude or love!

You wouldn’t tell a marathon runner that it was silly to mention feeling tired or sore! You would just cheer them along and offer support. This is the same.
 
@bobezeh Complaining about your baby's sleep doesn't make you a bad mom. Sleep is an essential human need, just like food or water. There's a reason why sleep deprivation is literally a form of torture. Not being able to get more than 1.5 hours of continuous sleep per night is completely unsustainable. Suffering when you don't have to is not a parenting badge of honor.

Pick an established sleep training method and apply it consistently. That means not giving in when the going is hard. Trying to sleep train but not being consistent with it just confuses baby even more and completely reverses any progress you may have made.

My wife was very resistant to sleep training but I was able to convince her after a few weeks of going through what you're going through. Yes, there were tears in the beginning, but I'm fully convinced that there are far fewer tears overall in the long run now. He's able to be put down awake, go to sleep independently within a few minutes, and has long restful sleep at night. Even my wife fully admits that sleep training was worth it for us.
 
@bobezeh I told myself with both of my sons that I would ONLY do gentle sleep training and CIO is BARBARIC.

I’m telling you we tried everything. Everything. For gentle sleep training and the only way these precocious little boys would sleep through the night was CIO. I felt like a monster for the 3-4 nights of CIO sleep training and cried while they cried in the other room, but it absolutely works. We did a Graduated CIO where we would go in and give them back pats for a bit if they had been crying long enough that we couldn’t take it anymore. I know CIO doesn’t work for every parent and baby, but it worked tremendously for us and they don’t appear to have any negative feelings towards us, bad memories, or nighttime anxieties. You don’t have to force yourself to do something you don’t want to do because your gut feeling is right probably 99% of the time. Follow your instincts and do what YOU think is best for your sweetie 🖤
 
@bobezeh I have a 5m old too. He’s our third baby and the happiest and chubbiest of our three. We had a miscarriage before him so I completely relate- all I can think about while rocking him is how happy I am that he’s here.
I’ve been gently sleep training him, also false starts every night. I’ve started to pay attention to his wake windows and nap lengths. I have a ton of mom guilt because my older two are on summer break and I’ve been hyper focused on the baby’s schedule.
Anyway. Look up The Sleep Lady and her book. We did Ferber with our oldest and Coslept with our second so the sleep lady shuffle is our plan this time around. She recommends waiting until they are 6m so I am going to continue gently “coaching” mine this month.
Hugs. You’re doing a great job.
 
@bobezeh Don’t judge yourself for feeling exhausted and recognizing this season is hard. Both realities can be true at the same time - she’s the best baby ever and she’s the best part of your life! AND, with that, it’s freakin’ hard and exhausting and draining.

Your baby is still a lil individual with needs and opinions and quirks. It’s not your fault if they sleep bad at first! Sleep may be bad, but it doesn’t mean shes bad. Or you, either. Sleep is bad; she is good; you are good.
 
@bobezeh I speak from experience! I’ve felt everything you felt… and if anything, hold on to hope that one day, they will actually sleep …
 
@carlo1 Thank you! I think my optimism is what holds me back from doing CIO or even Ferber. Every night I think everything will magically get better by itself
 
@bobezeh I don’t have much advise just solidarity.
My baby is 5 months old and we’ve been struggling with sleep since 2.5 months. Things are slowly getting better as we’ve been doing a lot of practice on independent sleep.
Most days I feel so deflated because I know I shouldn’t compare but we have a routine, I pay a lot of attention to wake windows, I’ve read books and spent lots of time an energy trying to figure out ways to help without many tears. And then my friends babies just sleep through the night with no problems, regressions or anything like that and they have zero routine/ schedules. I often think why does it have to be so difficult for me 🙈
 
@bobezeh Hmmm, can't seem to reply beyond a certain word limit. So, part 1:

As at least one other person has pointed out here, your baby is waking up because of sleep associations that are completely natural, but just suck in today's modern age. If you're not blessed with one of those babies that are naturally gifted in sleeping independently (which I think 90% of parents aren't), you either have to accept that it'll be more or less like this for a while (1-year or longer, but maybe a bit better after 9 months), or you have to intervene with proper sleep training.

You can do gentle sleep training, but it requires serious dedication and can take a loooong time (for example, moving step by step from most intervention to least, as in this chart: https://images.whattoexpect.com/1ef4eb20-f0f8-4578-b80e-97a1e9c24d65

In some parts, you can even put the baby down and sit next to her, and every few nights sit a bit further and further until you're out).

But in my opinion, any gentle method will still involve crying. Add all that crying, plus all the crying from the baby waking up during the night, over 3-12 months, and you get A LOT of crying. So why not just do a proper sleep training that most probably will involve a lot of difficult crying for a few nights, but then that's about it? (actually, it's never really 'that's about it' bcz they go through so many phases and sleep regressions until they're at least a year old).
 
Part 2:

So my advice:

0) Figure out if your baby is ready for sleep training. Only you would know that. In my case, with both my babies, we waited until they were 7-8 months old.

1) You and your partner sit down and agree on a sleep training method AND STICK TO IT NO MATTER WHAT. FOr me, the best is extinction, where you leave them in bed, turn around and leave and not enter the room anymore, no matter how much they cry. Some people prefer the ferber method thinking it's gentler, where they check in with the baby at scheduled intervals (2, 4, 6/6/6/... the first night, 3/5/10/10/10... the 2nd, etc.) but without touching them and just to say from afar 'it's ok, we're here, go to sleep'. But to me, that just aggravates the baby more.

2) Figure out who's doing what. If the dad is stronger in this, then unfortunately he has to do it, and the mum can take a walk for an hour every night for a week.

3) You make sure the nap schedule and wake windows are correct. Too little nap, too much nap, the last nap before sleep being too far away or too close to bedtime, and it'll screw everything up. And you'll end up making the baby cry for nothing. AND YOU STICK WITH THE SCHEDULE. For at least 2 weeks, those dinner plans with friends where the baby sleeps in the stroller, or anything else, they get put on hold. #1 priority is sticking to the baby's schedule.

4) Make sure the baby's getting plenty of activity during the wake windows. A lot of people also prefer to have quiet time an hour before bedtime. I actually think it's better to throw the baby up and down and have some fun "wrestling" and get physical with the baby 30-45 minutes before bedtime, then start the calm time.

5) You devise a bedtime routine (dinner, shower with calming music, lots of kisses and cuddles in bed, milk/formula, bedtime stories, some gentle rocking with dimmed lights, then leaving the baby in bed, walking out of the bedroom, and NOT COMING BACK IN) and... you guess it, you STICK WITH IT. Same routine, same bedtime stories, night after night.

6) If the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, you give it AT LEAST 5 minutes before you go in, if for example you're doing the Ferber method. You have to be consistent.

Speaking of being consistent, some general points:

* Consistency: if you're not consistent, it's not going to work. The baby's just going to get confused if one night they cry themselves to sleep, another night you help them to sleep, etc.

* Not sticking to the plan: worst thing you can do. For example, you let the baby cry, it's been 20 minutes, you can't take it anymore, and then you go in and rock them to sleep. That way, they'll just learn they have to cry until you come in.

* I advice that they be done with any food/milk at least 30 minutes before bedtime, especially if you have REALLY LOUD screamers like mine that get very anxious and start pulling their hair and inhale a lot of air in the process of hysterically screaming and crying. Because they can end up taking in a lot of air and then they puke (both of mine did on the first or second night of training).

* Your sleep situation is not unique, and you're no worse than most parents. Trust me. We all think our kids our the worst when it comes to sleeping, but that's just not the case.

If you want to wait for her to be a bit older, what you can do is stick to a plan like putting her down when she's drowsy and awake, but then tapping her back or bum and trying to put her back down (if she sits/stands up) until she falls asleep. She *WILL* cry a lot, but you're there with her and so maybe that's easier for you. Then when they're 7-8 months older and the schedules are all set and the routines are fixed and they're taking in a good amount of solids, you can try a more strict approach.

And if you let them cry, just remember: her belly is full, her diaper is clean, she's healthy, etc. So this crying is just because she can't express herself in any other way to say 'wait a minute, this is not how i've been going to sleep for 5 months'.

Good luck.
 
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