PLS S.W.A.P

felipeoliveir

New member
To the author of this book - do you honestly think if my baby calmed down and went to sleep in her crib with just patting and singing that I’d be reading your fricking book in the first place. Honestly it’s like step 1 get your baby used to sleeping flat on their back, not on your body. Step 2 now they sleep. Ok no step by step instructions here? Baby cries if she goes in her crib awake no matter what I do and I don’t want to do anything that involves leaving her to cry. Not sleeping sucks 😭
 
@felipeoliveir It takes time. If you want to really try SWAP, commit to at least 2 weeks of implementing the change to see if it's working. If you want success in a shorter timeframe then I'm sorry, but that's really only going to work with CIO, Ferber, or similar approaches.

I've copied in a comment I made to a different post here from a while back, to give you an idea of what to expect with SWAP:

Try to fade gradually over time (we did this for bedtime). Start with holding and rock all the way to sleep if that's where she is now. After she's settled, hold and sit for 8 minutes minimum, or until deeply asleep, then place in cot on side, bum first, roll her out of your grip smoothly (may have to practise awake, and watch some videos about transfer techniques). Then over 3-4 nights, reduce length of time rocking, and just sit still and pat while holding her until she's asleep. She will probably take longer to settle when you make this switch, but if she's tired enough and your wake windows are right for her age, then she will eventually fall asleep without being rocked. Then reduce the time holding each night by a few minutes. Once she's down to 5 minutes being held, the next night try laying her down on her side (or equivalent to however you hold her in your arms) and holding her down gently with one hand for pressure, and patting her with the other. Might take 20 minutes or more, but she will eventually fall asleep. It might not even work for the first night, in which case after 20 of fussing (or as long as you can handle) pick up and and pat in your arms until asleep, but no rocking or feeding. Try again the next night. There will come a night when she is tired enough to fall asleep while being patted. Then you reduce the time patting (I sing a song as well, and used that to track how long, ie how many choruses) until it's your desired length. My end point for this stage of sleep training was 1 minute of pats while singing a song, then fading the pats and song and walk out the room. If she's still awake but just fussing, let her be. Try to leave the room and see what happens. If she starts getting more upset, go in, but just pats. Leave once settled. Repeat until asleep.
...

My advice: make a plan for what you want to change, how many days to commit to, what the stages will be, and then each night write notes for what happened. And remember, up to 20 minutes of crying is still considered success (according to PLS) some babies just need to cry out a bit of energy at the end of the day.

Tracking how we went over time really helped me to see the progress, because every bedtime felt like it took forever, but for my bub, she actually learned the above steps in about 10 days (7 months old at the time). That was after 2 weeks of weaning off feeding to sleep (to go from feeding, to rocking only until she was fully sleep in my arms, yes it took 2 weeks). So in the space of 3.5 weeks she went from feeding to sleep every night and every nap being a contact nap, to completely independent sleep, day and night.

Now 7 months later, she's 14 months old and she's still going great. I put her down, pat and sing, she's still awake when I leave the room, cries for about 2-5 minutes, then goes to sleep. Some days are worse when she has a tooth coming, but generally she's asleep within 10 minutes. It's amazing, and it was a hard few weeks, but it was absolutely worth it!
 
@seena Copied from an old post:

It will make the training easier if he's not still feeding to sleep. Layer on as many reliable sleep associations as you can while withdrawing the feed. Manage daytime feeding and sleep schedule and create a solid bedtime routine, for example: bath, white noise, sleep sack, dark room, lullaby, pacifier etc) and then withdraw the feed. Try to move the feed earlier in the bedtime routine by managing the feeds during the afternoon to make him hungry enough at the desired time (feed ends at least 20 min before bed). First few nights you may need to accept he falls asleep during the feed, then wake him up as he does, finish the routine. He may need you to bounce or pat him for extra soothing.

[In Precious Little Sleep, I think the advice is: use any and all soothing techniques except feeding. You can rock, bounce, walk, sing, just don't feed. It may take 20 minutes of crying or more on the first night. I think the best is 5 minutes walking, then 8 sitting, then roll into the cot https://www.sci.news/othersciences/psychology/infant-walking-11194.html]

Then once he is getting to sleep with less than 10 minutes of crying, start gently withdrawing any measures that you don't want to offer when he wakes up at night. Eg pat for less time, sing the lullaby more quietly, fade out anything that needs you to be there. And remember 10-20 minutes of crying is still a success if he goes to sleep by himself. This might seem like a lot before dealing with night waking, but it's all because it's so much easier to settle him at night if he's soothed by things other than boob, and can eventually learn to soothe himself. Feeding is binary, either they're feeding or not. But bouncing/ pats / singing can be gently withdrawn as he gets better at settling. This all comes from Precious Little Sleep, good read and very helpful imho.

It took us 2 weeks to wean off from feeding to sleep, and then another 10 days to complete the SWAP process (to go from rocking all the way to sleep to independent settling in the cot) from Precious Little Sleep, at 7mo.
 
@julius_cyrano Thanks this is so helpful! I’m absolutely not after a quick fix, believe me it’s taken 8 months to get to where we are, and as crap as it is, it’s still progress! We’ve got to the point where she’ll lay flat in my arms and peacefully drift off to sleep (no rocking), but the next step, drifting off in the crib has completely eluded us. I feel so cruel not picking her up when all she wants is to be near me 😭 but I like the idea of taking notes each night.
 
@felipeoliveir The SWAP methods are usually recommended for babies 4 months and under. My first was a spirited baby and really needed the Ferber method. This baby is much chiller and started falling asleep on his own at a maximum of 12 minutes of crying for bedtime and naps at 8-9 weeks. I think it depends on the child, but age is also a variable.
 
@felipeoliveir It sounds like you're halfway there! Make a plan with what each step would be between holding to sleep and laying her down in the cot awake. I'd recommend: holding to fully asleep > holding for 5 minutes only, then patting in cot up to 20 minutes for 5 nights > reduce patting time by 1 minute each night. Decide how long to try it for, then at the end, assess whether it helped, or what to change! I recommend having a mental ladder for the different steps of soothing, and if she's having a really hard time, go up one step only, for 5 minutes. Keep the serious options in backup for those nights when you need them, like teething or sickness. Also, the daytime schedule is such an important factor! If in doubt, make the last wake window a bit longer, and make sure you're getting out of the house, so she's properly tired before bedtime. Best of luck!
 
@felipeoliveir When we sleep trained, she was still waking up ~ every 2 hours overnight (sleeping 7.30pm-6.30am, 3 wakings overnight) but she wasn't into solids for a long time so I wasn't keen on night weaning, because that would severely reduce how much she ate overall. PLS advises to do the first feed after 12, so they at least sleep 4hrs, but we kept a feed at 10pm so I fed her before I went to sleep, so my sleep wasn't as badly interrupted by being woken up just after falling asleep. At first, sleep training did reduce the overnight wakings, but she's gone up and down with how many times she wakes, sometimes up to every 90 minutes, sometimes down to once overnight. When we've decided to try and reduce overnight wakings (because it was consistent over more than a week, and not related to teething or sickness) what seemed to work best was each time she woke up and cried, just waiting up to 20 minutes after she wakes, to see if she will fall back asleep on her own, or if she keeps escalating past that time, then I go in and feed. If it's 20+ minutes, but she sounds like she's winding down, or she's just babbling, then we leave her. With this "wait and see" approach, it usually reduces to 2-3 wakings within 3 nights. Some people opt for this "wait and see" approach for all wakings, always, but if she's only waking up a couple of times, and at consistent hours, I then I don't like to leave her to cry unnecessarily, so I'm usually in the room within 2 minutes.

When I go in to her room, I have on only the nightlight on that she has on all night (an adjustable IKEA coloured LED bulb set to pink, on the lowest setting) and I just pick her up from the cot, sit in an armchair next to the cot, and offer both sides. Once she pulls off or if she's fallen asleep and stopped sucking, then I put her back down. She generally falls asleep while feeding, and stays asleep when she goes back down. If she wakes up when I put her down, I pat her but don't sing, only for 1-2 minutes, then leave. 9/10 times she stays silent and goes back to sleep. Otherwise she cries up to 1 minute after I leave. Only very rarely, will she will cry up to 5 minutes, before going back to sleep overnight. We don't change her overnight, she wears a night nappy that lasts all night (unless she's been sick, or done a poo).

If she wakes up very early in the night (first 2hrs after bedtime) or if it's sudden onset of frequent waking, then it's a signal she's feeling off, and she's been sick or teething during the day, then I will go in and give her a dose of pain relief and follow it with a feed, even if it's early in the night. I don't deny her feedings if she's sick - she's a baby and breastmilk is her fluids, so extra feeds are important for hydration when she's having a hard time.

If she wakes up and babbles or chats overnight, or if she wants to wriggle out of my arms during a feed to get down and play, it's a signal that she's fully awake. That means her daytime schedule is off, and she needs more awake time during the day so I have to reduce naps, or extend bedtime.

She still wakes up 1-2 times overnight now at 14mo, but she's still not eating a lot of solids, so I figure she's genuinely hungry and I'm not planning to cut those feeds until she's reliably eating more.
 
@julius_cyrano I really appreciate you taking the time to write this. You’re taking exactly the approach that I want to take with my little girl. From an extremely exhausted mother, thank you so much ❤️
 
Also, make sure your partner or any other caregivers present are in strong agreement about what you're doing. Sitting there and listening while they cry is really hard, even when only for 15 minutes, but it's worse when you're doubting yourselves and start disagreeing about how long to let them try to self settle, whether it sounds like they're winding down or up, who is responsible for going in etc. If you can, get them to read some of the info, and come together in deciding what the plan is, and in reviewing each night on how it's going.
 
@felipeoliveir I think once your baby is born and you're in the position to need a sleep training book, that you're probably past SWAPS and FIO. I read PLS when I was pregnant and it helped me understand what sleep crutches looked like and have some idea of what steps I would eventually need to take to get baby to sleep independently. Because of PLS I started implementing good sleep hygiene like consistent bedtime routine and consistent wake time pretty much right away. Then around 5 weeks I started separating feeding from bedtime by a few minutes each night. Finally we started putting him down awake for every nap and bedtime and giving him the chance to fall asleep on his own. If he cried at all we picked him right up and rocked him. So we essentially did FIO. Because of all this (and I'm sure my baby's temperament) we never had to SLIP or CIO. The tips are helpful under certain circumstances, but for a lot of people they're past them being useful by the time they read the book.
 
@gimmick Same here! I’m only reading PLS now (my babies are 4 months already) and noticed that we already did some of the things recommended, like consistent bedtime routine, age appropriate wake times and FIO. The FIO in the end turned into a bit of Ferber with pick it up put it down but now they can go to bed basically awake…
 
@felipeoliveir From the SWAP chapter:

“Many infant sleep philosophies focus on “gentle” methods, but “gradual” is a more accurate term. Gentle is often assumed to mean “no cry,” and for most of us, “no cry” is an unrealistic target. When you deviate from the norm, most babies will squawk, fuss, or even scream boisterously. Some will cry loudly and with great gusto even as you’re actively trying to soothe them. The term “gentle” also creates a dichotomy where everything else defaults to “harsh,” which is both unfair and inaccurate.”
 
@felipeoliveir We got inspiration from her book but I also agree that I was so lost on how to go from bouncing on the yoga ball for 20-30 min to laying her in the crib. We just had to do a very slow progression where we slowly bounced less intensely while patting her, then holding and patting, then finally laying her down and patting. The whole “just shake the crib thing to mimic bouncing” so did not work - our crib doesn’t move! There was crying too so it wasn’t a walk in the park but eventually it did work to start laying her down drowsy but awake.
She still in no way sleeps through the night. It did not magically solve all our sleep issues.
 
@falan So for me with my first (who was very sensitive) it literally took a month of slowly stop moving, then moving myself closer and closer to the crib, and then placing her in the crib and standing there. Then leaving.

It worked, but it was slllllllow. Death by a thousand cuts slow.
 
Back
Top