Taking Cara Babies v Ferber

E

extiff

New member
Hi all,

My wife and I are losing our mind. My 5 y/o started sleeping through the night at 3 months, and never had much of a problem. My 9 month old though has never slept more than a few hours, will often fall asleep for thirty minutes at bed time then be awake until midnight, and wakes up several times every night crying. Needless to say we're at our wits end so need to sleep train.

Do people have thoughts on Taking Cara Babies v Ferber (or any other method?) I'd rather do something with minimal crying if possible but at this point really just want to do what is most effective.

Edit: wow thank you everyone for the comments and advise!! I’d apparently confused Ferber with the extortion method, but it sounds from most people that a Ferber-like method works well, and tcb is not significantly different.
 
@extiff We paid for TCB and it worked like a charm. Here’s how it works:
  • develop a solid sleep routine that you do every night the exact same way. this helps your baby relax and know that long sleep is coming. do a mini version for naps. make sure feeding is towards the beginning of the routine.
  • write down the reason you are doing this so you can repeat it to yourself and or partner when it gets hard! this actually helped
  • make sure you will be home for about 2 weeks with no trips planned when you start. also not ideal to start if baby is sick.
  • at the end our sleep routine place baby down in crib awake but drowsy — this is important. leave the room and watch or listen on your monitor.
  • when they start crying or if crying right away, set timer for 5 minutes. if they are still crying at the end of 5, go in and soothe them for about 10 seconds but don’t pick them up.
  • set timer for 10 minutes and do the same thing.( if they are just kind of groaning but not crying I recommend giving them a little more time without going in.)
  • set timer for 15 minutes. if still crying soothe again for 10 seconds. continue with 15 minute intervals until they fall asleep.
  • every time they wake in the night, do these 5/10/15 min intervals. The most important rule is to NEVER pick them up and feed them when they are crying to soothe them. When you do the check ins you can sniff for a poop or feel for leaked diaper and change if needed.
  • if you would like to maintain a night feeding, you have to wake them up and basically dream feed them rather than doing it when they wake up and cry. that way they don’t learn that you will feed them if they cry.
  • they learn pretty fast that you aren’t coming in when they cry and they can soothe themselves to sleep. when they fall asleep on their own in the crib that way when they wake a little in the night every thing is the same as when they fell alseep so they aren’t freaked out and just go back to sleep. (vs falling sleep on mom and suddenly they wake up and are alone in a different place)
  • if you use binkies put like 5 throughout the crib so they find them in the night without you
  • nap training is slightly different, you let them cry for up to 10 or 20 min before coming in depending on age.
The best thing about it for me was how it resolved all the conflict with my husband on how to deal with the night wakings (the whisper fights and blame game in the middle of the night as we dealt with my daughter waking every 1-2 hours and comfort nursing).

To everyone saying do the Ferber book over TCB…there is no way i could have gotten him to read a whole book, but having a sleep consultant to listen to instead of me reading a book and explaining it to him (which somehow makes it like “what I think” not what the information in book is) saved our sanity and possibly our marriage! The print outs are also amazing if you have other caregivers doing naps. Who cares if she voted for Trump, so did the CEOs of dozens of other products you probably buy! The price was worth it for me and I shared my login with a bunch of friends.
 
@racam We considered it, but she’s mostly breastfed and doesn’t exhibit any discomfort during the day. Also she sleeps like a rock if we let her sleep on one of us.
 
@extiff ok, just thought i would mention it, one of my soms had issues sleeping bd it ended being that and he was fine after gave soy formula vs breast milk or milk, sounds like you got it
 
@extiff TCB is just Ferber repackaged by a Trump supporter, so that’s your call!

I used Ferber for both kids, and I actually read the whole book just because the science and case studies are interesting! Sleep training sometimes takes a while to click, and there are occasional regressions, but it’s been great for us (6 and 2 now)
 
@extiff TCB basically took the information from Ferber and repackaged it with cutesy acronyms, charges a lot more for it and then gives your money to a political candidate of her choosing. Ferber is likely available for free at your local library and has a whole lot of other information pertaining to children's sleep beyond "sleep training."

I personally liked Precious Little Sleep. The book is easy to read, she gives lots of suggestions and you get access to her FB group with the book. She also has lots of blog posts you can read with great tips. This sub was also a huge help to me over the years.
 
@tgia413 I read all these resources. Don’t waste your time. Get Tizzie Halls Save Our Sleep. The woman is a genius. It’s literally the only book a parent needs to read.
 
@extiff From months 3-7 our now 9 month old would RARELY sleep through the night. I was mostly us waking up to cries every 20 minutes-2 hours. Around 8 months we’d had enough. I put him down fully awake without his pacifier. He cried for about 17 minutes. Then fell asleep. He woke up twice through the night and cried for about 10 minutes each time. Ever since then he has slept 10-13 hours straight at night. CIO worked absolute magic for us.
 
@extiff We used Ferber and it worked like an actual fucking charm for us.

My 7 months old woke up every 50m and wanted at least 5 feeds at night.

Within two nights he fell asleep independently within 5 minutes and naps too... The first night he cried for an hour and the second night for 30.. After that never longer than 5 minutes.

I would recommend reading the actual book though and not just looking up the basic method on the Internet. The book helps troubleshooting and preparing as good as possible for a process that is nearly painless.
 
@extiff We tried Ferber it did not work for us. We ended up having to do cry it out, I hated it but it was worth it. Ferber just made it worse on our baby. Our now 10 month old slept in our room in a pack n play, a little after 9 months we knew we needed to get him moved to
His room because we are having another baby in February and didn’t want two babies in our room.

Our baby has always been a good sleeper, he would wake up in the middle of the night for a bottle without crying and would go back to sleep asap. He slowly started to get worse in the fact of he went from waking up once to twice and after getting him to his room
He either sleeps all night or wakes up once (no crying, just wants a bottle and back to sleep), we all sleep 100 times better because we aren’t waking up to his noises and I’m assuming the same for him.

If neither of these methods work, don’t be afraid of crying it out. It sucks but if we didn’t try it we wouldn’t be where we are today in our house. You can set your own guidelines on how long you let him cry, it doesn’t have to be brutal. I wasn’t going to let him cry for more then an hour and at 55 minutes he fall asleep, now he was not crying that whole time, it was on and off. And every night after it got better. It took until night 10 to finally not cry anymore. We got all the day down to 5 minutes of just whining and then finally nothing.

No matter what you choose to do stick with it, it was a game changer for us!
 
@extiff TCB is repackaged Ferber. I personally liked TCB because it laid everything out in extremely detailed, easy to follow fashion. No guesswork, which was helpful as an exasperated parent. It also had a night weaning plan. But it’s pricey, so if you are on a budget, Ferber is totally doable too.
 
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