Last week, Jacob and I made the decision to begin sleep training Hunter. Well, to be honest, I decided I wanted to do it a while ago, but last week is when Jacob decided to hop on board… likely seeing me grouchy and sleep deprived. Using products like a mattress heater can be a great game-changer.
Let me start out by telling you, bedtime is going great. We’re 1 week in and he’s figured it out. We still have a couple things to work on (naps and middle of the night), but we’ll get there.
It’s funny how a baby’s sleep can change daily. Hunter started sleeping through the night at 11 weeks and was golden until about 4 months. We hit a sleep regression, probably some growth spurts too, and sleep never got back to as good as it was. He could still sleep through the night, but then sometimes he wouldn’t. He was becoming a bit of a wild card.
At six months sleep started getting worse. Then he became mobile; crawling, pulling-up, and standing. After this, not only did he start waking up multiple times a night, getting him to bed was starting to take an hour of rocking/nursing/whatever I could think of doing.
Thanks to reader Maggie, I found the site Troublesome Tots and read A LOT about sleep training. Jacob read some too and got on board with what I wanted to do – cry it out. Troublesome Tots has soooooo many good reads + tons of information on cry it out. Here are a few, but there are definitely more articles I’m not linking to.
The Ferber vs Weissbluth CIO smackdown
How to cry it out: bedtime edition
What you need to know about sleeping through the night: part 1, part 2 and part 3
So bedtime was our big issue. Our goal was to have Hunter put him self to sleep. I knew lots of tears would be involved in the beginning so I told myself we would commit to doing it for a week. That way I couldn’t stop early as my mommy emotions kicked in.
Our plan: start Hunter’s bedtime routine about 30 minutes before bed. Routine [nurse, bath, baby massage, book, singing then into bed] Bedtime is usually around 7:30-8pm.
Day 1: He cried for 1 hour total before falling asleep. During that time I went in 2-3 times and laid him back down on his back (Ferber style – read link above), but that really just seemed to make him more upset, so we switched to the extinction/weissbluth method (leave and stay out – again, read link above). After being asleep, he woke 40 minutes later, I fed him and he went back to sleep. We were up multiple times that night.
Day 2: 45 minutes of crying and the start of sleep sitting. So so sad to see him doing this. Once he’s asleep I go check on him, and he was just sitting, rocking forward and back asleep. 🙁 Eventually he turned himself into a forward fold asleep. Then he woke 30-40 minutes later, so I fed him and he went back to sleep. Same as the night before, lots of waking, but it was particularly challenging getting him back to sleep.
Day 3: Around 45 minutes of crying. I kept him up just a little bit too long + we had company over. I could tell he was a little overtired going to bed, and then woke 30 minutes later after falling asleep. I fed him, he went back to sleep and another night of nighttime wakings.
Day 4: The turning point – he was a very tired baby all day and was not napping well, which made me think it would be a worse night than the previous. But I was wrong! It took just 20 minutes of crying/noise making and he was asleep on his belly (his preferred way to sleep). Falling asleep on his belly was a first since we started this. Also, he didn’t wake after 30-40 minutes! I decided to just see what happened instead of doing a dream feed. He woke at 11:30pm, after 3 hours of sleep. I fed him and he easily went back to sleep. Then he didn’t wake up until 7:40am!
Day 5: New record – less than 10 minutes of crying and again, asleep on his belly. However, he woke up after 45 minutes. Fed him + back to sleep. Lots of nighttime waking, with a long almost 3 hour stretch of me trying to get him back to sleep. He just kept waking every time I’d put him back in his crib.
Day 6: Around 10-20 minutes of crying, and he stayed asleep past the 45 minute mark. I did a dream feed at 10pm, wishing and hoping he’d stay asleep, but we were up 3 times again.
Day 7: Today – he keeps falling asleep in an uncomfortable looking position and then waking up again. However, tonight we’re starting nighttime sleep training too (we got our pediatricians blessing that it’ll be a-okay yesterday). Hopefully it’s not as rough as I’m anticipating it will be.
I feel really good about our nighttime routine, and Hunter’s ability to put himself to sleep now at bedtime with just a typical 10-20 minutes of crying. I think after those first 3 days he really started to get it a little more. We’re just going to continue to be consistent and know that we’ll make it through this stage.
I’ll share more on how nighttime sleep training goes once we’re into it a bit.
Sleep well my friends.
Heather
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Congratulations on your progress! Night weaning takes a while and is not always a simple process. But once baby has learned to fall asleep without nursing you’re WELL on your way. So good for you!
Thanks Alexis! Your site has so much awesome info on it, thank you!
Oh and I’m happy to report just 10 minutes of midnight crying last night and 8 hours between the dreamfeed –> morning. Big step!
Sleep training makes me so nervous but at the same time I so want to do it as well. I have an 8 1/2 month old, he is up soooo much. The hubby and I are still opposing on it so we can’t do it just yet – but question for you, as my hubby does NONE of the night time stuff so hence why I want to do it, I need more than a two hour block of sleep, but he is the one not agreeing in it, did your hubby help you at night previously?
I do get anxious in doing it as our babe is cutting his 4th tooth and I know he wakes up even more when he is teething and so I’d like to comfort him during that but I still get frustrated when, like you, he’s up 40-45 minutes after putting him to sleep. I read so much on the internet about sleep training but I like reading how it was, how the mom’s felt after starting it, and what the baby was like too, so I am interested in your follow up.
Hi Jade! So, I do all of the night time waking too, but if Hunter is really loud and worked up, he’ll wake Jacob up sometimes (he sleeps with earplugs, so I think that helps). Just keep telling your hubs about how often he wakes, how tired you are… and maybe see if he’ll do some reading on sleep training. I think all 3 of those helped Jacob come around. We had already started bedtime sleep training, but then at our 9 mo check up we talked a lot about it with our pediatrician (hubby was there too), and I think getting the blessing from her made us both more comfortable with night time sleep training. I’ll have a follow up post about night time after we get through it 🙂 Hope that helps!
I was wondering if you noticed the pattern that I did. It happened with my littlest one too. If I would nurse her at bed time (dream times for you) she would wake up for all of those nightly feedings. And then most of the time if I didn’t get to nurse her before bed she would sleep longer, not always, but more often than not. My husband is a nurse and claims it has to do with the amount of natural sugars in breast milk and honestly I can’t even begin to explain it all, something to do with when it’s “gone” from their system it sends a “trigger” to wake them up with them wanting more…. I think that was the hardest for me, dropping the before bed feeding, but when I did, things went MUCH more smoothly and she started sleeping through the night like a pro, again, like she had done at 9 weeks.
I hope things go well for you! My husband was all about the “let her cry it out” but I just can’t do it!! I was the one that he had to convince at about 13 mo!!! and by then she was finally starting to do it on her own! *sigh* I managed to survive though 😉
I am so glad you found the website helpful. It has gotten us through some long days and nights! I reread the regression and wonder week posts all the time. Sleep training is so tough. I feel like the only way we got though it was by repeating something I read about how it was our job to help establish good sleep patterns for our babies since they can’t do it for themselves. I liked the idea of being a protector of his sleep! Ferber worked best for us but there have been nights even now where my mommy instinct overrides Ferber and I go in and rock him. It hasn’t set us back yet. I am a therapist and have spent years studying child development and working with families and kids who didn’t have the best start to life like our boys have. Congrats on the progress and keep us posted!
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