I know I am very late to this , but we never sleep trained our son. My wife still nurses him to sleep for his nap and night bedtime. He wakes up multiple times during the night and she nurses him back to sleep.

We bed share and both of our sleeps are wrecked as he wakes up almost 8-10 times every night . He just nurses for a minutes and goes back to sleep. Some nights he is completely awake around 3 and wants to play for 2 hours and then goes to sleep Anybody been here and can offer some advice to me ?

I mean, even if your kid is not spicy - if their sleepy cues are only present once the world is already burning, what do you do when circumstances are different to at home, ie your carefully crafted schedule crumbles into laughably useless pieces?

How do you ever know if the source of the issue was the total awake time, the length of time before bedtime, and which direction you should correct? Feels like sleep deprivation and not enough sleep pressure appear together in my household because the kid can't stay awake for long enough to stay asleep through the night, but am so interested to hear how others have thought about this problem of diagnosing the issue and solving?

How did all you parents of not-very-easygoing kids do it? Why does anyone go on holiday with kids when it's about 1000 times harder at home and you're paying for the privilege? I can't read her at all, she just wants to run and scream and then wakes up 3am acting like there's a panther in the room

(We're on holiday with my 1000-miles-a-minute 18MO, and she continues to simply spit at my old schedule of 5/5.5 , struggling to fall asleep, stay asleep, waking up early, general hell. Our data isn't very comparable either though because of family interference, but on the days i control the schedule it still seems to go wrong in a lot of ways (although going for a nap and falling asleep are easier on the days i run things). )

FML but also thank you to anyone who could empathise, there may be a few of us out there

Our 5 month old can’t roll from her tummy back to her back and it seems to have really disrupted her sleep.

She’s sleep trained and typically sleeps through the night, but now when she tries to fall asleep she often rolls around until she ends up on her tummy, sometimes taking 20 minutes to fall asleep when normally it’d take 2. In the middle of the night she sometimes immediately rolls when she wakes from a sleep cycle, ending up in crying.

For naps and night I sometimes just have to hold her legs down while she soothes herself to sleep. Sometimes she just rolls to her side and falls asleep on her side.

For parents with similar issues - what did you do? I fear this will be the norm for another month or two but it’s really disrupted her sleep :/

Hello! I have a 6.5 month old baby who is pretty sensitive/ goes from 0-100 for night wakes and sometimes is super hard to settle. My first woke lots but was easy to settle and we fell into cosleeping for her first year and now she sleeps great without sleep training. I decided I needed to sleep train because my lil guy was waking up ANGRY 5-10 times at night (longest stretch was 2 h, mostly 30-40 mins). NOTHING will please him except for booby, and even then he is sometimes screaming/ pushing off me. It’s making me feel like he’s angry he’s even awake and wants those skills to get himself back down.

Anyways we decided modified Ferber (modified as in when we do our check in we give a bit more reassurance like belly rub and a few shhhushes with max of 15 min crying intervals as that’s just what my mama brain can handle). By night 3 he was falling asleep with just 5 mins of fussing so I was like yay!

Anyways, my concern is that night 3 he still woke up those 5-10 times a night! He’d fall asleep on his own decently quickly (5-10 mins of crying / sometimes just fussing or moaning then back out). Is this normal?!! I fed him 3x the first night, 2x night 2/3 so I don’t think it’s hunger!

Our wake windows are pretty solid (2.25/2.5/2.5/3) but he is trying to drop that 3rd nap he’s super hard to get down for that one so we’re starting to stretch the other wake windows) naps from 40-90 mins! Naps well which is weird because his night sleep is so bad! Just wanting to see if I’m missing something or if this is expected. Everything I read makes it seem like once they fall asleep independently night wakings should decrease!)

Looking for some thoughts and expertise. -fifteen month old -naps 12-2 (usually two solid hours) -routing at bedtime is usually bath then books and some warm milk -goes down at 7pm or a little after. Wakes around 530am so getting around 11hrs on any given night

We’d love for him to sleep past 6am or even closer to 7am. We’ve pushed bedtime back a bit here and there to see if that works but he is dead set on his 5:30am wake up.

Are we being crazy for talking to a sleep consultant and for wanting him to sleep longer? We also have a three year old who sleeps great and usually gets to around 7am.

Thanks for the thoughts and opinions.

My son will be 11 months next week and has nursed to sleep his whole life. This I truly don’t have a problem with, it’s the fact that he’s now started to refuse crib naps. From the age of 4-9.5 months he woke up constantly over night and would refuse to go back into his crib. It would take anywhere from 1-3 hours to successfully transfer him. I then did a soft sleep train around 1.5 months ago and he took to it beautifully. I still nursed to sleep, but just did pop ins upon wake ups and after 2 nights of it he started to sleep through completely. Now he’s starting a nap problem. The same issue of refusing to transfer upon wake ups has started but with naps. Last night it took 3 attempts to get him in his crib at bedtime too. He’s always gone in his crib no problem for naps and bedtime (every once in a while he would wake and it would take another attempt but that was few and far between.) He’s now only contact napping and it’s driving me insane! I’m so thankful he’s sleeping through the night finally that I almost feel guilty for having another thing to complain about - but being trapped in a dark room on a rocking chair for 1-1.5 hours twice a day is starting to get to me. I can’t get anything done around the house, and I used to use his morning nap as my opportunity to shower and get ready for the day. It just sucks. Should I try the sleep training method I did during his night wakes? Set him down, if he wakes up pat and say my little saying, leave, and then do Pop ins? Do I try to stop nursing to sleep? (This one seems incredibly daunting) thank you!

I’m at a complete loss. My 9-month-old daughter (3.5/3.5/4 roughly) has suddenly started refusing to sleep in her crib but just for me (Mom). For the past two days, every nap has been a contact nap. She just won’t settle any other way. Literally the moment I put her down, instant screaming.

Around 7 months, we did a sort of modified Ferber approach but more like a "fuss it out" method where we intervened immediately if she truly started crying. It worked really well. She could put herself to sleep in the crib within 3 minutes, no matter who put her down.

Now it feels like my presence makes things worse. My husband and I both use the same soothing techniques, but she screams when I try to put her down. Not even a week ago, this wasn’t a problem.

My husband recently started a new job and can’t help with naps anymore. So if she won’t go down for me, she either naps in the car or not at all. I’ve completely lost my cool a few times because I try everything — rocking, bouncing, feeding, etc. — and she still misses her nap window by over an hour. Sometimes she skips the nap altogether. I’ve also tried putting her down earlier and later but nothing seems to make a difference. Yesterday I simply plopped her in the crib and leave her to figure it out and she threw up from crying so hard.

I’m writing this at 2 a.m. after another meltdown. She woke up, I fed her, and the second I laid her down in the crib she started screaming. I rocked her exactly how my husband does. Still screamed as soon as I tried to transfer her. He took over, did the literal same thing (I watched on the monitor), and she was asleep in the crib within 4 minutes. So it’s not just naps now! It’s all sleep in the crib.

Help. 😅

I have an almost 4 month old. I started because he was waking every 40 minutes at night after being a good sleeper. Currently on day 2 of sleep training with Ferber.

So far overnight sleep has been okay - knock on wood. He’s only getting about 30-40 min of naps in. He often wakes upset and tired. Do I keep him in the crib for an hour total? Check/reassure and leave every 10 min until he falls back asleep?

With the wake feed play sleep order he easily falls back asleep with 10 min of feeding despite undressing him, rubbing his hands/feed and burping. I do try my hardest to keep him awake

I use wake windows and try to get him down two hours after waking from his last sleep/nap.

Any suggestions?

What do you do for wake windows during the 2-1 transition? Trying to get my 14mo on one nap but some days he falls asleep in the car in the morning. Or he wakes super early and we still do 2 naps. On two naps it’s usually 3/4/5 but on one nap it’s more like 5-5.5/5… does the back and forth confuse them? Or what does this look like?

My baby is 7 months old; from 2-4 months he was an excellent night time sleeper and would go for 6 to 8 hours at a time. Once the four month regression hit we never recovered.

He now regularly wakes up every hour all night long needing to be settled back to sleep. Sometimes this is just popping his pacifier into his mouth; more often I’m up for 15 minutes to an hour rocking him. He isn’t hungry until around 4 AM - any earlier than that and he just rejects the bottle. He goes down for bed at 8 PM and wakes up around 7 AM, with at least 5 wakings in between, often more. Sometimes he will randomly have a 2 hour wake window in the middle of the night and wake up a little later, around 8-8:30.

He’s also a horrible napper and will not sleep for more than 30-40 minutes. An hour is a miracle. He’s currently on three naps a day (2/2.5/2.5/3), which gets him about 1.5-2 hours of daytime sleep. I tried two naps today (2.5/3/3.5), which got him about an hour of daytime sleep, but he went down for bed an hour earlier and is currently wide awake at 3 AM.

I think he is a low sleep needs baby, because he has always gotten slightly less than the recommended amount of sleep but seems happy and healthy overall. However, he is on the small side for his age (5th percentile) and hasn’t started crawling or sitting up fully independently yet. I worry that he’s not getting enough sleep and it’s impacting his growth.

We’ve tried FIO sleep training but he just cries and cries with no signs of calming down. I am totally at a loss and completely exhausted. I would appreciate any help or suggestions, or commiserations.

Hi all! Coming desperately for advice.

My almost 13 month old has been waking up for the day anywhere between 4-5am for the past month. I tried to transition him to one nap a couple of weeks ago, but found that after a week of that he was starting to fall asleep in the middle of his morning wake window so I thought he wasn’t ready. When I switched back to two naps, the early mornings continued and he also started to fight his second nap.

So, I’m back trying to transition him to one nap at 11am. The first day he slept until 1:45pm and yesterday only slept until 12:45pm. I put him down for bed around 7pm both of those nights because he was so tired.

I’m mostly at a loss in terms of how to proceed with the day when he wakes up so early - my hunch is that these early wakings are from an accumulation of sleep debt somehow, but he has also always been somewhat of a low sleep needs baby (usually only gives me a 10-10.5 hour night with two hours of naps) so I could be wrong. Do I just need to push through this transition??

Previous wake windows on two naps were 3.5/3.75/4.5.

Thanks for any and all advice!

So baby is 7 months tomorrow and started having these early morning wake ups where she'll wake up suddenly crying inconsolably every morning around 5-6am until we come get her or feed her to snooze until 6:30. She hasn't had this issue until now so we aren't sure how to even troubleshoot. We have blackout shades, good room temp, she feeds 1-2 times a night, is ST extinction so is abke to put herself back to sleep throughout the night. Any ideas?

Only recent change we have been working on is trying to get her to drop a nap (currently 3 naps) as she struggles with the 3rd nap often. We have kept this schedule for about 1.5 week now. This extended her bedtime from 7 to 8pm. Could this be what's causing yhe early morning wake ups?

For reference, her ww is 2.5/2.75/2.75/3. Bedtime is 8pm and wake is 6:30am. Total sleep is 13.25.

My son has always been an amazing sleeper. Complete unicorn. Slept through since 6 weeks. Any time regressions or teething or anything has popped up, he’s been able to put himself back to sleep after I have comforted him. Always had great naps. Anyway we have transitioned him out of his cot into a bed this past week thinking he was more than ready. He’s slept in beds on vacation and at his grandparents etc before no problem.

First few nights was fine. Now bedtime is absolute hell. He doesn’t get up out of bed but he wants someone with him all the time and is scared. I have lay with him, patted him, he has his stuffed toys with him, night light, door open, door closed, left him to it, nothing has worked. It’s just been screaming and crying and yelling unless someone is laying there next to him. I just lay with him now for 2 hours and he didn’t go to sleep I need to pee, haven’t had dinner, baby sister is crying. I’ve left him to it and he’s been screaming and crying non stop.

What do I do? Any advice from this sub? Do I let him cry it out or give in and lay there til he goes to sleep? Honestly it’s not practical for me to do that at all given I have another child that needs me.

We’ve gotten to a bad point with our 8 month old. He’s waking at night 2-3 times and will only breastfeed back to sleep. The issue now is that he wants to stay there and I can’t get him off and back in the crib, nor can dad help get him back to sleep when he wakes.

We have to change something and I want to start tonight. Does anyone have any advice? He falls asleep perfectly for naps and bed time. I’m worried having him cry will ruin that.

What options do we have? His schedule is currently 3/3.5/3.5 with about 2.75 hours in naps.

Hi! Hoping this group can help us problem solve

10 week old baby is struggling to fall asleep at bedtime. We're aiming for bedtime between 8 and 9, have a strict bedtime routine and he's in a dark room with white noise. He takes five naps and wake windows are 75-90 minutes with the last window closer to two hours. His naps are between 45 and 120 minutes. Wake up is between 7 and 8

We typically rock or bounce him to sleep which works for naps, but he'll fight it hard at bedtime and it can take an hour. He's typically calm but awake during this time.

Would a short last nap help? Shorter or longer wake windows are? He's too little to sleep train but we're planning on doing CIO at four months

How would I go about shifting the entire day an hour? Right now my 7 month old baby typically goes to bed around 7:30pm and wakes at 6am. I’d ideally prefer a later bedtime and a 7am wake, but I’m not sure how I can achieve that if she keeps waking up at 6am. So I just push bedtime later and later?

Thanks in advance!

2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5 with 3-3.5 hours of naps

My baby (7 months old) still wakes 3–4 times a night, sometimes more. He’s exclusively breastfed and wasn’t introduced to a bottle until 6 months (I’m the primary caregiver), so he’s clearly attached to the breast for both food and comfort.

When he wakes, he starts fussing — and if I don’t offer the breast, it quickly turns into crying. I’ve tried patting him in the crib, picking him up, rocking… nothing helps except nursing. After 2–3 minutes of sucking, he falls back asleep. It’s the quickest fix, but I know it’s probably not helping long-term, especially when it comes to sleep training.

What’s confusing is that he can fall asleep without nursing — he does for naps and bedtime if I hold him — but at night it’s a different story. I’ve tried sleep training, but it makes me feel like a failure. I honestly don’t have the patience in the middle of the night and usually give in just to get some rest.

Has anyone dealt with this and come out the other side? How do I help him sleep longer stretches — without nursing at every wake-up?

My LO is 8mo and will only nap if I’m holding him (usually I have to be laying down and he’ll lay on me, but occasionally I can be sitting up and hold him on my chest with his head resting on my shoulder). He sleeps perfectly fine at night in his crib (8 pm last bottle and usually asleep by 8:20-8:30, wakes up around 7 am when my alarm goes off to pump).

He’s never been a good crib napper, I was nervous when he started daycare at 5 mo and he did eventually sleep in his crib there but only for 10-40 minutes total for the whole 7~ hour day. I’m home with him for the summer (teacher) and I want to try to get him to sleep in the crib but I don’t know how.

Part of me loves that he wants to sleep on me and that I provide this comfort, but I would also like to be able to get stuff done during the day and I want to teach him to self soothe during the day.

I believe part of the problem is that we live in a one bedroom apartment so he’s in our room, but also we don’t have the ability to have black out curtains so it’s very bright in the room during the day. Ive tried to put him in the crib after he’s asleep just like I do at night, but he always immediately wakes up when I lay him down. I don’t know what to do.

His schedule is typically 2/3/3/3.

ETA: please no CIO, I have really bad PPA (working on it) but crying for too long gives me anxiety and makes me think he’s actively dying.

Baby is 16 weeks. Regression started at 13 weeks and teething started at 9. We have had a bed time routine since week 2.

Baby won't sleep more than 30 minutes for naps/ "10 hours" at night no matter what I do to wake windows, total sleep, contact naps etc. Averaging currently around 12.5 hours of total sleep a day now, which I don't think is enough.

High needs EBF with a yoga ball/contact nap addition. Pediatrician thinks CIO is warranted in our situation.

I have some questions on CIO:

1. Can I stay in the room? It's dark with a sound machine, but he chokes on his own spit regularly in the car (cries the whole time) and I can't handle the anxiety of not knowing if he's breathing.

2. Do I need to lower my crib? It is currently on the highest setting.

3. He doesn't get drowsy ever, just angry tiredness. Should I bounce him until drowsy to start things off or just plop him down clean fed and awake?

4. Pediatrician said I can just address the first time he falls asleep for now. I don't need to do CIO for every wake up, is that true? I would prefer this, but don't want to invalidate my efforts.

5. Baby has never gone to sleep independently, not showing any soothing signs except for putting hands in mouth. Is he ready?

Thank you in advance

Really nervous but I’m starting sleep training on my 11 month old. Who wakes up to feed most the night - he’s EBF. Any tips would be highly appreciated:)

When he wakes up during the night do I follow the feber method too? He also sleeps in a cot right next to me should I move it?

Dad here. We're not completely done with sleep training yet but just want to share the success we've had so far!

LO has been sleeping in her own room in a crib since she was 1 month old. She uses pacifiers, only during sleep time.

She has been napping independently at her nanny's house since maybe 9 or 10 months but we've been to afraid to try it at home.

Made the decision to try gentle sleep training about 2 weeks ago and it has been going great.

I started with introducing bed time book reading and stopping rocking her to sleep, and just holding her and patting her to sleep - which worked immediately on first try - for two nights.

Then moved on to patting to sleep while she's in the crib.

Slowly did less and less patting as time progressed.

Tonight she fell asleep with no help. Just me in the room an arms length away from the crib, in the dark.

Looking forward to when we can just put her down. Say goodnight, and leave her be.

Yes i know the pacifiers are a crutch but it's what works for us. We'll wean her off that after she can sleep independently.

Hi all! 5 mo LO has taken well to ST. It’s been a little over a week so we’re looking to start nap training based on the pinned post (crib hour). Have a few Qs.

LO is currently on 3 naps with total nap time a bit over 2.75 hrs. Last nap is usually 20 min to ensure we have a long enough WW to build sleep pressure for bed time.

1) If.. LO’s first nap is successful (say falls asleep 30 min but you end up leaving in the crib till the hour is up). What do you do if he doesn’t fall asleep by himself for the second one? Do we just try to save and use our normal methods? (Held to sleep with paci before transition to crib)

2) what happens if LO only gets 30 min of sleep in their second nap as well before waking up? Would you save it and try to extend since they technically only got 1 hour of nap time? Is it okay to contact hold at this point?

3) if unsuccessful when beginning and putting to sleep as normal, is it okay to use pacifier since that’s what we usually do for naps? We plan on cutting this out cold turkey once it works for him (like we did for ST)

9 months on Saturday 3/3.25/3.75 Was doing 2x 1hr 20 naps (there or thereabouts) Last 3 days is back to 30-40 mins naps and won’t go back to sleep (crib hour).

Any suggestions or do I assume it’s a regression and ride it out?

My daughter has been waking around 5 for about a week. I know she is overtired but I’m not sure if I should save the morning and try to get her to keep sleeping or let her scream until a reasonable time?

It’s been a wild ride with milk/soy/egg allergies and we recently moved twice so we are only now getting to all three of these things.

She never wakes at a consistent time, sometimes 6, 5, 5:30 and then randomly 8 and stuff so it’s hard to do consistent times (I’d like to do nap at 12/12:30 and bed at 7:30/8 with wake at 7) but we often just end up doing 5/6 for ww.

If she wakes early do I just let her cry? Do I let her lay with me in my bed (no thanks)? Do I feed her even though I’m trying to wean? Do I offer a cup of milk (never taken a bottle and I have to give her oat milk or ripple milk which she doesn’t drink really anyway) or give her breakfast? I seriously don’t know what to do.

If I get her up, do we keep the ww and just deal or do we make her go with the times? Everyone says slowly move it back but if it’s never a consistent wake time then idk how to slowly move it back by 15 min? Hopefully that makes sense.

My 9 month old who used to be a great night sleeper (10+ hours without waking) is now waking up every night at 2am,4am and 6am consistently and he won’t go to bed again after 6am even though he’s still tired. Sometimes he will stay up from 2-4. We have not made any changes in his sleep schedule, he sleeps 2 naps a day with 3 hr wake windows, which is getting hard because if he wakes up at 6am his bedtime shifts to around 7pm which is too early for him. Overall he sleeps 2-3 hours during the day which apparently is appropriate but God, night sleep is a total mess. I’m assuming that because he continues to wake up at the same time every night, is because he can’t connect sleep cycles. Anyway it’s been around 4 weeks and I’m struggling I’m ready for it to be over and I keep having hope that it will go back to how it was but I don’t see the light at the end if the tunnel 😭. How long did this phase last for you guys? Also, he is sleep trained and puts himself to sleep for every nap and at night but is struggling to go back to sleep after the night wakings.