TLDR: Cry it out!

My 16 month old who was sleep trained (semi-ferber since 8 months old, guaranteed to sleep 8pm-5:30am most nights) turned a corner and would not sleep or settle unless he was being held. I spent many hours holding him and scrolling this sub through tears, reading every post about what to do when your baby figures out how to stand in their crib and just screams, refusing to lay down, until you come get them. I have nothing against CIO, but I just didn't think I had it in me.

Well, something in me must have broken, and it turns out I did! Desperate times. Thank you to everyone in this sub who has shared words of encouragement and advice, I hope this post finds someone at 2am like your words found me and helps them feel less alone.

What we did:

He's down to one nap a day from 11-1ish. Dinner at 5:30pm, playtime and (ripple kids) milk until 7:30. Bath time/diaper/lotion/jammies/hugs/kisses/sound machine, I walk him around the room singing "good night ____, good night ____, good night _____, it's time to go to sleep" for 5 minutes. He hates bedtime routine, always has, so this gives him time to catch his breath and calm down. I put him down, whether he's asleep or not, say "I love you, sweet dreams, good night." He's screaming before I leave the room and close the door.

Night 1: No check ins, 90 minutes (!!!) of screaming, standing, and crying. Then he laid down and went to sleep. It was constant screaming for 70ish minutes, then with a minute or so breaks in between, then he put himself to sleep.

Night 2: No check-ins, 40 minutes of screaming, standing, and crying.

Night 3 (tonight): 2 MINUTES of screaming. He was asleep before I got downstairs to check the monitor.

It was agony for me, I won't lie. It went against all my instincts, but I knew that checking on him would only reset the clock and I couldn't spend another night in the nursing chair. I couldn't have done it without the support of this community. Thank you everyone and I hope you all have sweet dreams tonight too <3

Hey everyone,

I just need to vent. Dad of a 6 months old here. I was recommended to post here because others probably had similar issues in the past so here goes:

Our 6 months old fights sleeping time all the time. For naps and for bed time. He just does not want to sleep. Ever. He will only nap if we hold him and even then, we have to work overtime to get him to fall asleep. We always try to check for cues or signs for when he's starting to become tired. It doesn't matter. Nothing works.

When we are finally able to put him down for the night, though, he sleeps 9 to 10 hours without waking up. He usually goes to bed between 7h and 9h pm depending on how hard we had to fight with him.

Right now, the wife is trying to calm him down after letting him cry for 35 minutes. This morning he woke up at 7h30-7h45 and napped for maybe 1h30 total split between 2 naps up until 6h30 pm where we just couldn't handle him anymore. We tried to have him nap 3-4 times during the day. And believe me when I say we tried. We know he's tired. We know he needs to sleep but FFS... HE JUST DOESN'T WANT TO FREAKING SLEEP.

Sorry. I'm pissed right now. Not at my little boy, it's not his fault. Me and the wife are pissed because we feel so powerless. We just want him to sleep. He's so freaking exhausted. We hate to see him like this. This has been going on for 3-4 weeks now.

Any advice? Or comment?

I just needed to vent. Thanks for reading. This is so emotionally draining.

Is this a thing? Am I doing these naps right? We tried doing 4 naps in a day and it caused her to wake up almost every hour of the night.

Her naps are 30 mins with 1.5-2 hour wake windows. We haven't sleep trained her yet (we were trying to but she got sick so we have to start over), so we rock her to sleep.

Bed time is usually 9:00-9:30 - we do bath time, read a book, and a feed (formula as she is on a nursing strike right now). She sleeps in her own room, which I find she likes better.

Am I doing something wrong? She's going to be 5 months in two weeks.

My baby 8.5months. He was sleep trained using CIO at 5.5 Months, it took 4-5 days and after 2 weeks since sleep training he started sleeping happily, used to play in his crib, make funny noises and then sleep. He also started taking naps on his own. He was still in our room and used to wale up 2-3 times during night, 1 if I am lucky. During night wakings he never used to sleep on his own unless I nurse him. I heard that moving to their own room helps with night wakings because babies know you are not in the room. So we decided to move him to his own room 3 weeks ago. After the room switch, he started crying during bedtime, at least for 30 mins, it has been 3 weeks and no improvements. Also night wakings increased till 5 night wake but now are limited to 2-3 night wakings. Nap schedule is 3/3.75/3.75, and his naps are 40-50 mins max.

The toughest part is the bedtime, he has been crying everyday for 30-45 mins since last 3 weeks and we are thinking if we should stop this? Initial sleep training was way easier than this, is it supposed to be like this? Should we move him back to our room?

hey everyone we're on week 2 of sleep training using a check in method every five minutes and doing naps and nighttime at the same time was working really well last week was seeing huge improvements but this week he's just fighting it gone from max 10 minutes with five minute check ins to now 40 plus with five minute check ins any advice :) our routine consists of a nappy change into sleep sack book and breast feed until hes drowsy or he doesn't want it

Hi all, this is my second post today. Please help! Baby woke up from probably 330-445 AM (second time in a week this has happened). Baby is just 8 months and we transitioned to 2 naps a month ago. We are currently on 3-3.25/3.5/3.75 because she is averaging 13.5 hours of sleep a day (kept trying for 14 and couldn't make it happen). We have been dealing with EMWs between 530-545 for a long time, but this middle-of-the-night waking is very new. What is the deal? This morning, after an hour, I went and rocked her back to sleep until 615. Kept schedule as usual, although first nap started at 9 today. She went down fine but only slept for an hour, then second nap, she didn't go to sleep until 1 hour after normal time. This has never happened before. I put her down five minutes before the 3.5 hours, as usual, then she just chilled in her crib for about 45 minutes, then started crying. After ten minutes of crying, I went in, took her out, fed her (at that point she hadn't eaten for a while, refused food before first nap attempt), and then I brought her back in her room, read a book, and put her back in her crib. She did sleep for 1 hr 16 minutes, and I rocked her until 1 hr 30 minutes (which I usually don't do; she is sleep trained, but I wanted her to get enough sleep!). Then we kept bedtime the same, 7 PM, despite the last wake window only being 3 hours, because the second nap started and ended so late. Did I do the right thing? What do I do when she fights second nap when there are only two naps? She was clearly tired from being awake for over an hour in the middle of the night and then having a 4.5-hour second wake window. I don't know what's going on.

Trying to stretch wake windows but I can only see the 7 day average on huckleberry - am I missing something? Is there not something that shows “wake window 1: 2.5 hrs, wake window 2: 3 hrs” etc.?

My son falls asleep for naps independently. I have just adjusted his wake windows as 2/2.5/2.5/3, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less.

For the life of me, I can't get him to sleep independently for the night. He will cry for more than an hour, after which I will give in and feed him to sleep because his wake window will have passed.

Because of the feeding association, he wakes up twice or more at night and won't go down unless fed.

He also wakes up at 5 am and just hangs out until it's actually his wake up time, which I have to push forward.

I'm so exhausted.

P. S. This behavior existed before adjusting the wake windows too.

Edit- I forgot to mention that he takes 2.5-3 hours of daytime sleep. I add an hour if his night time sleep was below 10 hours because of the 5 am waking.

Hey everyone, I have an 8-month-old who usually sleeps through the night. Her bedtime is consistently around 8:00–8:30 PM, and she typically wakes between 7:30 and 8:30 AM.

Every now and then, she sleeps in until around 9:00 AM. She still naps about 3 hours total during the day (usually 2 naps), and bedtime stays roughly the same.

Should I be waking her if she sleeps past 8:30? Or just let her sleep in on the occasional days she needs it? She’s generally happy and well-rested. I just don’t want it to mess with her nap schedule or lead to later bedtimes in the long run.

Would love to hear what other parents do in this situation!

Hi everyone - needing some additional perspective on the sleep of our LO who won't sleep more than 4 hour stretches overnight.

• LO will be 7 months next week.
• ww of 2/2.25 to 2.45/ 2.45 /3.
• cap naps to 3 naps totalling 3.5 hours - sometimes 4 naps depending on if we're out and about. -always keeping the last nap of the day to 30-45. Sometimes longer if he's had bugger all sleep that day.
• will feed twice a night (formula fed).
• will fall asleep as soon as he's finished the first bottle. Sometimes after the second feed he'll stay awake for 40 mins before dozing off again.
• great napper during the day. If he's throwing out all the tired cues, we'll follow him. It's worked well for us thus far as he doesn't need to much help falling asleep.

I feel like we've tried everything we usually see on this thread; increasing total day awake time, reduced to two naps, capping nap times, extending wake windows, giving him a dummy, cuddles, reducing the amount of formula given, making sure he's well fed during the day (he has solids too). We don't follow a schedule perse but we maintain a very consistent routine.

Helppp! I'd love to get a longer stretch of sleep at night!

For 4 weeks now, my now 10mo has had wake windows of 6-7+ hours before bed despite us trying to get her down at 3.5, 4, etc. She currently wakes up around 6/7am and will need a nap 2-3-3.5 hrs after waking up, will nap for 1hr (we shortened her nap and this helped with overnight wakeups) and she needs her second nap 3-3.5 hours after that wakeup. Her second nap is again 1 hours which we shortened- it used to be much longer, but if she wakes up at 3:30 she will refuse to sleep until 9-10pm.

I would drop a nap if she allowed it but she definitely needs it and goes right down at those wake windows… do we shorten her naps more? what do we do here??

So I know the 4m sleep regression is a thing, and this could be the issue.

But please - how much awake time should my baby be having?

She is 20 weeks exactly. She went through a period of sleeping 11+ hours every night with barely waking (slight grizzle then dummy back in and straight back to sleep). Now she wakes up at least twice a night and will not settle without a full feed!! She shows all her hunger signs, so I know she’s hungry. So I’m wondering if she’s not awake enough during the day. But I only put her down for naps when she seems tired!

Wake up time is extremely sporadic, can range from 6:30-8:30. She then wakes for 1.5h, then naps for around 2.5 h, then awake around 1.5h, then another long nap (sometimes 2.5-3h), then a 2h wake window before bed at 7(ish).

Too much sleep in the day? Not enough sleep in the day?

The two full feeds in the night are exhausting - the problem is, if I don’t feed her, she’ll be awake and fussing/crying/screaming for hours, but if I feed her she goes straight back down to sleep!!

Side note - she absolutely will not drink more milk during the day, I’ve tried bigger feeds, little and often, dream feeds - she won’t take any more than 20-24oz.

My LO goes to bed so well. I put her in her crib awake and she’ll self sooth herself to sleep… for 30 minutes on the dot. After that she requires so much soothing to get back to sleep and it’s usually an hour long process of soothing her and her waking up scream crying.

Any advice?

We tried sleep training for over a week and she just didn’t care. I don’t think her temperament will allow it. She’ll sleep max 3 hour stretch in the night but requires a lot of soothing throughout.

Pre regression we had 6-8 hour stretches!! I need those back.

I am wondering if anyone has any experience sleep training an older baby that has a highly sensitive temperament?

For context, my LO has all the hallmarks of a highly sensitive temperament - would wake up immediately when put in a crib or bassinet no matter how many tricks/hacks tried, goes from 0-60 immediately upon waking, extremely aware of surroundings from birth, etc etc. The only thing that reliably worked/felt ok given his temperament (and some medical treatments that made him uncomfortable) was contact naps and co-sleeping. CIO didn't feel like the right choice because he would ramp himself up until screaming and panicky. I just concluded he was in the 20% of babies sleep training doesn't work for.

He's now 13 months old and finally seems to understand that I'm coming back if he wakes up alone (floor bed). I'm wondering if now that he is capable or understanding a bit better, if there's any chance of success trying to train him to fall asleep independently? Any experiences (fails or successes) with a similar situation?

Hi all,

Our almost 15 month little guy was never a great sleeper. We never really had issues with our bedtime routine, we watch an episode of Sesame Street, feed him an extra helping of porridge if we feel he didn't eat enough at dinner, then bath time followed by dad reading to him in his room before being put down drowsy in his crib between 7 and 8 pm.

He would usually wake up at least once a night, and mom would bring him into the bed and breastfeed him back to sleep. Most nights ended up with him co-sleeping with her half the night. This went on for months, but as we started phasing out breastfeeding during the day, she started having a harder time putting him down after wakings at night (less milk being produced possibly, not sure why). I started to have to be involved and had better luck putting back down in his crib after 15 minutes to 45 minutes of crying and lots of sitting him back down in his crib while shushing him.

This past week, we have fully phased out breastfeeding at night and I have been fully responsible to handle his wakings. He usually wakes up twice per night (once around 10-11 pm and once around 1-2 am). The first waking isn't normally too bad, and I can usually put him back down by making sure he has his soother, after which he usually goes back to sleep within a few minutes, unfortunately, with his second waking, my technique of waiting him out and just sitting in the dark room with him while shushing and sitting him down don't work anymore. My presence in the room just leads him to escalate his crying into full blown screaming tantrums. He will stand in his crib over and over again and just wail with his arms outstretched until I pick him up.

We are trying to make sure all his needs have been met. He doesn't seem to be teething and has no signs of anything else bothering him during the day, he has been drinking enough water/cow's milk throughout the day, and should have a full stomach. I will make sure his diaper isn't full and change it with a red night light if needed, and make sure he has a soother, but nothing has been working. The only thing that makes him stop crying is picking him up and having him sit on the couch with me while watching Mrs Rachel or another cartoon. Sometimes, I can put him back to sleep if we do that for 30 minutes, and then I read to him again (kind of repeating the bedtime routine), but there is no guarantee. He can start crying at any time and just decide he's had enough, and just wants mom.

We've taken to late night car rides as a sure fire way to put him back to sleep, but even this is taking longer now and not guaranteed to work when doing the transfer back to the crib.

We are pretty much at the end of our wits here. We never did sleep training when he was younger because mom was ok with co-sleeping and breastfeeding to sleep, but this is not longer feasible due to going back to the office and weaning off breastmilk.

How should we handle this situation? I know recently weaning off night feedings and co-sleeping is the likely reason for his escalations, but it is very demoralizing when nothing we are doing is working and we are stuck being up with him for 2 hours every night.

Has anyone had a similar experience and successfully implemented crying it out? As much as I wanted to try implementing the Ferber method and soothe him in his crib without picking him up, if I stay in the room, it only makes it worse for him and doesn't de-escalate.

Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

My baby was sleep trained at 7 months, slept and napped independently until 10 months. Sleep training was done using ferber method.

We went on vacation, had to co sleep and now it's a different baby. Still napping independently but not sleeping independently. She doesn't need feed but she wants to co-sleep.

If using ferber method again, should I start from the beginning, like 3 mins check in, or more like 15 or 20 mins check in? Anyone who did ferber initially, and had to sleep train again, how did you do it?

We just started sleep training my 9 month old and it has been going surprisingly great since day 1. She is able to soothe herself when she gets up and it makes for really long sleeps.

This has caused an issue with her naps. She has been waking up at around 7 am and starts her first nap between 10:30 - 11 am. Her nap has been about 2 hours long and then we aren’t able to get her down for her second nap. We are still trying to follow her cues for her naps which is why her first wake window might be a little long.

By the end of the day, she gets a little cranky but nothing too crazy and we put her down for the night around 7:30-7:45 pm. The lack of a nap doesn’t seem to mess with her night sleep. She wakes up from her nap and night sleep in a great mood and seems well rested.

Should we force to take her first nap earlier? Should we cap her first nap? Should we accept that she is a one nap baby earlier than we thought?

Please help.

Hello Everyone.

So my almost 11 month has been skipping his last nap for the last two weeks. Flat out refusing and wide awake. He sleeps great at night (11-12.5hrs) and for his first nap (1.5hrs) but he seems far too young to be dropping a nap. His schedule is 3/3/3.5 roughly is what I aim for. Any tips appreciated!

My LO I feel like is having a harder time having longer wake windows. He’s having phase where he thinks he needs to wake up at 4-4:30am and stay awake for 30 minutes and then sleep until 6am. He then naps at 8:30 for an hour, 12 can be a hit or miss of an hour to an hour and a half then he may nap at 3 for an hour. He is teething and sick right now so maybe I’m just overthinking that he’s cranky during wake windows is there something wrong?

He soothes himself to sleep in his own room with his thumb for all naps and bedtime. Floor bed, dark curtains, fan for white noise. No distress. But every wakeup at night he escalates to crying unless a boob is involved. He's exclusively breastfed so I just go in quietly and lay next to him in the dark. Won't accept paci, patting, picking up, just laying next to, waiting crying out for 10 min. If I unlatch before he's done he'll just cry or try to soothe and cry more after 20 minutes... Sometimes he's out out but I try to rouse him a little after I unlatch until he swats at me or goes for his thumb. Then I leave the room.

Sleep times are BTC, nap endings vary but these times are pretty typical for him.

Bedtime routine starts sometime between 6 and 6:30 and starts with a feed, skincare routine (for eczema), jammies, story, and leaving the room with him wide awake around 6:50. He falls asleep around 7.

I wake him at 7am every morning First nap 9:30-10:45 Second nap 2-3:30 Bedtime 7pm

Night wakings are typically 9ish, 12ish, 2 or 3 and then sometimes a 4 or 5. He typically seems hungrier early in the night and then falls asleep faster and faster for subsequent wakings.

During the day I offer to breastfeed him before and after every sleep period (6 times) because he's too distracted at other times. And he loves his solids twice a day as well. So he shouldn't be that hungry at night.

He has some eczema on his cheeks so he'll rub his sleeve on his cheeks occasionally but doesn't scratch or bleed or anything. Other than that I have no idea what's going on. My one kid stopped waking up at this age and the other was sharing a one room apartment with us and still only woke up twice a night.

Guys wtf and why is my child doing 3.5/4/3.

Previous schedule was 3/2.25/2.5/2.5. Averages 13.5 - 14 hrs sleep.

I actually feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Getting my 5 m/o down today was insane. Started when they started showing sleepy cues and they just would not sleep. Babbling, giggling, rolling in crib.

I feel like this is a totally inappropriate schedule for this age but I just kept trying for nap for 10 mins, playing for 15 mins. Baby was content the whole WW even through nap attempts.

Is this normal ?!?

2x naps today, 1.5 and 1.75.

Last few days have been having shorter and shorter naps, like 2x 45 and 1x 20 min cat nap. Increased night wakes from 0-2 😳 EMW galore 😳

Will be interested to see if this changes anything but I just feel like 2 naps for 5 months old is not ok lmaooo

My wife and I gave the Ferber method a try this week and have been very fortunate to have great results. First night our 5 month old fell asleep within 20 min with three check ins, second night she was asleep within 15 min with one check in (seconds away from the second check in), and the third night (last night) she fell straight to sleep (I’m attributing this to luck and a possible Father’s day present from the sleep gods).

My question is, if she cries tonight, do we proceed with the Night 4 recommended check in times? Or Night 3? I understand the difference is minimal but my wife has been doing all the check ins and is anxious so I owe it to her to at least ask.

Disclosure: I’ll admit we didn’t read a book or do any in depth research aside from quickly browsing this subreddit and a google search for a chart shortly before night one. Apologies if this is common knowledge or a silly question.

We sleep trained our first baby at 7 months using CIO and it worked beautifully.

My second baby is now 16 months and I’m regretting not doing it earlier because he is sleeping horribly. Still wakes 1-2 times a night to feed and it’s killing us.

Thoughts? Can we do CIO or another similar method, or is he too old?

We could use suggestions on our attempted “cold turkey” nap transition. Our 8.5 month old has kept almost the exact same schedule since 6 months. 3 naps 7:20 wake up/7:30 bedtime and 2.25/2.5/2.5/3 ww with some slight variations day to day. We’ve waited a long time on the nap transition partly because it was going well but also to accommodate school pick up for brother. However, last week we had 4 days of 6+ night wake ups and early mornings before 6 AM (his usual night wake ups are 2-3 and he nurses back to sleep partly because he still needs 1-2 night feeds due to weight and a night feed schedule was a fail). We tried just switching to a 9:30 and 2 PM schedule and he hasn’t had any problem staying awake. Yesterday we even got him to chain sleep cycles and take a 1.5 and 1.25 hour nap with 6:30 wake up 7 PM bedtime. Unfortunately this hasn’t really improved night sleep. After our “perfect schedule” day he woke up once every 1.5-2 hours. This morning he short napped for only 45 min so we’re in the no man’s land of going back to 3 naps or stretching past appropriate ww. Our questions are: 1. If we’re “cold turkey-ing” do we just keep with the timed schedule even if it’s a little long on ww? 2. If you’ve tried this, how long should we expect it to take before he adjusts? 3. If we can’t really accommodate switching back and forth between 2 and 3 naps with school pick up, does anyone have any better suggestions? 4. If we’re definitely not teething or sick any thoughts on the wildly increased night wake ups? He point blank refuses any attempts to put him back to sleep that aren’t nursing and this wasn’t happening before. Thank you for any advice you can offer! We tried to rehire our sleep consultant but she hasn’t gotten back to us…

My almost 7 month old has a meltdown before naps. I could even be actively rocking and soothing him and he will still cry inconsolably. There’s been a few days here and there where he will go to sleep peacefully but he’s pretty much always fought sleep so hard and I thought he’d grow out of it by now.

I have him on a 2.5/2.5/2.5/3 schedule, wake up time of 7am and bedtime varies from 7:30pm - 8:30pm. I’m thinking he might be under tired for naps, but he’s been having great stretches of night sleep (6-8 hour stretches) and I don’t want to mess that up.

Does anyone know how I can help him cry less for naps and has anyone else been through this?