Advice about Sleep Training

Parent Q&A

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  • Sleep Training at 17 months

    Oct 19, 2024

    Has anyone had success with sleep training at 17 months especially if you tried it previously and it didn't work? We did sleep training with our daughter about a year ago and it did help a lot. She moved from sleeping on us to sleeping in the crib (a real life changer). She still struggled with naps and the first part of the evening and sleeping through the night. She's improved in those areas as well over time but at nap time and when she first goes to bed she will sleep for 30 minutes exactly and then wake up and not be able to put herself back to sleep. If I go in, I can almost always hold her and get her to sleep and sometimes just patting her on the back works. It doesn't matter how tired she is. This always happens. When we did sleep training last year we let her cry for an hour and sometimes longer at night but she just got more worked up and either didn't go back to sleep or it took over an hour even after a month of this. She will occasionally sleep through the night or wake up and be able to quickly go back to sleep but often she's up sometime between 2am-4am and I have to put her back to sleep. It can take two hours to get her into a deep enough sleep that I can also relax and sleep. She's either asleep with me in bed or I've managed to get her into the crib. I don't expect anyone to have the answer but wondering if you have any experience with something similar with sleep training or working with a sleep consultant. I'm skeptical of sleep consultants because they all seem to say some form of 'put the baby down drowsy, check on them periodically, let them cry and magically they will learn to sleep'. That said, I'm probably going to hire one so would love any recommendations and any stories from people who've been here!

    We did ferber sleep training at 18 months and it worked, so I don't think yours is too old. www.thebabysleepengineer.com is a very nice sleep consultant we worked with and she had lots of ideas. The chair method is nice for older kids. That said, I agree sleep consultants seem to have a blind spot for kids outside the norm and if your kid is really struggling despite you following all the protocols it's worth investigating if there's a medical or other issue that makes the formula not work (our neurodivergent kid has a much harder time settling, for example, and we got tired of letting him cry or lay awake staring into the darkness)

    Hi, that sounds exhausting!  My advice would be to give Cry It Out another try but prepare to be 100% committed to it.  I sleep-trained my baby at 4 months this way and it was really hard to never go in to soothe.  But if you are not 100% consistent, it undoes all of the kid's learning and creates uncertainty (and stress) for them.  That's my take on it.  Also, at that age I feel like not getting enough sleep can create sleep disruptions.  You might try moving bedtime earlier (depending on how much sleep your child is currently getting each night).  Just an idea.  Good luck.  

    But if you want expert advice, I highly recommend Arlene (www.GentleTouchSleepTime.com) - she definitely gives personalized advice.   Another resource I like is the Huckleberry website and sample sleep schedules by age.  

    Here's a suggestion.  If you child wakes up exactly 30 minutes after falling asleep try being in the room ready to sooth with voice or patting her back as soon as she stirs.  If she does not wake all the way up she may go back to sleep faster without ever waking all the way up.  You may find she needs you less and less help and eventually will learn to put herself back to sleep at the 30 minute mark without any help from you.  I don't have any suggestion for the 2 am part, just lots of empathy.

    Good luck.  

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  • I’m looking for someone to help me and my family get more sleep. I have a 5 year old and almost 3 year old and a 6month old and I’m averaging about 4 hours a night. It’s a complicated situation because I have co slept with all of my children since birth and there is extremely low confidence re: indenpendent sleep. I cannot get them to sleep in their own spaces and when I try I end up staying up all night long walking them back to their beds. My husband leaves for work at 3am so it’s on me most of the night. I really need some help of any sorts to try and dig our way out of this hole. Many moms I’ve talked to have said they sleep trained early on and so they haven’t had trouble with this.

    I have a fantastic sleep consultant I worked with! She can definitely help and is super kind and experienced. She would say it’s definitely not too late. I’d be happy to intro you if interested! She does a first free consult so might be good to see if she’s a good fit for you and your family. 

    I hear you and feel you. I was in your situation for many years. I'm sorry that I don't have a suggestion for sleep training. We tried sleep training for unsuccessfully and then abandoned the ship. I co-slept with the kid which was the only way everyone could get sufficient amount of sleep. (My husband slept alone because he has an unconventional schedule like yours.) 

    If felt that I might have been able to make sleep training work if I could take 2 - 3 weeks off of work and just focus on sleep training. (Impossible - I would have been fired or incredibly resentful as I would have used up all of my vacation time.)

    We have an only child, so our situation is a bit different. I continued to co-sleep and then I started sleeping in the same room but not in the same bed. I bought a camping mat (HEST) that is seriously more comfortable than our bed and slept on that. If we had a bigger room, we might have been able to fit another mattress. 

    Around age 7/8, the child acted developmentally appropriate and wanted to try to sleep alone. By age 10/11, the child definitely did not want me in the room. A short and sweet "good night" and the child went into their room. Child is 12 years old now and in full puberty, and child craves alone time and kicks us out of their room. 

    Sleep deprivation is real and depletes us to no end. Hang in there, mom. 

    That sounds really hard, and you definitely deserve more sleep. For what it’s worth, I think it’s possible! Humans are adaptable, as are human kids who are adapting to their world and its rules everyday. Don’t let people tell you it’s all over bc you didn’t sleep train (by the way, I did sleep train, perfect independent sleep for 3 years, and at a certain point kids want to be in bed with parents anyway bc they have fears related to their new developmental stage). Im not an expert, but a few things to try: 

    For the two older kids, try incentives, such as a daily reward or a weekly reward chart: stay in your bed, get a prize. Something really good for the weekly reward (ice cream at the end of the week). 
    Make sure they have water, a night light,  a potty, and a a “time to wake” clock in their room(s). also, maybe they can share a room so they don’t feel alone? 

    If you want to try harsher methods, I know parents who use those crib tents to keep kids inside. This worked with a 3.5-4 year old. but there will be crying. You can try going in a few times at first to reassure them, but stick to the plan: stay in bed until (time). Or simply lock the door from the outside, making sure their rooms are super safe.

    For the baby, you can sleep train! The Ferber method worked well for us. One secret about sleep training is that it’s often not just one event. If you are really serious about it, you may need to sleep train and re-sleep train several times throughout the early years. 

    If you want to co-sleep, you MAY be able to later on, once your baby knows how to fall asleep, stay asleep, and go back to sleep on their own. However, going back to co-sleeping at any point will reintroduce the dependency. From what I’ve observed of babies/toddlers who were never sleep trained (and fall asleep by getting nursed or held), is that they can’t get back to sleep by themselves if they wake up during the night. So in my opinion, it’s worth it to sleep train to teach that skill. Although I sleep trained my 2 yo as an infant, I now cosleep with him (I missed out on this with my older kid bc we were strict about independent sleep). co-sleeping with him is not perfect, but at least he doesn’t wake me up in the middle of the night because he can just fall asleep on his own. 

    Parents got to do what they got to do to function as a good parent. So lovingly and firmly do what you need to do, especially if you are at a breaking point. 

    If you want some real professional advice (which will definitely lean more on harsher tactics), try sleep consultant/baby nurse Marsha Podd. 

    Two words: sleep consultant! There is SO much you can do. I also coslept in the first 6 months and then at some point it turns from the solution to the problem. I highly, highly, recommend Nicole ( https://www.sleepy-mama.com) we worked with her in NJ and then here remotely with our (then co-sleeping) third and she’s a miracle worker.

    Highly recommend working with Sleep Wise Consulting! We used them to help sleep train our kid when she was a baby, and then hired them again to help when she was ready to transition to a bed (4 y/o). They are fantastic -- excellent customer service, relatable, non-judgmental, and incredible commitment to getting everyone more and better sleep. Best investment we've made as parents :) Good luck! https://sleepwiseconsulting.com/

    Hi,

    I’m sorry to hear about your sleep troubles. I do not have direct experience with this (my son is only 6 months and we still sleep in the same room), but my sister in law had this issue. She could not get her four year old to sleep in his own room. She eventually started paying him money to sleep in his own bed in his own room. Worked right away. He was told he could save the money to buy a toy. She says most days he now forgets to ask for his money. She said it was a good way to teach him to save. My other sister in law had a similar issue trying to get her five year old and three year old to sleep in their own rooms. Instead of having them each in their own room she tried having them sleep together in a single room (not hers). It had some success. For my 6 month old son we recently did sleep training using the Ferber method because he was waking up very frequently at night and a lot of the time he was not actually hungry. I only did the method on his 2AM and 3AM wakings, but he took to it very well and he quickly stopped most of his night wakings. He only wakes up once during the night to eat instead of every hour like he was doing previously.

    Good luck and hoping you get some rest soon.

    For the 3 and 5 year olds, you could consider announcing that you have a new household rule that everyone falls asleep in their own beds. It's OK if they wake up in the night and come into your bed, but they have to start out the night in their own beds. This is not going to be a quick fix, they may spend a full year coming in to your bed at 2am, but eventually they will end up sleeping through in their own beds. And this way you hopefully get a decent stretch of sleep in the early part of the night before the first kid joins you, and you don't have to exhaust yourself walking them back to their own beds. I co-slept with my little until 3, and then moved him to his own bed with this rule. My sleep improved considerably immediately, and I didn't mind the minimal wake up when he came into my bed in the early hours.

    I'm not sure how this plays with the 6 month old though, since you'll probably want to continue co-sleeping with them for a while, and that might result in some jealousy from the older kids.

    I only had one child, but we co-slept with her until she was 2.5 years. What worked for us was a slower transition.

    1. First, we got her her own bed, but, initially, we set it up in our bedroom. I stayed with her while she fell asleep. Now, this worked because she was asleep within about 15 minutes.
    2. For the first few weeks, she would wake up at some point in the night and climb into bed with us. I just let her do it, I did not get up and put her back in her own bed. After a few weeks, she stopped waking up and just slept through the night in her own bed.
    3. Once she’d been sleeping in her own bed in our room for a couple of months, we moved her to her own room. For a while, we had a repeat of the previous pattern: she’d wake up in the middle if the night and patter into our room and climb into our bed. I let her do it. Within two weeks, she was sleeping through the night in her own room.

      I realize that with three, it may not be this simple and straightforward, especially if you’re still nursing a now teething 6 month old, but perhaps you can adopt a similar transition process that doesn’t require you to keep getting up to guide the other two back to their beds throughout the night?

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  • We have two children, ages 3 years and 6 months, and live in a typical Berkeley home with two small bedrooms. Our goal is for both kids to be sleeping through the night in the same room. Right now the baby is sleeping in a crib in our room and the toddler is sleeping great in his own room. The baby still wakes up several times a night to eat, but our pediatrician gave us the green light to sleep train since he is very healthy and doesn't require middle of the night feedings. We used the ferber method to sleep train our toddler and it worked well so we're planning to try the same method with this baby. I have two questions: 1) How have other families sleep trained babies using a CIO method when room sharing and with a toddler in the house? 2) How have other families gotten a toddler and a baby to sleep in the same room? Our toddler is a good sleeper and I'm afraid of the baby waking him up at night.

    Hi! We were in the same position as you, and what we ended up doing was bringing the toddler into our room (a little floor bed w/ his toddler mattress in the corner worked great) while we sleep-trained his little brother in a crib in the other room. We took longer than necessary to move big brother back into their shared room (once everyone was sleeping through the night) but that's sort of on us (and him - he loved being our "roomie"). Good luck!

    We moved our toddler into our room for a couple of night. and the baby into the kids’ room. That got us through CIO pretty easily. Once they were sharing a room, the little one would still wake up in the middle of the night on occasion, but the toddler would sleep through it. 

    We had the same issue with our small 2-bedroom house, and ended up moving the baby out to a corner of the living room while we worked on sleep training. It meant that after the baby went to bed we hung out with toddler in their bedroom, and then adults in our bedroom, but it was only 10 days or so until we were certain the baby was comfortable sleeping through the night. Moving the baby into the toddler room was a breeze, because both were solidly sleeping through the night. For awhile the baby went to bed earlier, then they both switched to having a similar bedtime (but we only have a two year age gap).

    Also (unsoclicitated advice, sorry!) I really like the modified Ferber method described in The Sleepeasy Solution - in particular, the book describes a good method to uncouple middle of the night feedings (which can linger for awhile) with "sleep training" (which is typically considered babies learning how to self-soothe and go to sleep on their own without aids. Just another resource in case it's helpful!

    We have a 12 month old and an almost 3 year old. They both sleep through the night if they are in separate rooms so we (the parents) sleep in the living room. If they sleep together, they wake each other up. Usually the younger one makes a peep and then the older one starts yelling. We've been trying to get them to sleep together for 4+ months. It was successful maybe 3 out of 45 attempts. Hopefully you'll have better luck.

    We just went through this last year with our then 5 month old and 3 yr old. Toddler stayed in her room as my husband was worried about moving her out and messing up her routine since she sleeps on her own well and can be very particular about things - her pillow, blanket, etc (didn’t want to have to retrain her again)
    We used our room where baby already slept in a pack and play next to our bed, and did the Feber method over one weekend. One parent took turns checking in on the baby while the other put the toddler to bed in her room, and then we would hang out in the living room till baby was deep in sleep before we could have our room back. We started sleep training on a Friday night and by Monday she was able to soothe herself to sleep. Even though she could put herself to sleep, she would still wake up once around 4:30/5am to feed then go back to sleep so she continued to sleep in the crib in our room until about 7-8 months when she started sleeping till 6am. At that point, we moved her into the room with the 3 yr old and I was always on alert to get her out of the room once she woke up at 6 before crying got too loud (thanks to setting my alarm and babycam stalking). That way she didn’t wake toddler who typically sleeps till 7am and can be a light sleeper. 
    Now they are 1 and 3.5 and both wake up around the same time and the toddler entertains the baby when they wake up  

    For bedtime, the. baby goes down first around 7:30pm. Toddler does her own routine - reading and storytelling in our bedroom and then we walk quietly using a phone night light to get her to her bed. She knows to stay quiet so she doesn’t wake the baby up but occasionally she sings to herself in a low voice as she falls asleep, and the baby is yet to wake up!

  • Hi there! My partner and I live in a 1 bedroom apartment with our 3 month old daughter. I've started to read up on sleep training, and a lot of what I'm reading involves putting our child in another room. Unfortunately, that's not an option for us, so I'm looking for advice from other parents who've successfully sleep trained in a 1 bedroom. As a first-time parent, I am at a loss.

    Our situation: Our apartment includes a living room, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. The bedroom includes a long, narrow closet that runs the length of one of our walls. We don't have any walk-in closets and we don't have a long hallway. BUT her mini-crib will fit in the closet. We have a sliding door that we've removed from the closet, which we could put back up if that would help. Our daughter currently sleeps in a bassinet next to our bed.

    What is most important for sleep training? 

    Thoughts on how to set up our bedroom to facilitate her sleeping well and independently as she gets a little bit older? We are not planning on moving in the near future if we don't have to. 

    Thank you! 

    I guess it would be helpful to understand what you are trying to accomplish with sleep training. It is a little early to stop feeding overnight as most drs recommend continuing to feed at night until around 6 months. We started a bedtime routine around the 12 week point so that our baby could start to understand the pattern. That really helped him start going down easily at night after several weeks of repetition. If that's what you're trying to accomplish then I would think it would be something you could do in a 1 bedroom apartment, assuming your child goes to sleep earlier than you. 

    We recently got our daughter through to 7mo in our 1-bdrm. Our sleep training for her simply included getting her on a reasonably consistent schedule (bed always between 7 and 7:30), and a routine (bottle, book, singing, bed). We gave her a lovey. We put a dohm in the room for white noise. We played a "shhh" song in the room. Black out curtains (think blanket clipped over the window shade) might be helpful for summer. A baby monitor was helpful to keep an eye on what was going on.  We did some cry-it-out. We sometimes caved and bounced her to sleep. Ultimately, feeling out what was right for her and the routine seemed to be the keys. We would wait for her to fall asleep and then quietly get into our bed.

    One note...our baby outgrew her mini-crib at 4mo. She started scratching the sides and would keep herself awake doing so. The full size crib solved that.

    Good luck!

    I feel your pain. I'm a Choice mom (single mom by choice) with an 11 month old daughter. She has her own room but I resorted to the
    "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" book like the bible!  Good luck!

    https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NyCeCgAAQBAJ&source=prod…

    What I'm envisioning is that the mini-crib will just barely fit in the closet.  That just doesn't sound so good to me - too much like a cage.  And, emotions aside, I don't think a sliding door is going to block out much of the sound. Could you put the mini-crib in the kitchen? Maybe temporarily replace your kitchen table with a folding table, and fold it up at night?

    I assume you're looking down the road, because 3 months is a little early for sleep training. Some pediatricians advise against it until the baby is a year.  You may find when you get there you don't need to do much. If you are lucky!!!

    The narrow closet sounds scary. In my opinion, it is not a good idea to put a baby in such a small enclosed space with no adequate air circulation. If the goal is to teach her to fall asleep on her own, why don’t you just leave her alone in your bedroom and go to the living room while she falls asleep? 

     I live in a 3br house in Richmond, but my 11 month old’s crib is still in our bedroom. I did CIO at 5 months (3 months is still too young to sleep train- babies don’t have sleep cycles and sleep hormones until 4 months). The first couple nights there was a lot of crying, but he quickly learned to put himself back to sleep when it wasn’t a feeding time (like if he woke up an hour after eating). After a few days, he went to sleep with minimal crying, and he’s been sleeping great ever since! It doesn’t matter if you are in the room. A mesh bumper can block the baby’s view, if you are comfortable using one. The most important thing is consistency. Pick a method, and stick to it! Sleep training was amazing for my family. I was a different person from sleep deprivation, and am so happy everyone sleeps now. Congrats on the new baby!

    We have a 6 1/2 month old who sleeps through the night and only have one bedroom/living area with kitchen etc downstairs thus we spend a good amount of time in our loft/bedroom area.  We successfully sleep trained (no night feedings, sleeps in crib from 7p -6a).  We did what many of these other parents did.  Started by initiating a simple bedtime routine around 3 or 4 months (warm wash cloth or bath, diaper change, pajamas, sleep sack, nursing, book, singing).  Transferred to normal sized crib at 5 months.  Did gentle cry it out (books Happy Sleeper and Sleepeasy Solution were pretty helpful). Couple difficult weeks but have had great success for many weeks now.  We don't use a sound machine since I was worried about our babe becoming dependent on it and we do spend time in the room after he's gone to bed.  We of course have to be quiet but we are not silent.  We are within very close proximity and it works.  I imagine that if you can be in the living room while your baby's in the bedroom, even better!  We do have black out shades which seem to help especially for nap times.  Also, right around 5 1/2, 6 months we started night weaning (as advised in The Sleepeasy Solution) and that really helped streamline our nights.  We will be keeping this living arrangement for as long as we can and it is working for now.  Now that our baby understands his routine and where he sleeps, I don't think he is bothered by the fact that we are close by and awake.  

    What we did in a similar situation was have a pack-n-play in the bedroom and a crib in the living room. We would put the baby to sleep in the bedroom, then go about our evening in the rest of the house (and we had a fair bit of evening left - we are huge supporters of the Happy Baby, Healthy Sleep Habits book, which espouses a pretty early bed time).  Once we were ready to go to bed, we would quietly pick up the baby and move him to the main crib.  Typically he did not wake up during this transfer, and if he did it was usually a brief snuffling about.  I suppose you run the risk of the baby waking back up fully and having to repeat any sleep training work you'd done earlier in the evening, which will be trying. But still worth it, in my book.  You'll get good at the transfer - making sure both rooms are dark and quiet, turning on white noise if you use that, etc.  I often wondered if our baby wondered why he woke up in a different spot from where he went to sleep, but he never seemed surprised in the morning, so I think it was just the normal routine for him.

    You (the parents) can just sleep in the living room for 3 nights or so when you sleep train.  We recently moved from NYC where this is common practice :) I also highly recommend the book the sleepeasy solution - great overall sleep strategies and techniques for night weaning or maintaining one feeding while sleep training.  Good luck!

    Hi. I can write about our experience with trying to sleep train in a similarly small apt, but remember that all babies are different! Our son was not one that we could just put down drowsy but awake and he would miraculously fall asleep. We also were in a one bedroom apt his first year of life. The two things that made a huge difference were creating a clear bedtime routine and ‘sleep schedule’ and putting him in a closet. We found that until there was a door between us and him, he’d wake up way more often. But, we also were slower to sleep train—starting our bed routine at about 2 months, but continuing night feedings through 6 months or so. It was a combination I think of bed routines, having him in his own space, and him just getting older that really started to make a difference. Hope this helps! 

    It sounds like you have a good set up. Just follow Ferber can get her down consistently. She hopefully will stay asleep when you both go to bed.  And, and I think the book talks about this (Bringing up Bébé certainly does), if she cries out in the middle of the night, wait a moment- she might get herself back down.  This is a skill she's learning.  Worst thing to do is to pick her up right away.  As for timing as others have mentioned, we employed an overnight doula for our first, when he was under 2mo. and we started then.  He's slept very well since, continues to do so (at 6).  White Noise app is great.

    Have a blanket and pillow on the LR couch if possible, in case one of you needs to be able to sleep fully.

    We sleep trained our daughter at around 4 months in a very small one bedroom apartment (using the Ferber method but I don't think the method is that relevant here). We put her down to sleep in the bedroom and hung out in the living room while she got herself to sleep, then we went to bed. It took one or two nights before we could start going to bed at our normal time. She now goes to sleep around 6:30 and we go to bed around 9. We're quiet when we go in and we've never had any issues with her waking up, even when we get up frequently to use the bathroom or drink water throughout the night. She's now 6 months old, so I don't know if it will continue to work when she gets older. If not, we may be moving our bed out into the living room until we can move to a bigger place.

    Although we have a two bedroom, when we “sleep trained” our daughter she was still sleeping in our room.  We used The Happy Sleeper,which I can’t recommend enough!!  It is kind of a modified sleep training, with a lot of emphasis on the child never getting scared that the parent won’t come back. Like everyone is saying, you wouldn’t be doing a sleep training portion right now, but there are things you can start doing to encourage your daughter to figure out ways to self soothe. Right now you will still be very involved, but you can still start getting her comfortable falling asleep without as much assistance.   We worked on some of the skills around 3 to 4 months. At around 5 1/2 months we did what they call The Sleep Wave with her falling asleep in the bassinet in our room. We were able to make this work for us, and eventually we transitioned her to her own room, but it wasn’t a necessity. 

     Hope this helps