💤sleep
Anonymous User
4 months ago
Sleep training 8week old
Has anyone had success sleep training an 8–12 week old without doing full-on cry-it-out? I’m not comfortable with the idea of just putting her in the crib and closing the door for hours — it feels like I’d be ignoring her needs even if the books say it’s fine …
She’s still waking every ~4 hours at night to eat and is genuinely hungry each time, so I don’t think we can just stretch her to morning yet. If you’ve found a gentler approach that worked at this stage, I’d love to hear your tips or tricks so I can get ahead of it before returning to work… Thank you!
Anonymous
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4 months ago
OK, so this isn’t the answer you’re looking for, but I really think that before considering sleep training for a baby that young you should do some deeper scientific research. Without citing specific sources, these are just a few of the reasons why you shouldn’t sleep train at age:
An eight-week-old's circadian rhythm, which regulates sleep-wake cycles, is still developing. Interfering with this process through sleep training can disrupt healthy development.
Infants at this age rely on caregivers for comfort and security. When left to cry, they may experience increased stress and anxiety.
Sleep training can potentially undermine the development of a secure parent-child attachment, especially if the infant's cries are consistently ignored.
Eight-week-olds are not yet developmentally ready to self-soothe or sleep for extended periods without feeding or comfort.
And from personal experience, I know a one year-old child who was sleep trained at just under eight weeks and she is not meeting her developmental milestones and does not have a healthy secure attachment. It’s sad. Please consider other avenues. (i’m sure I’ll get a lot of hate for saying what I just said, but I’m good with it.)
Anonymous
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4 months ago
My sons started sleeping through the night at 7 months old, what I did was to ensure his eating a lot in the day so he will be able to sleep through the night. So everything is time still breakfast lunch and dinner .
Anonymous
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4 months ago
I’m no expert here and from everything I’ve seen, peoples experiences are just very different in terms of their baby’s sleep behavior. So just sharing what happened with our two boys as two examples in a sea of other examples. At 8 weeks both our sons didn’t seem to be getting enough calories during the day to make it through the night without feeding. So trying to withhold feeding/comfort during the night to get them to sleep through the night didn’t feel like the right thing. We waited until about 6 months to fully ween the night feedings. So lots of wake ups for feeding and comfort until 6-8 months.
The big challenge is how do you get your baby to eat more in the day so they have the calories to get through the night.
We experimented with slowly weening. This is much easier to do bottle feeding since you can keep track of the ounces. Much harder to do if you’re BFing. So with the bottle, you very slowly reduce the amount of ounces during each night feed over the course of several weeks.
One issue that starts to pop up around 4-6 months or so is teething. So baby wakes up not because they are hungry but because they are in pain and feeding is soothing. So that’s just another hard thing to navigate.
All this goes to say is that there’s just a lot of trial and error and most important thing is to do what feels right for you and your baby. Because nobody knows your baby like you. And each persons experience is so different.
I have a friend whose baby was sleeping through the night at 2 weeks. 🤯 that was definitely not our experience!
Anonymous
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4 months ago
We did sleep training with our 8 week old and followed the Precious Little Sleep book!
Anonymous
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4 months ago
We successfully sleep trained our baby within 1-2 weeks with the book Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks. We started at 8 weeks when he was consuming 24 oz in 24 hours and gradually eliminated the night feeds from 3 to 0 in 2 weeks. The 4 feeds in the day would require encouraging your baby to eat as much as possible to get the full 24+ oz during the 12 hour-day (versus across 24 hours). Now he sleeps from 8pm-7am. You only allow the baby to cry for 3-5 mins at night and then you go in to sooth him without picking him up. This taught our baby to self-sooth by sucking on his hand.
You have to believe in the method to have it work and stick with it.
Anonymous
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4 months ago
Oh and in regards to not meeting developmental milestones and secure attachment, at least right now at 14 weeks he’s been meeting them and there hasn’t been signs of any attachment issues.
If the baby cries or is hungry during the sleep training, of course you shouldn’t starve or neglect the baby. The method is similar to working out with a trainer. You’re guiding the baby, meeting their full potential, and pushing them a little out of their comfort zone in order to progress.
Anonymous
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4 months ago
One last thing, I will say a few things made it easier for us… so success rate will vary for others.
- our baby is relatively good natured so he didn’t cry a ton to begin with.
- we have cradewise which is a smart crib that rocks the baby back to sleep when he starts stirring. Thus this def helped us not having to wake up to soothe him as often.
Anonymous
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4 months ago
I may have a different view on this. I’m not sure at eight weeks if the infant brain is developed enough to understand what sleep training is and what I fear is that the baby goes through a severe cortisol depleting response and simply falls asleep because here she is not being tended to. I know sleep training is probably what’s needed in our modern day-to-day life given that we have so many other responsibilities in our day but something about it especially at a very early age seems very unnatural to me.
Anonymous
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4 months ago
We followed SWAPS from the book precious little sleep and our baby was falling asleep independently by 10ish weeks. he wasn’t night weaned but he night weaned himself later.
Anonymous
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4 months ago
People need to stop sleep training. Sleep training an 8 week old is insane. If you can’t be a parent and wake up with your NEW BORN then what r u doing being a parent.
Anonymous
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3 months ago
+1 to 12 hours by 12 weeks, and all the details lifted from it above. Going to start down the path from there this week