đź’¤sleep
Anonymous User
9 months ago
Sleep training
What's your take on sleep training? What worked for you, what method do you recommend, did you move baby to their own room first? When did you start?
I'm anxious about being away from our baby but we all need better sleep đź«Ł
Anonymous
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9 months ago
Defintely sleep is so important. There are perhaps multiple right answers here but we personally found it hard conceptually to be away from our baby for that many hours in the night when every instinct was telling us to be close. Sleep training itself is largely a USA/UK/Australia thing. The vast majority of the world does not formally sleep train (as in separate from your baby or perhaps let them cry it out). There are some schools of thought that say until the baby has a matured amygdala we shouldn’t stress the baby out too much. Thus the “cry-it-out” method in the strictest sense may be too much of a cortisol-releasing stressful experience.! Probabaly the most balanced answer calls for sleeping in the same room together (perhaps in a close by crib) and doing a combination of the “no tears method” and the “chair method” outline above by the recess-bot.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
I forgot to add that I feel doing what your instincts tell you to do should be weighed heavily. We ( yes I’m a doctor) tend to over medicalize and over structure things without enough weight given to our own instincts especially maternal instincts.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
My wife and I both work, so sleep training was a non-negotiable since we couldn't function waking up 3+ times per night. For our first child, we waited too long to start which made it more difficult. We started at about 7 or 8 months. We did a version of the cry it out method where we would put our son down groggy, let him cry for 10 mins, come in for 30 seconds, comfort him without picking him up, leave the room, and repeat until he'd fall asleep. It some time took 3-4 cycles of this for him to sleep. It took about a week for him to get used to it and he showed dramatic progress around day 3. For our second child, we started sleep training the day we got back from the hospital, putting him down groggy and letting him just get used to going to sleep on his own for every nap. The difference in sleep related stress (for the parents) was night and day between child 1 and child 2. We'd spend hours soothing child 1 before naps and bedtime with super elaborate bedtime rituals. Child 2 has a streamlined bedtime ritual and requires basically no work to put down. So I guess like anything, when you build up experience you just get better at it. Doing sleep training the first time was tough. I really am bothered by the crying even though I know intellectually that they aren't in distress. But some people are less bothered by it. As a second time parent, I'm also so much less bothered by it.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
We followed advice from Precious Little Sleep — first starting with making sure routine and environment was good and then we did Fuss it out. I moved him out of our room at 7 weeks but you can def sleep train in your room it can just be a little tough. We did it around 10-11 weeks and then he started consistently sleeping thru the night and night weaned by 20 weeks. It was a life savor. We never had to let him “cry it out”
Anonymous
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9 months ago
@Ally Palanzi
- 20 week!? đź‘Źđź‘Źđź‘Ź well done! That definitely takes discipline.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
Our night nurse started with sleep training at around 2 months....we actually never slept in the same room as baby so she is very comfortable in her crib in her room. The sleep training mainly consisted of soothing through the night but not picking her up. Over a period of 6 weeks, the length of time of time between feedings got longer and longer. By the time our nanny left us at 3 months she was sleeping 8pm to 7/8am consistently. At six months, still on this schedule and never had a regression. We keep the nanit running on our phone all night so we can hear everything but have only needed to get up a handful of times!
Anonymous
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9 months ago
Thanks everyone! I'm still not convinced I want to be in a separate room, but she definitely needs help learning to fall asleep on her own. The chair method sounds like it will be most comfortable for me, but may take way longer than others.
Anonymous
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9 months ago
Good luck!