💤advice
Anonymous User
6 months ago
Sleep training (again) / night weaning?
We did a slow/"gentle" form of sleep training around 6mo and had an amazing brief period of sleeping through the night, as long as we did a dream feed around 11.
Our 8mo old has gone back to not sleeping for the past month and I'm... so tired. She's mostly waking to eat anywhere between 1 and 4. If she has a small bottle at that time, she'll be up for the day by 6a, otherwise sleeps until 6:30-7. If we don't dream feed, she'll wake up by 12 to eat anyway (which makes sense bc we've kind of taught her to eat then!)
She definitely CAN fall asleep independently, but often will not. The problem is she's so tired when we get home from daycare that she falls asleep at the bottle even if we try to separate last bottle from bedtime.
What should we do next? What should we even be expecting at this age? Help!
Anonymous
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6 months ago
Are you 💯 sure it’s daycare fatigue? Given her age, she could also be teething. In that case, ibuprofen could help.
Anonymous
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6 months ago
@Ethan Arpithere's definitely a teething component, but it's hard (for me) to tell the difference!
Reporting live from my living room where baby is napping in her stroller bc she fell asleep on the 8 minute walk home 🙃
Anonymous
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6 months ago
Oh yeah she’s definitely tired. Does she nap at day care? The environment is really tough for good napping.
Anonymous
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6 months ago
I’m sorry about the baby sleep!!
How does she nap at daycare?
Maybe you need to move bedtime earlier if she is that tired? Or make sure the last nap if she’s super tired is less than 15 min so it doesn’t impact night sleep.
For night feeds, I would possibly try not responding with food if you know she can get through the night. She might be waking up for it out of habit!
We’ve had to like “re” sleep train Charlie a few times and unfortunately letting him fuss it out is like the only thing that worked as he got older. But luckily the fussing never lasted too long. Good luck!!
Anonymous
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6 months ago
Tl;dr it's probably time to graduate to the "tough" sleep training 🙄
It sounds like we're living a very similar life. Our 8mo has been a pretty crappy sleeper from day 1, especially compared to his older brother.
We had been feeding 2-3 times a night, because we were desperate for sleep and that seemed the fastest way to get him back down. We did night weaning, and got to a dream feed, but still didn't get consistent sleep stretches more than 2 hours. We did not make any substantial progress until we went full on Ferber method. It was incredibly tough for 2-3 nights, but it got better fast, and we were so tired and frustrated and desperate.
The best we can figure out in hindsight is that he wasn't actually hungry, but had learned bad "sleep hygiene" over weeks of us responding to any wake longer than a few minutes with a bottle. This makes sense, since we had been closely counting daily formula intake and he was always at high end of recommend range, without counting the small 2oz feeds we were doing overnight.
We're still making progress toward true thru-the-night sleeping (we've gotten 715p-6a twice now in the last 2 weeks) but it is infinitely better. Last 2 nights we've had a regression due to teething where he was just inconsolable around midnight and needed some ibuprofen and a cuddle before getting back to sleep.
Two steps forward, one step back 😏
Anonymous
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6 months ago
+1 to what others have said - she doesn’t need to eat, she’s not actually hungry — she’s just doing what she knows! She will also be less tired during the day if she’s not waking up at night. 😛 For reference on the eating thing, my babies stopped eating at night at like 2-3mo.
I’d try to wrap your mind around a less “gentle” form of sleep training and just bite the bullet. I promise it’s worth it. Also, check in w daycare about how her naps are there. Is there anything they can do to make them work better for you?
If you’re desperate, you can throw money at this problem and hire a baby sleep consultant to give you specific steps.
Anonymous
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6 months ago
Thanks everyone! We dropped the proactive dream feed and had a few solid nights of sleep - not through the night, but sleeping til 4-5a, then back to sleep after eating a full bottle.
Last night (overnight) she ate 30% of what she normally eats in a day after already having a full day of calories yesterday so I genuinely think she was hungry!
Her naps are awful at daycare. I've spoken to them about it but since she's still in the infant room and they do on demand naps, she is just too stimulated knowing other babies are awake and only goes down when exhausted. She's slowing taking longer naps there, though, so 🤞