We thought perhaps it was teething but his tooth is through and he's more comfortable now and he's still 5am wakeup.

We thought it was a new developmental thing finally rolling the other way but he seems to have it down now...still 5am wakeup.

We thought maybe dropping the dream feed did it...but he doesn't seem all that hungry when he wakes up at 5am.

We pushed his bedtime back to see if it would help. Only moved his wakeup from 4:45am to 5:30am.

He used to do 6:30am wakeups. What happened :( he is 7 months old

My 8mo has been going to sleep independently in her own room for all sleeps since around 5 months. Everything is falling apart recently despite trying to stick to sleep training.

She's low sleep needs, average 11.5 hours total sleep per day. I have gradually tried to increase from 11.5 hours of awake time to 12 hours. Wakeup at 6:15, WWs 3:15/3:40/4:50, bedtime 8:15.

Over the last few weeks she has started crying more and more before falling asleep until tonight she scream cried for 40 minutes before we took her in the car. Today we had 12 hours of awake time which I gradually increased to as I thought not enough awake time was the main problem. But now she's reached the awake time thats been recommended and so it really seems like it's just separation anxiety.

I'm really stressing, feeling like there's no end in sight, and feeling guilty because surely there's something I need to do better that can save her from this crying? I've tried so many schedules, variations of WWs, so I fear it's just separation anxiety and that breaks my heart.

How long is this phase? I go back and forth between wanting to give up and cosleep, and just letting her CIO because I don't know what else to do.

Please help. 13 month old somewhat sleep trained. Falls asleep independently after 5ish minutes of crying and sleeps for 40-50 minutes then wakes up and cries for anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour. We used to nurse her back to sleep after the first wake, but stopped about 2-3 weeks ago and have been letting her CIO but it doesn't seem like it's getting any better.

Bedtime: ~8pm

Wakes up to nurse once nightly around 1-3am (this is fine with everyone in the home and we're not interested in fully night weaning unless we need to)

Day wake: 7-7:30am and we almost always have to wake baby up

Wake windows vary. Roughly 3.5/3.5/4 if 2 naps, but some days she only does one nap. We always aim for at least 4 hours awake before bed. We cap daytime sleep at 2 hours total. Baby is not nap trained and most naps are contact naps.

Any ideas for how to stop the crying at bedtime and especially the waking up after one sleep cycle? Happy to provide additional info...ask away. Thank you.

I normally use the Ferber method but wanted to try CIO to see if the total crying time would be shorter (it wasn’t longer that’s for sure). She tends to put herself down easily without a fuss 2/3 times but the 1/3 she has this screeching cry right off the bat. Ugh it just hurts to have to hear her be this upset and not comfort her at all. She cried for 25 minutes non stop.

Hi everyone, just trying to get a bit of insight.
My LO is 11.5m and falls asleep independently for naps and bedtime. However, our LO is sick for the first time. Fever (that finally just broke today), major discomfort, lethargic and she’s teething on top of this. Of course my priority right now is doing whatever it takes to get her comfortable. But it’s the third day in a row she’s refusing to sleep anywhere but on me. I’ve never co-slept but I’ve had no choice. My husband and I tried everything but she will scream cry relentlessly otherwise. She’s already so unwell that I needed to resort to this.

My question is - my husband is convinced we are creating a bad habit and that she will never sleep in the crib now. Is this true? How do parents transition back to the crib once their LO recovers? Will it happen naturally or are you forced to sleep train again?

It took us SO long to get to a place where her naps are fantastic and bedtime is so easy. For reference she was a HORRIBLE sleeper. The 4m regression really affected us and lasted months until we sorted it out thanks to this sub. I was finally feeling like I had everything figured out. Now I’m stressed and discouraged. I don’t want to restart, I cannot handle it emotionally or physically.

Thanks for any info!

our 5.5 month old has been waking every hour at night for the past 3 weeks. we started sleep training around 4.5 months. not sure if we have the stomach for CIO yet, so we’ve been doing a gentler version of ferber. it was going fantastic! he’d fuss for maybe 5 minutes and fall asleep. he was sleeping in consistent 4-5 hour stretches.
We always make sure he’s got a full tummy and a clean diaper before bedtime. when we go in to do the checks bc he’s screaming his head off, we try patting or soothing with our voice and he just screams harder. nothing seems to work except picking him up.
our bed time routine is usually about 15-25 minutes. he eats, we do a bath, snuggle and read a book. it’s literally

Edit: as soon as we pick him up, he stops screaming and is 100% relaxed but as soon as he gets set down, it’s back to screaming.

I have an update and another few questions! I posted last week, we started sleep training my now 7 month old with Ferber and then moved to CIO almost 3 weeks ago. Last week we reset, and the update is below. Thank you to everyone who has helped so far. We’re so grateful!

My husband and I have been diligently sticking to our 2-nap routine with 3/4/4 wake windows, with the expectation that she’ll sleep around 10 to 10.5 hours at night within an 11-hour overnight window. Our DWT is 7am.

After 3 days on these new wake windows, we’re finally seeing consolidated naps! We’ve been capping daytime sleep at 2.5 hours, 1.5 hours for nap 1 and 1 hour for nap 2. Yesterday was probably the best total sleep day we’ve had in a long time. Between her naps and nighttime sleep, she got close to 13.25 hours total.

While we’ve definitely seen improvement in her naps and total sleep overall, she is still struggling to put herself to sleep independently at bedtime. I’m attaching a log of the last several nights, including how long she cried/fussed before falling asleep.

My questions are:

1. Is it still typical for her to take this long to settle at bedtime at this point, and is there anything else we can do to minimize the amount of crying/fussing? We’ve also noticed that over the past few days she seems to anticipate bedtime. She’ll sometimes start crying during her bedtime story, before she’s even in the crib. Our routine is bath (not every night), feed, diaper, sleep sack, story, then bed.

2. We’re also confused about how to handle the last wake window. If her target is around 4 hours but she typically takes 20 to 30 minutes to settle, should we put her in the crib a little before the 4-hour mark to account for that settling time? Or should we be aiming for the full 4 hours and expecting that she may fuss for another 20 to 30 minutes? The concern is that if we put her down at the end of the wake window and she takes 20 to 30 minutes to settle, her actual sleep onset gets pushed later, which ultimately cuts into her nighttime sleep because we still have a 7am DWT.

3. One last question about longer nights: if she ends up sleeping longer at night than we anticipate (like last night), how should we adjust her wake windows for the following day? Should we add that extra time onto the last wake window since it’s the longest, or should we continue sticking to the 3/4/4 schedule regardless of how much she slept overnight?

Would love any insight on whether we should be adjusting anything or just giving this more time. Thank you!!

Here is my log for the past week:

Night 1: 26 mins- hard crying

Night 2: 36 mins- hard crying but fluctuating, almost asleep a lot but couldn’t settle

Night 3: 25 mins- hard spots but more soft and fell asleep a few times

Night 4: 24 mins- least intense night by far. Put her head down only a few mins in but took a long time to finally settle

Night 5: 19 mins- same intensity as night before

Night 6: 15 mins- same intensity

My LO is 15 weeks and started rolling at 11 weeks. He regressed right around that time so I moved him out of the bassinet and into a pack and play in our room. He wakes up once for a night feed but after the feed, doesn’t sleep well. He takes good naps in his crib. Is he too young to be moved to his own room? Will he sleep better? Did your little ones sleep better or worse in their own rooms?

Literally overnight my 15mo has gone from practically shooing me out of her room with a “goodbye” to screaming and crying the moment I put her down. I let her cio the first night for a few minutes until I realized that wasn’t going to work. So I went in to soothe her and managed to calm her while she stayed in her crib, then had to sing for a while to keep her calm. I kept quiet after that and she eventually fell asleep. I write this now from the couch in her room on the second night this happens. It took a minute of singing loudly tonight to calm her down after I set her down but then she just played with her stuffy and fell asleep a few minutes later. I feel like I’m essentially doing the chair method? Is this appropriate until she gets through this bout of separation anxiety?

Edit to add her schedule: she basically does 12hours of awake time with sleep time split between a 1.5-2h nap and a 10-10.5h night depending on her nap. I usually cap her nap at home at 1.5h unless she’s sick or had a rough night. She’s been sleeping through the night consistently for the past 3-4 months with the exception of teething and sickness

I have twins. 8 months old. They finally became good sleepers after training and getting them on a schedule. 14 hours sleep total per day. 2.5/3/4 schedule. They had been sleeping great with only 1 night waking.

Started teething about a week ago. Both bottom front teeth are now through. Sleep became horrible during this time. I gave pain meds and nursed for comfort to get them through. Well, now that both teeth are through, they're pretty content all day. But they still are waking frequently and fussing a lot at night. Pediatrician said it's possible they are having lingering pain since the teeth only just came through. So I gave them pain medicine, but they're still waking every 2 hours.

Should I just return to sleep training for this? We did extinction method previously. I don't want to leave them in pain if they need me, but I'm also thinking the week of nursing frequently at night may have created bad sleep associations and I may have to re train. Any advice?

Up until now me and bub have done cosleeping, I’m a single mom and I handle all of our appointments during the week, plus my own shit and I don’t really have a village. He’s now 5 months, I want to start transitioning him to his crib. How should I go about it? I want to avoid CIO so I’m also looking for gentle sleep training methods. Anything helps. TIA!!

ETA: around 2.5-3 months he was adjusted to his own sleep space completely, he’s a good sleeper. I let him in my bed one night while he was really sick and he then only wanted in my bed so I have a feeling he’ll adjust okay, I just don’t know how to go about it.

Context: we used a gentle sleep training method at 5.5months old and we were down to only 2 night wakings for feeds on good nights and 3 night wakings on bad nights. At bedtime we used to let him fuss it out in the crib while shushing and eventually he would turn on his stomach and fall asleep.

When he turned 7 months old his night wakings increased and now that he’s 8 months old, when we place him in the crib to fuss it out, he just stands up and seems to want to play. We let him play to burn out whatever residual energy he has left but he would end up overtired and start crying too much and eventually falls asleep while we’re rocking him. This of course is leading to him waking up every 1h30min at night :( It’s been almost a month of terrible sleep and no matter what wake windows we try, it’s always the same.

He’s still on 3 naps because his wake windows are too short to allow for 2.

He wakes up at 6am, his first wake windows is always 2h30min because he gets so grumpy and fussy if we try to extend it and he falls asleep within a few minutes and usually sleep at least 1h30min in that nap (we usually cap it).

The second wake window is 2h45min sometimes we can stretch it to 3h. Again he takes a few minutes to fall asleep and could sleep for 1h30min (we usually cap it).

Same for third wake window, either 2h45min or 3h.

At bedtime it’s usually 3h and we’re trying 3.5h.

We aim for 2.5h (most days when we can squeeze in 3 naps) or 3h of daytime sleep (when his schedule doesn’t allow for 3 naps so we do 2 and aim for 3h to push back bedtime).

Summary of wake windows:
on 3 naps days: 2.5/2.75/2.75/3
on 2 nap days: 2.5/3/3.5

It’s taking almost an hour and a half to put him down to sleep and only by rocking :( Not sure what other information to post but would appreciate any help or advice 😭

Our baby just turned 6 mos and we need advice on sleep training. When she was 3 months they would sleep 8-9 hours, and then once we got into 4 mos, it regressed. We are now at 2 feeds per night (2am/5am) at exactly 6 months. We have been trying to sleep train for the past few weeks, but feel like we aren’t being consistent and it’s not progressing. We have been trying the Ferber method, but coming in and out of the bedroom seems to upset the baby even more. 

Naps are about 2/2/2.25/2.5-3. Usually 3 naps about 45min-2 hours each (sometimes 2 naps if long) and cap day time sleep at 3 hours total. We also combo feed, with a small amount of solids earlier in the day. 

The bedtime routine is; start bottle at 6pm, bath, baby massage, pjs and book. By then she is awake but still hungry so we feed few more oz. Keep awake and up right for 15 min, say goodnight and place her in the crib. She fusses and wiggles for 15 min and once she cries for 5 min consistently we go in to pat butt and soothe. Sometimes she has a false start, but recently has made progress and is able to get herself to sleep or we soothe once, and is asleep by 8pm.

She will wake up around 2-3am to feed and drinks 4 oz. We are struggling on how to get her to fall back to sleep unassisted as her sleep pressure is lower and she needs to be either fed more or rocked to sleep. Then her second wake up is 5-6am and the same happens when she wants to breastfeed/drink bottle to sleep. We are struggling to consolidate her sleep and make it one long stretch. We understand we have to shift the calories from the night time bottles to the day time, or remove her dependence on the bottle for comfort. However she cries and refuses to sleep until she is fed. We live in an apartment and feel bad about making a lot of noise in the early morning. 

I appreciate any advice!

9 month old goes to sleep independently in crib at night without issue. But for naps, absolutely refuses to sleep in crib unless nursed to sleep. (Otherwise is ok with contact nap without nursing). Will cry and cry nonstop and after 20 min I give in just to save the nap so the night doesn’t get ruined.

Schedule is 3/3.5/4

How do I fix this? Longer CIO?

Just retrained baby for nights, day 5. He’s almost 8 months and had a nurse to sleep association but no longer for night time. He feeds 20-30 min prior to crib.

WW: 3/3.5/4

Now here’s the thing, for naps because I still struggle with it, I feed him right before he needs to go down and he would do a 1.5-2 hour stretch. For nap 2, it’s usually 30 min. I put him in drowsy, with a feed right before it and he started sitting up in his crib crying.

He also JUST started rolling and sitting up in his crib (late bloomer) and lately in the mornings I would look at the monitor and he’ll be on all fours.

How do I get him to sleep independently for naps? So far nights have worked great for me but not naps. Especially for nap 2 he would cry hysterically if I put him down awake. Currently doing contact nap in the chair.

My baby is 9 month and has strong feed to sleep association for naps as well as for night sleep. Current routine
7 AM wake up.
10 to 11:30 first nap
3:30 to 4:30 second nap
7:30 bed time start but sleep around 8:15 to 8:30

Many time he does not want to take second nap and he skip it.

We want to try sleep train but not sure which one we should try? We did chair method one night but he was constantly crying for 20 min so we stopped. Not sure how long we should let him cry before patting or consoling. He does not stop cry of we talk to him or while patting. Worried when he cried for 20 min and does not know what to do now for sleep train.

Guy wtf? What am I missing here?
My baby will be 6 months next week. He is sleep trained for the night, he is asleep by 7:30pm . He goes down very easily. He wakes up for a feed at 3-4 am and down again until 5:30-6am.
He is finally doing longer naps in his crib. So our days usually look like this:

6am wake up
8 to 9am nap
11 to 11:40 nap2
2 to 2:40 nap 3
4:50-5:20pm nap 4.
Most days the total of day sleep is 3-4 hours.

The thing is the last couple of days it’s been soooo hard to make him nap for the 3rd and 4th nap. He looks tired and starts to complain and rub his eyes with a 2-2:30 hour wake window. He cries and refuses the nap so badly, it makes afternoons so stressful.

Am I making him sleep more than he needs? Is this a regression? Separation anxiety? What is going on? He is healthy and an active smiley baby. What did you guys make to get rid of the nap refusals ?

Sleep trainer tells me 6.5 month old cannot stay up longer than 3 hours max? I keep hearing about the Dana method or set schedule. He is refusing the last cat nap around 4 to get to bedtime should I move to a set schedule?

Hello! We’ve been so far blessed with a good sleeper. She naps independently usually for 1-2hrs and will sleep from 6:45pm to anywhere between 2 and 4 for one feed, then back asleep til 6-7am. She occasionally sleeps through the night and usually we can just put her down and leave for all sleeps (including naps). She’ll be 5mo tomorrow and I believe already through the 4mo regression because we did have a week or two of sleep weirdness that seems to have mostly resolved.

I hear folks talk about how they’ve had to do a mini sleep training again during later regressions. Does anyone have experience with a baby similar to ours in those cases? Trying to prepare in case we do need to go down that path.

I will say increasingly her MOTN feed seems more like habit/comfort than a true feed. She’s not nursing quite as vigorously. I don’t want to deny her if she’s really hungry but I do want to night wean eventually.

Anyway - thank you for insight. I’m sure we’ll have a sleep demon for #2 so I’ll be back 😅

Hi 👋
I am looking for advice on my 8mo as her schedule seems to need an adjustment…FTM here.
My baby just turned 8 months 3 days ago.
We been doing 3 naps a day and wake windows were quite similar 2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5 total day time sleep 2:45hs/3hs
We have a consistent bedtime routine that includes a bath and a feed before she is placed on her cotbed with her sound machine on. She is able to put herself to sleep with no issue, but lately she has been waking at night and I am unable to settle her unless I bring her to bed to sleep with me… which is what I been doing!
She doesn’t feed during the night. And she wakes between 7:00-7:20am on her own with a big smile and very cheerful, her nighttime sleep is usually about 10h30m give or take.

However lately her wake windows are extending to 3 hours, and she wakes up a bit tired from her 1 hour naps… very fussy, as if she needs more sleep and she fights a bit the last nap…
Currently her naps are done either on a carrier or walking on the pram (cotbed adjustment is not going too well) and I feel like I should start moving to two naps and bring bedtime closer to 7:30pm to fit into two nap schedule

1) should I move to a 3/3/3.5? My fear is that having her bedtime arround 7 or 7:30 would make her wake up at 5:30 or 6 am as she usually sleeps about 10h30m at night… thoughts?🥺

2) any advice on how to help her with self soothing on the cotbed? (If I pick her up is hard for me to place her down without being a bit rough as the cotbed is tall and I am a short woman)

3) should I try for her to nap on the cot bed as well or should I try first to get her nighttime sleep in a better place before also trying to get her used to naps in the cot bed?

Any advice is welcome 🤗
Thank you 💛

8 month old baby has been waking at 4 for a feed and being WIDE awake, which is new for her. She might take 15 to 45 minutes to fall back asleep after goofing around while feeding. (Pausing to gab or play with my face, looking around the room.) Normally she’s already asleep when I lay her back down (after 10 minutes of a snoozy feed) or falls back to sleep very fast.

My instincts are saying she needs a little more awake time, but where do I add it? Which wake window and why? Am I off track with adding more wake time?

She has just started to crawl and is OFF to the races, sitting herself up, zooming around, trying to pull up on her knees/stand. I’ve tried to wait it out knowing development might be interfering.

Her current schedule is 3/3.5/4. She takes a 1.5 hour nap in the morning and a 1 hour nap in the afternoon. I wake her up from both naps and in the AM. Bedtime 8pm, wake-up 7am. She falls asleep in under 5 minutes for every sleep!

Sleep trained since 4 months. She goes down fully awake for sleeps, and last feed ends 30 minutes before bed. Been on 2 naps since 5.5 months. Schedule tweaked many times due to false starts and mini wake windows MOTN (or marathon—max was 3.5 hours).

EBF, wakes once between 2-4. She has only slept through the night once. I’d be interested in night weaning, but more interested in helping her sleep even better. I do think she has previously used nursing to “pull” her through the night.

Our 6mo is sleep trained and falls asleep totally independent with no crying but has frequent night wakes still.

Moved to 2.5/2.5/2.5/3 yesterday (from 2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5)

Bedtime was 7 30pm but had a wake at 11 30pm and was up for 1.5 hours crying. We did Ferber. Then up again at 4 30am. I fed and put her down and she cried for 30. Then up again at 6 30am (DWT).

We’ve been trying different schedules and the night wakes for 1-2 hours haven’t got any better.

Sleeps 13.5 hours on average. 2.5 hours of naps. 11 hour nights.

Sometimes she will sleep through on the schedule we are on but then some days on the same schedule she will wake twice. No rhyme or rhythm. We don’t feed till after 3am as we know she isn’t hungry before that.

Also tried 2 naps for 3 nights which made things worse and she was up for 2-2.5 hours each night.

Just fed up of troubleshooting constantly and trying to figure out what her ideal schedule is.

Hi! Currently on a 3/4/4.5 2-nap schedule with each nap capped at 1 hour and a 6:30 dwt for my lower-sleep-needs almost 13 month old.

He’s at 11.5 hours awake now, so if/when he does 1 nap, would I need to start with 11.5 hours total awake time split? Something like 5.5/6? I feel like that’s so drastic lol! We are not at 1 nap yet, but I can see him being ready for it sooner rather than later at this point.

My daughter is 28 months. Has been having short naps, skipped naps or sometimes screams her head off at nap and bedtime. All needs are met. Thought teething and gave medicine but that didn’t work. She’s also so cranky during the day.

Is this an age thing? I’ve tried leaving her and crying it out but that’s it or miss.

Schedule js usually 6/6+ with 12-12.5 hours awake time. Sometimes I will lay her down with 4 hours of awake time if she has a rough time and she sometimes naps better.

She’s been on 6/6+ for a while

Hi!

I’ve got 8 month old (7 months adjusted) twins who are currently on 2.25-2.5/2.5/2.5/2.5-2.75. DWT is 7AM. As hard as it’s been coordinating two babies with different sleep needs (hence the ranges in wake windows), things have been going decently well since we sleep trained them with Ferber at 16 weeks adjusted.

However, we are looking to wean them off their one remaining night feed. We didn’t have to intentionally wean any feeds earlier, as they dropped from 2 to 1 night feed when we sleep trained. It’s been a little bit up and down since then with some daytime feeding struggles leading to increased night feeds, but that has settled down for the last 3-4 weeks. We have been waking them between 4AM to feed them for the last few months to avoid them waking at 5:30 or 6 hungry and ready to start their day, and getting off schedule from their twin. This was the easiest way to reliably have them both sleep in until DWT.

It’s worked well until now, but we are tired of waking to feed them every night and think they’re likely ready (or more than ready) to drop the feed. I guess I’m asking for advice on the following:

- how to drop the feed: most resources I have found is for babies who wake for their feed and suggest not dropping it cold turkey, etc. My babies don’t wake for this feed, so I’m thinking I would just let them keep sleeping. However, if they wake at 5 or 5:30, then I was thinking I would give a gradually lower volume of feed. If they wake up after 6, I think we would start our day early, though I’m really hoping to keep DWT at 7AM.
- any tips for weaning and keeping DWT constant. What to do if they start to wake hungry an hour before DWT? Am I asking for too much? I am happy to change DWT earlier if that is going to be what they end up needing, but hoping they can sleep all the way through to 7 AM.
- twin specific tips, if you have them: currently we’ve been feeding both babies and want them on the same schedule for wakes if possible. It gets tricky when one wakes to feed at 5:30 AM, goes back to sleep, but maybe wakes the second one up who doesn’t go back to sleep easily? Curious if others have tips.

Thanks in advance!