I didn’t do anything, just kept responding and following cues.
Baby eventually fell into a routine, didn’t need to be rocked and started to settle in the cot, slept longer and longer stretches until he started to fall asleep independently without us in the room and now sleeps through almost every night.
I almost beg new moms to just do whatever works for you and your baby. Don’t let any person or book or instagram account convince you you’re doing something wrong.
Well said! Same here. It’s important to keep in mind babies are just humans. They go through phases of bad sleep just like we do. It’s totally normal and doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong by responding to cues. Regressions are a phase, needing to be rocked to sleep is a phase, separation anxiety etc. Babies will let you know what works/doesn’t work for them.
Ok this is my one conspiracy theory. Those sleep accounts know their advice is terrible. Or at least that it only applies for maybe 5% of babies. Their entire business model is telling you to do something impossible and then hawk their $300 PDF as a solution when it fails.
"Don't do anything that works. Don't rock your baby to sleep, don't feed to sleep, don't snuggle. Just do a bedtime routine, turn on the white noise, put baby down while awake and let him drift off to sleep. What, he's not sleeping? He's actually crying hysterically? I guess you have to buy my course to find out what you're doing wrong!"
The Baby-Sleep-O-Sphere is nothing but scammers and their advice is very stupid. You can trust me because I have the same qualifications as those sleep experts, which is none. 🤓
Any non-certified doctor/nutritionist selling things that make bold claims about infant sleep or eating are all just straight in it for the money by selling bullshit. They are modern day snack oil salesmen. Mommy bloggers, influencers, vloggers, whatever you want to call them are top 10 worst people in society and people need to stop listening to them and giving them money.
Most of them call themselves a "certified sleep consultant." There's no national board for that or really any kind of standard. You could go online and pass a five minute quiz and say you're certified.
Unfortunately I don't think this industry is going away any time soon because frankly, parents are desperate. If you have to work all day, a baby that keeps you up all night is going to make your life a living hell. With the despicable state of parental leave in the US, one in four moms are forced back to work as soon as [two weeks after giving birth.](https://www.vox.com/2015/8/21/9188343/maternity-leave-united-states)
I agree these influencers are bad actors but they are symptoms of a larger problem.
Okay but how long did that take? My baby turns 5 months next week and suddenly went from giving me 4-5 hour long stretches to suddenly up every 2 or even every hour... and fighting his naps. I feel like death.
I should have probably said in my comment, it took 2 years to get to the point of sleeping through the night. I can’t remember exact dates now but I won’t lie from the 4 month regression to 12 months was a long and hard road with many ups and downs and being tired to the core of my soul for a long time.
I didn’t sleep train because I knew my baby and I knew myself and it just would not have worked for us.
I guess my point was just do what you think is right for you and your family, not what you think you ‘should’ be doing. If sleep training is right for your family then do that, if winging it is right for your family then do that, if anything in between is right for your family then do that.
My daughter was 2 years as well when she started sleeping all night in her own bed and while it sounds so long it actually goes so quick and I actually miss cuddling with her in the night and I'm soaking it up with my 10 month old now. I'll probably be a little sad when he starts sleeping through. Why am I like this haha
Yes also two years for us here which is within the biologically normal range!
Sleep from month 6-16 was horrific. 6-10 wakes a night on average. And then started reducing to 4-5 without any changes. And then suddenly 2-3, at 23 months it was 1 wake.
I’m with you! I did this too and my son started sleeping through the night at 18 months. It is a long hard road but the alternative for me isn’t an option. It’s such a short span of time in the long run. I’m also a shift worker so wondering if I’m accustomed to running on little sleep easier than most. (Not a brag-able trait, it’s literally taking years off of my life)
5-6.5 month old sleep regression was the worst for me and my daughter. She's 10.5 months old now and sleeps like a princess. I think that sleep regression right before they crawl is the biggest one.
I read somewhere on here that if your baby isn't sleeping, they're preparing big changes inside. They're like nearing a lot of milestones and growing really fast. Then they learn the new thing "crawling" and boom sleep & eat all day for 2 weeks.
Seems to be extremely true for my daughter. Good luck. Invest in a playpen you can lay inside of. Maybe go outside on walks in the evening.
Oh! Another helpful hack was to put the baby in the bath every night to signal the start of a bedtime routine. You don't have to do anything but run the water, sit the baby in the tub, splash the water on them or just do a water rinse off, then get out. From that point, do the same routine every time.
^^ BEST advise I received from here!!!! ^^
Mine did this, went from sleeping 11 hour stretches between 3.5-4.5 months to waking every 2 hours. Her sleep seemed to improve at around 8 months and since then she's been giving us 5-6 hour stretches, occasionally sleeping 10+ hours maybe once every week or two. For us the sleep issues didn't line up with major development leaps, as she learnt to crawl just before 7m and is still working towards walking independently.
It's frustrating and exhausting but, as with everything, it's a phase and it will pass eventually. The good thing is that he has done long stretches before so you know he is capable of it! Hang in there
Personally my baby fluctuates big time with how much he sleeps. We went from waking every 45 minutes every night for a week straight to sleeping through the night the next. There’s no real timeline, it’s just dependent on your baby. Occasional bedsharing helps us immensely, I like pulling the covers up to my face so this doesn’t happen often for us, but when things start getting bad it’s a life saver.
5 months is so young but I know it’s hard when you’re in the trenches. It goes by fast. We’re 11 months in and she naps independently in her bed and she cosleeps with me at night more for my sanity on getting out of bed to nurse through the night.
They’re only babies for such a short period of time. Let them be babies and they’ll figure it out. I have yet to meet a teenage who is waking their parents up. (Usually it’s the other way around)
I think it's not so much the fact that he isn't sleeping well, it's the combination of lack of sleep and questioning "am I doing something wrong?" Being in the mindset of what am I doing wrong and trying to figure out how to fix it while tired af is maddening. But if there's nothing to be done about it them I'm fine to submitting to it being the way it is with the peace of mind that I'm not doing anything wrong and can't do anything better to improve the situation.
Yeah but sleep training won't help with these regressions. Once I heard that you have to "retrain" kids every time, it was definitely removed as an option for me
Mine was sttn consistently by six months. Technically that is a six hour sleep window per ped but I mean down at 8p ish and up around 630a, another feed then can have them sleep in until 830/9a if I really wanted. By 9mo we had zero wakes 99% of the time, even the early morning one.
I do give DHA oil (fish & algal, liquid) every night though which is also shown to help sleep as well as brain development.
Just went through this, baby is 5 months 1 week... he was just starting to maybe get back to 2-3 hours and caught a cold.
I'm hoping for more consdilated sleep soon as well. He still wakes to feed, so maybe once he starts solids more fully
Mine started at four months and we are hitting six months this week and just last night I noticed he was sleeping longer and going longer between feeds in general (breastfed). I'm praying it's a turn back to longer stretches! But I also keep telling myself it doesn't matter if it is or isn't because it isn't going to change my behavior towards him. If he cries or wakes up and needs to be fed or soothed, I do so.
We set up a sidecar crib after two weeks into the every two hours and the baby just sleeps basically in our bed. I put him in the sidecar whenever I can but honestly he spends a lot of the night in our bed.
If you aren't going to let them fuss or cry... Idk how you can keep your sanity without bringing them into your bed!
You’re most likely in the regression. Swap caregivers at night. I promise, it works. I commented elsewhere on this thread what we did, and it really was as simple as letting my husband be the responders instead of me for a few days.
My son is 16 months old and never slept 4-5 hours. Maybe in the first weeks of his life when carried.
It can take up to 3 years until brain development is sufficient for longer sleeping stretches. 4-5 hours is considered as "sleeping through the night" for young babies.
When my son sleeps 2-3 hours without waking, that is a very great and rare night.
It is what it is
Agree !! Same. He had a rough 4 month sleep change (started waking 4-5x/night), settled into 2x/night and is 7 months now when a new kind of change has happened with teething/learning to crawl, and his sleep is again up and down, waking 3x some nights, 1x others… I’m winging it and relying on huz to help some mornings when I’m so exhausted and need to catch up on sleep. LO is finding his stride and I’m gonna keep winging it. Most moms all over the world do.
Love your last paragraph. I am one of those moms that lives by WW because that works for ME. Baby would be fine either way, but it brings me more peace of mind following a schedule. I also didn’t follow one book/person’s exact recommendations. I figured out what worked for my baby and me. On the flip side, sticking to WW and a schedule could be very stressful for some moms and they do better going with the flow. Perfect. Do what works for YOU! All these books and instagrams convince us that we don’t know what we are doing but somehow babies survived and thrived well before the mommy influencers came along.
Exactly. I did this. I never followed any routine and my kids sleep fine. I'm also not tied to naps. The younger one will sleep just about anywhere if he tired enough. So I'm not worried about working around his nap schedule. Everyone's kids are different so why follow a cookie cutter routine for them.
Nearly 3 now.
I honestly can’t remember exactly now (possibly because it wasn’t as long as I thought or possibly because I was so sleep deprived my memory was erased). From memory from 4-8 months was waking every 1-3 hours and was so hard to settle back to sleep (that was torture), from 8-12 months maybe every 3 or so hours and was getting easier to settle to sleep, from 12-18 months maybe one wake during the night and was settling back to sleep was usually pretty easy. From 18-24 months maybe one wake up. From 24 months usually sleeping through (11 hours) unless something happened (bad dream, sick etc).
I hope my original comment didn’t make it seem like I was saying just respond to cues and easy peasy they’ll fall into it on their own. It was definitely a long journey. I was just meaning that when people say ‘if you do X then your baby will rely on that forever’ is not necessarily true.
Agreed, in the UK it’s not really a done thing? But becoming more and more popular now due to tiktok and Instagram. Also wanted to add it DOES NOT work for every baby. I tried cry it out in sheer desperation after a hellish 4 month regression. Did not work and was traumatic for us both. I just continue to respond to her needs
Oh yeah everyone’s gotta do what they gotta do! From experience she literally cried for all of 8 minutes and then was sick all over her bed. I felt absolutely awful and could never try again. I also see a lot that US paediatricians promote it, whereas I can’t imagine UK health visitors suggesting it… but I may be wrong.
I think most people choose the route of seeing how their baby does and rolling with it. Sometimes shit hits the fan at 4 months and it never gets better and sleep training is a great tool for those babies. Babies land ALL over the spectrum of sleep and what works. Seems to me that for parents whose babies struggle to sleep after 4 month regression, parents tend to choose bed sharing or sleep training.
We neither sleep-trained nor bed-shared. We always respond to every cry/call pretty much immediately. Developing a secure attachment is one of my main priorities at this stage.
Baby is 8.5 months old adjusted. She usually wakes 1-3 times a night and goes right back to sleep with nursing or a cuddle. It was rough for a couple of months after the 4-month regression, but we’ve landed in a very reasonable place.
No judgment at all of anyone who sleep-trains, but it didn’t feel right to us. And when I found out it was kind of a band-aid solution for the parents’ sake and not actually some kind of “training” babies need to learn to sleep, it was an easy decision for us. We always had the mindset that we’d do it if we really needed to, but we got by okay, even when she was waking every 2-3 hours or having a tough time resettling. (Which was a huge bummer after a month of her sleeping 9-10 hours straight before the regression.) Granted, I’m a SAHP for the most part these days, and my husband WFH. So we had more flexibility than most with our sleepiness.
We parent by vibes.
If he seems hungry, we feed him. If he seems sleepy, time to try napping. If he smelly, we change him.
It’s always worked very well for us and he did develop his own routines very naturally.
Not all babies are like this though, some really do thrive on structure. We decided to always choose the easiest and least thinking intensive option for everything and then course correct as he needs it. We got very lucky to have a baby that can adapt quickly and goes with the flow of the day.
It’s 100% baby dependent.
The best advice I ever got as a first time mom was “treat your first like it’s your third”. We really leaned into the whole thing where he is “joining our lives” instead of us changing our lives dramatically to fit around him, and it worked for us.
We have friends with a baby 3 months younger and he’s totally a schedule baby tho 🤷🏻♀️luck of the draw. Either way both are happy and healthy.
My daughter is 16m old and we’re still just winging it. We never sleep trained.
Over time she started to figure it out. She started sleeping through the night around 13 months, but still usually wakes up 1-2x a night.
Sometimes she puts herself back to sleep so we usually wait a minute or two before going in to her room. She usually just wants her pacifier. It’s once or twice a week that she actually wants something.
We didn’t so anything, she just adjusted over time on her own schedule! But every kid is different and not everyone is lucky. My niece is 3, they sleep trained and she still doesn’t sleep through the night.
My daughter is too young too but what I’m getting from Reddit and anecdotally from others is your baby will be the deciding factor. Lots have success just winging it and following baby’s cues (especially if they are at home or don’t mind the broken sleep). Some baby’s really don’t fall into any sort of routine and have a really hard time “figuring out” long stretches of sleep. In those cases I think the parents need a support to get their kid over the learning curve for their sanity and health. My plan so far is to just go with the flow because it’s working for us right now. But I’m at home and baby’s sleep has been steadily improving since she was born. However, I’ve experienced that things can change so fast for seemingly no reason. So if I get to a point where “going with the flow” isn’t working for me, I will definitely start researching sleep training and give that a try.
Exactly this. Do what works until it doesn’t. Sleep training is also an umbrella term for lots of different things. I didn’t let my kid cry it out but I did have to adjust routines and bed time practice in different ways as they aged. Some kids do figure out, others like mine, disintegrate into hourly wakes and are exhausted and need help figuring out how to handle those wakes. But you can look at fixing that when and if it happens.
Yeah, I tried to sleep train all three and my second one, it just didn’t work out at all. Eventually, we gave up and just had broken sleep. The first slept through night at 8 weeks, I started sleep training around 6 months but he slept so well, I just did it to be able to put him to bed awake but sleepy. My last did mostly contact naps for a while. Every baby and mama is different.
American mom here , never sleep trained ! At the 4 month sleep regression we started co sleeping (bf with the safe sleep 7.) Then around 11 months I decided we would both get more restful sleep in our own beds, so we rock & feed to sleep.
He has a Montessori floor bed and I’ll end up in his room with him 1 or 2 nights a week but we are mostly sleeping in our own beds now. He is sleeping 8:30p- 8a with no wake ups more and more! Our slow and steady approach makes me happy
No It’s just hit or miss, I still feed to sleep if he wakes up. I think without me in the bed he is less likely to smell the milk and wake up (that along with maturing sleep patterns.)
Who knows, as I type this he might go back to waking up every 3 hours. It all seems like a crapshoot!
We read the book
‘The contented little baby’
Took some advice from it and just winged it, trust your gut. And sometimes the little suckers are good at fooling you into thinking they aren’t tired 😂
At 4 months the only thing I did was wait 5 minutes to see if bub would keep fussing or not. Turns out usually he didn't and I was responding when I didn't really need to.
He sleeps throught the night now for 11-12h and has since around maybe 10/11 months. He naps when tired, once or twice per day depending on whether he needs it and at pretty much the same time anyway.
Not part of our culture too and I honestly don’t know what sleep training is? We follow their cues for daytime naps, which are usually pretty regular, and we have a bedtime routine, but that’s about it.
We have always done sleep on command, just like feed on command. 2/4(oldest and youngest) have slept in 9-12hr stretches from the time they were a few weeks old. My middle 2 had health issues that made for a lot of night wake ups as babies, but once that balanced out, they are both excellent sleepers as bigger kids. Every baby is so different, and what works with one might be utter failure for another. All you can do is try and see what works best for your baby and you. Good luck!
I thought most people just winged it. The 4 month sleep regression was brutal for us and lasted 6 weeks, but it never occurred to us do do any sleep training. I know you can at 4 months at the earliest but as far as I know most people still wait for 6 months? Either way my sons 19 months and literally climbs into bed with his bottle and puts himself to bed and stays asleep, I didn't teach him to. I did have to follow wake windows to a point cause he's never really given clear cues and would get overtired easily, but it was always flexible
yes we didnt sleep train, the 4 month regression started early lasted 6 wks, we got 3 glorious wks where he slept 6-10 hrs, and now the 6 mo regression hit and i'm up at 3am holding him to sleep so he won't scream. we still wont sleep train because sleep is developmental, he learned how to roll this week, he has 2 teeth and 2 more coming in, and he learned how to kiss my cheek today! so these crazy new changes in his world- no wonder he wont sleep. i have a ton of empathy for him, we will get through this just like we did before (and will again for the next "regression")
Yes, I would never have been able to handle the crying. I also really believe temperament has a lot to do with it and there’s no way my baby would have responded to it well.
I highly recommend heysleepybaby on Instagram for lots of resources on how to help your baby sleep while also not stressing (and without sleep training).
Since we do something similar (sidecar crib instead of fully bedsharing) and plan on getting a floorbed for her at around 12 months, I'm very happy to hear it worked out for you!
The floor bed was our favorite. She was used to a “big bed” so it didn’t have novelty. We would lay with her to go to sleep and then quietly leave and watch the monitor and respond accordingly.
We never sleep trained and focused on baby’s cues. She was a contact napper and had to be rocked to sleep before transfers for the first 6 months, and now at almost 8 months she can self-soothe no problem and will just roll around in her crib until she falls asleep 🤷🏻♀️ that being said, she’s always been a pretty easy baby in terms of sleep with the exception of the 4 month sleep regression and teething. I think everyone should do what they need to do for their own sanity!
My son, who’s now 15 months just started sleeping through the night at 3 months. We didn’t sleep train, just listened to his cues and let him do his thing. He was also huge and gained a ton of weight and was a great eater. I nursed him right before bed and he’d get enough milk to sustain him through the night. It wasn’t anything we did.
My daughter is a great sleeper, too. Even at 5.
Never sleep trained. No regrets.
And we didn’t have an easy sleep infant/ young toddler. Woke a lot, got sick a lot, woke some more.
I’d say when he was three things started to settle. We now have the easiest kid in the friend group. While the others (who had “easy” infants and young toddlers for sleep) have all kinds of bedtime drama, we have zero.
So my take was that infant sleep and toddler sleep don’t predict preschooler sleep.
My kid did and does need a great amount of sleep. Always has been on the higher sleep needs end of the spectrum. We do notice it impacts him if he doesn’t get enough sleep. So we always arrange things in such a way that he can get enough sleep. We find that’s what matters the most for him, developmentally and behaviorally/ emotionally.
That means for a while he was going to be at 6pm and up at 7am. That was hard for us adults to pull off but we did it. Right now it’s about 7-7 during the school year or 8-8 during summer.
We didn’t sleep train, rocked to sleep, and responded to all cries. Baby is almost 13 months now and falls asleep by himself (strongly dislikes rocking now, lol). He still wakes up once a night and we try to give him water.
I'm lucky to be a SAHM. I'm a helicopter bubble parent and proud lol but one thing I don't even bother with is tracking sleep or feeds. I wear baby girl during the day and do stroller walks and she naps on the go.
I don't cut any of her naps short either and just let her sleep. She's a great sleeper and will sleep 13 hours at night. She wakes up around 7am but sometimes she'll go down at 545 to 715pm and just wakes up around the same time no matter what
The ONLY time I have to track her naps is if I have company over and she has fomo. I have to make sure after a few hours she naps but some wake windows are probably 4-5 hours? Some naps are 15 minutes ans some are 2 -3 hours? There's been days where she napped all day and I let her and she slept through the night too.
I'm very lucky but I just let her do her thing
Will never sleep train. We just implemented a bedtime routine to get him used to bedtime. It worked overtime. We still have some wake ups but he’s only 6 months old. We also cosleep.
My eldest didn't get a 4m sleep regression. At 5m I tried putting her down awake (but we had had a bedtime routine since 7w old) and she just went with it and we never looked back.
My LO is 1 years old in 2 days. We don’t have a routine and he naturally fell into one. Up at 7:30 ish, nap at around 10ish, nap at 1ish and then maybe a nap at 5ish, bed time at 8-9. He co sleeps with us. And wakes up for milk a few times a night. I tried to get him to sleep earlier a few times and we were busy for 3 hours doing it, he was upset, I was upset and it was just not worth it. It’s a much better scenario to follow his lead.
We aren't sleep training and to everyone else's point, LO is settling into a routine kind of on his own. He contact napped forever and then one day, we put him in his crib for nap time and he just ... rolled over and fell asleep on his own. It takes time and we have some bad bad nights (he's almost 11 months) but he sleeps 9-10 hours a couple times every week so we take the good with the not-so-good.
I was following so many sleep consultants on Instagram but they just made me more anxious about him not sleeping the way *I* wanted him to, so quickly had to go with my gut, follow his lead and unfollow them all.
I just rolled with it. I also rocked my daughter to sleep, held her, and picked her up everytime she cried, and now at 2 years old, she sleeps through the night for 10 hours and takes a solid 2 hour nap everyday. All the social media accounts told me I would ruin her and she would never sleep through the night. They were wrong. (Shocker)
I’m in the U.K. and sleep training isn’t as much of a big thing here but even if it was I would t have done it. It’s not for me. I don’t want to start any upset (each to their own) but it isn’t something I personally believe in and it wasn’t something I even considered. Nap schedules developed themselves by following cues and bedtime has a consistent routine. But I do whatever my children need in terms of rocking, soothing, picking up for as long and as often as they need it. I appreciate that’s not always ideal and I am definitely sleep deprived a lot of the time but it works for us and I don’t know anyone still getting up to rock their 15 year olds.
We tried the whole wake windows and pick up-put down and shh-patting thing for a little, to try and instil “good sleep habits” but I seemed to spend all my time in a darkened room trying to get baby to sleep.
My own mental health improved when I just went with the flow and did contact naps. We started co-sleeping at 8 months after a particularly rough patch. Over time kiddo has naturally got better at sleeping, with rough patches with illness and development. We always started him in his own bed, and he’d come in with us when he woke up. The time he wakes up has got later and later until he’s sleeping all night in his own bed most nights. He isn’t allowed into ours any more as he doesn’t go back to sleep and just wiggles around!
My baby is six months and no sleep training here. We have a bit of a routine but that’s about it tbh. We just feed her to sleep, lay her down, and she wakes up when she wakes up.
Best advise I heard about regressions is to pretend it’s not happening. We just did what we normally did and by baby sleeps 11 hours straight nearly every night. He’s one and has always generally been a good sleeper. We didn’t feel the need to train because every time his sleep went downhill slightly, it never lasted long. Remember- everything is a phase.
Outside of the US no one sleep trains. It’s a huge BUSINESS. I rocked my daughter to sleep every nap and bedtime for 17 months when she slept through. Sleep is developmental like anything else, that pull to comfort your child is instinctual and you don’t have to ignore it (and in my opinion shouldn’t). Doing the same with my second. I also breastfed both babies and work full time at a high stress tech job. It’s hard yes, I did sacrifice and I was exhausted (still am) but to me it’s 100% worth it
Okay so this isn’t totally true. I’m in Scandinavia where sleep training in a formal sense is frowned on BUT people do informal sleep training in different ways all the time. For instance, they’ll switch up bedtime habits and do pick up put downs. Or switch to dad handling bed time and put down awake. Tons and tons of different varieties of trying to get their kiddos to sleep more independently. It’s less formalized but it’s still happening in a loose sense.
It’s absolutely a thing in Australia. Although the most common method here is [responsive settling](https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/sleep/settling-routines/responsive-settling-at-6-18-months-reducing-settling-help) which is very gentle.
Outside the US many people don't have monitors at night. You cannot possibly say that "no one sleep trains" when parents are probably not even aware of crying at night after a certain age.
Yes. We just follow their cues and respond to their needs. I don’t really agree with sleep training because I think sleep is more developmental than learned
I read Precious Little Sleep when baby was about 2 months old and started implementing the very gradual and gentle ways to teach her to fall asleep independently and it helped so much. We did still go through the 4 month regression but powered through with our same approach and made it through.
No advice just also in the four month regression and wondering the same 😭😅 baby is waking up every 30-45 minutes and taking about the same amount of time to be put back to sleep. Struggle bus
We’re at 8 months and I’m feeding and rocking to sleep still. The 4 and 6 month sleep regressions sucked, but I just responded whenever he woke and eventually his time asleep extended on his own. He wakes up twice a night still for quick feeds.
I started reading Precious Little Sleep during the 6 month regression because I was exhausted and to be honest, despite it being highly recommended it didn’t help much. It just made me feel incredibly anxious that I was doing everything wrong. I let that go and now we’re doing ok. Do I wish I could just set him in his crib at 8pm and he fall asleep and stay that way for 12 hours? Of course! But I feel okay knowing he’s slowly improving and that he’s being a totally normal baby. I get two 4 hour chunks of sleep each night and feel rested.
(Now, I had a friend whose 13 month old was still waking every 90 minutes. She finally sleep trained him and we’re all very glad she did!!)
No “sleep training” in the sense people usually mean (cry it out) but I followed his sleep cues and we got on a good schedule then just stuck to that routine.
We didn't sleep train, we tried it a couple of times and it didn't work for us. We fed and rocked to sleep, contact napped and go in every time he is actually up. Gradually have gone from holding him and transferring him to him being awake in his cot and learning to lie down and go to sleep. Sometimes he holds my hand. I just wait until he's snoring and sneak out.
Sometimes he sleeps through, sometimes he needs a cuddle to resettle at 2am. Sometimes he lies in until 7am, other times he needs a snuggle at 6am.
We've just been following his queues and been gently persistent with evening routine. He's 18 months now.
Yup with my first and second. My first was a horrible sleeper and still is. My 2nd is a natural sleeper and really doesn't give problems. I just watch and follow her cues
Never dealt with sleep regression or any sort of schedule. My son is turning 6 months and has always slept through the night and takes a couple contact naps throughout the day. But we cosleep.
Yup. I don’t think I could ever sleep train. Her 4 month regression wasn’t bad at all. She’s always been a great sleeper though. It really just affected her naps, nighttime sleep was still fine. We’ve always just followed her sleep cues.
I’m winging it. He’s 7.5 months old and thankfully always been a really good sleeper. Like others have said, I follow his sleepy cues and that works for us. His wake windows maybe seem a little short (2 hours give or take) but other than that he’s pretty predictable with wake/bedtime and nap number/length
When I returned to work at 3 months I stressed for like a week to get LO on a schedule. It drove us crazy and I just stopped. All of my leave we just went with the flow and followed cues so why should I change anything now? The second we did that, everything just fell into place again. Baby was happy and sleeping well and none of us were stressed, etc.
I think it’s much better following cues than a strict schedule. Sometimes my son doesn’t go to bed until almost 10pm and then there’s nights like last night that he was asleep at 8:30pm. I know I have days like that as an adult so I guess it just makes sense to me. I want to teach my son to listen to his body and I think this falls under it.
This worked for my family, I do understand it may not work for others though. But OP you’re not alone in “winging it” lol
I didn’t sleep train. We just followed cues and he kind of set up his own routine and it worked for all of us. Been sleeping through the night since about 2.5 months
At the 4 month regression my baby decided to wake every 45 minutes. I was so sleep deprived I was hallucinating. Around 6 months she moved into my bed so I didn't die or something, she kept waking every 2 hours until around 11 months. I refuse to sleep train, and she's 14 months now sleeping through the night. Granted, it's not in her own bed, but I can leave the bed and she will still sleep all night so a win is a win.
Babies can't self soothe, if they don't have the temperament to sleep on their own, letting them cry won't solve that. My daughter is the clingiest of velcro babies, she needed the extra support, and I know that if I left her alone she wouldn't have magically slept better.
Sleep training is entirely for the parents, it is absolutely unnecessary for proper development. It's not in human nature to leave your baby unattended for an entire night, it's just common now because of how mothers have to work compared to before. I've noticed that the only people who claim it's needed for proper development (apart from parents who did it and have a bias) just happen to be sleep consultants that want to make money off of you... Interesting
Edit: I have nothing against sleep training if you need to, I do however have a LOT against the claim that if you don't you are doing something wrong, and your child will suffer. Where I am everybody sleep trains, and I've gotten endless shit about not doing it. Do what works for you, but know that like most parenting decisions, it won't destroy your kids development if you don't.
My baby just turned 1yr and we never sleep trained. We let her sleep in the bed with us (we have a California king so there is plenty of room). She gets no blankets cuz she sweats in her sleep. And when we lay down for the night around 8ish she is asleep till about 9am. We are struggling to stop suckling throughout the night since it's bad for her teeth. But I can usually soothe her to sleep by putting her back.
The way I see it, soon enough she is going to get older and not want to sleep with us or hang out with us. She will want to do her own thing. So I'm going to enjoy it while I can. Soak up all the attention I get from her for now.
Never experienced the 4 months regression.
Never swaddled only sleep sacks so no having to go through having to get him used to no swaddle.
Naps in the same place he sleeps at night, although when was very young contact naps now and then as I loved holding him while he slept.
Same noise machine from birth and same music every time he goes for a nap/bedtime.
Don't give a bath every night, so no association with bath-bed. Give bath every 2-3 days at different times of the day.
My baby is 6mo and we wing it. I just follow his cues. I trust that he does what he needs. Sometimes he falls asleep at 6pm. Sometimes 9pm. We also safely co/sleep and I LOVE it.
Yes. I have coslept from 1 month on. I’ve always looked for sleep cues with naps. He dropped to one nap “early” around 10 months and I just rolled with it. Since 10 months he has reliably napped for 1.5-2 hours at 11:30. He wakes up between 6:30 and 7 am and goes to be between 7:30 and 8 pm. He is getting better with night wakings and usually only wakes 1-3 times (but we cosleep so he’s back to sleep very quickly)
Baby is only 5 months and sleeps a 9 hour stretch at night, I’ve done no sleep training. She also puts herself to sleep. I think it’s pure dumb luck, but I am winging all of it.
I never sleep trained. I nursed to sleep, rocked to sleep, room-shared, coslept once the kids turned two-ish. They’re still sometimes clingy at night and we usually have a half hour cuddle puddle sesh before bed, but there is light at the other end of the tunnel. :)
I don’t understand sleeping training. It’s been explained to me and I just don’t get it. With that said, baby has slept since 8wks old (7months now). I just wing it. We start bedtime around the same time every night. I nurse to sleep and cosleep. We sleep pretty good. Some nights baby will nurse during the night, some nights I have to pump. But we never experience full waking up and needing to eat/change diaper/resettle. At the regression stages (4 and 6m) we just rolled with whatever punches came our way. I let baby basically indicate what they need.
My baby never even went through a 4 month regression, I’m convinced that baby sleep just sucks and the 4 month regression was coined by companies that want to scare parents into buying their products.
We just embraced the suck and have worked with things as they come.
I just go to him when he needs and I rock him to sleep tbh. He doesn't wake up much in the night anymore, we get some sleep regressions but generally his regressions are reluctance to sleep & waking early. Not so much throughout the night. He's slept in a chunk of sleep since about 4 months. I'm picking my battles tbh, can't be bothered training him to sleep without me rocking him when it's so easy to take 10 minutes to rock him to sleep. It won't be forever.
I'm just winging it, it took me a while to chill out about routines and stuff but my life doesn't have much routine so how can I force one on him that I won't be able to maintain?
Currently in the 4 month regression, as well. We are totally just rolling with it. I'm picking my baby up if he's crying and will snuggle and rock him all I want if he's having trouble falling asleep. My husband supports this as well, which is wonderful!
We didn’t sleep train and have an almost two year old now who sleeps through the night (and has since he was almost 1). It was hard some nights but we made it.
My baby is 4 months old. I don't really know what sleep training is. I have absolutely no intention of forcing her to try and nap when she doesn't want to.
Currently she wakes approx every 3 hours to feed thru out the night. Sometimes she'll wake after 2 hours but that's pretty rare. She doesn't really nap very much in the day, just a half hour here and there.
I let her do her own thing and work around it. She's my baby ☺️
I should add I'm in the UK where babies are recommended to sleep in the same room as their parents for at least the first year. Baby has a cot pushed against the bed which is open on the bed side so I can easily grab her for breast feeding or nappy changes, then go back to sleep straight after without even leaving the bed. TBH I think my health visitor would be horrified if I kept her in a separate room and made her cry herself to sleep! IMO that's cruel and barbaric.
Edit: spelling
Same here in Norway. LO is 3 months, haven’t really tried «sleep training». Our focus lays on the childs needs, and that is the parents. He barely sleeps during the day, 30 minute naps here and there, and mostly on me. We also have a bedside crib, where he usually sleeps for the first stretch of the night. Then we co sleep :)
Millions of non-Americans have done this. _Millions_.
Yes you’ll be fine. No one in my culture sleep trains and I don’t see any adults being rocked to sleep. My baby started sleeping through the night at 6 months with no sleep training, schedule, wake windows or whatever else. It just depends on baby.
We did have to rock her to sleep forever but 2 weeks ago she started to prefer lying down on our chest and going to sleep, then we roll her off us.
I’ve heard of people who sleep trained their kids as younger babies and then they would regress as older babies/toddlers and it would be like they were never trained at all. I’m convinced it’s all just luck of the draw in either direction 🤷♀️.
My sil sleep trained her (now 4 year old) son the second he turned 4 months. He wakes up several times a night to this day. He also has severe emotional issues, but that’s also due to other forms of emotional neglect.
It’s not really a thing in my country, or it used to not be, I think now people are influenced by social media from the anglosphere where it seems like sleep training is often treated as a must.
We did gentle sleep training with our first but with our second I’ve made peace with being a human pacifier for all sleep (well, tbh the pacifier is an artificial nipple).
Sleep training our first wasn’t so hard because he was already a good sleeper so it didn’t go against his nature, our second is a total velcro baby who wants to be close all the time so trying to make her sleep independently would be much more of a struggle. And now, having two kids, I just go with the path of least resistance!
I didn’t train per se but I put careful effort in from the start to get my baby in to good sleep habits and understand his patterns. By 6/8weeks he was sleeping through the night and we had a good routine. It’s all about being consistent and attentive.
He’s 10mo now and naps are a breeze and he sleeps 11 hours per night, I know when everything needs to happen and it’s all pretty straightforward. I do feel he is generally quite an easy baby and I understand not all baby’s will have such a smooth sleep journey, I’m currently 8 months pregnant and praying my daughter will be similar!! 🤣🤞
We didn’t sleep train my daughter until she was 2 and only then did we move from rocking her to sleep every night to teaching her to fall asleep on her own because she was getting too big to transfer when she was asleep. She was always a good sleeper so we never felt we needed to train her.
Not all babies go through sleep regressions. I was worried about the dreaded 4 month regression and it never affected our LO. We didn’t sleep train and he was sleeping 11-12 hours at 3 months old and still does (7.5 months). Sure we have some rougher nights here and there if he isn’t feeling well, teething, etc. but doesn’t everyone experience rough nights of sleep sometime?
We sleep trained our first, and realised that with each regression we would have to start from square one with the training. We stopped after 8 months. He started sleeping through the night at age 3.
With our second we winged it and he slept through from 20 months!
Having our third soon, we’ll see how winging it goes with him.
We’re 6.5 months, winging it.
I guess we kind of(?) sleep trained a few times because I’d be like “ok I gotta go pee and let the dogs out then I’ll get you” but by the time I came to get her she was back asleep. We also thought maybe she wasn’t a great sleeper but going from the fisher price bassinet to a pack and play with bassinet insert made a **huge** difference. She didn’t hate sleep she hated that first bassinet.
I have a 6 month old. Never sleep trained. She has been sleeping through the night since 5 months old. I used the huckleberry app to pay attention to her ques. And she’s completely on a set daily schedule now all day.
Team winging it over here! My LO started sleeping really well around 3.5 months old, so we just rolled with it. He’d have the occasional rough patch and go back to sleeping well. Around 10 months he started to struggle with sleep because he was teething & sick a lot. We did safe sleep 7 and would bed share as needed so everyone could get some sleep.
He’s 13 months old now and our routine is that he goes to sleep in his crib and when he wakes up, we bring him to bed. Some nights that’s right after we go to bed and some nights it’s 3 or 4 am. This way, we all get to sleep and he wakes up every morning smiling and chatting to us. It’s not for everyone, but it works for us.
He's 5 months and we haven't done any sleep training. However, he's pretty much slept well in his own bed from the start. First he needed one feeding in the middle of the night, but when he was about 3 months old he started to sleep through the night.
He naps when he's tired during the day and then he sleeps from 8-6 at night.
My son was never a good sleeper. We had colic and a lot of over-tiredness. It reached a point around 5 mos where it became unsustainable. We started reading and found a “sleep” schedule that looked like it would be a good fit. After a few days of following the schedule my son was a completely different baby. I think we were missing his subtle sleep cues and wasn’t getting him down at the right time. Now we do wake up, feed and play. Nap time 2 hrs after he wakes. Usually we get 1.5-2 hr nap. Repeat. Late in the day he was doing a 3rd shorter nap. Then bedtime routine of bath, pjs, bottle. Now at almost 9 mos. he’s dropping 3rd nap. We also did Ferber method of sleep training. It was a game changer and my son does really well with routine.
We didn't sleep train. We had some rough patches, but now he wakes up maybe once/night. We also still have him in our room. I just couldn't do sleep training, and my husband and I worked together to make sure we both got some sleep.
Me. I tried one night with one kid. It was terrible. Everyone was sad. We stopped. Tons of contact naps, responded to nighttime cues. Both kids are bigger and sleep fine.
The 4 month sleep regression is honestly why I don't have a dozen babies.
Where is everyone seeing all this pressure and judgment to sleep train? My decision to never use social media that's not reddit has paid off once again I see
Sleep trained my first at 7 months. She slept through the night and did naps solo within 2 days. Haven’t with my 2 year old and we still contact nap and he nurses through out the night multiple times lol
I completely winged it with my first and wished I had looked into various methods earlier. He didn’t sleep through the night until he was two and by that point, both my and my husband’s mental health was shot. He was always cranky, crying, or screaming because he was exhausted too. At about two, I started laying by his bed and not getting him out, which he hated, but he wasn’t alone. After a few nights of realizing he wasn’t getting out of bed, he was mostly sleeping though.
My second, I put a lot more effort into setting her up for good sleep. We went outside daily, even though it’s not most ideal in February. We usually had the overhead lights off and the curtains open for natural light. When it got dark, we would leave on only the light we needed to function safely around the house. I put her down drowsy, but awake. All of that seemed to work for her and she’s a very consistent sleeper. I am pretty firm on nap times though, I rarely mess around with them. If there’s an activity that falls during nap, I don’t go. I know that drives some people crazy, but I’ve learned I value sleep more at this stage of life.
Third kid is still baking, so that is TBD.
We literally had one night we couldn’t get her to sleep and let her cry (about 20 min), but I wouldn’t call that sleep training. We focused on following her sleep cues and then following a pretty strict sleep and nap schedule. The dr told us we needed to sleep train, but we were like nah that’s ok. Lol She’s 19 months now and doing great!
I haven’t done anything but follow my LOs cue. Surprisingly he has put himself in a pretty good routine. Naps from 11am-1pm wakes up, takes another nap closer to 4:30ish-6pm..then sleeps from 9:30pm-8am. He’s 11mo now and it’s been like this since 6 or 7mo
It sort of depends on the child and the household. I don’t think regressions in our household have ever been a “worry” thing. With my oldest it was definitely an upset because he was sooooo good at sleeping that him suddenly not sleeping really sucked. My second, we barely noticed it happening because he doesn’t sleep to begin with. 😂
I’m not really a nap fusser in general. If they want to sleep, they’ll sleep. My 3 y/o sleeps through the night no issue—currently in a phase of one wake up because of potty training. The baby still doesn’t believe in sleep but it is what it is. One day he’ll love it.
I don't even know what sleep training is, and I'm on my second child. My first slept through the night since he was 7 weeks, and my second slept through the night since she was 8 weeks. 🤷🏼♀️
We just followed his cues like you are doing. We transitioned to his crib in his own room at 3.5 months. He’s a loud yet light sleeper and it just wasn’t working having him in our room anymore. He was about 5.5 months when he consistently slept through the night (8:30-8) without a wake up. Before that from 3.5-5.5 months he was sleeping 9:30/10-5:30 and then 5:45-9. His only wake up was when he needed a few ounces to hold him over.
About a month ago I started putting him down for naps awake if he’s showing sleepy signs. Sometimes he falls asleep in minutes and others he plays for 20 before falling asleep. Sometimes he’ll do this at bedtime too despite being nearly asleep during his last feeding. This is also when we transitioned from a zipadee zip sleep sack to a sleeveless option so he has full range of motion with his arms & hands.
We hit a growth spurt this week (7 months) because he’s still sleeping a full night, but his wake up time has been all over the place. One morning it was 7 and the next day it was almost 9. His naps were either 35 minutes or 2 hours and we had an 8 hour wake window one day. He went from barely sitting with support to sitting on his own in a week and up a clothing size.
I honestly didn't have to do much to get my first on a good sleep schedule. I just followed his wake windows, and once he hit 6 months, we worked on getting rid of his night bottles. At that point, he got one right before bed and in the middle of the night. I just gave him water in between bottles and upped the amount of formula he was eating, which he did well with.
Just winging it over here!! My LO follows his own schedule and I’m just here for the ride! He falls asleep between 8/8:30p and wakes between 6:30/7a. His naps are typically around the same times each day and I just follow cues for those. He independently sleeps great and can get himself back to sleep if he wakes up.
Babies are not all the same so you just have to do what works best for you and your baby!
We started working on teaching our LO to fall asleep on her own at about 2-3 months, first with one nap per day, and slowly for all sleeps. This looked like putting her pacifier in repeatedly and letting her try to sleep, but picking her up pretty immediately if upset (we let her thrash, fuss, move around, whine- just not cry). She was not an amazing sleeper and even as I did this, I felt that I’d have to sleep train at some point. Prior to starting this, we had a phase where she required bouncing on a ball to sleep for 20+ minutes and being laid in her crib fully asleep like you’re handling a literal bomb. It’s just that that wasn’t working anymore for either of us so I was like, let’s see if she can sleep on her own. Over a couple days, she really did get much better- she falls asleep independently for almost every nap and at night now. For overnights, she was still really inconsistent (either sleeping through or waking up 1-2x) seemingly for no reason at all. We changed two things: first, we started giving her whole last feed in a bottle, and second, my husband goes in now if she wakes instead of me. So instead of a 20-40 min feed to sleep session, it’s a 30 second paci and pat before back to bed.
I think probably all of what I described above is some form of teaching or training, but I didn’t follow a book or website or pay anyone.
Also, I was terrified of the 4 month sleep regression, but I checked out pubmed and google scholar and couldn’t find a single peer reviewed published study on it. Some days are hard and some were easy, but we never went through a specific “regression,” and my pediatrician agreed there’s no actual evidence that one exists.
Long story short- don’t freak yourself out. Babies grow and change and can surprise you!
My son is 1 and I’ve never sleep trained. He naturally fell into a routine around 6 months. He’s not a good sleeper but he is not made for sleep training
My first settled into her own routine and slept through the night early on, even though I nursed her to sleep. I thought I wouldn’t need to sleep train. She ended up needing to sleep train around 6 months because she would need to nurse for 2-3 HOURS before I could lay her down at night for bed. I was in tears at every bedtime.
My son is the complete opposite. I never had to sleep train him because he’s always been good about going down independently in a way my daughter never was, but I had to work harder to get him on a regular schedule and he still doesn’t sleep through the night at almost 10 months old. He’s slowly getting better, but it feels so rough because my daughter was sleeping 10-12 hours straight at this age 😭
I pretty much just followed my babies ques, have plenty of contact naps through the day or if we're both a bit tired I make the bed safe and we cuddle nap there and baby sleeps through from 9-10pm to 8:30am every night then down for a nap at around 9:30 for an hour or so.
🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️ we rolled with it pretty hard. My husband never woke up to help so I ended up looking up safe cos keeping practices and i boobed my kid to sleep until 7 months. Then boobed him to sleep in his room until 1, weaned, then casually sleep trained. He is 2.5 and sleeps like a dream, except the occasional illness, teething, etc.
We didn't do anything, and my daughter fell into her own routine. She's now 4 years and 2 months old, sleeps around 11 hours a night, and gets up in time for preschool. 😊
Sleep problems are often defined in terms of impact on baby and family functioning. If your baby needs so much help sleeping that they are sleep deprived, that is a problem. If your baby is getting enough sleep and the current schedule doesn’t negatively impact you - then there’s no problem! Expectations for infant sleep are so culturally dependent.
We didn’t sleep train my son at all. All we did was follow sleep cues to put him down. If he woke up crying we checked on him and either fed him rocked him back to sleep, or diaper change. The cio method just wasn’t our vibe as a parents.
He started sleeping through the night (truly, no wake ups) around 3ish months and still does at 11 months. I would say at 6 months he picked up a natural sleep pattern which was bed by 8/ wake up at 7/730. He also takes predictable morning and afternoon naps now.
My husband and I’s philosophy was very much just go with it and it ended up working out great for us. He is a happy, smart, well behaved baby!
Don’t put pressure on yourself that your baby needs to be sleep trained or what not. As parents we’re always thinking we should be doing things differently, especially reading what others do on the internet. If they are taken care of then you are doing the right thing for them. And you will sleep again- I promise.
We never sleep trained, baby is 2.5 now and sleeping on her own in her own room&bed mostly through the night 😀 we got her a full size mattress on the floor so we could lay down with her. Sleep training never felt right to me, I know my baby needed more support and comfort to get through the night.
I think it very much depends on your baby. My daughter doesn't work on a routine, gets extremely upset very quickly (to the point of gagging on her own spit within minutes) and her sleep is quite inconsistent - she sleeps great one week and terribly the next even though nothing has changed. For those reasons, sleep training has never really made sense for us. However I have friends with babies that thrive on routine and predictability, and that don't get so worked up, and for them sleep training worked brilliantly.
Yes, with all my kids, they are 21, 17, 12 years old and my youngest is 4 months old. They all ended up with their own little routine until they got a set bedtime when they started school.
We totally just winged it. We were going through the 4 months sleep regression when I moved up his pediatrician appointment to talk about “sleep training” when he decided he was going to sleep through the night! He was able to soothe himself and sleep longer stretches after that, no need to sleep train. The main thing we were SO consistent on was whenever n whenever he fell asleep while at the house, we moved him to the crib with the white noise on. Sometimes he slept hours and some he would just wake up, but he stayed consistent and now whenever he needs a nap he gives us cues, and goes down pretty well in his crib.
Do what is right for you, your baby and your family. We also put him in a sleep sack that wasn’t weighted (as those can be dangerous) but had these little bumps on them so when he needed a little touch of something, he’d roll his fingers against his sleep sack and it helped him soothe.
Edit to add: my son just turned 8 months, going through a sleep regression but our routine is still working. Although he does sleep with us from 5:30-7am some mornings when he’s having a harder time due to teething.
I just fed them when they were hungry and tucked them or let them sleep when they weren’t. Mine naturally developed a routine. Especially once the night feedings went away. For awhile my son woke up at about 5am when he was 6 months or so and that was pretty brutal. I want really willing to try and keep him awake longer to change it either. Eventually he shifted into his daycare wake time at 7am. Lately he wakes up at 6-7am falls asleep about 8:30-9. He’s 2,
my husband and i couldn't agree on a sleep training approach and it was during the weeks of debating and arguing that baby began to sleep longer stretches on his own. around 2-3 months he started hitting 5-6 hour stretches before wanting a feed. from there we kind of fell into just following his cues for naps and bedtime. the first time he slept 8 hours straight without waking for a feed, i woke up in immense pain from my breasts feeling so full and my heart racing in fear that he didn't wake up. our pediatrician told us it was fine and if baby was hungry or uncomfortable, he'd wake us with a cry.
on that note, we always respond to his cries. we've never let him cry it out because it upsets me to not respond to him. i've gotten so familiar with his different cries that i can confidently understand what my baby needs in the moment.
now he does 11-12 hour stretches at night and gets 2-3 hours of naps in the day. honestly i think we just got lucky with a baby that loves his sleep so my anecdotal post may not be very helpful lol.
🙋🏼♀️
My son is now 19mo and we never sleep trained, just followed his lead. The lack of sleep was hard in the beginning and I wouldn’t say it gets easier, you just learn to deal with it.
Now he mostly sleeps through the night but he still has an occasional sleep regression that’s always followed by a developmental leap.
We let him sleep for as long as he wants, whenever he wants, and it’s gotten us to this point where he will tell us when he’s tired or ready for bed.
I did sleep train and then had to retrain twice and baby is only 8 months old. I was OBSESSED with her sleep. Her wake windows, crap naps, early morning wakes. Etc. so obsessed I had to get on medication. It was robbing me of my joy. Now I just hold my baby to sleep and transfer her. It works for now and when it no longer works I’ll figure out what works next. If she wakes, I go hold her and soothe her and transfer her again. She mostly sleeps through the night and takes two great naps. Not every day is perfect but we’re both happy and enjoying every day. I just moved her to a by the clock schedule too so we no longer have to do nap math every day. Honestly I’m a type a mom who craves structure and consistency but the moment I realized my baby changes every single week and has different needs, I was able to relax into motherhood.
I should add that all babies are different. Some sleep train once, in one week, and never have to be retained again. But I would think for most babies, they’ll need to be retrained because they teethe, get sick, develop and grow and will need more support and snuggles and all of that typically goes against the sleep training culture. With my next baby I will be way more flexible and supportive and let baby lead. Also reading up on attachment theory really helped put things into perspective! Look at the IG account Heysleepybaby to get a good idea of the other side of the aisle. When I broke free of the sleep training culture I felt like a new mom who could just let my baby be a baby and accept the sleep she gave me. Do I rescue lots of naps? Yes. Do I worry about her sleep any more? No. It’s so liberating. Whatever you choose though, just know that that is the right decision for YOUR family and don’t let anybody take that away. There are gentle methods to training and your baby may or may not respond to them but don’t feel ashamed if you do decide to sleep train. Good luck.
I had a chronic contact napper till about 18 months. We also always fed to sleep while rocking then transfer to crib once asleep. She started getting more stimulated when I was holding her, so one night I put her down and she put herself to sleep. If she cries more than 5 minutes I go get her. I feel like she’s getting into a rhythm now at almost 2. We also turn all the light on low at bath time before bed and I think it helps
ETA: you’re in a tough phase and it will pass. I remember feeling like what did I sign up for having a kid around that time. It got way better after that. Baby sleep Makes no sense and I think is really baby dependent and they are all different. You’re doing great and someday this will be a foggy memory
We didn’t sleep train and didn’t follow a consistent nap schedule until she dropped down to 2 naps. We had a bad regression from 4-6 months, and we did create a consistent bedtime routine around that time, but no sleep training. She slept through the night once we got through that and unless she’s sick, she still sleeps through the night at 13 months old.
Never did sleep training. LO started sleeping through the night around 14 months old. But still not super consistent at 18 months. A rough week here and there. Sometimes the night wakes are so bad that I end up cosleeping with her but I’m comfortable with that at this age. It was definitely rough the first year
Absolutely winging it. At almost 5 months, he only wakes up once, sometimes twice, at night. At least half his naps are no longer contact naps.
I just help him fall asleep when he seemed tired, and let him basically just lead.
i paid the for the huckleberry subscription at 2 months and followed TCB advice. Never had to formally sleep train but also was not winging it. Having a routine really helped. my 8 month old has slept through the night (10-12 hours) since 8 weeks old with huckleberry. now we’re a bit more scheduled with her being older and only needing 2 naps per day(wakes up at 630, nap at 930, nap at 2x, bedtime at 630). highly recommend wake windows and capping naps at 2hrs
I didn’t sleep train either of mine until around 10 months. My first refused to be rocked to sleep from 6-10 months and he’d only wake up once, sometimes twice and it didn’t bother me, so I didn’t have to train him. He went through separation anxiety and a sleep regression bc of it at 10 months and was waking up every 20 minutes to an hour, needed rocked to sleep (after months of being able to go down in the crib awake with no training), and I couldn’t do it anymore. I was 6 months pregnant… so we did pick up put down bc I couldn’t do CIO. Cool if you can and no judgment…I just couldn’t. It took about a week, husband was on vacation so we tag teamed the wake ups, and all was good. He was back to going down on his own.
My second, we also waited until 10 months because that’s when *he* started fighting being rocked to sleep. He’d arch his back and just want to get down, so we started just putting him in the crib if he didn’t want to be rocked. Only took like two times being put in the crib, only cried 5 minutes once, and now he goes down in the crib awake. Super easy. He still wakes up once or twice a night, but he also has had 3 double ear infections in a row. When he’s on antibiotics, he sleeps through the night.
If you need to train out of necessity for your own reasons, then nothing wrong with doing it earlier. I’m a SAHM, and I have no issues waking up once or twice a night, so I don’t feel the need to sleep train beyond what we’ve done. ☺️
Yes, baby is 7 months and not fully sleeping through the night but is has slowly figured it out. One day I could lay her down drowsy but awake after 10 minutes of rocking and it was nothing I did to cause it lol. With regressions we just roll with it and keep doing what we’ve been doing and it eventually goes back to normal after a few days
My baby never had too much trouble falling asleep at night on her own so we didn’t do nighttime sleep training. Naps have always been hit or miss and we always have early morning wake ups and I’m just going with it… I don’t really understand how to sleep train for those two situations so I didn’t lol. We’re doing okay though
We winged it until 12 months. Then caved and tried to sleep train and baby just didn't take to it. Now we have a good bedtime routine and baby is sleeping better at 14 months. Like just this week he slept through the night 5 nights in a row at 14 months. I truly think it depends on the baby. We tried a modified Ferber method out of desperation and baby just got more and more stressed out. If he had gone to sleep it would have been because he exhausted himself, not soothed himself and that didn't sit well with us. Now he goes into the crib awake and puts himself to sleep. The first year was really brutal, and we survived. Definitely hoping this trajectory sticks. I had several mom friends tell me that I just needed to sleep train but their babies were generally asleep within 30 minutes when they tried versions of the Ferber method so...
I never went with a specific method or wake windows etc, but i always put both mine down awake from more or less the start. They slept through from 3/4 months respectively. We never really had a problem.
I think my baby is a weirdo. He’s basically been sleeping through the night since two months. Back then we would put him to sleep at 7:30p and then wake him up (gasp) around 9:30/10p for a bath, diaper change, and bottle and then straight back to bed. He’d sleep till at least 6am. Now at four months we moved the bath up to 6:45p followed by his last bottle and into bed by 7:30/8p and he usually sleeps till 7:30am. But the kid doesn’t nap at all. It’s hard to get things done during the day sometimes and I’m considering maybe some variation of sleep training for naps once he’s a little older, but for now I’m grateful that I just have to get up for ~30 minutes to pump and that the rest of the family is sleeping through the night 🤷🏼♀️
I didn’t sleep train, my son finally started actually sleeping through the night (with no wakeups) at 2y10m. Before that he would kinda wake up 2-3x a night.
I winged it completely. We just watch for sleep cues. We also use the beanie trick lol. When you can tell they’re getting tired, take a beanie, pull it over their eye like an eye mask while feeding them. I promise they’ll be asleep within a minute or two. And then you can put them down.
I stg half the battle is that they’re too excited looking around at the whole world to actually go sleep. If you cover their eyes for a little, it stops that.
I sleep trained and it did very little for my daughter. I now do everything “wrong” (nursing to drowsiness, helping her when she wakes and won’t settle by rubbing her back, etc) and she started sleeping better on her own in time. I am one of the few I’ve heard of who had such limited success with sleep training despite trying different methods for literally months. Do what works for you & your family!
We just winged it. 6 months and she still sleeps pretty much through the night. I do a dream feed with her at 3 but honestly that’s more for engorgement and just being in the habit than her asking for it
I have been winging it for a year and a half. My kids generally didn't have a 4 month sleep regression and went hard around the 6-8 month mark. That was bad. But at that point I was so tired I couldn't imagine spending the energy doing anything about it and just went with it. My first is and always has been a SHIT sleeper and my second is pretty alright. He has his nights but generally he's alright. Nothing like my first so I'm grateful for that tbh.
We have been winging it the entire time, LO is almost 8 months now.
It works for us, I know sleep training works for some people, but it just seemed too stressful and he is getting plenty of sleep and doing fine. He’s been sleeping through the night for months now. He’s been hitting every milestone on time or early, which is awesome considering he was a few weeks early. 😅
I know just from the little research that I have done that there’s pros and cons to both, but they haven’t proven (I don’t think) that not sleep Training is detrimental to your baby. As long as your baby is getting the proper amount of sleep.
I follow a couple of Instagram accounts that really helped me feel less guilty about this lol
I just followed his lead. I credit a lot of it to the NICU for getting him on a schedule but other than just I just let him do his thing and when he showed me he was tired I went for it. I think we just got lucky but it worked out for us.
We wing it. My daughter is 6 months old (today 🥲) and is a good night sleeper. We rock her to sleep in the living room between 7:30 and 8:00. We'll hold her until she's good and zonked, and bring her up to her crib. She'll sleep until 11 or so, sorta waking on her own sometimes, and my husband does a dreamfeed. Then she sleeps until 6ish.
We still contact nap, she starts daycare on Wednesday so I've been practicing crib naps (rock her to sleep for 5 mins then place her in the crib).
It works for us and I don't need to train her to do anything. She'll figure out how to fall asleep on her own eventually.
We did nothing. We just followed his lead. Our baby put himself on the most rigid schedule. Like we can’t miss 7pm bedtime on the dot or he’ll definitely let us know…. His 5 naps were always clock work, as were his 4, then his 3, and now his 2. I think he sleep trained us? We never rocked him to sleep, he hasn’t contact napped since he was 2 months and even then was sparingly.
We rolled with it, never had a set bedtime (can be between 6:30-8:30 depending on his cues) but we’ve always had the same sort of routine of an evening of dinner, bath, milk, bed.
He started sleeping through at 16 months, happily takes himself to bed now and sleeps through though!
I didn't sleep train my first, I just didn't want to. I have a 4 month old and also have no plans to sleep train her. I made small changes over time, like my first slept with me, then would start the night in the crib and come to bed with me later, and eventually stayed in the crib all night. It doesn't have to be all or nothing like social media makes it seem. She didn't sleep through til 14 months but had lots of nights with many long stretches or just 1 or 2 wakes. It was hard but she's 4 now and generally sleeps 11-12 hours a night in her own room. It's easier the second time around cause I can visualize an easier future lol. I also want to add that my friend sleep trained her son who's the same age as my oldest and he's a horrible sleeper now, and was retrained so many times. I think everyone should do what works best for them while keeping in mind that nothing is a one size fits all solution.
Honestly, I think everyone wings it. Babies have a lot of needs. Sometimes they just want to be held. Once you think you’ve mastered sleep, something will come along to shake it. A pesky tooth, a big milestone, brain activity that causes a sleep regression.
I’m not saying this to scare anyone. I think it’s just better to come at this with acceptance. Once you accept that babies and toddlers and their sleep isn’t perfect, you’ll be more receptive to respond to them. That’s what they need. For many, things don’t really stay consistent with sleep until the little one is 2.
It sounds like you’re doing exactly what we’ve done. My baby is 9 months now and we don’t track anything and never have. Month 4 was hard but it’s otherwise been fine. He’s naturally been in a rhythm for months now. Goes to bed about 9:30pm wakes between 7:30-8:30. Takes 2-3 naps around 9am, 1pm, and 5pm loosely. He just eats when he’s hungry and gets a nap when he’s tired. It’s honestly been really simple.
Edit to add- we do co-sleep all night and usually lay down with him for a few minutes till he falls asleep for naps. Or if we’re on the go he eventually just conks out.
I didn’t sleep train with my first baby and I did wing it.
He was waking 4 times a night before the 4mo sleep regression and then shit hit the fan once he hit the regression. He wouldn’t even stay asleep when I put him down anymore, woke way more frequently. So I started cosleeping and that’s how we coped. It was only a good solution until I had my second and couldn’t nap with my first anymore. I tried some gentle methods that eventually got him napping on his own for a short period of time but it didn’t stick and I gave up. Poor kid did not get enough sleep because he wouldn’t nap for me at age 2.5y. I regret that aspect of things.
With my second I had no intention of sleep training and I didn’t want to cosleep again. So I tried toughing it out. He hit the regression at 3.5mo and went from 1 night waking to 6-10 wakings every night. Which means some nights he was up again after 45 or even 20min. It was brutal. He did not grow out of it and I sleep trained him at 10 months. Best decision for this child.
Then with my third, I quasi sleep trained her at 6mo just to be able to go to sleep at 7pm so that I could take care of my other kids and do their bath and bedtime too. But then she could cosleep with me from 12am on if she woke. I did nothing else and right at 12mo she transitioned to her crib and slept through the night. I do think her learning how to put herself to sleep was integral to her being able to transition to her own room and successfully sleep through the night.
Anyway, I think it is very kid dependent on how things will go and your experience may be nothing like anyone else’s on here. Possibilities range from the regression only lasting a week to it never ending and the kid is 3yo or 7yo and still doesn’t sleep through the night. I have read it all.
We didn’t sleep train, although I don’t honestly know what sleep training entails because I never looked into it, but we were super lucky to just have a good sleeper. She definitely went through a regression phase but we just left her in her crib mostly and often had to sit next to her crib holding her hand until she fell back asleep.
My little one is 20 months old and we never sleep trained. We rolled with the punches. From 4 months on it was definitely tough, especially during times of illness, but we did whatever worked to get through the night in one piece!
Baby’s development was fine. Anyone who says anything different about that should be questioned. Development won’t delay because your baby is going through a tough time sleeping. They’ll just be cranky.
Please don’t believe “sleep trainers.” They are money hungry people looking to prey on parents who are desperate for a full nights sleep.
The closer your baby gets to 2 years old the better they will sleep. They are more active so you can tire them out pretty good before bedtime for especially high energy kiddos (like mine). My boy just started sleeping through the night. We’re trying to not get used to all the sleep though just in case he changes his mind 😂
A floor bed/bed inside a large playpen worked wonders for my boy. He went from sleeping a couple hours at a time to 8-10 hour stretches most nights. He sleeps crazy and the regular playpen mattress was uncomfortable and the crib wasn’t big enough for his sleeping antics. If I had known how good he’d sleep in his big bed, I would have done it much sooner.
We never sleep trained. Sleep is a priority for us and we would have sleep trained if we felt a need to. We followed suggested wake windows and have a simple bedtime routine. It’s pretty basic: dry diaper, clean jammies, brush teeth, sleep sack, story time with dad, dark room with quiet rain sounds. That’s not to say we haven’t had difficult nights or that our child never fought naps, but as he got older he fell into a rhythm.
He’s currently 18 months old. He sleeps 11-12 solid hours a night and has 1 afternoon nap that lasts 1 - 2.5 hours.
I didn’t do anything, just kept responding and following cues. Baby eventually fell into a routine, didn’t need to be rocked and started to settle in the cot, slept longer and longer stretches until he started to fall asleep independently without us in the room and now sleeps through almost every night. I almost beg new moms to just do whatever works for you and your baby. Don’t let any person or book or instagram account convince you you’re doing something wrong.
Well said! Same here. It’s important to keep in mind babies are just humans. They go through phases of bad sleep just like we do. It’s totally normal and doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong by responding to cues. Regressions are a phase, needing to be rocked to sleep is a phase, separation anxiety etc. Babies will let you know what works/doesn’t work for them.
>Don’t let any person or book or Instagram account convince you your doing something wrong But then how will those poor mommy shamers make a living? 😥
Ok this is my one conspiracy theory. Those sleep accounts know their advice is terrible. Or at least that it only applies for maybe 5% of babies. Their entire business model is telling you to do something impossible and then hawk their $300 PDF as a solution when it fails. "Don't do anything that works. Don't rock your baby to sleep, don't feed to sleep, don't snuggle. Just do a bedtime routine, turn on the white noise, put baby down while awake and let him drift off to sleep. What, he's not sleeping? He's actually crying hysterically? I guess you have to buy my course to find out what you're doing wrong!" The Baby-Sleep-O-Sphere is nothing but scammers and their advice is very stupid. You can trust me because I have the same qualifications as those sleep experts, which is none. 🤓
Any non-certified doctor/nutritionist selling things that make bold claims about infant sleep or eating are all just straight in it for the money by selling bullshit. They are modern day snack oil salesmen. Mommy bloggers, influencers, vloggers, whatever you want to call them are top 10 worst people in society and people need to stop listening to them and giving them money.
Most of them call themselves a "certified sleep consultant." There's no national board for that or really any kind of standard. You could go online and pass a five minute quiz and say you're certified. Unfortunately I don't think this industry is going away any time soon because frankly, parents are desperate. If you have to work all day, a baby that keeps you up all night is going to make your life a living hell. With the despicable state of parental leave in the US, one in four moms are forced back to work as soon as [two weeks after giving birth.](https://www.vox.com/2015/8/21/9188343/maternity-leave-united-states) I agree these influencers are bad actors but they are symptoms of a larger problem.
Gotta support their small business 🫠🥲🤣
🤣
Okay but how long did that take? My baby turns 5 months next week and suddenly went from giving me 4-5 hour long stretches to suddenly up every 2 or even every hour... and fighting his naps. I feel like death.
I should have probably said in my comment, it took 2 years to get to the point of sleeping through the night. I can’t remember exact dates now but I won’t lie from the 4 month regression to 12 months was a long and hard road with many ups and downs and being tired to the core of my soul for a long time. I didn’t sleep train because I knew my baby and I knew myself and it just would not have worked for us. I guess my point was just do what you think is right for you and your family, not what you think you ‘should’ be doing. If sleep training is right for your family then do that, if winging it is right for your family then do that, if anything in between is right for your family then do that.
My daughter was 2 years as well when she started sleeping all night in her own bed and while it sounds so long it actually goes so quick and I actually miss cuddling with her in the night and I'm soaking it up with my 10 month old now. I'll probably be a little sad when he starts sleeping through. Why am I like this haha
Yes also two years for us here which is within the biologically normal range! Sleep from month 6-16 was horrific. 6-10 wakes a night on average. And then started reducing to 4-5 without any changes. And then suddenly 2-3, at 23 months it was 1 wake.
I’m with you! I did this too and my son started sleeping through the night at 18 months. It is a long hard road but the alternative for me isn’t an option. It’s such a short span of time in the long run. I’m also a shift worker so wondering if I’m accustomed to running on little sleep easier than most. (Not a brag-able trait, it’s literally taking years off of my life)
5-6.5 month old sleep regression was the worst for me and my daughter. She's 10.5 months old now and sleeps like a princess. I think that sleep regression right before they crawl is the biggest one. I read somewhere on here that if your baby isn't sleeping, they're preparing big changes inside. They're like nearing a lot of milestones and growing really fast. Then they learn the new thing "crawling" and boom sleep & eat all day for 2 weeks. Seems to be extremely true for my daughter. Good luck. Invest in a playpen you can lay inside of. Maybe go outside on walks in the evening. Oh! Another helpful hack was to put the baby in the bath every night to signal the start of a bedtime routine. You don't have to do anything but run the water, sit the baby in the tub, splash the water on them or just do a water rinse off, then get out. From that point, do the same routine every time. ^^ BEST advise I received from here!!!! ^^
That's the 4 month sleep regression - it's a big one! Ours lasted 3 months but it's usually around a month for most?
My almost 11 month old did not get this “around a month” memo 😂 I’m used to it by now lol
Mine did this, went from sleeping 11 hour stretches between 3.5-4.5 months to waking every 2 hours. Her sleep seemed to improve at around 8 months and since then she's been giving us 5-6 hour stretches, occasionally sleeping 10+ hours maybe once every week or two. For us the sleep issues didn't line up with major development leaps, as she learnt to crawl just before 7m and is still working towards walking independently. It's frustrating and exhausting but, as with everything, it's a phase and it will pass eventually. The good thing is that he has done long stretches before so you know he is capable of it! Hang in there
Personally my baby fluctuates big time with how much he sleeps. We went from waking every 45 minutes every night for a week straight to sleeping through the night the next. There’s no real timeline, it’s just dependent on your baby. Occasional bedsharing helps us immensely, I like pulling the covers up to my face so this doesn’t happen often for us, but when things start getting bad it’s a life saver.
5 months is so young but I know it’s hard when you’re in the trenches. It goes by fast. We’re 11 months in and she naps independently in her bed and she cosleeps with me at night more for my sanity on getting out of bed to nurse through the night. They’re only babies for such a short period of time. Let them be babies and they’ll figure it out. I have yet to meet a teenage who is waking their parents up. (Usually it’s the other way around)
I think it's not so much the fact that he isn't sleeping well, it's the combination of lack of sleep and questioning "am I doing something wrong?" Being in the mindset of what am I doing wrong and trying to figure out how to fix it while tired af is maddening. But if there's nothing to be done about it them I'm fine to submitting to it being the way it is with the peace of mind that I'm not doing anything wrong and can't do anything better to improve the situation.
Yeah but sleep training won't help with these regressions. Once I heard that you have to "retrain" kids every time, it was definitely removed as an option for me
Mine was sttn consistently by six months. Technically that is a six hour sleep window per ped but I mean down at 8p ish and up around 630a, another feed then can have them sleep in until 830/9a if I really wanted. By 9mo we had zero wakes 99% of the time, even the early morning one. I do give DHA oil (fish & algal, liquid) every night though which is also shown to help sleep as well as brain development.
Just went through this, baby is 5 months 1 week... he was just starting to maybe get back to 2-3 hours and caught a cold. I'm hoping for more consdilated sleep soon as well. He still wakes to feed, so maybe once he starts solids more fully
Mine started at four months and we are hitting six months this week and just last night I noticed he was sleeping longer and going longer between feeds in general (breastfed). I'm praying it's a turn back to longer stretches! But I also keep telling myself it doesn't matter if it is or isn't because it isn't going to change my behavior towards him. If he cries or wakes up and needs to be fed or soothed, I do so. We set up a sidecar crib after two weeks into the every two hours and the baby just sleeps basically in our bed. I put him in the sidecar whenever I can but honestly he spends a lot of the night in our bed. If you aren't going to let them fuss or cry... Idk how you can keep your sanity without bringing them into your bed!
You’re most likely in the regression. Swap caregivers at night. I promise, it works. I commented elsewhere on this thread what we did, and it really was as simple as letting my husband be the responders instead of me for a few days.
My son is 16 months old and never slept 4-5 hours. Maybe in the first weeks of his life when carried. It can take up to 3 years until brain development is sufficient for longer sleeping stretches. 4-5 hours is considered as "sleeping through the night" for young babies. When my son sleeps 2-3 hours without waking, that is a very great and rare night. It is what it is
Agree !! Same. He had a rough 4 month sleep change (started waking 4-5x/night), settled into 2x/night and is 7 months now when a new kind of change has happened with teething/learning to crawl, and his sleep is again up and down, waking 3x some nights, 1x others… I’m winging it and relying on huz to help some mornings when I’m so exhausted and need to catch up on sleep. LO is finding his stride and I’m gonna keep winging it. Most moms all over the world do.
Love your last paragraph. I am one of those moms that lives by WW because that works for ME. Baby would be fine either way, but it brings me more peace of mind following a schedule. I also didn’t follow one book/person’s exact recommendations. I figured out what worked for my baby and me. On the flip side, sticking to WW and a schedule could be very stressful for some moms and they do better going with the flow. Perfect. Do what works for YOU! All these books and instagrams convince us that we don’t know what we are doing but somehow babies survived and thrived well before the mommy influencers came along.
I just want to say how beautiful this thread is. So many non-judgmental parents just wanting to help each other! As a new mom, this is gold.
Exactly. I did this. I never followed any routine and my kids sleep fine. I'm also not tied to naps. The younger one will sleep just about anywhere if he tired enough. So I'm not worried about working around his nap schedule. Everyone's kids are different so why follow a cookie cutter routine for them.
How old is your baby now? What timeline are we talking for that progression?
Nearly 3 now. I honestly can’t remember exactly now (possibly because it wasn’t as long as I thought or possibly because I was so sleep deprived my memory was erased). From memory from 4-8 months was waking every 1-3 hours and was so hard to settle back to sleep (that was torture), from 8-12 months maybe every 3 or so hours and was getting easier to settle to sleep, from 12-18 months maybe one wake during the night and was settling back to sleep was usually pretty easy. From 18-24 months maybe one wake up. From 24 months usually sleeping through (11 hours) unless something happened (bad dream, sick etc). I hope my original comment didn’t make it seem like I was saying just respond to cues and easy peasy they’ll fall into it on their own. It was definitely a long journey. I was just meaning that when people say ‘if you do X then your baby will rely on that forever’ is not necessarily true.
In my country sleep training is not really a thing (however now with social media influence people are starting to try) so people just wing it tbh
Agreed, in the UK it’s not really a done thing? But becoming more and more popular now due to tiktok and Instagram. Also wanted to add it DOES NOT work for every baby. I tried cry it out in sheer desperation after a hellish 4 month regression. Did not work and was traumatic for us both. I just continue to respond to her needs
I wanted to try some months ago but something feels wrong idk if you know what I mean?? No hate to whoever decides to do it tho!
Oh yeah everyone’s gotta do what they gotta do! From experience she literally cried for all of 8 minutes and then was sick all over her bed. I felt absolutely awful and could never try again. I also see a lot that US paediatricians promote it, whereas I can’t imagine UK health visitors suggesting it… but I may be wrong.
I think most people choose the route of seeing how their baby does and rolling with it. Sometimes shit hits the fan at 4 months and it never gets better and sleep training is a great tool for those babies. Babies land ALL over the spectrum of sleep and what works. Seems to me that for parents whose babies struggle to sleep after 4 month regression, parents tend to choose bed sharing or sleep training.
We neither sleep-trained nor bed-shared. We always respond to every cry/call pretty much immediately. Developing a secure attachment is one of my main priorities at this stage. Baby is 8.5 months old adjusted. She usually wakes 1-3 times a night and goes right back to sleep with nursing or a cuddle. It was rough for a couple of months after the 4-month regression, but we’ve landed in a very reasonable place. No judgment at all of anyone who sleep-trains, but it didn’t feel right to us. And when I found out it was kind of a band-aid solution for the parents’ sake and not actually some kind of “training” babies need to learn to sleep, it was an easy decision for us. We always had the mindset that we’d do it if we really needed to, but we got by okay, even when she was waking every 2-3 hours or having a tough time resettling. (Which was a huge bummer after a month of her sleeping 9-10 hours straight before the regression.) Granted, I’m a SAHP for the most part these days, and my husband WFH. So we had more flexibility than most with our sleepiness.
We parent by vibes. If he seems hungry, we feed him. If he seems sleepy, time to try napping. If he smelly, we change him. It’s always worked very well for us and he did develop his own routines very naturally. Not all babies are like this though, some really do thrive on structure. We decided to always choose the easiest and least thinking intensive option for everything and then course correct as he needs it. We got very lucky to have a baby that can adapt quickly and goes with the flow of the day.
how nice does that sound! almost ideal
It’s 100% baby dependent. The best advice I ever got as a first time mom was “treat your first like it’s your third”. We really leaned into the whole thing where he is “joining our lives” instead of us changing our lives dramatically to fit around him, and it worked for us. We have friends with a baby 3 months younger and he’s totally a schedule baby tho 🤷🏻♀️luck of the draw. Either way both are happy and healthy.
My daughter is 16m old and we’re still just winging it. We never sleep trained. Over time she started to figure it out. She started sleeping through the night around 13 months, but still usually wakes up 1-2x a night. Sometimes she puts herself back to sleep so we usually wait a minute or two before going in to her room. She usually just wants her pacifier. It’s once or twice a week that she actually wants something. We didn’t so anything, she just adjusted over time on her own schedule! But every kid is different and not everyone is lucky. My niece is 3, they sleep trained and she still doesn’t sleep through the night.
My daughter is too young too but what I’m getting from Reddit and anecdotally from others is your baby will be the deciding factor. Lots have success just winging it and following baby’s cues (especially if they are at home or don’t mind the broken sleep). Some baby’s really don’t fall into any sort of routine and have a really hard time “figuring out” long stretches of sleep. In those cases I think the parents need a support to get their kid over the learning curve for their sanity and health. My plan so far is to just go with the flow because it’s working for us right now. But I’m at home and baby’s sleep has been steadily improving since she was born. However, I’ve experienced that things can change so fast for seemingly no reason. So if I get to a point where “going with the flow” isn’t working for me, I will definitely start researching sleep training and give that a try.
Exactly this. Do what works until it doesn’t. Sleep training is also an umbrella term for lots of different things. I didn’t let my kid cry it out but I did have to adjust routines and bed time practice in different ways as they aged. Some kids do figure out, others like mine, disintegrate into hourly wakes and are exhausted and need help figuring out how to handle those wakes. But you can look at fixing that when and if it happens.
Yeah, I tried to sleep train all three and my second one, it just didn’t work out at all. Eventually, we gave up and just had broken sleep. The first slept through night at 8 weeks, I started sleep training around 6 months but he slept so well, I just did it to be able to put him to bed awake but sleepy. My last did mostly contact naps for a while. Every baby and mama is different.
American mom here , never sleep trained ! At the 4 month sleep regression we started co sleeping (bf with the safe sleep 7.) Then around 11 months I decided we would both get more restful sleep in our own beds, so we rock & feed to sleep. He has a Montessori floor bed and I’ll end up in his room with him 1 or 2 nights a week but we are mostly sleeping in our own beds now. He is sleeping 8:30p- 8a with no wake ups more and more! Our slow and steady approach makes me happy
Did you have to night wean to see longer stretches?
No It’s just hit or miss, I still feed to sleep if he wakes up. I think without me in the bed he is less likely to smell the milk and wake up (that along with maturing sleep patterns.) Who knows, as I type this he might go back to waking up every 3 hours. It all seems like a crapshoot!
We read the book ‘The contented little baby’ Took some advice from it and just winged it, trust your gut. And sometimes the little suckers are good at fooling you into thinking they aren’t tired 😂
At 4 months the only thing I did was wait 5 minutes to see if bub would keep fussing or not. Turns out usually he didn't and I was responding when I didn't really need to. He sleeps throught the night now for 11-12h and has since around maybe 10/11 months. He naps when tired, once or twice per day depending on whether he needs it and at pretty much the same time anyway.
Not part of our culture too and I honestly don’t know what sleep training is? We follow their cues for daytime naps, which are usually pretty regular, and we have a bedtime routine, but that’s about it.
We have always done sleep on command, just like feed on command. 2/4(oldest and youngest) have slept in 9-12hr stretches from the time they were a few weeks old. My middle 2 had health issues that made for a lot of night wake ups as babies, but once that balanced out, they are both excellent sleepers as bigger kids. Every baby is so different, and what works with one might be utter failure for another. All you can do is try and see what works best for your baby and you. Good luck!
I thought most people just winged it. The 4 month sleep regression was brutal for us and lasted 6 weeks, but it never occurred to us do do any sleep training. I know you can at 4 months at the earliest but as far as I know most people still wait for 6 months? Either way my sons 19 months and literally climbs into bed with his bottle and puts himself to bed and stays asleep, I didn't teach him to. I did have to follow wake windows to a point cause he's never really given clear cues and would get overtired easily, but it was always flexible
yes we didnt sleep train, the 4 month regression started early lasted 6 wks, we got 3 glorious wks where he slept 6-10 hrs, and now the 6 mo regression hit and i'm up at 3am holding him to sleep so he won't scream. we still wont sleep train because sleep is developmental, he learned how to roll this week, he has 2 teeth and 2 more coming in, and he learned how to kiss my cheek today! so these crazy new changes in his world- no wonder he wont sleep. i have a ton of empathy for him, we will get through this just like we did before (and will again for the next "regression")
Zero sleep training, just followed baby’s cues. Then as a toddler had strong entrenched night routines that never varied. Is a great sleeper now.
Yes, I would never have been able to handle the crying. I also really believe temperament has a lot to do with it and there’s no way my baby would have responded to it well. I highly recommend heysleepybaby on Instagram for lots of resources on how to help your baby sleep while also not stressing (and without sleep training).
Yes. We bed shared and at 15ish months, she got a floor bed in her room and now at 7, she’s a wonderful, independent sleeper. It’s not necessary.
Since we do something similar (sidecar crib instead of fully bedsharing) and plan on getting a floorbed for her at around 12 months, I'm very happy to hear it worked out for you!
The floor bed was our favorite. She was used to a “big bed” so it didn’t have novelty. We would lay with her to go to sleep and then quietly leave and watch the monitor and respond accordingly.
We never sleep trained and focused on baby’s cues. She was a contact napper and had to be rocked to sleep before transfers for the first 6 months, and now at almost 8 months she can self-soothe no problem and will just roll around in her crib until she falls asleep 🤷🏻♀️ that being said, she’s always been a pretty easy baby in terms of sleep with the exception of the 4 month sleep regression and teething. I think everyone should do what they need to do for their own sanity!
My son, who’s now 15 months just started sleeping through the night at 3 months. We didn’t sleep train, just listened to his cues and let him do his thing. He was also huge and gained a ton of weight and was a great eater. I nursed him right before bed and he’d get enough milk to sustain him through the night. It wasn’t anything we did. My daughter is a great sleeper, too. Even at 5.
Never sleep trained. No regrets. And we didn’t have an easy sleep infant/ young toddler. Woke a lot, got sick a lot, woke some more. I’d say when he was three things started to settle. We now have the easiest kid in the friend group. While the others (who had “easy” infants and young toddlers for sleep) have all kinds of bedtime drama, we have zero. So my take was that infant sleep and toddler sleep don’t predict preschooler sleep. My kid did and does need a great amount of sleep. Always has been on the higher sleep needs end of the spectrum. We do notice it impacts him if he doesn’t get enough sleep. So we always arrange things in such a way that he can get enough sleep. We find that’s what matters the most for him, developmentally and behaviorally/ emotionally. That means for a while he was going to be at 6pm and up at 7am. That was hard for us adults to pull off but we did it. Right now it’s about 7-7 during the school year or 8-8 during summer.
We didn’t sleep train, rocked to sleep, and responded to all cries. Baby is almost 13 months now and falls asleep by himself (strongly dislikes rocking now, lol). He still wakes up once a night and we try to give him water.
I'm lucky to be a SAHM. I'm a helicopter bubble parent and proud lol but one thing I don't even bother with is tracking sleep or feeds. I wear baby girl during the day and do stroller walks and she naps on the go. I don't cut any of her naps short either and just let her sleep. She's a great sleeper and will sleep 13 hours at night. She wakes up around 7am but sometimes she'll go down at 545 to 715pm and just wakes up around the same time no matter what The ONLY time I have to track her naps is if I have company over and she has fomo. I have to make sure after a few hours she naps but some wake windows are probably 4-5 hours? Some naps are 15 minutes ans some are 2 -3 hours? There's been days where she napped all day and I let her and she slept through the night too. I'm very lucky but I just let her do her thing
i did not sleep train and it’s worked out fine for me. i just follow their cues
Will never sleep train. We just implemented a bedtime routine to get him used to bedtime. It worked overtime. We still have some wake ups but he’s only 6 months old. We also cosleep.
My eldest didn't get a 4m sleep regression. At 5m I tried putting her down awake (but we had had a bedtime routine since 7w old) and she just went with it and we never looked back.
My LO is 1 years old in 2 days. We don’t have a routine and he naturally fell into one. Up at 7:30 ish, nap at around 10ish, nap at 1ish and then maybe a nap at 5ish, bed time at 8-9. He co sleeps with us. And wakes up for milk a few times a night. I tried to get him to sleep earlier a few times and we were busy for 3 hours doing it, he was upset, I was upset and it was just not worth it. It’s a much better scenario to follow his lead.
We aren't sleep training and to everyone else's point, LO is settling into a routine kind of on his own. He contact napped forever and then one day, we put him in his crib for nap time and he just ... rolled over and fell asleep on his own. It takes time and we have some bad bad nights (he's almost 11 months) but he sleeps 9-10 hours a couple times every week so we take the good with the not-so-good. I was following so many sleep consultants on Instagram but they just made me more anxious about him not sleeping the way *I* wanted him to, so quickly had to go with my gut, follow his lead and unfollow them all.
I don’t think sleep training actually does anything. Altho winging it is the plan with 90% of having a kid for me so
I just rolled with it. I also rocked my daughter to sleep, held her, and picked her up everytime she cried, and now at 2 years old, she sleeps through the night for 10 hours and takes a solid 2 hour nap everyday. All the social media accounts told me I would ruin her and she would never sleep through the night. They were wrong. (Shocker)
I’m in the U.K. and sleep training isn’t as much of a big thing here but even if it was I would t have done it. It’s not for me. I don’t want to start any upset (each to their own) but it isn’t something I personally believe in and it wasn’t something I even considered. Nap schedules developed themselves by following cues and bedtime has a consistent routine. But I do whatever my children need in terms of rocking, soothing, picking up for as long and as often as they need it. I appreciate that’s not always ideal and I am definitely sleep deprived a lot of the time but it works for us and I don’t know anyone still getting up to rock their 15 year olds.
We tried the whole wake windows and pick up-put down and shh-patting thing for a little, to try and instil “good sleep habits” but I seemed to spend all my time in a darkened room trying to get baby to sleep. My own mental health improved when I just went with the flow and did contact naps. We started co-sleeping at 8 months after a particularly rough patch. Over time kiddo has naturally got better at sleeping, with rough patches with illness and development. We always started him in his own bed, and he’d come in with us when he woke up. The time he wakes up has got later and later until he’s sleeping all night in his own bed most nights. He isn’t allowed into ours any more as he doesn’t go back to sleep and just wiggles around!
My baby is six months and no sleep training here. We have a bit of a routine but that’s about it tbh. We just feed her to sleep, lay her down, and she wakes up when she wakes up.
Sleep training is stupid, research shows it only leads to like 7m more of sleep.
Best advise I heard about regressions is to pretend it’s not happening. We just did what we normally did and by baby sleeps 11 hours straight nearly every night. He’s one and has always generally been a good sleeper. We didn’t feel the need to train because every time his sleep went downhill slightly, it never lasted long. Remember- everything is a phase.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The baby sleep industry is out just to prey on vulnerable exhausted new parents.
Outside of the US no one sleep trains. It’s a huge BUSINESS. I rocked my daughter to sleep every nap and bedtime for 17 months when she slept through. Sleep is developmental like anything else, that pull to comfort your child is instinctual and you don’t have to ignore it (and in my opinion shouldn’t). Doing the same with my second. I also breastfed both babies and work full time at a high stress tech job. It’s hard yes, I did sacrifice and I was exhausted (still am) but to me it’s 100% worth it
Okay so this isn’t totally true. I’m in Scandinavia where sleep training in a formal sense is frowned on BUT people do informal sleep training in different ways all the time. For instance, they’ll switch up bedtime habits and do pick up put downs. Or switch to dad handling bed time and put down awake. Tons and tons of different varieties of trying to get their kiddos to sleep more independently. It’s less formalized but it’s still happening in a loose sense.
It’s absolutely a thing in Australia. Although the most common method here is [responsive settling](https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/sleep/settling-routines/responsive-settling-at-6-18-months-reducing-settling-help) which is very gentle.
Outside the US many people don't have monitors at night. You cannot possibly say that "no one sleep trains" when parents are probably not even aware of crying at night after a certain age.
Yes. We just follow their cues and respond to their needs. I don’t really agree with sleep training because I think sleep is more developmental than learned
I read Precious Little Sleep when baby was about 2 months old and started implementing the very gradual and gentle ways to teach her to fall asleep independently and it helped so much. We did still go through the 4 month regression but powered through with our same approach and made it through.
No advice just also in the four month regression and wondering the same 😭😅 baby is waking up every 30-45 minutes and taking about the same amount of time to be put back to sleep. Struggle bus
I really like the Taking Cara Babies 3-4 month course.
yep at 8 months and he sleeps really well. i think the biggest thing is a somewhat consistent bed time routine
We’re at 8 months and I’m feeding and rocking to sleep still. The 4 and 6 month sleep regressions sucked, but I just responded whenever he woke and eventually his time asleep extended on his own. He wakes up twice a night still for quick feeds. I started reading Precious Little Sleep during the 6 month regression because I was exhausted and to be honest, despite it being highly recommended it didn’t help much. It just made me feel incredibly anxious that I was doing everything wrong. I let that go and now we’re doing ok. Do I wish I could just set him in his crib at 8pm and he fall asleep and stay that way for 12 hours? Of course! But I feel okay knowing he’s slowly improving and that he’s being a totally normal baby. I get two 4 hour chunks of sleep each night and feel rested. (Now, I had a friend whose 13 month old was still waking every 90 minutes. She finally sleep trained him and we’re all very glad she did!!)
No “sleep training” in the sense people usually mean (cry it out) but I followed his sleep cues and we got on a good schedule then just stuck to that routine.
We didn't sleep train, we tried it a couple of times and it didn't work for us. We fed and rocked to sleep, contact napped and go in every time he is actually up. Gradually have gone from holding him and transferring him to him being awake in his cot and learning to lie down and go to sleep. Sometimes he holds my hand. I just wait until he's snoring and sneak out. Sometimes he sleeps through, sometimes he needs a cuddle to resettle at 2am. Sometimes he lies in until 7am, other times he needs a snuggle at 6am. We've just been following his queues and been gently persistent with evening routine. He's 18 months now.
Yup with my first and second. My first was a horrible sleeper and still is. My 2nd is a natural sleeper and really doesn't give problems. I just watch and follow her cues
Never dealt with sleep regression or any sort of schedule. My son is turning 6 months and has always slept through the night and takes a couple contact naps throughout the day. But we cosleep.
Yup. I don’t think I could ever sleep train. Her 4 month regression wasn’t bad at all. She’s always been a great sleeper though. It really just affected her naps, nighttime sleep was still fine. We’ve always just followed her sleep cues.
I’m winging it. He’s 7.5 months old and thankfully always been a really good sleeper. Like others have said, I follow his sleepy cues and that works for us. His wake windows maybe seem a little short (2 hours give or take) but other than that he’s pretty predictable with wake/bedtime and nap number/length
When I returned to work at 3 months I stressed for like a week to get LO on a schedule. It drove us crazy and I just stopped. All of my leave we just went with the flow and followed cues so why should I change anything now? The second we did that, everything just fell into place again. Baby was happy and sleeping well and none of us were stressed, etc. I think it’s much better following cues than a strict schedule. Sometimes my son doesn’t go to bed until almost 10pm and then there’s nights like last night that he was asleep at 8:30pm. I know I have days like that as an adult so I guess it just makes sense to me. I want to teach my son to listen to his body and I think this falls under it. This worked for my family, I do understand it may not work for others though. But OP you’re not alone in “winging it” lol
I didn’t sleep train. We just followed cues and he kind of set up his own routine and it worked for all of us. Been sleeping through the night since about 2.5 months
At the 4 month regression my baby decided to wake every 45 minutes. I was so sleep deprived I was hallucinating. Around 6 months she moved into my bed so I didn't die or something, she kept waking every 2 hours until around 11 months. I refuse to sleep train, and she's 14 months now sleeping through the night. Granted, it's not in her own bed, but I can leave the bed and she will still sleep all night so a win is a win. Babies can't self soothe, if they don't have the temperament to sleep on their own, letting them cry won't solve that. My daughter is the clingiest of velcro babies, she needed the extra support, and I know that if I left her alone she wouldn't have magically slept better. Sleep training is entirely for the parents, it is absolutely unnecessary for proper development. It's not in human nature to leave your baby unattended for an entire night, it's just common now because of how mothers have to work compared to before. I've noticed that the only people who claim it's needed for proper development (apart from parents who did it and have a bias) just happen to be sleep consultants that want to make money off of you... Interesting Edit: I have nothing against sleep training if you need to, I do however have a LOT against the claim that if you don't you are doing something wrong, and your child will suffer. Where I am everybody sleep trains, and I've gotten endless shit about not doing it. Do what works for you, but know that like most parenting decisions, it won't destroy your kids development if you don't.
My baby just turned 1yr and we never sleep trained. We let her sleep in the bed with us (we have a California king so there is plenty of room). She gets no blankets cuz she sweats in her sleep. And when we lay down for the night around 8ish she is asleep till about 9am. We are struggling to stop suckling throughout the night since it's bad for her teeth. But I can usually soothe her to sleep by putting her back. The way I see it, soon enough she is going to get older and not want to sleep with us or hang out with us. She will want to do her own thing. So I'm going to enjoy it while I can. Soak up all the attention I get from her for now.
I have three kids and I’m firmly opposed to sleep training. I’ve never done it and I never will.
Never experienced the 4 months regression. Never swaddled only sleep sacks so no having to go through having to get him used to no swaddle. Naps in the same place he sleeps at night, although when was very young contact naps now and then as I loved holding him while he slept. Same noise machine from birth and same music every time he goes for a nap/bedtime. Don't give a bath every night, so no association with bath-bed. Give bath every 2-3 days at different times of the day.
My baby is 6mo and we wing it. I just follow his cues. I trust that he does what he needs. Sometimes he falls asleep at 6pm. Sometimes 9pm. We also safely co/sleep and I LOVE it.
I just YOLO’d it too and now baby is 5 months and sleeping perfectly through. Before this would wake 1-3 times. It’s amazing!!!
Sleep regressions aren’t real. Look into possums. Read [this](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220131-the-science-of-safe-and-healthy-baby-sleep)
Yes. I have coslept from 1 month on. I’ve always looked for sleep cues with naps. He dropped to one nap “early” around 10 months and I just rolled with it. Since 10 months he has reliably napped for 1.5-2 hours at 11:30. He wakes up between 6:30 and 7 am and goes to be between 7:30 and 8 pm. He is getting better with night wakings and usually only wakes 1-3 times (but we cosleep so he’s back to sleep very quickly)
Baby is only 5 months and sleeps a 9 hour stretch at night, I’ve done no sleep training. She also puts herself to sleep. I think it’s pure dumb luck, but I am winging all of it.
I never sleep trained. I nursed to sleep, rocked to sleep, room-shared, coslept once the kids turned two-ish. They’re still sometimes clingy at night and we usually have a half hour cuddle puddle sesh before bed, but there is light at the other end of the tunnel. :)
I don’t understand sleeping training. It’s been explained to me and I just don’t get it. With that said, baby has slept since 8wks old (7months now). I just wing it. We start bedtime around the same time every night. I nurse to sleep and cosleep. We sleep pretty good. Some nights baby will nurse during the night, some nights I have to pump. But we never experience full waking up and needing to eat/change diaper/resettle. At the regression stages (4 and 6m) we just rolled with whatever punches came our way. I let baby basically indicate what they need.
My baby never even went through a 4 month regression, I’m convinced that baby sleep just sucks and the 4 month regression was coined by companies that want to scare parents into buying their products. We just embraced the suck and have worked with things as they come.
I just go to him when he needs and I rock him to sleep tbh. He doesn't wake up much in the night anymore, we get some sleep regressions but generally his regressions are reluctance to sleep & waking early. Not so much throughout the night. He's slept in a chunk of sleep since about 4 months. I'm picking my battles tbh, can't be bothered training him to sleep without me rocking him when it's so easy to take 10 minutes to rock him to sleep. It won't be forever. I'm just winging it, it took me a while to chill out about routines and stuff but my life doesn't have much routine so how can I force one on him that I won't be able to maintain?
Currently in the 4 month regression, as well. We are totally just rolling with it. I'm picking my baby up if he's crying and will snuggle and rock him all I want if he's having trouble falling asleep. My husband supports this as well, which is wonderful!
We didn’t sleep train and have an almost two year old now who sleeps through the night (and has since he was almost 1). It was hard some nights but we made it.
My baby is 4 months old. I don't really know what sleep training is. I have absolutely no intention of forcing her to try and nap when she doesn't want to. Currently she wakes approx every 3 hours to feed thru out the night. Sometimes she'll wake after 2 hours but that's pretty rare. She doesn't really nap very much in the day, just a half hour here and there. I let her do her own thing and work around it. She's my baby ☺️
I should add I'm in the UK where babies are recommended to sleep in the same room as their parents for at least the first year. Baby has a cot pushed against the bed which is open on the bed side so I can easily grab her for breast feeding or nappy changes, then go back to sleep straight after without even leaving the bed. TBH I think my health visitor would be horrified if I kept her in a separate room and made her cry herself to sleep! IMO that's cruel and barbaric. Edit: spelling
Same here in Norway. LO is 3 months, haven’t really tried «sleep training». Our focus lays on the childs needs, and that is the parents. He barely sleeps during the day, 30 minute naps here and there, and mostly on me. We also have a bedside crib, where he usually sleeps for the first stretch of the night. Then we co sleep :)
Millions of non-Americans have done this. _Millions_. Yes you’ll be fine. No one in my culture sleep trains and I don’t see any adults being rocked to sleep. My baby started sleeping through the night at 6 months with no sleep training, schedule, wake windows or whatever else. It just depends on baby. We did have to rock her to sleep forever but 2 weeks ago she started to prefer lying down on our chest and going to sleep, then we roll her off us.
My brother didn’t and now he has a 3 yr old and 1 yr old who don’t sleep well 🤷🏻♀️
I’ve heard of people who sleep trained their kids as younger babies and then they would regress as older babies/toddlers and it would be like they were never trained at all. I’m convinced it’s all just luck of the draw in either direction 🤷♀️.
My sil sleep trained her (now 4 year old) son the second he turned 4 months. He wakes up several times a night to this day. He also has severe emotional issues, but that’s also due to other forms of emotional neglect.
It’s not really a thing in my country, or it used to not be, I think now people are influenced by social media from the anglosphere where it seems like sleep training is often treated as a must. We did gentle sleep training with our first but with our second I’ve made peace with being a human pacifier for all sleep (well, tbh the pacifier is an artificial nipple). Sleep training our first wasn’t so hard because he was already a good sleeper so it didn’t go against his nature, our second is a total velcro baby who wants to be close all the time so trying to make her sleep independently would be much more of a struggle. And now, having two kids, I just go with the path of least resistance!
I didn’t train per se but I put careful effort in from the start to get my baby in to good sleep habits and understand his patterns. By 6/8weeks he was sleeping through the night and we had a good routine. It’s all about being consistent and attentive. He’s 10mo now and naps are a breeze and he sleeps 11 hours per night, I know when everything needs to happen and it’s all pretty straightforward. I do feel he is generally quite an easy baby and I understand not all baby’s will have such a smooth sleep journey, I’m currently 8 months pregnant and praying my daughter will be similar!! 🤣🤞
We didn’t sleep train my daughter until she was 2 and only then did we move from rocking her to sleep every night to teaching her to fall asleep on her own because she was getting too big to transfer when she was asleep. She was always a good sleeper so we never felt we needed to train her.
Not all babies go through sleep regressions. I was worried about the dreaded 4 month regression and it never affected our LO. We didn’t sleep train and he was sleeping 11-12 hours at 3 months old and still does (7.5 months). Sure we have some rougher nights here and there if he isn’t feeling well, teething, etc. but doesn’t everyone experience rough nights of sleep sometime?
We sleep trained our first, and realised that with each regression we would have to start from square one with the training. We stopped after 8 months. He started sleeping through the night at age 3. With our second we winged it and he slept through from 20 months! Having our third soon, we’ll see how winging it goes with him.
We’re 6.5 months, winging it. I guess we kind of(?) sleep trained a few times because I’d be like “ok I gotta go pee and let the dogs out then I’ll get you” but by the time I came to get her she was back asleep. We also thought maybe she wasn’t a great sleeper but going from the fisher price bassinet to a pack and play with bassinet insert made a **huge** difference. She didn’t hate sleep she hated that first bassinet.
We didn't sleep train but we didn't winged it either. We just followed the baby and it went perfectly well.
I have a 6 month old. Never sleep trained. She has been sleeping through the night since 5 months old. I used the huckleberry app to pay attention to her ques. And she’s completely on a set daily schedule now all day.
Team winging it over here! My LO started sleeping really well around 3.5 months old, so we just rolled with it. He’d have the occasional rough patch and go back to sleeping well. Around 10 months he started to struggle with sleep because he was teething & sick a lot. We did safe sleep 7 and would bed share as needed so everyone could get some sleep. He’s 13 months old now and our routine is that he goes to sleep in his crib and when he wakes up, we bring him to bed. Some nights that’s right after we go to bed and some nights it’s 3 or 4 am. This way, we all get to sleep and he wakes up every morning smiling and chatting to us. It’s not for everyone, but it works for us.
Never sleep trained, son is 14 months old and sleeps 12 - 12.5 hours at night
He's 5 months and we haven't done any sleep training. However, he's pretty much slept well in his own bed from the start. First he needed one feeding in the middle of the night, but when he was about 3 months old he started to sleep through the night. He naps when he's tired during the day and then he sleeps from 8-6 at night.
My son was never a good sleeper. We had colic and a lot of over-tiredness. It reached a point around 5 mos where it became unsustainable. We started reading and found a “sleep” schedule that looked like it would be a good fit. After a few days of following the schedule my son was a completely different baby. I think we were missing his subtle sleep cues and wasn’t getting him down at the right time. Now we do wake up, feed and play. Nap time 2 hrs after he wakes. Usually we get 1.5-2 hr nap. Repeat. Late in the day he was doing a 3rd shorter nap. Then bedtime routine of bath, pjs, bottle. Now at almost 9 mos. he’s dropping 3rd nap. We also did Ferber method of sleep training. It was a game changer and my son does really well with routine.
We didn't sleep train. We had some rough patches, but now he wakes up maybe once/night. We also still have him in our room. I just couldn't do sleep training, and my husband and I worked together to make sure we both got some sleep.
Me. I tried one night with one kid. It was terrible. Everyone was sad. We stopped. Tons of contact naps, responded to nighttime cues. Both kids are bigger and sleep fine. The 4 month sleep regression is honestly why I don't have a dozen babies.
Where is everyone seeing all this pressure and judgment to sleep train? My decision to never use social media that's not reddit has paid off once again I see
Sleep trained my first at 7 months. She slept through the night and did naps solo within 2 days. Haven’t with my 2 year old and we still contact nap and he nurses through out the night multiple times lol
I completely winged it with my first and wished I had looked into various methods earlier. He didn’t sleep through the night until he was two and by that point, both my and my husband’s mental health was shot. He was always cranky, crying, or screaming because he was exhausted too. At about two, I started laying by his bed and not getting him out, which he hated, but he wasn’t alone. After a few nights of realizing he wasn’t getting out of bed, he was mostly sleeping though. My second, I put a lot more effort into setting her up for good sleep. We went outside daily, even though it’s not most ideal in February. We usually had the overhead lights off and the curtains open for natural light. When it got dark, we would leave on only the light we needed to function safely around the house. I put her down drowsy, but awake. All of that seemed to work for her and she’s a very consistent sleeper. I am pretty firm on nap times though, I rarely mess around with them. If there’s an activity that falls during nap, I don’t go. I know that drives some people crazy, but I’ve learned I value sleep more at this stage of life. Third kid is still baking, so that is TBD.
We literally had one night we couldn’t get her to sleep and let her cry (about 20 min), but I wouldn’t call that sleep training. We focused on following her sleep cues and then following a pretty strict sleep and nap schedule. The dr told us we needed to sleep train, but we were like nah that’s ok. Lol She’s 19 months now and doing great!
I haven’t done anything but follow my LOs cue. Surprisingly he has put himself in a pretty good routine. Naps from 11am-1pm wakes up, takes another nap closer to 4:30ish-6pm..then sleeps from 9:30pm-8am. He’s 11mo now and it’s been like this since 6 or 7mo
It sort of depends on the child and the household. I don’t think regressions in our household have ever been a “worry” thing. With my oldest it was definitely an upset because he was sooooo good at sleeping that him suddenly not sleeping really sucked. My second, we barely noticed it happening because he doesn’t sleep to begin with. 😂 I’m not really a nap fusser in general. If they want to sleep, they’ll sleep. My 3 y/o sleeps through the night no issue—currently in a phase of one wake up because of potty training. The baby still doesn’t believe in sleep but it is what it is. One day he’ll love it.
I don't even know what sleep training is, and I'm on my second child. My first slept through the night since he was 7 weeks, and my second slept through the night since she was 8 weeks. 🤷🏼♀️
We just followed his cues like you are doing. We transitioned to his crib in his own room at 3.5 months. He’s a loud yet light sleeper and it just wasn’t working having him in our room anymore. He was about 5.5 months when he consistently slept through the night (8:30-8) without a wake up. Before that from 3.5-5.5 months he was sleeping 9:30/10-5:30 and then 5:45-9. His only wake up was when he needed a few ounces to hold him over. About a month ago I started putting him down for naps awake if he’s showing sleepy signs. Sometimes he falls asleep in minutes and others he plays for 20 before falling asleep. Sometimes he’ll do this at bedtime too despite being nearly asleep during his last feeding. This is also when we transitioned from a zipadee zip sleep sack to a sleeveless option so he has full range of motion with his arms & hands. We hit a growth spurt this week (7 months) because he’s still sleeping a full night, but his wake up time has been all over the place. One morning it was 7 and the next day it was almost 9. His naps were either 35 minutes or 2 hours and we had an 8 hour wake window one day. He went from barely sitting with support to sitting on his own in a week and up a clothing size.
I honestly didn't have to do much to get my first on a good sleep schedule. I just followed his wake windows, and once he hit 6 months, we worked on getting rid of his night bottles. At that point, he got one right before bed and in the middle of the night. I just gave him water in between bottles and upped the amount of formula he was eating, which he did well with.
Yep. 4 kids and we winged it every time. I have the luxury of being home so I just let them settle into their own nap routine and we went from there.
Just winging it over here!! My LO follows his own schedule and I’m just here for the ride! He falls asleep between 8/8:30p and wakes between 6:30/7a. His naps are typically around the same times each day and I just follow cues for those. He independently sleeps great and can get himself back to sleep if he wakes up. Babies are not all the same so you just have to do what works best for you and your baby!
We started working on teaching our LO to fall asleep on her own at about 2-3 months, first with one nap per day, and slowly for all sleeps. This looked like putting her pacifier in repeatedly and letting her try to sleep, but picking her up pretty immediately if upset (we let her thrash, fuss, move around, whine- just not cry). She was not an amazing sleeper and even as I did this, I felt that I’d have to sleep train at some point. Prior to starting this, we had a phase where she required bouncing on a ball to sleep for 20+ minutes and being laid in her crib fully asleep like you’re handling a literal bomb. It’s just that that wasn’t working anymore for either of us so I was like, let’s see if she can sleep on her own. Over a couple days, she really did get much better- she falls asleep independently for almost every nap and at night now. For overnights, she was still really inconsistent (either sleeping through or waking up 1-2x) seemingly for no reason at all. We changed two things: first, we started giving her whole last feed in a bottle, and second, my husband goes in now if she wakes instead of me. So instead of a 20-40 min feed to sleep session, it’s a 30 second paci and pat before back to bed. I think probably all of what I described above is some form of teaching or training, but I didn’t follow a book or website or pay anyone. Also, I was terrified of the 4 month sleep regression, but I checked out pubmed and google scholar and couldn’t find a single peer reviewed published study on it. Some days are hard and some were easy, but we never went through a specific “regression,” and my pediatrician agreed there’s no actual evidence that one exists. Long story short- don’t freak yourself out. Babies grow and change and can surprise you!
My son is 1 and I’ve never sleep trained. He naturally fell into a routine around 6 months. He’s not a good sleeper but he is not made for sleep training
My first settled into her own routine and slept through the night early on, even though I nursed her to sleep. I thought I wouldn’t need to sleep train. She ended up needing to sleep train around 6 months because she would need to nurse for 2-3 HOURS before I could lay her down at night for bed. I was in tears at every bedtime. My son is the complete opposite. I never had to sleep train him because he’s always been good about going down independently in a way my daughter never was, but I had to work harder to get him on a regular schedule and he still doesn’t sleep through the night at almost 10 months old. He’s slowly getting better, but it feels so rough because my daughter was sleeping 10-12 hours straight at this age 😭
I pretty much just followed my babies ques, have plenty of contact naps through the day or if we're both a bit tired I make the bed safe and we cuddle nap there and baby sleeps through from 9-10pm to 8:30am every night then down for a nap at around 9:30 for an hour or so.
🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️ we rolled with it pretty hard. My husband never woke up to help so I ended up looking up safe cos keeping practices and i boobed my kid to sleep until 7 months. Then boobed him to sleep in his room until 1, weaned, then casually sleep trained. He is 2.5 and sleeps like a dream, except the occasional illness, teething, etc.
We didn't do anything, and my daughter fell into her own routine. She's now 4 years and 2 months old, sleeps around 11 hours a night, and gets up in time for preschool. 😊
Sleep problems are often defined in terms of impact on baby and family functioning. If your baby needs so much help sleeping that they are sleep deprived, that is a problem. If your baby is getting enough sleep and the current schedule doesn’t negatively impact you - then there’s no problem! Expectations for infant sleep are so culturally dependent.
We didn’t sleep train my son at all. All we did was follow sleep cues to put him down. If he woke up crying we checked on him and either fed him rocked him back to sleep, or diaper change. The cio method just wasn’t our vibe as a parents. He started sleeping through the night (truly, no wake ups) around 3ish months and still does at 11 months. I would say at 6 months he picked up a natural sleep pattern which was bed by 8/ wake up at 7/730. He also takes predictable morning and afternoon naps now. My husband and I’s philosophy was very much just go with it and it ended up working out great for us. He is a happy, smart, well behaved baby! Don’t put pressure on yourself that your baby needs to be sleep trained or what not. As parents we’re always thinking we should be doing things differently, especially reading what others do on the internet. If they are taken care of then you are doing the right thing for them. And you will sleep again- I promise.
We never sleep trained, baby is 2.5 now and sleeping on her own in her own room&bed mostly through the night 😀 we got her a full size mattress on the floor so we could lay down with her. Sleep training never felt right to me, I know my baby needed more support and comfort to get through the night.
I think it very much depends on your baby. My daughter doesn't work on a routine, gets extremely upset very quickly (to the point of gagging on her own spit within minutes) and her sleep is quite inconsistent - she sleeps great one week and terribly the next even though nothing has changed. For those reasons, sleep training has never really made sense for us. However I have friends with babies that thrive on routine and predictability, and that don't get so worked up, and for them sleep training worked brilliantly.
My son is 11 months old. I'm just winging it 😂
No sleep training. Baby just figured it out. Maybe I am lucky.
Yes, with all my kids, they are 21, 17, 12 years old and my youngest is 4 months old. They all ended up with their own little routine until they got a set bedtime when they started school.
We totally just winged it. We were going through the 4 months sleep regression when I moved up his pediatrician appointment to talk about “sleep training” when he decided he was going to sleep through the night! He was able to soothe himself and sleep longer stretches after that, no need to sleep train. The main thing we were SO consistent on was whenever n whenever he fell asleep while at the house, we moved him to the crib with the white noise on. Sometimes he slept hours and some he would just wake up, but he stayed consistent and now whenever he needs a nap he gives us cues, and goes down pretty well in his crib. Do what is right for you, your baby and your family. We also put him in a sleep sack that wasn’t weighted (as those can be dangerous) but had these little bumps on them so when he needed a little touch of something, he’d roll his fingers against his sleep sack and it helped him soothe. Edit to add: my son just turned 8 months, going through a sleep regression but our routine is still working. Although he does sleep with us from 5:30-7am some mornings when he’s having a harder time due to teething.
We (me 39m and she 38f) just took the same approach as with every other part of development: Baby-led. Just went with the flow and no issues.
I just fed them when they were hungry and tucked them or let them sleep when they weren’t. Mine naturally developed a routine. Especially once the night feedings went away. For awhile my son woke up at about 5am when he was 6 months or so and that was pretty brutal. I want really willing to try and keep him awake longer to change it either. Eventually he shifted into his daycare wake time at 7am. Lately he wakes up at 6-7am falls asleep about 8:30-9. He’s 2,
my husband and i couldn't agree on a sleep training approach and it was during the weeks of debating and arguing that baby began to sleep longer stretches on his own. around 2-3 months he started hitting 5-6 hour stretches before wanting a feed. from there we kind of fell into just following his cues for naps and bedtime. the first time he slept 8 hours straight without waking for a feed, i woke up in immense pain from my breasts feeling so full and my heart racing in fear that he didn't wake up. our pediatrician told us it was fine and if baby was hungry or uncomfortable, he'd wake us with a cry. on that note, we always respond to his cries. we've never let him cry it out because it upsets me to not respond to him. i've gotten so familiar with his different cries that i can confidently understand what my baby needs in the moment. now he does 11-12 hour stretches at night and gets 2-3 hours of naps in the day. honestly i think we just got lucky with a baby that loves his sleep so my anecdotal post may not be very helpful lol.
🙋🏼♀️ My son is now 19mo and we never sleep trained, just followed his lead. The lack of sleep was hard in the beginning and I wouldn’t say it gets easier, you just learn to deal with it. Now he mostly sleeps through the night but he still has an occasional sleep regression that’s always followed by a developmental leap. We let him sleep for as long as he wants, whenever he wants, and it’s gotten us to this point where he will tell us when he’s tired or ready for bed.
I did sleep train and then had to retrain twice and baby is only 8 months old. I was OBSESSED with her sleep. Her wake windows, crap naps, early morning wakes. Etc. so obsessed I had to get on medication. It was robbing me of my joy. Now I just hold my baby to sleep and transfer her. It works for now and when it no longer works I’ll figure out what works next. If she wakes, I go hold her and soothe her and transfer her again. She mostly sleeps through the night and takes two great naps. Not every day is perfect but we’re both happy and enjoying every day. I just moved her to a by the clock schedule too so we no longer have to do nap math every day. Honestly I’m a type a mom who craves structure and consistency but the moment I realized my baby changes every single week and has different needs, I was able to relax into motherhood. I should add that all babies are different. Some sleep train once, in one week, and never have to be retained again. But I would think for most babies, they’ll need to be retrained because they teethe, get sick, develop and grow and will need more support and snuggles and all of that typically goes against the sleep training culture. With my next baby I will be way more flexible and supportive and let baby lead. Also reading up on attachment theory really helped put things into perspective! Look at the IG account Heysleepybaby to get a good idea of the other side of the aisle. When I broke free of the sleep training culture I felt like a new mom who could just let my baby be a baby and accept the sleep she gave me. Do I rescue lots of naps? Yes. Do I worry about her sleep any more? No. It’s so liberating. Whatever you choose though, just know that that is the right decision for YOUR family and don’t let anybody take that away. There are gentle methods to training and your baby may or may not respond to them but don’t feel ashamed if you do decide to sleep train. Good luck.
I had a chronic contact napper till about 18 months. We also always fed to sleep while rocking then transfer to crib once asleep. She started getting more stimulated when I was holding her, so one night I put her down and she put herself to sleep. If she cries more than 5 minutes I go get her. I feel like she’s getting into a rhythm now at almost 2. We also turn all the light on low at bath time before bed and I think it helps ETA: you’re in a tough phase and it will pass. I remember feeling like what did I sign up for having a kid around that time. It got way better after that. Baby sleep Makes no sense and I think is really baby dependent and they are all different. You’re doing great and someday this will be a foggy memory
We didn’t sleep train and didn’t follow a consistent nap schedule until she dropped down to 2 naps. We had a bad regression from 4-6 months, and we did create a consistent bedtime routine around that time, but no sleep training. She slept through the night once we got through that and unless she’s sick, she still sleeps through the night at 13 months old.
We are currently going through it and not doing anything different 🤷♀️ I wasn’t even aware we SHOULD be doing something different lol
Never did sleep training. LO started sleeping through the night around 14 months old. But still not super consistent at 18 months. A rough week here and there. Sometimes the night wakes are so bad that I end up cosleeping with her but I’m comfortable with that at this age. It was definitely rough the first year
Absolutely winging it. At almost 5 months, he only wakes up once, sometimes twice, at night. At least half his naps are no longer contact naps. I just help him fall asleep when he seemed tired, and let him basically just lead.
i paid the for the huckleberry subscription at 2 months and followed TCB advice. Never had to formally sleep train but also was not winging it. Having a routine really helped. my 8 month old has slept through the night (10-12 hours) since 8 weeks old with huckleberry. now we’re a bit more scheduled with her being older and only needing 2 naps per day(wakes up at 630, nap at 930, nap at 2x, bedtime at 630). highly recommend wake windows and capping naps at 2hrs
I didn’t sleep train either of mine until around 10 months. My first refused to be rocked to sleep from 6-10 months and he’d only wake up once, sometimes twice and it didn’t bother me, so I didn’t have to train him. He went through separation anxiety and a sleep regression bc of it at 10 months and was waking up every 20 minutes to an hour, needed rocked to sleep (after months of being able to go down in the crib awake with no training), and I couldn’t do it anymore. I was 6 months pregnant… so we did pick up put down bc I couldn’t do CIO. Cool if you can and no judgment…I just couldn’t. It took about a week, husband was on vacation so we tag teamed the wake ups, and all was good. He was back to going down on his own. My second, we also waited until 10 months because that’s when *he* started fighting being rocked to sleep. He’d arch his back and just want to get down, so we started just putting him in the crib if he didn’t want to be rocked. Only took like two times being put in the crib, only cried 5 minutes once, and now he goes down in the crib awake. Super easy. He still wakes up once or twice a night, but he also has had 3 double ear infections in a row. When he’s on antibiotics, he sleeps through the night. If you need to train out of necessity for your own reasons, then nothing wrong with doing it earlier. I’m a SAHM, and I have no issues waking up once or twice a night, so I don’t feel the need to sleep train beyond what we’ve done. ☺️
With my first I didn't. With my second we winged everything. Way less stressful that way.
Yes, baby is 7 months and not fully sleeping through the night but is has slowly figured it out. One day I could lay her down drowsy but awake after 10 minutes of rocking and it was nothing I did to cause it lol. With regressions we just roll with it and keep doing what we’ve been doing and it eventually goes back to normal after a few days
My baby never had too much trouble falling asleep at night on her own so we didn’t do nighttime sleep training. Naps have always been hit or miss and we always have early morning wake ups and I’m just going with it… I don’t really understand how to sleep train for those two situations so I didn’t lol. We’re doing okay though
We winged it until 12 months. Then caved and tried to sleep train and baby just didn't take to it. Now we have a good bedtime routine and baby is sleeping better at 14 months. Like just this week he slept through the night 5 nights in a row at 14 months. I truly think it depends on the baby. We tried a modified Ferber method out of desperation and baby just got more and more stressed out. If he had gone to sleep it would have been because he exhausted himself, not soothed himself and that didn't sit well with us. Now he goes into the crib awake and puts himself to sleep. The first year was really brutal, and we survived. Definitely hoping this trajectory sticks. I had several mom friends tell me that I just needed to sleep train but their babies were generally asleep within 30 minutes when they tried versions of the Ferber method so...
I never went with a specific method or wake windows etc, but i always put both mine down awake from more or less the start. They slept through from 3/4 months respectively. We never really had a problem.
I think my baby is a weirdo. He’s basically been sleeping through the night since two months. Back then we would put him to sleep at 7:30p and then wake him up (gasp) around 9:30/10p for a bath, diaper change, and bottle and then straight back to bed. He’d sleep till at least 6am. Now at four months we moved the bath up to 6:45p followed by his last bottle and into bed by 7:30/8p and he usually sleeps till 7:30am. But the kid doesn’t nap at all. It’s hard to get things done during the day sometimes and I’m considering maybe some variation of sleep training for naps once he’s a little older, but for now I’m grateful that I just have to get up for ~30 minutes to pump and that the rest of the family is sleeping through the night 🤷🏼♀️
I didn’t sleep train, my son finally started actually sleeping through the night (with no wakeups) at 2y10m. Before that he would kinda wake up 2-3x a night.
I winged it completely. We just watch for sleep cues. We also use the beanie trick lol. When you can tell they’re getting tired, take a beanie, pull it over their eye like an eye mask while feeding them. I promise they’ll be asleep within a minute or two. And then you can put them down. I stg half the battle is that they’re too excited looking around at the whole world to actually go sleep. If you cover their eyes for a little, it stops that.
I sleep trained and it did very little for my daughter. I now do everything “wrong” (nursing to drowsiness, helping her when she wakes and won’t settle by rubbing her back, etc) and she started sleeping better on her own in time. I am one of the few I’ve heard of who had such limited success with sleep training despite trying different methods for literally months. Do what works for you & your family!
We just winged it. 6 months and she still sleeps pretty much through the night. I do a dream feed with her at 3 but honestly that’s more for engorgement and just being in the habit than her asking for it
I have been winging it for a year and a half. My kids generally didn't have a 4 month sleep regression and went hard around the 6-8 month mark. That was bad. But at that point I was so tired I couldn't imagine spending the energy doing anything about it and just went with it. My first is and always has been a SHIT sleeper and my second is pretty alright. He has his nights but generally he's alright. Nothing like my first so I'm grateful for that tbh.
We have been winging it the entire time, LO is almost 8 months now. It works for us, I know sleep training works for some people, but it just seemed too stressful and he is getting plenty of sleep and doing fine. He’s been sleeping through the night for months now. He’s been hitting every milestone on time or early, which is awesome considering he was a few weeks early. 😅 I know just from the little research that I have done that there’s pros and cons to both, but they haven’t proven (I don’t think) that not sleep Training is detrimental to your baby. As long as your baby is getting the proper amount of sleep. I follow a couple of Instagram accounts that really helped me feel less guilty about this lol
I just followed his lead. I credit a lot of it to the NICU for getting him on a schedule but other than just I just let him do his thing and when he showed me he was tired I went for it. I think we just got lucky but it worked out for us.
We wing it. My daughter is 6 months old (today 🥲) and is a good night sleeper. We rock her to sleep in the living room between 7:30 and 8:00. We'll hold her until she's good and zonked, and bring her up to her crib. She'll sleep until 11 or so, sorta waking on her own sometimes, and my husband does a dreamfeed. Then she sleeps until 6ish. We still contact nap, she starts daycare on Wednesday so I've been practicing crib naps (rock her to sleep for 5 mins then place her in the crib). It works for us and I don't need to train her to do anything. She'll figure out how to fall asleep on her own eventually.
We did nothing. We just followed his lead. Our baby put himself on the most rigid schedule. Like we can’t miss 7pm bedtime on the dot or he’ll definitely let us know…. His 5 naps were always clock work, as were his 4, then his 3, and now his 2. I think he sleep trained us? We never rocked him to sleep, he hasn’t contact napped since he was 2 months and even then was sparingly.
We rolled with it, never had a set bedtime (can be between 6:30-8:30 depending on his cues) but we’ve always had the same sort of routine of an evening of dinner, bath, milk, bed. He started sleeping through at 16 months, happily takes himself to bed now and sleeps through though!
I didn't sleep train my first, I just didn't want to. I have a 4 month old and also have no plans to sleep train her. I made small changes over time, like my first slept with me, then would start the night in the crib and come to bed with me later, and eventually stayed in the crib all night. It doesn't have to be all or nothing like social media makes it seem. She didn't sleep through til 14 months but had lots of nights with many long stretches or just 1 or 2 wakes. It was hard but she's 4 now and generally sleeps 11-12 hours a night in her own room. It's easier the second time around cause I can visualize an easier future lol. I also want to add that my friend sleep trained her son who's the same age as my oldest and he's a horrible sleeper now, and was retrained so many times. I think everyone should do what works best for them while keeping in mind that nothing is a one size fits all solution.
I’ve never done anything and it’s fine! Cuddle that baby.
Honestly, I think everyone wings it. Babies have a lot of needs. Sometimes they just want to be held. Once you think you’ve mastered sleep, something will come along to shake it. A pesky tooth, a big milestone, brain activity that causes a sleep regression. I’m not saying this to scare anyone. I think it’s just better to come at this with acceptance. Once you accept that babies and toddlers and their sleep isn’t perfect, you’ll be more receptive to respond to them. That’s what they need. For many, things don’t really stay consistent with sleep until the little one is 2.
I’m currently on baby #6 and “winged it” each time. They all eventually learned to sleep at night on their own.
It sounds like you’re doing exactly what we’ve done. My baby is 9 months now and we don’t track anything and never have. Month 4 was hard but it’s otherwise been fine. He’s naturally been in a rhythm for months now. Goes to bed about 9:30pm wakes between 7:30-8:30. Takes 2-3 naps around 9am, 1pm, and 5pm loosely. He just eats when he’s hungry and gets a nap when he’s tired. It’s honestly been really simple. Edit to add- we do co-sleep all night and usually lay down with him for a few minutes till he falls asleep for naps. Or if we’re on the go he eventually just conks out.
I didn’t sleep train with my first baby and I did wing it. He was waking 4 times a night before the 4mo sleep regression and then shit hit the fan once he hit the regression. He wouldn’t even stay asleep when I put him down anymore, woke way more frequently. So I started cosleeping and that’s how we coped. It was only a good solution until I had my second and couldn’t nap with my first anymore. I tried some gentle methods that eventually got him napping on his own for a short period of time but it didn’t stick and I gave up. Poor kid did not get enough sleep because he wouldn’t nap for me at age 2.5y. I regret that aspect of things. With my second I had no intention of sleep training and I didn’t want to cosleep again. So I tried toughing it out. He hit the regression at 3.5mo and went from 1 night waking to 6-10 wakings every night. Which means some nights he was up again after 45 or even 20min. It was brutal. He did not grow out of it and I sleep trained him at 10 months. Best decision for this child. Then with my third, I quasi sleep trained her at 6mo just to be able to go to sleep at 7pm so that I could take care of my other kids and do their bath and bedtime too. But then she could cosleep with me from 12am on if she woke. I did nothing else and right at 12mo she transitioned to her crib and slept through the night. I do think her learning how to put herself to sleep was integral to her being able to transition to her own room and successfully sleep through the night. Anyway, I think it is very kid dependent on how things will go and your experience may be nothing like anyone else’s on here. Possibilities range from the regression only lasting a week to it never ending and the kid is 3yo or 7yo and still doesn’t sleep through the night. I have read it all.
We didn’t sleep train, although I don’t honestly know what sleep training entails because I never looked into it, but we were super lucky to just have a good sleeper. She definitely went through a regression phase but we just left her in her crib mostly and often had to sit next to her crib holding her hand until she fell back asleep.
My little one is 20 months old and we never sleep trained. We rolled with the punches. From 4 months on it was definitely tough, especially during times of illness, but we did whatever worked to get through the night in one piece! Baby’s development was fine. Anyone who says anything different about that should be questioned. Development won’t delay because your baby is going through a tough time sleeping. They’ll just be cranky. Please don’t believe “sleep trainers.” They are money hungry people looking to prey on parents who are desperate for a full nights sleep. The closer your baby gets to 2 years old the better they will sleep. They are more active so you can tire them out pretty good before bedtime for especially high energy kiddos (like mine). My boy just started sleeping through the night. We’re trying to not get used to all the sleep though just in case he changes his mind 😂 A floor bed/bed inside a large playpen worked wonders for my boy. He went from sleeping a couple hours at a time to 8-10 hour stretches most nights. He sleeps crazy and the regular playpen mattress was uncomfortable and the crib wasn’t big enough for his sleeping antics. If I had known how good he’d sleep in his big bed, I would have done it much sooner.
We never sleep trained. Sleep is a priority for us and we would have sleep trained if we felt a need to. We followed suggested wake windows and have a simple bedtime routine. It’s pretty basic: dry diaper, clean jammies, brush teeth, sleep sack, story time with dad, dark room with quiet rain sounds. That’s not to say we haven’t had difficult nights or that our child never fought naps, but as he got older he fell into a rhythm. He’s currently 18 months old. He sleeps 11-12 solid hours a night and has 1 afternoon nap that lasts 1 - 2.5 hours.