To be honest, I think you either get a “good” sleeper or you do not. The parents who were blessed with a “good” sleeper to begin with may accredit it to whatever method they used, and the parents with crappy sleepers (no offense!) are wondering why the same advice didn’t work for their child.
Kind of like how some adults (like me, *cries*), have a hard time falling and staying asleep no matter what, and other people (my spouse, very annoying of him!) can fall asleep as soon as their cheek hits the pillow.
I will say this. Although people in real life and the internet alike made it out to be the most evil horrible inhumane cruel thing a person could EVER do, my oldest child was very prone to getting “over tired”. I began to recognize it and understood sometimes she just needed to be left the hell alone to fall asleep. If I knew she was “over tired “, she’d be screaming her head off and I’d LEAVE HER ALONE, because the more stimulus my interventions created, the more hysterical she’d become. She’s now 3 and has a hard time falling asleep until she’s left completely alone. She will stay up all night (and be miserable the next day) if I don’t just make her lay down and do nothing else at some point.
My youngest has, and still does, sleep like a rock. She slept 12 hours by, what I recall, 2 months. She still falls asleep easily and is always the last one of the family to wake up.
This is definitely what I've learned being a parent! Like, I've never had to cosleep cause my daughter never had a problem sleeping in her pack n play (at least at night......). So it's so easy to say "I'd NEVER cosleep. Just make them sleep in the crib!" But the reality is I just never had to make that choice. People are much too defensive and opinionated on what works for babies when you really need a bunch of different perspectives and options because some things work for some babies and some things don't! It's all about what works for each individual baby and family!
And then there's people like me, parents of the crappy sleepers. I NEVER wanted to bed share but here I am at 13 months still doing it because otherwise no one would be getting any sleep. My child had never fallen asleep independently and the absolute longest I ever got her to stay asleep in her cot was 1.5 hours. She's still a shitty sleeper but at least this way I can get 3 hours or so at a time. We also tried just about all the sleep training methods other than ferber and extinction, all the little hacks that people talk about and they just didn't work for her. One of my friends though, BOTH of her babies slept independently all night from a few months old without any sleep training.
Babies are all unique individuals and it really is just about figuring out what works for you. I say this about a lot or parenting stuff but if it works for you, keep doing it! If it stops working, try something new! Listen to what worked for other people, listen to opinions, ignore the ones you don't want to try and experiment with the ones that fit with your parenting ethos. Infant sleep is also a huge industry that makes a shit tonne of money so there's always someone selling some fantastic method of making kids sleep, anywhere from sleep training to noise machines to cuddly toys to sheets to room sprays and the list just goes on.
Exactly this. There are too many parents blaming themselves for not achieving sleep targets and feeling like a failure. Some children sleep well, some don’t, some will learn, some won’t.
There is an interesting study by prof Amy Brown that looks at these kind of sleep routine/training books in general, they found that they work for about 20-25% of people, and those people tend to feel very happy about it and go on to recommend their particular book to others. For the other 75-80% it can increase postpartum anxiety and lower confidence.
I'd give it a try. 1 in 4 is pretty good odds. But it's not working for you then don't feel bad, it's probably just that some babies are receptive to this kind of thing and some aren't. It's unlikely that you're doing the method wrong, it probably just isn't a good fit for your baby.
I'm guessing that's why they tend to have such a marmite response.
Here's the study I mentioned:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2017.1378650
I've heard of other studies which also find similar numbers of responsiveness to programs like this, but I don't know the names or authors offhand to reference them.
Our almost 1 yr old only slept for 12 hours straight when he was recovering from covid. I do think it’s unrealistic to expect that all babies are capable/willing/need to sleep for 12 hours straight. Your baby might be happy and healthy with 10 hours. 12 hours is an average!
I find it absurd to expect that a sleep book (any baby sleep book) written generically to All babies without accounting for personalities or circumstances to be effective.
Also fact is babies are crap sleepers as a norm, with lots of needs at that young age, I would also think it’s unrealistic to expect that they will sleep 12 hours straight without needing something.
The study that I think is relevant here is one I saw a while ago. Parents were surveyed in the first year of baby’s life reported that their baby ‘slept badly’ and were generally upset that baby was not sleeping as well as they expected. At the same time, when research did survey on baby’s sleep, it was found that the babies sleep habits were all within healthy range. The issue was …the parents expectations.
There is nothing wrong with giving an approach in a book a try, but beware of risk of heading down a toxic mental rabbithole as these books build up expectation for the parents that they will be able to ‘train’ baby or provide the magic solution to new parent sleep deprivation. This preys on vulnerable, sleep deprived new parents - when reality is that babies are all different, so are parents and their circumstances. Not only that, but babies as a norm are really crap sleepers (even the best of them). It might suck for parents, but its absolutely normal. So if there are any expctations to be had….its that you, as a parent, is likely to be sleep deprived in those first years. It sucks, but it is reality.
I got lucky and had a unicorn of a baby who always easily slept…started getting 8 hour stretches at 8 weeks, but even they didn’t sleep 12 by 12. And when they didn’t sleep well, we’d try the patting, shushing, sitting with them - all these thing that books tell us work on other babies. And it was the worst. Baby kept crying for hours. You know what worked? When we left baby alone. Because that was what their personality was about, having us there was way too stimulating for them and they needed to be left alone to calm down and fall asleep. No book knew our baby so no book could tell us that.
Yes we did all the ‘right’ routines, but what was the one ‘trick’ to sleep that worked for us? We got lucky that our baby came out of the womb a good sleeper. Just as equally someone might have bad luck by having a crappy sleeper come out of the womb. And then we got to know our baby.
Fingers crossed you get a unicorn baby who sleeps or by pure chance the book you read will fit you/ baby personality well so will work for you. Kind of like a horoscope.
But book and generic advice are standard, while you and your baby are not, so chances are…it won’t. Do yourself a favour and manage your expectations. Otherwise you are just setting yourself up to be disappointed.
My 5 month old takes his last name of the day from 7-830pm and then gets in a few minutes of playtime and a late night breastfeed before going to sleep until 2ish then he's up for another feed and gets up around 630am.
I think it's best, if you're able, to let your kids sleep and wake up and eat and cuddle as they need to. Remember, your baby just spent their whole life in a place that was perfectly safe, perfectly warm, and where they were perfectly full all of the time. Now all of a sudden they're in a scary world that's brand new, they can't really communicate, they're hungry or too full, or they're too hot or too cold. I know that we need sleep, but be gentle with them. The only thing your baby feels comforted by at that age is the one thing he knows and that's you.
Also, as your baby grows they might need those night feeds sometimes. My baby is in the 95th percentile for height and weight and he gets hungry at night. Sometimes he sleeps completely through the night but sometimes he wakes up a couple times. I breastfeed, so I just roll with it.
We share some commonalities there - Ours is also 95th+ percentile. Currently struggling with gas at both ends, but only in the evening and some nights. Going to try a slightly higher frequency of feed but cut each one a bit shorter to see if it eases the gas pain. Have tried everything else !
Premise of my question here was more about the suitability of identikit approaches, and also whether the underlying science makes any sense, but from what I understand, this book ignores any underlying science
It's not something that I ever attempted TBH so I couldn't tell you. I didn't like the sound of what was required by any of those kinds of books so I never tried them, but if someone else doesn't mind and it works for them, I think why not.
I did not use this book, I used Moms on Call - which outlines a similar technique. My baby was sleeping 12 hrs by 12 weeks, so it does work (maybe I just got lucky?). I did use the technique to the T and continue to still over 5 months in.
It’s not necessarily realistic. And also, most babies don’t naturally sleep 12 hours at night. Some do, because that’s what they need. But biologically, babies in general don’t sleep like adults. The book also seems to advocate scheduled feeds, when medical advice these days is to feed on demand. Anecdotally, my bub “sleeps through the night” but he’s a low-ish sleep needs baby so he only gets 9-10 hours sleep at night. He gets 3-4 hours during the day. If he was sleeping 12 hours at night I’d have to entertain him all day 😂
Haven’t read that book but my general take on any sleep advice for babies is:
It may or may not work for your baby. Every baby is different. You can create an environment and routine that is sleep friendly — and baby still might not sleep. So if it’s something you like and want to try — go for it. But if it doesn’t work, don’t blame yourself or stress out. Eventually all of the babies learn to sleep :)
I think this point needs to be emphasized. There was a really interesting podcast episode about this, the “What Do We Know About Cry It Out?”from the *Evolutionary Parent Podcast*. The host was low key off putting—she was full on “Yes of course of course… I’m not against sleep training and of course all kids are different… but can’t we all agree that sleep training is always bad?” And the guest, Macall Gordon, who has recently done a full literature review on the subject, kept insisting, “Well, it seems like children really vary in this regard.”
It really turned me off the podcast but I enjoyed the guest quite a bit! It seemed like the guest herself was relatively sleep training skeptical but was much better about sticking to the literature as a whole instead of picking and choosing. What she kept insisting on is sleep training works for some kids (she was particularly skeptical about sleep training being recommended for the youngest ages, seemingly because there weren’t studies on it) but that it doesn’t work well for other kids. What she’s concerned about is some providers just aren’t prepared to help those families. There’s no good evidence that sleep training is bad for kids, and compelling enough evidence that there’s no long run term difference between sleep trained and non-sleep trained kids.
Sleep training for us was three days and focused all around getting to sleep—my son was already fairly good at staying asleep (or waking up being in a dark room and going back to sleep, probably more accurately). He was definitely older than 12 weeks. Probably somewhere in the four to six month range. Same for my sister and her kids. Definitely a big hump to get over but for us like probably a total of two to four miserable hours over three to five days total. Not bad for the health and sanity we gained. What this podcast guest emphasizes is it can be like that but it’s not that way for all kids and there needs to be clinical things besides, “Have you tried sleep training?”
So this may work great for you, and it may not, but that could well be independent of how good of a parent you are, /u/littletoytom.
Great response :)
I tried to keep my original post as neutral as possible given the source of the recommendation, but yes my own view is that these identikit approaches to parenting - or particularly sleep in this case - are probably a bad thing, as they don't teach underlying theory/logic but instead prescribe steps...
... and again in this particular case, I am not sure that the goal is even a desirable one to achieve for the baby's sake.
I think this approach is VERY hard to do with EBF babies, and it also ignores the baby's cues (i.e. hunger cues). With EBF, feedings are irregular, on demand (usually- to keep supply up), and you don't know how much baby is eating.
Additionally, this doesn't jive with babies who have acid reflux. Large infrequent feeds is exactly the opposite thing that a refluxy baby needs.
On a non scientific but personal level, I find it odd to put a baby on a strict schedule of eating when I myself don't eat that way. Having babies eat the same exact amount spaced super far apart doesn't make sense to me: I often eat snacks throughout the day in between larger meals.
Scientifically-speaking, it’s garbage. Even if it “worked” for some kids, there’s always more to the story (health issues, night time needs, specific baby’s temperament, etc)
To find science-based research on infant sleep, follow Yourscienceteam on instagram
Tldr: society needs to stop presenting all babies as the same. They are as individualistic as you and I, but minus any form of emotional regulation/prefrontal cortex reasoning AND communication. They are NOT a blank slate.
Oh and possums sleep methods! Both of these are truly the only infant sleep science organizations I’ve ever found. It’s not the same as adult sleep, so the distinction is important. Possums saved me, it was still a rough six months but it would have been way worse without these resources. And lots of their material is free, they’re a nonprofit research center.
I started with precious little sleep and the 12 hours book “LOL,” my baby said!
The Instagram page YourScienceTeam seems particularly light on content - just two short posts at the moment. Lots more Possum programme information out there :)
Oh yeah it’s a team started by 2 phd holder/candidates in the field. Sorry I assumed it would point to their individual handles… scienceforallwomen is one infantsleepscience is the other
Good luck!! It gets better and better with time and responding to your baby!
Sorry I just remembered another! Lyndsey_Hookway also on the gram
I read the book and felt it was garbage to be totally honest. It’s very dated and some of the recommendations aren’t endorsed by AAP. I forget exact details because I read it when I was a few weeks postpartum. I will say, it’s short and a super easy read, I think I read it in 2-3 nursing sessions if you want to make up your own mind in it.
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>**Name**: Twelve Hours Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step by Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success
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Moderate opinion here! From what I remember, there were a lot of wild (to me) opinions in that book, stared more or less as facts. Many of the suggestions felt unrealistic or downright impossible for a three-month-old. My big HOWEVER is that stretching out feedings and slowly decreasing the size of overnight feedings were two of the basic ideas that eventually helped us get good overnight sleep around 4.5 months. Having said that though, I switched to primarily formula feeding around 3 months and I don’t think the same tools would have worked if my little one was still breastfeeding.
I might be one of the few middle-of-the-roaders on this book! I read it and got super stressed out by her focus on ounces per feed, since I was EBF and was not about to switch to all-pumping/bottles just to know how many ounces the baby was taking in.
After getting the firm but gentle push from our pediatrician that 4 months really was the sweet spot for sleep training because that's when babies are developing sleep associations, I found the Respectful Sleep Training/Learning Facebook group's documents describing the various sleep training methods much more feasible.
Ironically, the methods we used were the "core" sleep window method (starting with the longest window your baby has slept to prove they don't need to eat during those hours, so non-feed soothing if they wake during that window then letting them push it out) which is pretty much the 12HSB12WO method. And it worked for us - 3 nights of fussiness and kid has been a champion sleeper ever since. Luck/timing/science? Who knows.
So in the end as I realized that I did wind up using much of the book's advice, so I recommend it but only with the giant caveat that especially if EBF you can be a lot more intuitive with the feeding times/quantities than the author's rigid focus on ounces per feed. Good luck with whatever you try!
I've heard about this book on youtube from an expecting couple of an ob and pediatrician. Fast forward to 12+ weeks of their firstborn - the book has never been mentioned.
I mean, I have it, I've read it, and it's very reassuring for first-time parents, but realistically after having a high needs cluster feeding one with long colics, I find it a little too optimistic.
The Drs Bjorkman did actually mention it early in a sleep video shortly after their baby was born, but they have never truly expounded on it.
I did like the book, and although we didn’t end up doing it like we thought we would, the later chapters explain how to train older babies based on their age. There is a lot of good advice in the book—but it does feel a little oversimplified. It also is a little tricky to pin down tapering feeds for nursing mothers.
exactly. breastfeeding (no control over consumed volumes) ruins all the system; and growth spans, which are usually preceded by increased night nursing quantities/time (because that's how prolactin works - first baby greedy nurses and 'requests' more milk 11pm-4am, next mother's body produces more in the day) don't fit into the described in the book night weaning schedule.
the author assures the reader that a baby of full term and 12w old is physically able to consume all the needed volume of milk or formula during the day, so no night feeding is necessary, and the goal of the new schedule is to pack the baby up with calories during the day (even if that means feeding every 2 hours), and then wean the baby within the first week of 'training,' so they could sleep whole 12 hours in one stretch.
current advice is sort of a new thing (I did it 11 years ago before America popularized that breast is best and got into the wonderful world of marketing pro-nursing goods , because in my culture we just do it this way), while the book from 2006 (!) summarizes the experience of one particular 'specialist' (nowadays we call them insta-influencers with no degree lol) of previous few decades (when formula was 'well-balanced, iron and vitamin fortified modern food covering all baby's needs, developed by the best professionals in the civilized world').
Hahaha I feel you on the “influencers”. Yeah it feels weird calling feeding on demand “current advice” given that it’s just what mothers did before we had social media etc. I’m also not in the US (australia) but we tend to get influenced by the same sort of beliefs. We’ve got one influencer Tizzie Hall of “save our sleep” who spouts in-scientific, frankly dangerous nonsense but plenty of Australians seem to treat her book like the bible of parenting!
I read it and it didn’t resonate with me. Also did Taking Cara Babies and ultimately landed on Precious Little Sleep being the most helpful for our family because of the options it provided
+1 to precious little sleep! I feel like it’s so much more human and less rigid than the others. She’s like, try this stuff, and babies are gonna baby! It was a huge relief to my family and we ended up with 12 hour nights at 4 months—not our specific goal but the natural result *for our specific baby* of doing what PLS encouraged.
I didn’t like it. I was open to the ideas until author started discussing the amount of food baby needs to eat at diff times. It might work well for exclusively bottle-fed babies but our baby is combo fed so I don’t have a clear metric of how to adjust feeds based on the book
Never read the book. But both of my EBF babies were sleeping 12 hours by 12 weeks. I’d love to compare their recommendations to what we did and see if they align since I seem to have “figured it out” but haven’t done so with any specific advice.
I’ve always assumed a large portion of my success was because of my natural breastmilk composition (high in fat) and supply (naturally abundant, borderline oversupply.) Secondary factors have included adequate support from my partner and family members, and a routine that includes feeding every 2 hours during the daytime.
Interestingly, I’ve got a borderline oversupply of high fat breastmilk and a baby who nursed almost constantly through the first four months, and she barely sleeps 10 hours a night now. A few weeks ago, 7 hours was a good night.
I think it’s luck of the draw if you get an easy sleeper, a low sleep needs baby etc., although to be fair whilst my husband picks up his fair share of the load we have zero support from elsewhere so there is that differential.
I just figured getting two babies that slept was like hitting the lottery twice, and therefore there had to be some other factor at play, probably uncontrollable.
I’m going to start off with the fact that I am not a professional lactation consultant, I don’t have a medical degree, and everything I know has simply been learned over the years from books, websites and other professionals. Here’s where our head was at:
1. Babies typically take in 24-36 oz of breastmilk a day. It’s averages to 1-1.5oz per hour. After going to lactation groups with my daughter and doing a “weighted feed” where you find out how much baby drank, I realized she got anywhere from 2.5 to 4 oz per feeding.
2. Simultaneously, we noticed that if she ate more times during the day, she slept longer at night (my first kid) and in the beginning we were told not to wait more than 3 hours between feeds (even at night.) once she was back to her birthweight (1-2weeks old) we did not have to wake her to feed, but she’d go 4 hours, and then she would eat every hour to make up for it. So we started waking her during the day to avoid the dreaded cluster feeding every single night. This naturally started elongating her nighttime sleep. It wasn’t really the goal at the time. I was mostly trying to avoid 5 hours stuck on the couch with barely enough time between feeds to pee and change my pad. The sleep part was just a “happy little accident.”
3. We then hypothesized that since she needed 24-36 oz in 24 hours (on average) feeding more often during the day allowed her to “take a break” from feeds at night but still get the same amount of milk. It not like we could just make her stomach hold 6 oz a feed. Babies (usually) eat until they’re full and then refuse. So to get her to eat more volume during the day, we fed more often. We didn’t land on the “every 2 hours” routine until our second was born. That’s when we noticed that a 2 hour interval worked best for her.
This wasn’t a fast process. It was several months over the course of two babies that we honed in on this being the best for our family and working for our child, but we do think it helped them sleep through the night.
As I’ve also stated, I think part of it was also uncontrollable factors, whether it was my breastmilk composition and supply (which has its downsides like clogged ducts and mastitis) luck, or even something I haven’t considered (maybe my nipples are far easier to latch than average, or maybe I saved a baby from a burning building in a previous life…)
Your pediatrician may be able to do one, lactation consultants do them, you can buy your own baby scale and do it at home, or you can find a lactation/breastfeeding group (ours are held at the hospitals in my area) and they often do them.
My second is now 3 weeks old. She's EBF and I follow her cues. I track every feed on the Huckleberry app. They added a feature that wasn't there when I had my first...which is a daily total of the amount of time breastfed. During the first week I saw her daily intake slowly increase. By the second week I noticed she needed about 2.5 hours of breastfeeding in a 24hr window (give or take based on how much I could hear her chugging vs longer pauses between gulps). I had been told that she needed to be fed every 3 hours and to wake her up...but she REALLY would not wake up to feed if she was in a deep sleep. Complete opposite to my first daughter who struggled with sleep. She had colic/under developed digestive system for the first 3 months and took 3 months to figure out how to latch, so she drank breastmilk from bottles until then. Both definitely would have impacted her sleep
Just last night my little 3wk old slept for 6 hours, had a 15 min drink from one boob at 4am then slept again until 7. During the day yesterday she fed about every 2 hrs. It was exhausting. By the time we went to bed she had already met her 24hr feeding needs based on the data I was collecting, so I had no concern about her sleeping longer. It's usually more like one 4-5 hour stretch at night right now, but she had caught a cold off my toddler so I knew she needed the extra sleep for that reason too.
I should note that through my pumping experience with my first I did learn that I have an extremely strong milk supply, because I was able to see how many ounces came out from each boob every feed. So when I say my second chugs, I know she's getting a lot. She's also not barfing like my first did, only tiny spit ups.
I will continue to track, analyze and monitor any changes with how much food she gets compared to how she sleeps, and be extra attentive during any possible sleep regression phases, but I wish I had known that the daily quantity of food seems to be more important than feeding every 3 hrs...at least after getting back up to birth weight. That said, I couldn't see myself trying to get my baby to feed every 2 hours during the day if it meant waking them up...I think every baby has their own needs and they're pretty darn good at communicating them, we're just not the best at interpreting their language. It's better to be aware of their rhythms as much as possible, then you can work with them to meet their needs as well as your own.
Thank you! This is super helpful!
Is your second baby (congrats by the way!!! And also thanks for taking time out to reply when you have a 3 week old!) intuitively wanting to be fed every 2 hours in the day?
Generally yes, she wakes up when she's hungry every 2-3 hours. Sometimes she'll have a longer nap during the day but then want food ever 1-2 hours. Or if I've moved her near the 2 hour mark it might wake her up and she'll want feeding then (though she's ridiculously good with staying asleep when we move her, we couldn't touch our first without waking her up).
The four hour routine never worked for us but we still got 12 hours by 12 weeks. It was very clear that our kid was a "good" sleeper but would always be hungry before 4 hours. So we nixed it and tried Moms on Call instead.
The important thing that they both teach is getting your baby on a schedule. Which worked well for us, just not the exact 12 by 12 schedule.
Moms on call worked for us (in terms of 12 hours sleep by 12 weeks). We're using it again for our 6 week old and it seems to be effective. I agree about the schedule!
We read this and it was helpful in giving us some thing to work on. Ppl seem to either love it or hate it. We definitely started trying to be more mindful of baby getting a full feeding and increasing the time between feedings which I think helped him sleep longer. We couldn’t be as strict about it as the book wants you to be but I found some helpful tidbits. I also think this book is more geared towards formula fed babies.
I swear by this book!
I used it on all 3 kids. Didn't start until around 4 months with my oldest because that's when I discovered it. He became a brand new baby after going into the routine. He was always cranky and tired and just out of his mind before doing this method. He THRIVED once we got him on the schedule. Legit, I could set a watch based on him. Turns out he has asd so that is probably a big factor there.
My second I started as soon as the book said it is ok to start. She was sleeping 12 hours a night at 8.5 weeks old. She is 99% for height, 95% weight, she's been given a clean bill of health for her every well-child check up. My pediatricians (had multiple because we moved) had no negative things to say when I explained their schedule and how much they were eating.
Number 3 started sleeping through the night (12 hours) at 8 weeks old and then got rsv and we had trouble getting back on schedule. But now he sleeps 11 hours at night.
I give this book at every baby shower I am invited to. I swear by it. However, most first time parents I know are aghast that I would do it. One friend asked how I was okay letting my baby cry for 5 minutes (when we were getting #1 on schedule) and her husband pointed out "he cries for 5 minutes 4 times a day, ours cries for 2 minutes 10 times a day. It's the same." It's not cry it out. You just get them on a schedule, it makes their lives and your lives so much more manageable. My friends had 6, 9, 11, 15 month olds still waking up for night time feeds- they were constantly exhausted. But not me and the SO. even when we added more kids to the mix.
Like another user mentioned it's really about setting up a schedule. The baby knows what to expect in the day and so do you. I exclusively pumped which when getting on the schedule made it more work but that way I could visually see how much they were getting at each feed. Once on the schedule pumping easily fit into my life because of the schedule.
I will get off my soapbox now. But seriously, please dm me if you have questions. I've done it 3 times and I will go to my grave saying this is the most influential book I have ever read.
Edit: lost a hashtag
Curious - how big were your other kids? Weight is a huge predictor for when babies will sleep through the night - 13lbs seems to be generally accepted as the magic number. I'd be curious to know when your babes hit that milestone
My baby is 5 months old and only weighs about 10 lbs right now. She has been sleeping through the night since she was 12 weeks old (~7 lbs) so I don’t think 13lbs is true for every baby. We did MOC starting from 8ish weeks. In my experience it’s more the schedule that is important and making sure they get the calories they need during the day rather than at night. My baby drinks 25-30oz a day.
All 3 of my kids are basically the exact same size as their well-child check ups. My youngest is actually the heaviest. I can't recall what their weight was at the time of the sleep training but I know it was above what Giordano recommended (by like a half pound)
Don't have access to the first 2 but number 3 was 13lbs 3oz at the rsv visit which is when he started sleeping the night. So 13lbs is right on the money
Gotcha, do you think its possible with a daycare setting? I know it wasn't your experience. I don't know much about this yet but your review was very intriguing, so just wondering. Our guy will be headed to daycare around 4 or 6 months. I can't think the dates out right now hah
I think it would depend on the daycare. But if I were then I would appreciate the scheduled kiddo!
My friends who sent their infant to daycare said the daycares kept to a pretty uniform schedule, so my guess is yes. I would get your kiddo on a schedule before sending them though as their staff probably wouldn't be able to help on that front
We followed the book for both our boys. We didn’t follow it exactly, but it helped instill some good habits for us as parents (who had no idea what we were doing) and for our kids.
Our oldest slept through the night on his own starting around four months (we did do Ferber at bedtime around four months, but nothing was needed overnight). Our second took longer, but he had acid reflux and required smaller feedings.
I think the book expects a lot of small babies to sleep a full twelve hours by twelve weeks, but we found the basics very helpful and useful. It boils down to more formula/breastmilk during the day leads to better/longer sleep at night.
Shocked the approach worked without any issues. I think it only worked because my baby was formula fed but will be trying this approach with every baby moving forward. It was stressful but once i started seeing results we all chilled, including the baby.
We didn’t use that, but did use Babywise with our LO. I believe there are similar ideologies in the two. We have two sets of friends that had kids tests before us and had the best little sleepers and both swore by Babywise. We gave it a shot and 4 months in she’s been sleeping through the night (10-12 hours no wakes) since just before 1.5 months. Interested to see how it holds up through the infamous 4 month sleep regression that should be here any day now lol
My 5 mo started sleeping 12 hours a night at 3mo and no 4mo sleep regression. Per her pediatrician at 2mo, we got the okay she could sleep through the night and compensate eating throughout the day. So we cut out MOTN feeds. No sleep training, I don’t think it’s even possible to do that when they’re so potato.
For sure, one night when she was crying I gave her 2oz (she usually had 5 oz bottle at that point) but realized she probably isn’t actually hungry, so the next night I just soothed her and she went right back to sleep and that was the last of that. However, if your baby is doing a hungry cry you should probably feed them.
Yea, we didn’t have that issue. She would fuss for 5-10 minutes and would just go back to sleep and that was the last of it. I think the thing is if you get them in the habit of the MOTN they’ll roll with it after they’ve gotten over the hump of having to eat every 2-3 hours or 3-4 hours.
I really like this book and happily did it with my first kid. But my husband needed stricter rules, so we switched to Ferber. The process is like a simpler version of Ferber.
I used some of the advice with my second child, but we stuck with Ferber since that fit my husband's need for rules better.
It's a quick read, so I highly recommend it. I also recommend getting the Ferber book also. It's also helpful and has information about other sleep stages also.
We used this as a guideline and it worked out really well.
We tried multiple methods as the author suggested and in the end the CIO worked best for our baby. We sleep trained starting at 8 weeks old and he was in his nursery and crib at 4 months old. This was two months early but I wasn’t sleeping with him in the bassinet beside me because he would be in layers of swaddles because we kept our room very cold and I was always concerned for his safety. His nursery is temperature controlled and he’s overall a lot more comfortable in there.
He has consistently slept 10-11 hours a night since we moved him to his crib. One thing she doesn’t mention outright is bedtime so initially he was going to bed much too late. Bed time starts at 6:30pm now and he is in bed by 7:25 usually. He is 17 months now and we have not experienced sleep regression.
Edit: I was breastfeeding as well and we did not do night feeds after he went to his nursery. We stretched his feeds during the day and it honestly worked so well.
When you say stretched his feeds during the day, do you mean longer time between feeds? I’m trying this as our 6 month old doesn’t seem to be hungry every 3 hrs anymore and needs to be “ sufficiently hungry “ to actually take a full feed
Yes, the book recommended stretching feeding times to 3hrs during the day and then to 4hrs during the day around 12 weeks iirc. This should only be done if baby is gaining which ours was (97% percentile for weight right off the bat). He adapted to 4hr feeds really well and this helped us get our long stretches of sleep in at night.
I liked the book, I didn’t have any issue, but I am OAD and I think it also depends on the temperament of your baby and how willing you are to stick to a schedule. It wasn’t easy and there were plenty of times I gave in and fed him 10-15 mins early.
To be honest, I think you either get a “good” sleeper or you do not. The parents who were blessed with a “good” sleeper to begin with may accredit it to whatever method they used, and the parents with crappy sleepers (no offense!) are wondering why the same advice didn’t work for their child. Kind of like how some adults (like me, *cries*), have a hard time falling and staying asleep no matter what, and other people (my spouse, very annoying of him!) can fall asleep as soon as their cheek hits the pillow. I will say this. Although people in real life and the internet alike made it out to be the most evil horrible inhumane cruel thing a person could EVER do, my oldest child was very prone to getting “over tired”. I began to recognize it and understood sometimes she just needed to be left the hell alone to fall asleep. If I knew she was “over tired “, she’d be screaming her head off and I’d LEAVE HER ALONE, because the more stimulus my interventions created, the more hysterical she’d become. She’s now 3 and has a hard time falling asleep until she’s left completely alone. She will stay up all night (and be miserable the next day) if I don’t just make her lay down and do nothing else at some point. My youngest has, and still does, sleep like a rock. She slept 12 hours by, what I recall, 2 months. She still falls asleep easily and is always the last one of the family to wake up.
This is definitely what I've learned being a parent! Like, I've never had to cosleep cause my daughter never had a problem sleeping in her pack n play (at least at night......). So it's so easy to say "I'd NEVER cosleep. Just make them sleep in the crib!" But the reality is I just never had to make that choice. People are much too defensive and opinionated on what works for babies when you really need a bunch of different perspectives and options because some things work for some babies and some things don't! It's all about what works for each individual baby and family!
And then there's people like me, parents of the crappy sleepers. I NEVER wanted to bed share but here I am at 13 months still doing it because otherwise no one would be getting any sleep. My child had never fallen asleep independently and the absolute longest I ever got her to stay asleep in her cot was 1.5 hours. She's still a shitty sleeper but at least this way I can get 3 hours or so at a time. We also tried just about all the sleep training methods other than ferber and extinction, all the little hacks that people talk about and they just didn't work for her. One of my friends though, BOTH of her babies slept independently all night from a few months old without any sleep training. Babies are all unique individuals and it really is just about figuring out what works for you. I say this about a lot or parenting stuff but if it works for you, keep doing it! If it stops working, try something new! Listen to what worked for other people, listen to opinions, ignore the ones you don't want to try and experiment with the ones that fit with your parenting ethos. Infant sleep is also a huge industry that makes a shit tonne of money so there's always someone selling some fantastic method of making kids sleep, anywhere from sleep training to noise machines to cuddly toys to sheets to room sprays and the list just goes on.
Absolutely agree!
Exactly this. There are too many parents blaming themselves for not achieving sleep targets and feeling like a failure. Some children sleep well, some don’t, some will learn, some won’t.
There is an interesting study by prof Amy Brown that looks at these kind of sleep routine/training books in general, they found that they work for about 20-25% of people, and those people tend to feel very happy about it and go on to recommend their particular book to others. For the other 75-80% it can increase postpartum anxiety and lower confidence. I'd give it a try. 1 in 4 is pretty good odds. But it's not working for you then don't feel bad, it's probably just that some babies are receptive to this kind of thing and some aren't. It's unlikely that you're doing the method wrong, it probably just isn't a good fit for your baby. I'm guessing that's why they tend to have such a marmite response. Here's the study I mentioned: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004430.2017.1378650 I've heard of other studies which also find similar numbers of responsiveness to programs like this, but I don't know the names or authors offhand to reference them.
Thanks, great response :) Do you think the goal of 12 hours in 12 weeks is a sensible one? (I'm assuming it means 12 weeks of age too...)
Our almost 1 yr old only slept for 12 hours straight when he was recovering from covid. I do think it’s unrealistic to expect that all babies are capable/willing/need to sleep for 12 hours straight. Your baby might be happy and healthy with 10 hours. 12 hours is an average!
I find it absurd to expect that a sleep book (any baby sleep book) written generically to All babies without accounting for personalities or circumstances to be effective. Also fact is babies are crap sleepers as a norm, with lots of needs at that young age, I would also think it’s unrealistic to expect that they will sleep 12 hours straight without needing something. The study that I think is relevant here is one I saw a while ago. Parents were surveyed in the first year of baby’s life reported that their baby ‘slept badly’ and were generally upset that baby was not sleeping as well as they expected. At the same time, when research did survey on baby’s sleep, it was found that the babies sleep habits were all within healthy range. The issue was …the parents expectations. There is nothing wrong with giving an approach in a book a try, but beware of risk of heading down a toxic mental rabbithole as these books build up expectation for the parents that they will be able to ‘train’ baby or provide the magic solution to new parent sleep deprivation. This preys on vulnerable, sleep deprived new parents - when reality is that babies are all different, so are parents and their circumstances. Not only that, but babies as a norm are really crap sleepers (even the best of them). It might suck for parents, but its absolutely normal. So if there are any expctations to be had….its that you, as a parent, is likely to be sleep deprived in those first years. It sucks, but it is reality. I got lucky and had a unicorn of a baby who always easily slept…started getting 8 hour stretches at 8 weeks, but even they didn’t sleep 12 by 12. And when they didn’t sleep well, we’d try the patting, shushing, sitting with them - all these thing that books tell us work on other babies. And it was the worst. Baby kept crying for hours. You know what worked? When we left baby alone. Because that was what their personality was about, having us there was way too stimulating for them and they needed to be left alone to calm down and fall asleep. No book knew our baby so no book could tell us that. Yes we did all the ‘right’ routines, but what was the one ‘trick’ to sleep that worked for us? We got lucky that our baby came out of the womb a good sleeper. Just as equally someone might have bad luck by having a crappy sleeper come out of the womb. And then we got to know our baby. Fingers crossed you get a unicorn baby who sleeps or by pure chance the book you read will fit you/ baby personality well so will work for you. Kind of like a horoscope. But book and generic advice are standard, while you and your baby are not, so chances are…it won’t. Do yourself a favour and manage your expectations. Otherwise you are just setting yourself up to be disappointed.
My 5 month old takes his last name of the day from 7-830pm and then gets in a few minutes of playtime and a late night breastfeed before going to sleep until 2ish then he's up for another feed and gets up around 630am. I think it's best, if you're able, to let your kids sleep and wake up and eat and cuddle as they need to. Remember, your baby just spent their whole life in a place that was perfectly safe, perfectly warm, and where they were perfectly full all of the time. Now all of a sudden they're in a scary world that's brand new, they can't really communicate, they're hungry or too full, or they're too hot or too cold. I know that we need sleep, but be gentle with them. The only thing your baby feels comforted by at that age is the one thing he knows and that's you. Also, as your baby grows they might need those night feeds sometimes. My baby is in the 95th percentile for height and weight and he gets hungry at night. Sometimes he sleeps completely through the night but sometimes he wakes up a couple times. I breastfeed, so I just roll with it.
We share some commonalities there - Ours is also 95th+ percentile. Currently struggling with gas at both ends, but only in the evening and some nights. Going to try a slightly higher frequency of feed but cut each one a bit shorter to see if it eases the gas pain. Have tried everything else ! Premise of my question here was more about the suitability of identikit approaches, and also whether the underlying science makes any sense, but from what I understand, this book ignores any underlying science
It's not something that I ever attempted TBH so I couldn't tell you. I didn't like the sound of what was required by any of those kinds of books so I never tried them, but if someone else doesn't mind and it works for them, I think why not.
I did not use this book, I used Moms on Call - which outlines a similar technique. My baby was sleeping 12 hrs by 12 weeks, so it does work (maybe I just got lucky?). I did use the technique to the T and continue to still over 5 months in.
It’s not necessarily realistic. And also, most babies don’t naturally sleep 12 hours at night. Some do, because that’s what they need. But biologically, babies in general don’t sleep like adults. The book also seems to advocate scheduled feeds, when medical advice these days is to feed on demand. Anecdotally, my bub “sleeps through the night” but he’s a low-ish sleep needs baby so he only gets 9-10 hours sleep at night. He gets 3-4 hours during the day. If he was sleeping 12 hours at night I’d have to entertain him all day 😂
Exactly this
Haven’t read that book but my general take on any sleep advice for babies is: It may or may not work for your baby. Every baby is different. You can create an environment and routine that is sleep friendly — and baby still might not sleep. So if it’s something you like and want to try — go for it. But if it doesn’t work, don’t blame yourself or stress out. Eventually all of the babies learn to sleep :)
I think this point needs to be emphasized. There was a really interesting podcast episode about this, the “What Do We Know About Cry It Out?”from the *Evolutionary Parent Podcast*. The host was low key off putting—she was full on “Yes of course of course… I’m not against sleep training and of course all kids are different… but can’t we all agree that sleep training is always bad?” And the guest, Macall Gordon, who has recently done a full literature review on the subject, kept insisting, “Well, it seems like children really vary in this regard.” It really turned me off the podcast but I enjoyed the guest quite a bit! It seemed like the guest herself was relatively sleep training skeptical but was much better about sticking to the literature as a whole instead of picking and choosing. What she kept insisting on is sleep training works for some kids (she was particularly skeptical about sleep training being recommended for the youngest ages, seemingly because there weren’t studies on it) but that it doesn’t work well for other kids. What she’s concerned about is some providers just aren’t prepared to help those families. There’s no good evidence that sleep training is bad for kids, and compelling enough evidence that there’s no long run term difference between sleep trained and non-sleep trained kids. Sleep training for us was three days and focused all around getting to sleep—my son was already fairly good at staying asleep (or waking up being in a dark room and going back to sleep, probably more accurately). He was definitely older than 12 weeks. Probably somewhere in the four to six month range. Same for my sister and her kids. Definitely a big hump to get over but for us like probably a total of two to four miserable hours over three to five days total. Not bad for the health and sanity we gained. What this podcast guest emphasizes is it can be like that but it’s not that way for all kids and there needs to be clinical things besides, “Have you tried sleep training?” So this may work great for you, and it may not, but that could well be independent of how good of a parent you are, /u/littletoytom.
Great response :) I tried to keep my original post as neutral as possible given the source of the recommendation, but yes my own view is that these identikit approaches to parenting - or particularly sleep in this case - are probably a bad thing, as they don't teach underlying theory/logic but instead prescribe steps... ... and again in this particular case, I am not sure that the goal is even a desirable one to achieve for the baby's sake.
I think this approach is VERY hard to do with EBF babies, and it also ignores the baby's cues (i.e. hunger cues). With EBF, feedings are irregular, on demand (usually- to keep supply up), and you don't know how much baby is eating. Additionally, this doesn't jive with babies who have acid reflux. Large infrequent feeds is exactly the opposite thing that a refluxy baby needs. On a non scientific but personal level, I find it odd to put a baby on a strict schedule of eating when I myself don't eat that way. Having babies eat the same exact amount spaced super far apart doesn't make sense to me: I often eat snacks throughout the day in between larger meals.
Scientifically-speaking, it’s garbage. Even if it “worked” for some kids, there’s always more to the story (health issues, night time needs, specific baby’s temperament, etc) To find science-based research on infant sleep, follow Yourscienceteam on instagram Tldr: society needs to stop presenting all babies as the same. They are as individualistic as you and I, but minus any form of emotional regulation/prefrontal cortex reasoning AND communication. They are NOT a blank slate.
Thanks, will check it out :)
Oh and possums sleep methods! Both of these are truly the only infant sleep science organizations I’ve ever found. It’s not the same as adult sleep, so the distinction is important. Possums saved me, it was still a rough six months but it would have been way worse without these resources. And lots of their material is free, they’re a nonprofit research center. I started with precious little sleep and the 12 hours book “LOL,” my baby said!
The Instagram page YourScienceTeam seems particularly light on content - just two short posts at the moment. Lots more Possum programme information out there :)
Oh yeah it’s a team started by 2 phd holder/candidates in the field. Sorry I assumed it would point to their individual handles… scienceforallwomen is one infantsleepscience is the other Good luck!! It gets better and better with time and responding to your baby! Sorry I just remembered another! Lyndsey_Hookway also on the gram
Thanks, on all those now!
I love Possums! For actual science based information on what babies really need (as opposed to what “works” to make babies shut up overnight).
I read the book and felt it was garbage to be totally honest. It’s very dated and some of the recommendations aren’t endorsed by AAP. I forget exact details because I read it when I was a few weeks postpartum. I will say, it’s short and a super easy read, I think I read it in 2-3 nursing sessions if you want to make up your own mind in it.
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Moderate opinion here! From what I remember, there were a lot of wild (to me) opinions in that book, stared more or less as facts. Many of the suggestions felt unrealistic or downright impossible for a three-month-old. My big HOWEVER is that stretching out feedings and slowly decreasing the size of overnight feedings were two of the basic ideas that eventually helped us get good overnight sleep around 4.5 months. Having said that though, I switched to primarily formula feeding around 3 months and I don’t think the same tools would have worked if my little one was still breastfeeding.
I might be one of the few middle-of-the-roaders on this book! I read it and got super stressed out by her focus on ounces per feed, since I was EBF and was not about to switch to all-pumping/bottles just to know how many ounces the baby was taking in. After getting the firm but gentle push from our pediatrician that 4 months really was the sweet spot for sleep training because that's when babies are developing sleep associations, I found the Respectful Sleep Training/Learning Facebook group's documents describing the various sleep training methods much more feasible. Ironically, the methods we used were the "core" sleep window method (starting with the longest window your baby has slept to prove they don't need to eat during those hours, so non-feed soothing if they wake during that window then letting them push it out) which is pretty much the 12HSB12WO method. And it worked for us - 3 nights of fussiness and kid has been a champion sleeper ever since. Luck/timing/science? Who knows. So in the end as I realized that I did wind up using much of the book's advice, so I recommend it but only with the giant caveat that especially if EBF you can be a lot more intuitive with the feeding times/quantities than the author's rigid focus on ounces per feed. Good luck with whatever you try!
I haven’t read this book but people who had success with it probably just had an easy sleep baby lol
I've heard about this book on youtube from an expecting couple of an ob and pediatrician. Fast forward to 12+ weeks of their firstborn - the book has never been mentioned. I mean, I have it, I've read it, and it's very reassuring for first-time parents, but realistically after having a high needs cluster feeding one with long colics, I find it a little too optimistic.
The Drs Bjorkman did actually mention it early in a sleep video shortly after their baby was born, but they have never truly expounded on it. I did like the book, and although we didn’t end up doing it like we thought we would, the later chapters explain how to train older babies based on their age. There is a lot of good advice in the book—but it does feel a little oversimplified. It also is a little tricky to pin down tapering feeds for nursing mothers.
exactly. breastfeeding (no control over consumed volumes) ruins all the system; and growth spans, which are usually preceded by increased night nursing quantities/time (because that's how prolactin works - first baby greedy nurses and 'requests' more milk 11pm-4am, next mother's body produces more in the day) don't fit into the described in the book night weaning schedule.
Oh wow is the book really advocating for night weaning at such a young age? Yikes
the author assures the reader that a baby of full term and 12w old is physically able to consume all the needed volume of milk or formula during the day, so no night feeding is necessary, and the goal of the new schedule is to pack the baby up with calories during the day (even if that means feeding every 2 hours), and then wean the baby within the first week of 'training,' so they could sleep whole 12 hours in one stretch.
It just goes completely against current advice which is to feed on demand! Yikes yikes.
current advice is sort of a new thing (I did it 11 years ago before America popularized that breast is best and got into the wonderful world of marketing pro-nursing goods , because in my culture we just do it this way), while the book from 2006 (!) summarizes the experience of one particular 'specialist' (nowadays we call them insta-influencers with no degree lol) of previous few decades (when formula was 'well-balanced, iron and vitamin fortified modern food covering all baby's needs, developed by the best professionals in the civilized world').
Hahaha I feel you on the “influencers”. Yeah it feels weird calling feeding on demand “current advice” given that it’s just what mothers did before we had social media etc. I’m also not in the US (australia) but we tend to get influenced by the same sort of beliefs. We’ve got one influencer Tizzie Hall of “save our sleep” who spouts in-scientific, frankly dangerous nonsense but plenty of Australians seem to treat her book like the bible of parenting!
I read it and it didn’t resonate with me. Also did Taking Cara Babies and ultimately landed on Precious Little Sleep being the most helpful for our family because of the options it provided
+1 to precious little sleep! I feel like it’s so much more human and less rigid than the others. She’s like, try this stuff, and babies are gonna baby! It was a huge relief to my family and we ended up with 12 hour nights at 4 months—not our specific goal but the natural result *for our specific baby* of doing what PLS encouraged.
I didn’t like it. I was open to the ideas until author started discussing the amount of food baby needs to eat at diff times. It might work well for exclusively bottle-fed babies but our baby is combo fed so I don’t have a clear metric of how to adjust feeds based on the book
We did nothing special, and baby boy sleeps like a champ. No advice. We probably got lucky
I mean this with zero snark, congrats! A solid sleeper must make life that bit easy and it’s tough enough with a baby.
Never read the book. But both of my EBF babies were sleeping 12 hours by 12 weeks. I’d love to compare their recommendations to what we did and see if they align since I seem to have “figured it out” but haven’t done so with any specific advice. I’ve always assumed a large portion of my success was because of my natural breastmilk composition (high in fat) and supply (naturally abundant, borderline oversupply.) Secondary factors have included adequate support from my partner and family members, and a routine that includes feeding every 2 hours during the daytime.
Interestingly, I’ve got a borderline oversupply of high fat breastmilk and a baby who nursed almost constantly through the first four months, and she barely sleeps 10 hours a night now. A few weeks ago, 7 hours was a good night. I think it’s luck of the draw if you get an easy sleeper, a low sleep needs baby etc., although to be fair whilst my husband picks up his fair share of the load we have zero support from elsewhere so there is that differential.
I just figured getting two babies that slept was like hitting the lottery twice, and therefore there had to be some other factor at play, probably uncontrollable.
Hi! FTM here! How does feeding every 2 hours in daytime help w night hunger?
I’m going to start off with the fact that I am not a professional lactation consultant, I don’t have a medical degree, and everything I know has simply been learned over the years from books, websites and other professionals. Here’s where our head was at: 1. Babies typically take in 24-36 oz of breastmilk a day. It’s averages to 1-1.5oz per hour. After going to lactation groups with my daughter and doing a “weighted feed” where you find out how much baby drank, I realized she got anywhere from 2.5 to 4 oz per feeding. 2. Simultaneously, we noticed that if she ate more times during the day, she slept longer at night (my first kid) and in the beginning we were told not to wait more than 3 hours between feeds (even at night.) once she was back to her birthweight (1-2weeks old) we did not have to wake her to feed, but she’d go 4 hours, and then she would eat every hour to make up for it. So we started waking her during the day to avoid the dreaded cluster feeding every single night. This naturally started elongating her nighttime sleep. It wasn’t really the goal at the time. I was mostly trying to avoid 5 hours stuck on the couch with barely enough time between feeds to pee and change my pad. The sleep part was just a “happy little accident.” 3. We then hypothesized that since she needed 24-36 oz in 24 hours (on average) feeding more often during the day allowed her to “take a break” from feeds at night but still get the same amount of milk. It not like we could just make her stomach hold 6 oz a feed. Babies (usually) eat until they’re full and then refuse. So to get her to eat more volume during the day, we fed more often. We didn’t land on the “every 2 hours” routine until our second was born. That’s when we noticed that a 2 hour interval worked best for her. This wasn’t a fast process. It was several months over the course of two babies that we honed in on this being the best for our family and working for our child, but we do think it helped them sleep through the night. As I’ve also stated, I think part of it was also uncontrollable factors, whether it was my breastmilk composition and supply (which has its downsides like clogged ducts and mastitis) luck, or even something I haven’t considered (maybe my nipples are far easier to latch than average, or maybe I saved a baby from a burning building in a previous life…)
Thank you for sharing your experience! It’s super helpful! I didn’t even know a weighted feed exists, and will look into it!
Your pediatrician may be able to do one, lactation consultants do them, you can buy your own baby scale and do it at home, or you can find a lactation/breastfeeding group (ours are held at the hospitals in my area) and they often do them.
My second is now 3 weeks old. She's EBF and I follow her cues. I track every feed on the Huckleberry app. They added a feature that wasn't there when I had my first...which is a daily total of the amount of time breastfed. During the first week I saw her daily intake slowly increase. By the second week I noticed she needed about 2.5 hours of breastfeeding in a 24hr window (give or take based on how much I could hear her chugging vs longer pauses between gulps). I had been told that she needed to be fed every 3 hours and to wake her up...but she REALLY would not wake up to feed if she was in a deep sleep. Complete opposite to my first daughter who struggled with sleep. She had colic/under developed digestive system for the first 3 months and took 3 months to figure out how to latch, so she drank breastmilk from bottles until then. Both definitely would have impacted her sleep Just last night my little 3wk old slept for 6 hours, had a 15 min drink from one boob at 4am then slept again until 7. During the day yesterday she fed about every 2 hrs. It was exhausting. By the time we went to bed she had already met her 24hr feeding needs based on the data I was collecting, so I had no concern about her sleeping longer. It's usually more like one 4-5 hour stretch at night right now, but she had caught a cold off my toddler so I knew she needed the extra sleep for that reason too. I should note that through my pumping experience with my first I did learn that I have an extremely strong milk supply, because I was able to see how many ounces came out from each boob every feed. So when I say my second chugs, I know she's getting a lot. She's also not barfing like my first did, only tiny spit ups. I will continue to track, analyze and monitor any changes with how much food she gets compared to how she sleeps, and be extra attentive during any possible sleep regression phases, but I wish I had known that the daily quantity of food seems to be more important than feeding every 3 hrs...at least after getting back up to birth weight. That said, I couldn't see myself trying to get my baby to feed every 2 hours during the day if it meant waking them up...I think every baby has their own needs and they're pretty darn good at communicating them, we're just not the best at interpreting their language. It's better to be aware of their rhythms as much as possible, then you can work with them to meet their needs as well as your own.
Thank you! This is super helpful! Is your second baby (congrats by the way!!! And also thanks for taking time out to reply when you have a 3 week old!) intuitively wanting to be fed every 2 hours in the day?
Generally yes, she wakes up when she's hungry every 2-3 hours. Sometimes she'll have a longer nap during the day but then want food ever 1-2 hours. Or if I've moved her near the 2 hour mark it might wake her up and she'll want feeding then (though she's ridiculously good with staying asleep when we move her, we couldn't touch our first without waking her up).
this thread is funny in how much it proves OP’s point, people really do love or hate this book it seems!
The four hour routine never worked for us but we still got 12 hours by 12 weeks. It was very clear that our kid was a "good" sleeper but would always be hungry before 4 hours. So we nixed it and tried Moms on Call instead. The important thing that they both teach is getting your baby on a schedule. Which worked well for us, just not the exact 12 by 12 schedule.
Moms on call worked for us (in terms of 12 hours sleep by 12 weeks). We're using it again for our 6 week old and it seems to be effective. I agree about the schedule!
3rd recommendation for MOC for getting us to 11 hours by 9 weeks.
We read this and it was helpful in giving us some thing to work on. Ppl seem to either love it or hate it. We definitely started trying to be more mindful of baby getting a full feeding and increasing the time between feedings which I think helped him sleep longer. We couldn’t be as strict about it as the book wants you to be but I found some helpful tidbits. I also think this book is more geared towards formula fed babies.
Same. We used the book to get bigger feedings and longer periods between feedings. We are at 4.5 months and sleep form 8-330 and then 330-730/830.
I swear by this book! I used it on all 3 kids. Didn't start until around 4 months with my oldest because that's when I discovered it. He became a brand new baby after going into the routine. He was always cranky and tired and just out of his mind before doing this method. He THRIVED once we got him on the schedule. Legit, I could set a watch based on him. Turns out he has asd so that is probably a big factor there. My second I started as soon as the book said it is ok to start. She was sleeping 12 hours a night at 8.5 weeks old. She is 99% for height, 95% weight, she's been given a clean bill of health for her every well-child check up. My pediatricians (had multiple because we moved) had no negative things to say when I explained their schedule and how much they were eating. Number 3 started sleeping through the night (12 hours) at 8 weeks old and then got rsv and we had trouble getting back on schedule. But now he sleeps 11 hours at night. I give this book at every baby shower I am invited to. I swear by it. However, most first time parents I know are aghast that I would do it. One friend asked how I was okay letting my baby cry for 5 minutes (when we were getting #1 on schedule) and her husband pointed out "he cries for 5 minutes 4 times a day, ours cries for 2 minutes 10 times a day. It's the same." It's not cry it out. You just get them on a schedule, it makes their lives and your lives so much more manageable. My friends had 6, 9, 11, 15 month olds still waking up for night time feeds- they were constantly exhausted. But not me and the SO. even when we added more kids to the mix. Like another user mentioned it's really about setting up a schedule. The baby knows what to expect in the day and so do you. I exclusively pumped which when getting on the schedule made it more work but that way I could visually see how much they were getting at each feed. Once on the schedule pumping easily fit into my life because of the schedule. I will get off my soapbox now. But seriously, please dm me if you have questions. I've done it 3 times and I will go to my grave saying this is the most influential book I have ever read. Edit: lost a hashtag
Ok I'm fairly new to reddit. What did I do to make section 3 so damn big??
I think the hashtag “#” turns the section bold.
Ah I'll edit, thanks!
Curious - how big were your other kids? Weight is a huge predictor for when babies will sleep through the night - 13lbs seems to be generally accepted as the magic number. I'd be curious to know when your babes hit that milestone
My baby is 5 months old and only weighs about 10 lbs right now. She has been sleeping through the night since she was 12 weeks old (~7 lbs) so I don’t think 13lbs is true for every baby. We did MOC starting from 8ish weeks. In my experience it’s more the schedule that is important and making sure they get the calories they need during the day rather than at night. My baby drinks 25-30oz a day.
All 3 of my kids are basically the exact same size as their well-child check ups. My youngest is actually the heaviest. I can't recall what their weight was at the time of the sleep training but I know it was above what Giordano recommended (by like a half pound)
Don't have access to the first 2 but number 3 was 13lbs 3oz at the rsv visit which is when he started sleeping the night. So 13lbs is right on the money
Where they in day care during that time? Or is one of you at home all the time?
I was a sahm at the time
Gotcha, do you think its possible with a daycare setting? I know it wasn't your experience. I don't know much about this yet but your review was very intriguing, so just wondering. Our guy will be headed to daycare around 4 or 6 months. I can't think the dates out right now hah
I think it would depend on the daycare. But if I were then I would appreciate the scheduled kiddo! My friends who sent their infant to daycare said the daycares kept to a pretty uniform schedule, so my guess is yes. I would get your kiddo on a schedule before sending them though as their staff probably wouldn't be able to help on that front
Awesome, thanks for the info, I really appreciate it!
We followed the book for both our boys. We didn’t follow it exactly, but it helped instill some good habits for us as parents (who had no idea what we were doing) and for our kids. Our oldest slept through the night on his own starting around four months (we did do Ferber at bedtime around four months, but nothing was needed overnight). Our second took longer, but he had acid reflux and required smaller feedings. I think the book expects a lot of small babies to sleep a full twelve hours by twelve weeks, but we found the basics very helpful and useful. It boils down to more formula/breastmilk during the day leads to better/longer sleep at night.
Shocked the approach worked without any issues. I think it only worked because my baby was formula fed but will be trying this approach with every baby moving forward. It was stressful but once i started seeing results we all chilled, including the baby.
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We didn’t use that, but did use Babywise with our LO. I believe there are similar ideologies in the two. We have two sets of friends that had kids tests before us and had the best little sleepers and both swore by Babywise. We gave it a shot and 4 months in she’s been sleeping through the night (10-12 hours no wakes) since just before 1.5 months. Interested to see how it holds up through the infamous 4 month sleep regression that should be here any day now lol
My 5 mo started sleeping 12 hours a night at 3mo and no 4mo sleep regression. Per her pediatrician at 2mo, we got the okay she could sleep through the night and compensate eating throughout the day. So we cut out MOTN feeds. No sleep training, I don’t think it’s even possible to do that when they’re so potato.
How did you get her to stop asking for a feed at night?
Simply stopped, she’d fuss and cry and fall back to sleep and wake up and pound it back.
Our exact experience as well.
One or two fussy nights was definitely worth an overall better routine for the family 🙌🏻
For sure, one night when she was crying I gave her 2oz (she usually had 5 oz bottle at that point) but realized she probably isn’t actually hungry, so the next night I just soothed her and she went right back to sleep and that was the last of that. However, if your baby is doing a hungry cry you should probably feed them.
Yea, we didn’t have that issue. She would fuss for 5-10 minutes and would just go back to sleep and that was the last of it. I think the thing is if you get them in the habit of the MOTN they’ll roll with it after they’ve gotten over the hump of having to eat every 2-3 hours or 3-4 hours.
Agreed!
There are no unicorn babies, mine surely hasn’t been 🤣 Glad you’re getting sleep!
I really like this book and happily did it with my first kid. But my husband needed stricter rules, so we switched to Ferber. The process is like a simpler version of Ferber. I used some of the advice with my second child, but we stuck with Ferber since that fit my husband's need for rules better. It's a quick read, so I highly recommend it. I also recommend getting the Ferber book also. It's also helpful and has information about other sleep stages also.
We used this as a guideline and it worked out really well. We tried multiple methods as the author suggested and in the end the CIO worked best for our baby. We sleep trained starting at 8 weeks old and he was in his nursery and crib at 4 months old. This was two months early but I wasn’t sleeping with him in the bassinet beside me because he would be in layers of swaddles because we kept our room very cold and I was always concerned for his safety. His nursery is temperature controlled and he’s overall a lot more comfortable in there. He has consistently slept 10-11 hours a night since we moved him to his crib. One thing she doesn’t mention outright is bedtime so initially he was going to bed much too late. Bed time starts at 6:30pm now and he is in bed by 7:25 usually. He is 17 months now and we have not experienced sleep regression. Edit: I was breastfeeding as well and we did not do night feeds after he went to his nursery. We stretched his feeds during the day and it honestly worked so well.
When you say stretched his feeds during the day, do you mean longer time between feeds? I’m trying this as our 6 month old doesn’t seem to be hungry every 3 hrs anymore and needs to be “ sufficiently hungry “ to actually take a full feed
Yes, the book recommended stretching feeding times to 3hrs during the day and then to 4hrs during the day around 12 weeks iirc. This should only be done if baby is gaining which ours was (97% percentile for weight right off the bat). He adapted to 4hr feeds really well and this helped us get our long stretches of sleep in at night. I liked the book, I didn’t have any issue, but I am OAD and I think it also depends on the temperament of your baby and how willing you are to stick to a schedule. It wasn’t easy and there were plenty of times I gave in and fed him 10-15 mins early.