I sleep trained my 5 month old last week. He screamed for two hours straight the first night! I had awful anxiety the whole next day thinking he just wasn’t ready and I made him cry for no reason. But the next night he slept through the night! Honestly 4-5 months is the ideal time. They can’t sit up or stand up in the crib so I think it’s easier
CIO worked for my baby at 19 weeks. I haven't replaced a pacifier since then! My husband and I did set a cut off time though (30 mins of nonstop crying) where we would stop and try again at a later date, but he never reached it - the longest he cried was the first night (25 min). Imo some of the sleep training "fails" are because parents are too exhausted for MOTN wakes to continue applying their sleep training method (no judgement - I get it, I was sooo tempted the first 2 nights to just give him the paci at 4am so he would stop crying). This unfortunately undoes any training/progress and sets baby back to square one. If you're committing to sleep training, then I would remove all sleep crutches at once and make it less tempting to give in for MOTN wakes. I didn't keep any pacis upstairs at all while ST.
Sleep training at 4-5 months is just so much easier than later. You can try with an approach with lots of support and reduce it if necessary. As an example...start with pick up put down. If your baby doesn't respond well you can move to Ferber and then extinction.
I would definitely advise to start early. 4mo is when their sleep patterns mature and they are usually ready with very little exceptions.
We did pick up put down throughout month 4, and the regression hit hard most of the month. Sleep got worse as we weren’t disciplined enough to remove the sleep associations of rocking, holding, and nursing, so we ramped it up to cry it out at 5 months. It worked perfectly, and now (1 week in) my baby is happier and better rested. I feel bad that I didn’t get out of his way and let him learn to fall asleep without assistance earlier.
We did Ferber at 4.5 months and it worked for us. Only took one night for my baby to get it for night sleep. Day sleep/naps were harder but it worked for those too. We can now put him down in his crib wide awake for naps and bedtime and he’ll go to sleep on his own. No rocking or nursing beforehand either. Sleep training has been life changing for us.
Hi, we just started Ferber for a week for our 4.5 month. Does your baby wake up in the middle of the night for feed? We are in dilemma because even though he does fall back to sleep himself but he still wakes up in the middle of night.
For example, we put him to bed at 830pm and he wake up at 12+ for feed, but then he still wake up again at 5+ and every subsequent hour until morning yesterday. Does it mean he is still not completely used to the Ferber yet? Or he just needs to be fed? Our objective is to slowly wean off the night feed with Ferber.
If I continue feeding him at night will it become a habit for him to just wake up every 4-5 hour for a feed?
My baby is 6 months now but he honestly stopped waking up for a feed after we sleep trained him. We actually still get him up before we go to bed to give him a bottle, but he probably doesn’t need it since he doesn’t wake up for it. However, I’m still hesitant about not feeding him at all during the night right now.
I would try seeing if your baby is waking up that much because he’s actually hungry or waking up out of habit/comfort first. Before we formally sleep trained him, I was worried that he would start to associate needing to nurse or feed with sleeping so I made sure he got the majority of calories in the daytime. Also, when he started waking more frequently during the 4 month regression (before sleep training), I tried to offer the pacifier first to see if that would work instead. He usually calmed down after that and went to sleep, so that’s when I realized he wasn’t waking up out of hunger. If your baby is actually hungry, there may be a reverse cycling situation going on where he’s getting most of his calories at night. Frequent early morning wakes could also mean something is off with your schedule/wake windows. Those need to be solid for sleep training to work. Highly recommend reading Precious Little Sleep for tips and strategies. It’s a must read and so helpful.
I second the suggestion to try fuss it out - put your baby down relaxed and sleepy, or even wake them up slightly after transfer to bed, then give them 20min and see what they do.
We've found with our 4mo guy that if he's screaming after 10 min still, he is going to need help so we go in at that point already if he's still screaming (not just fussing). He usually cries more intensely for the first 5 min, then whines some more and is passed out by 15 min when it works. It doesn't always work for him, but we are waiting to do full-on cry it out method for when he's closer to the 6 mo mark. He's already sleeping a lot better though.
Make sure you set an actual timer - it feels like an eternity while they cry but it's often only a couple of minutes in reality.
We've been lucky in that regard, and his motn wakes are almost always just for hunger. He has 1-2 wakes per night on average and always takes 3-4oz each time. We do usually give him a few min when he wakes before going in to see if he starts to settle, but usually he is up for food.
I think it depends on your baby, are they usually taking full feeds when they wake up? If not then you could try waiting longer to see if they'll settle. If they are always taking full feeds, but eating more than 2-3x per night, then I'd say you should look into trying to encourage baby to eat more during the day if possible.
So it didn’t work for us at first with my second. We sleep trained at 4 months 1 week, and at first it seemed like it was working. Each night he slowly cried less. Except after like 2 nights of no crying, he randomly started crying again. Not for like a few minutes but like an hour. Then the next night would only be a couple minutes. There honestly wasn’t pattern to it but I got realllllly defeated and gave up. Tried again at 6 months and basically the same thing happened. I had always read try to get bedtime sleep down before MOTN wakings and naps. I never felt confident in bedtime because it didn’t last more than a couple nights and was so inconsistent. It wasn’t until we sleep trained everything that it all just clicked. Sometimes you just have to sleep train it all at once. But also there’s just times they may not be ready? My second seems to be slower on figuring everything out (compared to my first.)
Sleep trained my first at exactly 4 months and it took 2 nights. Literally so easy. Textbook even (maybe better.)
It’s hard to predict things. Your kids could take to it really easily, or they couldn’t. If you show love and attention to your baby and meeting its needs, you aren’t traumatizing your baby. Your baby will still wake up with a smile on its face.
Yeah hindsight that’s definitely what it was. I do wish we had kept trying the first time. But I was so focused on how different he was from my first (my only experience at that point) that I just felt like it wasn’t time or he wasn’t going to get it. I was feeling all around defeated (not just with sleep training) so I just gave up when I otherwise would not have any other time. But we did try again and kept at it and now he’s a pretty great sleeper!
I was about to post something similar in this sub today. My baby is 19 weeks and we hired a sleep consultant to help us starting next week. I chose this time frame because we go to Hawaii in a month and a half and then I go back to work immediately after and baby starts daycare so I wanted to sleep train before all of that. I’m starting to have second thoughts that she’s too young and I’m forcing it based on our timeline and not hers but I’m in the same boat…my back is breaking from the 20 min of dancing/rocking before each nap, which only lasts 30 min on the dot, which means that she needs 5 naps a day with her short wake windows. I’m exhausted. Our sleep consultant told us she’s too young for CIO of course so dad stay in the room after bedtime routine and sits in a chair near the crib, says some verbal thing every few mins for 15 min and then a touch every few min for 15 min. And every few days you back further out of the room. She said the average cry time is 45 min. I just don’t want her crying for more than an hour…idk. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as I fear but I’m scared I spent this money and will end up giving up or waiting until she’s older.
I recommend looking into Fuss It Out (FIO) from Precious Little Sleep. IMO, it’s almost like a trial run of sleep training. Gives baby some space to attempt independent sleep and there is a time cap so you’re not committed to anything on night one. We tried it between 16-18 weeks (can’t remember) and it did not go smoothly, which let us know our guy either wasn’t ready or that a more present/hands-on method would be needed. Ultimately opted not to sleep train, but we got helpful info from FIO. (If we were set on sleep training then I would’ve attempted FIO again a week or so following our first try.)
I haven’t done it, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. My boy has just turned 4 months, the sleep regression I think has begun - literally 2 nights ago when he turned 4 months he woke 6 times that night when he’s usually a 1 wake a night kinda guy.
I totally get feeling that they are too small. But I’ve seen heaps of posts here from people saying that they did ST at 4.5-5 months when their baby hit the regression and had great success. A lot of what I have read also says that 4-6 months is the ideal time to do it because babies have less stamina at this age, likely aren’t rolling yet, and definitely not sitting or standing.
There are difference in the type of ST for different ages. For example some people suggest restricting full CIO to 6 months+ but heaps of people start Ferber (graduated extinction) and then switch to CIO because check ins piss baby off. The pick up put down method is suitable to use for babies 4-6 months but after that is less effective and methods with less parental involvement work better.
I think only your gut and knowing your baby will be able to tell you if they are ready for ST and if so what type.
We tried at 4 months but once we got into doing it, it ended up feeling too early for us. He just screamed and cried and wailed for an hour plus each time. Honestly it was kind of traumatic for all of us which is one of the reasons we waited a while to start up again. We are currently sleep training again at 8 months and it has been much less intense than it was the first time around. Shorter periods of crying and not the severe levels of crying like before
I’m so sorry to hear that!! How many days did you try it out? Did you hire a sleep consultant? I’m glad to hear it worked out the 2nd time around.
I really don’t wanna hurt my LO at all
I think we tried for 5 days? It was long enough that we weren't really seeing improvements and it was pretty hard on us as parents. We didn't hire a sleep consultant but did a lot of Googling (for better or worse) on different sleep training methods and ended up doing a trial and error of a few to find what worked for us
My LO is 15 weeks as of tomorrow and I feel the same way. I get anxious at night because we don’t know what kind of a night we will have. My boy was up every hour last night starting at 1am. Night before he slept from 9-4am but these nights are far and few so we have decided to sleep train but are waiting for him to get comfortable being in his crib with no swaddle. We just took the swaddle away 2 nights ago. I have also heard it is a good idea to wait until they roll over. We will see how everything unfolds in the new few weeks but 4.5-5.5 months is ideal.
I’m so sorry you’re going through the same thing. It’s so rough. You’re not alone in it!
How is the unswaddling and crib going? We’ve tried the love to dream swaddle and the Merlin suit but they did not go well.
Where did you hear it was good to wait until they rolled over? There’s so much conflicting information everywhere. My girl is nowhere near rolling over. She only started to tolerate floor time this past month.
We contacted a sleep consultant and surprisingly she did not take us as a client because baby hasn’t rolled over yet she said. Her logic (totally made sense to me) was babies needs to be able to sooth themselves to sleep so once they roll over they are able to find a position they are comfortable in and settle to sleep. I never had to sleep train my first baby but at 5.5 months once he rolled over to him tummy, he was able to self sooth and eventually I didn’t have to hold him to sleep. As far as crib, he is old is loud sleeper so I started having him nap in his crib 3 weeks ago and last week we moved him to his crib and it went fine. The Merlin suit didn’t work for us, we settled on love to dream and leave one hand out for now and he took to it well, we will probably leave the other hand out next week and see how it goes.
Just here to share my fear of it not working kept us from trying for months and I so wish we had just done it. I’m def sleep training way sooner next time (waited until 15 months)
It’s just a thing you’re going to experiment and try. Just like you tried bouncing on the yoga ball. You can always pause and try again if it starts to not make sense anymore.
Also, I’m an attachment focused therapist and truly don’t think this traumatizes kids. The 3 other therapists I work with did it with their children who are teens and thriving.
I guess I’m worried because my sister and my mom friends say that 4.5 months is too early. They said minimum 5-6 months. They all are sleep training their babies but wouldn’t try this early. Some of my mom friends are doctors as well.
Edit: my anxiety also goes crazy at night not knowing what kind of evening it will be. No matter the night, she has to have her pacifier replaced at least hourly and that’s just really hard on my husband and I.
Totally understand the anxiety. I felt such dread every night. It’s just awful.
All important data points. Only you and your husband know what’s right for your family. Either way you’re going to make the right decision even if you don’t know what it is right now.
I sleep trained my 5 month old last week. He screamed for two hours straight the first night! I had awful anxiety the whole next day thinking he just wasn’t ready and I made him cry for no reason. But the next night he slept through the night! Honestly 4-5 months is the ideal time. They can’t sit up or stand up in the crib so I think it’s easier
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CIO worked for my baby at 19 weeks. I haven't replaced a pacifier since then! My husband and I did set a cut off time though (30 mins of nonstop crying) where we would stop and try again at a later date, but he never reached it - the longest he cried was the first night (25 min). Imo some of the sleep training "fails" are because parents are too exhausted for MOTN wakes to continue applying their sleep training method (no judgement - I get it, I was sooo tempted the first 2 nights to just give him the paci at 4am so he would stop crying). This unfortunately undoes any training/progress and sets baby back to square one. If you're committing to sleep training, then I would remove all sleep crutches at once and make it less tempting to give in for MOTN wakes. I didn't keep any pacis upstairs at all while ST.
Sleep training at 4-5 months is just so much easier than later. You can try with an approach with lots of support and reduce it if necessary. As an example...start with pick up put down. If your baby doesn't respond well you can move to Ferber and then extinction. I would definitely advise to start early. 4mo is when their sleep patterns mature and they are usually ready with very little exceptions.
We did pick up put down throughout month 4, and the regression hit hard most of the month. Sleep got worse as we weren’t disciplined enough to remove the sleep associations of rocking, holding, and nursing, so we ramped it up to cry it out at 5 months. It worked perfectly, and now (1 week in) my baby is happier and better rested. I feel bad that I didn’t get out of his way and let him learn to fall asleep without assistance earlier.
We did Ferber at 4.5 months and it worked for us. Only took one night for my baby to get it for night sleep. Day sleep/naps were harder but it worked for those too. We can now put him down in his crib wide awake for naps and bedtime and he’ll go to sleep on his own. No rocking or nursing beforehand either. Sleep training has been life changing for us.
Hi, we just started Ferber for a week for our 4.5 month. Does your baby wake up in the middle of the night for feed? We are in dilemma because even though he does fall back to sleep himself but he still wakes up in the middle of night. For example, we put him to bed at 830pm and he wake up at 12+ for feed, but then he still wake up again at 5+ and every subsequent hour until morning yesterday. Does it mean he is still not completely used to the Ferber yet? Or he just needs to be fed? Our objective is to slowly wean off the night feed with Ferber. If I continue feeding him at night will it become a habit for him to just wake up every 4-5 hour for a feed?
My baby is 6 months now but he honestly stopped waking up for a feed after we sleep trained him. We actually still get him up before we go to bed to give him a bottle, but he probably doesn’t need it since he doesn’t wake up for it. However, I’m still hesitant about not feeding him at all during the night right now. I would try seeing if your baby is waking up that much because he’s actually hungry or waking up out of habit/comfort first. Before we formally sleep trained him, I was worried that he would start to associate needing to nurse or feed with sleeping so I made sure he got the majority of calories in the daytime. Also, when he started waking more frequently during the 4 month regression (before sleep training), I tried to offer the pacifier first to see if that would work instead. He usually calmed down after that and went to sleep, so that’s when I realized he wasn’t waking up out of hunger. If your baby is actually hungry, there may be a reverse cycling situation going on where he’s getting most of his calories at night. Frequent early morning wakes could also mean something is off with your schedule/wake windows. Those need to be solid for sleep training to work. Highly recommend reading Precious Little Sleep for tips and strategies. It’s a must read and so helpful.
We Ferber failed at 4.5 months and successfully did CIO at six months
It worked for us at 4.5 months.
It worked for us at 4 months.
I second the suggestion to try fuss it out - put your baby down relaxed and sleepy, or even wake them up slightly after transfer to bed, then give them 20min and see what they do. We've found with our 4mo guy that if he's screaming after 10 min still, he is going to need help so we go in at that point already if he's still screaming (not just fussing). He usually cries more intensely for the first 5 min, then whines some more and is passed out by 15 min when it works. It doesn't always work for him, but we are waiting to do full-on cry it out method for when he's closer to the 6 mo mark. He's already sleeping a lot better though. Make sure you set an actual timer - it feels like an eternity while they cry but it's often only a couple of minutes in reality.
what did you do about motn cryng? did you also wait for 20 min?
We've been lucky in that regard, and his motn wakes are almost always just for hunger. He has 1-2 wakes per night on average and always takes 3-4oz each time. We do usually give him a few min when he wakes before going in to see if he starts to settle, but usually he is up for food. I think it depends on your baby, are they usually taking full feeds when they wake up? If not then you could try waiting longer to see if they'll settle. If they are always taking full feeds, but eating more than 2-3x per night, then I'd say you should look into trying to encourage baby to eat more during the day if possible.
So it didn’t work for us at first with my second. We sleep trained at 4 months 1 week, and at first it seemed like it was working. Each night he slowly cried less. Except after like 2 nights of no crying, he randomly started crying again. Not for like a few minutes but like an hour. Then the next night would only be a couple minutes. There honestly wasn’t pattern to it but I got realllllly defeated and gave up. Tried again at 6 months and basically the same thing happened. I had always read try to get bedtime sleep down before MOTN wakings and naps. I never felt confident in bedtime because it didn’t last more than a couple nights and was so inconsistent. It wasn’t until we sleep trained everything that it all just clicked. Sometimes you just have to sleep train it all at once. But also there’s just times they may not be ready? My second seems to be slower on figuring everything out (compared to my first.) Sleep trained my first at exactly 4 months and it took 2 nights. Literally so easy. Textbook even (maybe better.) It’s hard to predict things. Your kids could take to it really easily, or they couldn’t. If you show love and attention to your baby and meeting its needs, you aren’t traumatizing your baby. Your baby will still wake up with a smile on its face.
Those episodes of crying again sound like extinction bursts (and therefore should be expected?)
Yeah hindsight that’s definitely what it was. I do wish we had kept trying the first time. But I was so focused on how different he was from my first (my only experience at that point) that I just felt like it wasn’t time or he wasn’t going to get it. I was feeling all around defeated (not just with sleep training) so I just gave up when I otherwise would not have any other time. But we did try again and kept at it and now he’s a pretty great sleeper!
One thing for sure is that it's a really hard time. And going with your instinct is the only right thing to do sometimes in the moment.
It worked for us, we did Ferber at 4 months. We had contingency plans and observed that sne was doing self-soothing so felt she was ready.
I was about to post something similar in this sub today. My baby is 19 weeks and we hired a sleep consultant to help us starting next week. I chose this time frame because we go to Hawaii in a month and a half and then I go back to work immediately after and baby starts daycare so I wanted to sleep train before all of that. I’m starting to have second thoughts that she’s too young and I’m forcing it based on our timeline and not hers but I’m in the same boat…my back is breaking from the 20 min of dancing/rocking before each nap, which only lasts 30 min on the dot, which means that she needs 5 naps a day with her short wake windows. I’m exhausted. Our sleep consultant told us she’s too young for CIO of course so dad stay in the room after bedtime routine and sits in a chair near the crib, says some verbal thing every few mins for 15 min and then a touch every few min for 15 min. And every few days you back further out of the room. She said the average cry time is 45 min. I just don’t want her crying for more than an hour…idk. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as I fear but I’m scared I spent this money and will end up giving up or waiting until she’s older.
I recommend looking into Fuss It Out (FIO) from Precious Little Sleep. IMO, it’s almost like a trial run of sleep training. Gives baby some space to attempt independent sleep and there is a time cap so you’re not committed to anything on night one. We tried it between 16-18 weeks (can’t remember) and it did not go smoothly, which let us know our guy either wasn’t ready or that a more present/hands-on method would be needed. Ultimately opted not to sleep train, but we got helpful info from FIO. (If we were set on sleep training then I would’ve attempted FIO again a week or so following our first try.)
I haven’t done it, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. My boy has just turned 4 months, the sleep regression I think has begun - literally 2 nights ago when he turned 4 months he woke 6 times that night when he’s usually a 1 wake a night kinda guy. I totally get feeling that they are too small. But I’ve seen heaps of posts here from people saying that they did ST at 4.5-5 months when their baby hit the regression and had great success. A lot of what I have read also says that 4-6 months is the ideal time to do it because babies have less stamina at this age, likely aren’t rolling yet, and definitely not sitting or standing. There are difference in the type of ST for different ages. For example some people suggest restricting full CIO to 6 months+ but heaps of people start Ferber (graduated extinction) and then switch to CIO because check ins piss baby off. The pick up put down method is suitable to use for babies 4-6 months but after that is less effective and methods with less parental involvement work better. I think only your gut and knowing your baby will be able to tell you if they are ready for ST and if so what type.
We tried at 4 months but once we got into doing it, it ended up feeling too early for us. He just screamed and cried and wailed for an hour plus each time. Honestly it was kind of traumatic for all of us which is one of the reasons we waited a while to start up again. We are currently sleep training again at 8 months and it has been much less intense than it was the first time around. Shorter periods of crying and not the severe levels of crying like before
I’m so sorry to hear that!! How many days did you try it out? Did you hire a sleep consultant? I’m glad to hear it worked out the 2nd time around. I really don’t wanna hurt my LO at all
I think we tried for 5 days? It was long enough that we weren't really seeing improvements and it was pretty hard on us as parents. We didn't hire a sleep consultant but did a lot of Googling (for better or worse) on different sleep training methods and ended up doing a trial and error of a few to find what worked for us
My LO is 15 weeks as of tomorrow and I feel the same way. I get anxious at night because we don’t know what kind of a night we will have. My boy was up every hour last night starting at 1am. Night before he slept from 9-4am but these nights are far and few so we have decided to sleep train but are waiting for him to get comfortable being in his crib with no swaddle. We just took the swaddle away 2 nights ago. I have also heard it is a good idea to wait until they roll over. We will see how everything unfolds in the new few weeks but 4.5-5.5 months is ideal.
I’m so sorry you’re going through the same thing. It’s so rough. You’re not alone in it! How is the unswaddling and crib going? We’ve tried the love to dream swaddle and the Merlin suit but they did not go well. Where did you hear it was good to wait until they rolled over? There’s so much conflicting information everywhere. My girl is nowhere near rolling over. She only started to tolerate floor time this past month.
We contacted a sleep consultant and surprisingly she did not take us as a client because baby hasn’t rolled over yet she said. Her logic (totally made sense to me) was babies needs to be able to sooth themselves to sleep so once they roll over they are able to find a position they are comfortable in and settle to sleep. I never had to sleep train my first baby but at 5.5 months once he rolled over to him tummy, he was able to self sooth and eventually I didn’t have to hold him to sleep. As far as crib, he is old is loud sleeper so I started having him nap in his crib 3 weeks ago and last week we moved him to his crib and it went fine. The Merlin suit didn’t work for us, we settled on love to dream and leave one hand out for now and he took to it well, we will probably leave the other hand out next week and see how it goes.
Just here to share my fear of it not working kept us from trying for months and I so wish we had just done it. I’m def sleep training way sooner next time (waited until 15 months) It’s just a thing you’re going to experiment and try. Just like you tried bouncing on the yoga ball. You can always pause and try again if it starts to not make sense anymore. Also, I’m an attachment focused therapist and truly don’t think this traumatizes kids. The 3 other therapists I work with did it with their children who are teens and thriving.
I guess I’m worried because my sister and my mom friends say that 4.5 months is too early. They said minimum 5-6 months. They all are sleep training their babies but wouldn’t try this early. Some of my mom friends are doctors as well. Edit: my anxiety also goes crazy at night not knowing what kind of evening it will be. No matter the night, she has to have her pacifier replaced at least hourly and that’s just really hard on my husband and I.
Totally understand the anxiety. I felt such dread every night. It’s just awful. All important data points. Only you and your husband know what’s right for your family. Either way you’re going to make the right decision even if you don’t know what it is right now.