Do I have to sleep train?

[Anonymous]

FTM here and would appreciate some advice. My 4 month old has been sleeping 7-9 hours stretches at night for about 6 weeks now. She wakes up once around 3-4 AM to feed and goes back to sleep until 6:30/7 AM when she's up for the day . She sleeps in our bedroom, in her Snoo. Do I need to sleep train her? I'd like to keep her in our room/in the Snoo for as long as possible but I'm confused if I need to sleep train to move her to her crib in her nursery. TIA

[Anonymous]

No need to sleep train, sounds like she’s sleeping great!! Don’t rock the boat

—signed mom who sleep trained two babies who were terrible sleepers.

[Anonymous]

If you don’t have a problem you don’t have a problem. No need to change anything if it’s working.

[Anonymous]

You don’t have to do anything. By that age, my baby was happy to be rolling around and out of the swaddle. So that’s something to consider because you have to transition to a crib at some point.

But I let the 4am feed drop on its own. I was getting enough sleep and the baby was an independent sleeper and fine at bedtime and naps. But if I were not getting enough sleep and I had the green light from the Ped nutritionally, I wouldn’t have hesitated to stop the 4am feed.

[Anonymous]

No, of course not. Why would you need to. You must know that a huge number of people do not sleep train. Many think it is cruel and others think it is okay when you have a 6 month old that wakes every 90 minutes without fail but not otherwise. Very, very few people would sleep train a 4 month old who currently wakes once in the night.

[Anonymous]

The only things you have to do are pay your taxes and die.

If I were you, I would try a dream feed - wake the baby to feed at around 10 or 11pm, before you go to bed. That way, you "shift" her long stretch to a time that's more convenient for you to sleep. But it's completely up to you.

[Anonymous]

If it's working for you and working for your baby, then there's no reason to change anything.

[Anonymous]

I mean I personally would sleep train because I don't think 3-4am is an acceptable time to wake up. I'd worry both you and her aren't getting the right quality of sleep because of the middle of the night interruption.

But I'd consider a snoo sleep training already. I mean doesn't it rock when it hears noise? You can always sleep train her in your room. Just let her fuss for 5 minutes before attending to her. I bet a week of that and she'll put herself back to sleep

[Anonymous]

Nope if it’s working keep at it. Make sure your “sleep hygiene” is good so the regressions are temporary and don’t get into toooooo many bad habits and you’ll be fine. Sleep training is for when things aren’t suiting your needs.

[Anonymous]

See how she does with the transition to the crib before worrying about this. You may need to sleep train if things go off the rails, but in my experience the transition was fine. Highly recommend using the weaning mode for a few weeks before moving to the crib.

[Anonymous]

I don't think you have to do anything now, but you might have to do some kind of sleep training when she moves out of the snoo or moves out of your room.

[Anonymous]

I sleep trained at 4.5 mos but what your baby is doing at 4 mos sounds about right. Mine still woke up around 4am for a feeding then went back to sleep until 7ish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean I personally would sleep train because I don't think 3-4am is an acceptable time to wake up. I'd worry both you and her aren't getting the right quality of sleep because of the middle of the night interruption.

But I'd consider a snoo sleep training already. I mean doesn't it rock when it hears noise? You can always sleep train her in your room. Just let her fuss for 5 minutes before attending to her. I bet a week of that and she'll put herself back to sleep

But if I don't wake up and feed her at 3-4 AM I feel so engorged in the morning. How did you work around that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don’t have a problem you don’t have a problem. No need to change anything if it’s working.

This. I never sleep trained and my baby had nighttime wake ups until around 10 months. But I really did not mind waking up with her and over time it barely disrupted my sleep. She'd always fall back asleep quickly after eating. And then it extinguished on its own.

I remember our pediatrician making a big deal about this around 6 months, saying she should need to feed in the middle of the night and definitely not twice (I can't quite remember when she went from two feeds down to one, somewhere around this time. At first I felt pressure to do something about it but... yeah, it was fine. I was getting enough sleep, DH was getting enough sleep, baby was sleeping well not only at night but doing great with consistent and predictable naps. All was good.

Don't borrow trouble, as they say.

[Anonymous]

Youre fine. Revisit when shes no linger in the snoo. You may need to or you may not. My niece slept like a dream in the snoo. Moved out at 5 months and had 4-5 wake ups a night thing. Just later in her life since the snoo handled all that earlier on.